Is he not adorable, I ask you? And look at that wooden spoon he’s holding! In recent years, Hollywood has found a direct route to movie success with animating and personalizing animals – penguins, dogs, and now a impecunious rat. I haven’t even seen the movie yet and I already love it, since it’s about Remy (the above clever, cute rat) who aims to become a famous French chef. But, as a rat, how could he? As a rat, he’s abhorred in the kitchen. So, he hitches up with an unlikely young man who works in the kitchen (as a janitor of all things) of a top-notch, but about-to-lose-its-stars Parisian restaurant. Remy whispers instructions to this young man, and saves the day by making ratatouille.

Have you ever made ratatouille? Most people haven’t. It’s a labor of love, I assure you. I made it once, years ago, and must have decided it was w-a-a-a-y too much work and have never made it since. Not that I didn’t love the taste. I did. And I’ve had it in France too. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that ratatouille is a layered vegetable dish. Unctuous is what comes to mind. In the directions of any French cookbook, each vegetable is cooked separately – blanched in new salted water – because you don’t want any vegetable to contaminate or take over the flavor of another. Then the vegetables are combined and baked into silkiness, usually served in a wedge with a simple salad.

Fortunately for us, a fellow blogger and writing pro in the Bay Area at World on a Plate decided to take on Remy’s ratatouille and make it her own. She adapted it from Thomas Keller’s kitchen (world famous The French Laundry in Yountville). I won’t say making this is exactly easy, but her version doesn’t require the labor of love of my one attempt years ago. I might even be tempted to try it again with this recipe. But first, I need to go see the movie! As soon as my ankle heals, I’ll be gettin’ there.

Click HERE to go on over to Jeanne Brophy’s blog and her recipe. And, in case you’re not sure of the pronunciation, it’s rat-ta-too-ee, or rat-ta-twee.

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No recipe today! Yesterday I misstepped off our boat and turned my ankle completely sideways. Crunch. I’m very laid up yesterday and today; can barely, barely walk. Dave rolled me in one of the yacht club’s grungy rolling carts (used to haul gear from boat to parking lot and vice-versa) from our boat to our car. No way could I walk the block-long dock distance. Once home, Dave fetched my father’s cane which has been collecting dust in the front closet. My ankle is very swollen and hurts like heck if I put any weight on it.

SO, thought I’d wax poetic about cooking classes, since I may not be cooking for a few days.

Recently, several people said to me one of the following: Why the heck do you go to cooking classes? You certainly don’t need to go to cooking classes. Don’t you have enough recipes already? You’re already a good cook, why do you go? You could be teaching the classes yourself, so why would you go? So, to those questions, my answers are:

I go to cooking classes because:

• I really, really enjoy them, so it’s like recreation to me; maybe you go to a scrapbooking class, or watch television, go to a game, lie on the beach, whatever it might be that floats your boat;
• Learning to cook different things is a challenge; or watching somebody else prepare something I’ve made for years, in a new and unusual way, which makes me think;
• My friend, Cherrie and I enjoy doing this together – it’s like girlfriend bonding time;
• Yes, I have enough recipes to last several lifetimes. I’ve been a recipe collector for my entire adult life (that’s 4 1/2 decades, last count), and I’m still a recipe clipper;
• Particularly I enjoy attending a class demonstration by a well-known cookbook author. Joanne Weir is about my favorite, but Phillis Carey is a close second. And I’ve attended countless others as well, a few I’ve written up in previous blog posts. More often than not I end up buying the cookbook, unless I’m disappointed in the food prepared. And in those instances, I can always look at the cooking class as entertainment. The bonus is that we get to eat, too!
• I count myself lucky – this is after years and years of attending cooking classes – if I come home with just one – yes ONE – recipe that I’ll make myself. I once heard someone say about buying record albums – if he bought one album and there was just one – just one song that was a keeper, he felt he’d made a good investment. On occasion I’ll come home with no recipes I’ll have the desire to prepare, but not usually.
• I have become a bit more circumspect about the menus – I really read them well before deciding to attend a class. I don’t need to learn knife skills. Or basics, like sauces. The class needs to have some kind of hook – maybe like “summer entertaining,” or “spring vegetable extravaganza.” That kind of thing.
• It’s not always about the recipes alone, either. Even though a class may not be about a cooking technique, I almost always learn something I didn’t know. You may find that hard to believe, but it’s true. It may be nothing more than watching the chef cut up something differently – like a very unusual method of cutting zucchini that I’ve used time and again since. Or seeing a chef use a Meisermeister peeler, which has become my all-time favorite. Or learning about the unusual spices used in Indian cooking.
• And probably last, but not least, watching somebody else prepare a full menu of food gives me ideas. More often than not, the chef will talk about why she/he put certain foods together, why they’re good on the palate, why they look good on the plate (the aesthetics are important too). Or maybe it’s just the idea that using cardamom pods in making homemade iced tea will give plain-old iced tea an added boost of flavor. So, that’s why I love going to cooking classes.

Could I teach cooking classes myself? Well yes, probably I could. I’m sure I could. Do I want to? No. Too much work. WAY too much work and not enough monetary benefit. That’s why I don’t quibble when I have to pay $50-$75 for a class. I’m quite happy to let somebody show me.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, I used to be a huge fan of Sur la Table. I still love the store, but I’m very down on the cooking school. About a year ago the company at large let go nearly all the cooking school staffs and hired (unknown) professional chefs. The cooking schools are now separate profit centers, and each day there is a class at a Sur la Table anywhere in the country, most of the time anyway, it’s the identical class and menu in all of their stores, prepared by the staff chef or one of his/her minions. They have very, very few well-known chefs – guest chefs – anymore. Cherrie, Darlene and I, who were regulars at their classes, have all individually complained.

I even wrote a blistering letter to their corporate office complaining about the chef who is in charge at their Newport Beach store. I’ve watched him in action, and truly question the wisdom of his hire. He’s arrogant and self-serving. I simply won’t go to classes there anymore. They are very basic and elementary too, which I don’t need. But, probably I’m an aberration for them – I’m an experienced cook and want more difficult subjects. Therefore, Cherrie and I have begun looking elsewhere to attend classes. I’ve mentioned the private classes we attend at homes in Coto de Caza. And we also go to A Store for Cooks. And our favorite is Our House, South County, but it may be closing down soon. Phillis Carey teaches at Great News in San Diego, so we’re thinking about trying that out one of these days. It will mean an all-day expedition, that’s all.

Since I’m on the subject of cooking classes, perhaps, for those who are uninitiated in this venue, I’ll mention that there are two kinds of classes: demonstration and hand-on. I suppose if I really needed to learn a specific technique, I’d want a hands-on. But with most classes of 20-30 people, you may not get a choice as to what you prepare. Meanwhile, everybody else does the prep on the other menu items and you don’t benefit or hear about their learning curve. Recently, when Cherrie and I went to Wine Country and attended classes at Ramekins in Sonoma, at one of my classes all I was given to do was slice, thinly slice, a red onion. Yawn. Therefore, Cherrie and I balk at going to hands-on classes anymore. We’ll mostly attend demonstration classes. That way we get to watch everything being prepared, we hear about all the steps and missteps along the way. If you do enjoy cooking, you really should try going to some classes. Your family might be thrilled to see some new things on the dinner table. So, you want to go to a cooking class with me? For now I’m going to get a bag of ice for my ankle.

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Lest you think that I bake a pie, cake or cookies nearly every day, I don’t. I made this about 2 weeks ago when our daughter, her husband and grandchildren were here – we had 9 for dinner, and I made two pies. The leftovers from this are long gone. But, here’s the story . . .

What a funny name, Millionaire Pie, huh? This recipe goes w-a-a-y back in my life. For a couple of difficult years (during my first marriage) I lived in Oklahoma City. A born and bred California girl sometimes doesn’t adapt well to such a different place. Lots of things contributed to my unhappiness there: the obsession – absolutely maniacal obsession I’m talking about – with football for one. Hunting and fishing for another. Beer for one more. I don’t do football, hunting, fishing OR beer. I didn’t drink much during that time in my life – I hadn’t discovered wine yet, but beer was not on my list at all. The weather was another formidable obstacle (wind, more wind, heat and tornadoes). And shopping was not what I was used to. Yes, there was one department store, but mostly it was out of my price range. Yes, there were drug stores. And yes, there were grocery stores, but they didn’t carry lots of the things I was used to – fresh tortillas for one thing. Fresh fish for another thing.

At the time I lived there (this was the early 70’s) there was not a single place in Oklahoma City where you could buy fresh fish. Zip-zero-nada. Frozen was all that was available, and very a meager selection at that – mostly fillet of sole, cod or shrimp. Or frozen fish sticks – those were available in most markets. But that was IT. Cilantro? They’d never heard of it. There were very few good restaurants – at least that I thought were good. Oklahoma is a BEEF state, so you can find steaks and burgers and not much else. In the ensuing 30 years, I’m certain the restaurant and grocery situations have improved. I don’t mean to give OKC a bad rap, but I found it really tough to be a very imaginative cook. Fortunately I didn’t stay there long.

But during those two years my family frequented a modestly upscale cafeteria called Furr’s. It’s still going strong in about 6 states. Unlike the buffet dining establishments now popular here in Southern California for the big-on-appetite and short-on-funds, in the 1970’s this was a fairly nice restaurant, and all their food was home made. I don’t remember much about the place now but this was a favorite dessert. The origin of the pie – and hence its name – was that during WW II there were lots of food items cooks couldn’t get, and if you were able to find pineapple and walnuts, you must be rich (a millionaire). And while I lived there the local paper printed the recipe for this pie. There is a website out there called copykat recipes (famous and not-so-famous restaurant recipes), and it has a similar one for this pie as well in case you want to research this or other restaurant favorites. Its version suggested using Eggbeaters or similar product in lieu of the raw egg, which is probably a very good idea.

It’s a baked pie shell, filled first with a butter/sugar layer that firms up when refrigerated, then it’s topped with pineapple and walnuts, folded into whipped cream. Not difficult. And if you used Trader Joe’s pie crust shells it’d be a cinch. I didn’t, so made a short tart shell and put it into a regular pie plate. Once baked and cooled, I filled the shell and covered the completed pie with plastic wrap and refrigerated it until ready to serve. I used fresh pineapple, and added more than the recipe indicated and also sprinkled additional pineapple and nuts on top of the pie. It will hold for a couple of days, but I think it’s probably better to serve the same or the next day. So, here’s to the old Furr’s.
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I’d forgotten about this salad and how much I love it until last weekend when I went to Joan’s daughter’s home to greet their newly adopted infant, and Joan had made it as part of a lovely luncheon. Joan is rather “famous” for this salad – it’s one other people request too, not just me. We used to have season tickets to our local summer symphony series, and we’ve had many a picnic dinner on the lawn at the amphitheater, and every time Joan and Tom would attend I requested she make this. And she graciously gave the recipe to several people. So, thanks very much, Joan. I needed a salad for an outdoor dinner, and this just fit the bill.

Nothing about it is hard. It probably takes about 40 minutes to make it, including boiling the pasta. Be sure to not overcook the pasta. You don’t have to use penne, but that’s the way Joan makes it, and that’s the type I prefer too. You can add more sun-dried tomatoes if you wish – her recipe calls for 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup. I used 1/4. And our basil plant is proliferating, so I pruned it back for this salad. The basil is crucial in my opinion. It also will keep a few days, although it’s best the day it’s made.
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My photo is missing something – the topping of whipped cream and chocolate curls. Sorry about that. We had two different pies that night and this one went in a flash, so I had to grab the last piece for a picture.

Silk pie was popular during the 1960’s and maybe it’s even older than that. I had it at a bridal shower way back then, and was amazed at the texture and subsequently was served it several times by others. It’s kind of a mousse type whipped filling. And that’s my guess as to why it’s called a French Silk Pie. It is whipped up – a lot – to a mousse type consistency.

The recipe calls for raw eggs. The chocolate silk is not cooked at all – the pie shell is, but the filling is merely beaten up and chilled. Remember when we used to use raw eggs all the time? I still do when I make Caesar dressing. I used raw eggs in this recipe because I bought the eggs from a supermarket, where I know the eggs have been stored (chilled) well and there is, supposedly, very minimal risk of salmonella. If you had any concern, though, about the raw eggs, I’d just use double the amount of egg whites rather than yolks and whites or use Eggbeaters instead.

If you’re not much for homemade pie crusts, this could easily be made in a ready-made graham or chocolate graham shell. Or even crushed Oreos would work too. Since it’s so fluffy and light (although I will admit this is FAR from low calorie!) it needs some kind of texture.
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I’d never even heard about paella until about 1967. Wow, that’s 40 years ago. At the time I was living in Denver, Colorado, and friends had returned from serving 3 years U.S. Navy duty in Rota, Spain. We got acquainted with them and began having dinner at one another’s homes on a regular basis. Joan was a good cook, and was happy to share her knowledge about Spanish food she’d learned about and prepared. They had lived “on the economy,” meaning they’d lived off the base, in a regular house, not on the U.S. Navy base, so had made friends with a few locals. One particular neighbor shared food with them and showed her how to make some of the Spanish dishes.

So one night Joan and Roger prepared their version of Spanish paella. They also served us her version of Sangria, which I’ll share another day. Joan explained that after trying many different kinds of paella in Spain, the only one they really liked was this one which combines chicken, Italian-style sausage and shellfish all together in the one dish. She explained that the flavoring of the sausage added a big boost to the flavor. She also said she varied the kind and amount of fish/shellfish included in it, but it always had to have the chicken drumsticks and sausage added as well.

Happily I began making it and have done so about 15 times over the years. It needs to be made for a crowd as it will feed about 12 people. And I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that this is an expensive dish to make – the more shellfish, the more those dollars add up. Eventually I acquired a paella pan, an inexpensive model from Williams-Sonoma (not available per their website). It was less than $15. And I’d be remiss again if I didn’t tell you that this dish does take a moderate amount of prep time. There’s a bunch of mincing, chopping and sauteing in several pans, to be done. So leave ample time to complete all those tasks.

Here’s a photo of the drumsticks with the onions, yellow bell pepper and garlic. I will admit that over these 40 years I’ve had some difficulty with the paella – sometimes the rice didn’t get cooked. Sometimes the chicken didn’t quite get done, and sometimes the shellfish was undercooked. Maybe if this was made out in the open, in the huge paella pans used by the original sheepherders, you’d know it’s done because it was stirred more often. Here in the U.S. anyway, the presentation is half the pleasure of serving it – with all of the shrimp tails standing up, the drumsticks arranged artfully in a spoke pattern and the rice buried underneath. I’ve used scallops and langostinos, squid, fresh clams and fresh mussels too. Just don’t use all of those as there’s no way you can get them all on top of the rice.

Here’s my advice when making paella:

• cook the rice until it’s just a hair’s breadth from being done (I do this in a separate pan now);
• brown and cook the drumsticks until they, too, are just barely done;
• if using frozen shellfish, defrost it fully first;
• if covering with foil, leave it tented with a space for steam, as that helps to cook all e fish nestled into the top layer; in other words, form it into a kind of dome;
• and lastly, cook the Italian sausage until it’s lost all of it’s pink color, and mince it up into small bite-sized pieces.

Here’s a photo of the rice – you must brown the rice before finally finishing the preparation of the paella. It has a really rich color and the steamy flavor from it is SO good. Until I visited Hungary some years ago I didn’t know there were so many types of paprika, so I now have the traditional, half sharp and smoked. I used some of the half sharp and the smoked paprika in the paella this time and liked it. I order most of my spices now from Penzey’s, and you do know, don’t you, that paprika must be kept refrigerated. Little critters love to get into that herb and it loses its flavor left at room temperature. The addition of saffron is essential – it’s so very Spanish, and leaves a nice underlying character to the rice.

Finally, you begin pulling it all together. You add the canned clams and sausage to the rice, then all that is poured into the bottom of the paella pan, then the drumsticks are placed in a spoke. Shellfish is strategically placed in and around the drumsticks, tails pointing up. If you add mussels or langostinos, those need to be nestled into the mixture as well. By this time the pan is FULL, let me tell you. Lastly, you throw in a bit of fresh tomato, cover with foil and put into the oven. If the fish is cold, just remember that it takes a bit of time for the entire mixture to heat up enough to cook the fish, so make sure it’s done before serving. It always seems to take longer than I think. Take a peek and be certain the shrimp is cooked through. Whisk off the foil and garnish with the reserved minced red bell pepper and peas and serve.
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All those little flecks you can see in the cookies? Those are tiny pieces of ground dry-roasted peanuts added to the batter to make them more peanut-ty. America’s Test Kitchen really works on their recipes to develop techniques and recipe additions to make foods taste even better, sometimes, than tried and true recipes. They weren’t happy with the standard peanut butter cookie recipes they tested, so finally came up with the addition of the dry-roasted peanuts. They liked the use of both white and light brown sugar too.

Two of our grandchildren have been visiting for the last 10 days, and I thought maybe some cooking lessons were in order. What child isn’t happy with making cookies, I ask you? They were more excited about eating the batter in the bowl and those few little clumps that just happened to get stuck to the sides of spoons or fingers than they were about the cookies themselves, but that’s okay. That’s part of the fun of it. I’ve made these cookies before and knew they were good. You need to like very crispy cookies, though. These aren’t soft at all. And the addition of the ground peanuts is a very nice one. Another successful America’s Test Kitchen recipe.

Logan (13), Grandpa Dave and Taylor (9) sampling the finished product.

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I’m always looking for different ways to serve vegetables or sides for warm, summer barbecue dinners. I must have been watching Bobby Flay last summer when he prepared this. I made it right away and liked it a LOT. It’s not difficult to prepare, although you do have to bake (or cook somehow) the sweet potatoes, then you pare them, slice and grill them, along with the green onions, then make the dressing and toss it together. It can be served hot, room temp or chilled, and it keeps for about a week.
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If you haven’t ever had Panna Cotta, you’re missing a big treat. And, if you’ve never had it, it’s hard to describe: it’s not custard; it’s not like mousse either; it’s not clotted cream; nor is it like a pie filling. But it is creamy, yummy. I guess you’ll just have to try it to find out. I’ve had it out and I’ve made it before, although this time I made it in muffin cups. I wanted to use ramekins, but I didn’t have enough for the family crowd we had over. A shopping expedition to Target didn’t yield any ramekins, either. I wasn’t about to drive to Williams-Sonoma just for ramekins. So I bought this new-fangled kind of silicone muffin tin. Each of the silicone cups are removable and they slide easily into their custom muffin tray. Since they’re small, however, I filled them right up to the top, which yields one half cup. So because of that, the recipe made 12 pannas using this recipe.

Strawberries are at their peak and waning, so I wanted to use berries with it. In the past I’ve made a Joanne Weir recipe for panna cotta, but I thought I’d try Ina Garten’s recipe instead, which uses more yogurt. Dave and I are stuck on Fage yogurt (Trader Joe’s, $3.60 low fat). It’s a strained (thicker) yogurt. It comes in non-fat, low fat and full fat. Interestingly, I had a hard time getting the pannas out of the muffin cups – you might not know the difference if you’ve never had this – the blobs of panna aren’t as perfect as you’d have at a restaurant. But, it made no difference whatsoever in the taste.

It’s very easy to make (must be made ahead, though) and spends some time resting in the refrigerator. An hour before serving the berries were sliced and balsamic added and the black pepper. Actually, since I wasn’t sure people would really like the pepper, we added it as a garnish on the berries rather than adding it to the berries in the bowl.

A note about the balsamic – I’m embarrassed to tell you that I have at least 4 bottles of balsamic vinegar on my pantry shelf. One bottle is cheap. Not very good either, but I use it in salad dressings or marinades only. Another is a middle grade, a bit thicker in texture and much more tasty. I use it in cooking when I know I’ll be able to tell the difference. A third bottle is a very expensive one, an aged balsamic I bought in Italy from a unique little shop that only carried wine and balsamic – it’s the cream of the crop, is almost the consistency of a light syrup. You could sip it from a spoon it’s so good. That one is reserved for the occasions when a drizzle is truly a garnish on a dish that prides itself on the balsamic quality. And, I had a bottle of pear balsamic on my shelf too. I don’t even remember where I got it, but I took a tiny taste before using it to see if it was appropriate for this dish. Since this was a fruit dessert, I thought it would be ideal. Loved it. Will I make this recipe again? You betcha.
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The Los Angeles Times’ Food Section happens to be one of the better ones in the country. Maybe I should qualify that. It used to be one of the best. So few major newspapers are devoting money and staff to the sections anymore, but you can access the food sections of many newspapers on the net now (click on this link for a list of newspaper food sections available online). But this recipe was in the “good old days,” when the food section was quite large. The recipe comes from a restaurant in Los Angeles called Cha Cha Cha and was printed about 7-8 years ago. I’ve never been to the restaurant, but I guess they do a lot of highly seasoned Caribbean foods, this being one of them. Jerk seasoning was new to U. S. cooking circles back then, and having never had it, I was intrigued to try it. It’s been a summertime regular ever since. And I want you to read the nutritional analysis this time (a very good-for-you dish).

You need to have a sizable repertoire of herbs and spices in order to concoct the herb/spice mixture. I make it up in quantity. I think I’ve read that once you combine herbs or spices their lifetime diminishes considerably. My stash of this mixture is from last summer, so I hope it lasts a few more months.

The chicken breasts are marinated in a combination of the herb/spice mixture, canned pineapple juice, orange juice and Worcestershire sauce. Ideally for 24 hours, but I’ve done it in far less when I haven’t planned ahead to make this. It’s very simple once you have the dry mix ready; I always marinate meat/chicken/fish in a plastic bag – one of the freezer types so there’s no chance of puncturing it. Or at least very little chance of a chicken bone or something poking a hole in the bag. When I am unsure about how safe the bag is, I’ll put it into the bag, then in a large plastic bowl. Just in case.

The only other info about this chicken that is different is how it’s cooked. It is done on direct heat, but after grilling for a fairly short time on the grill, you remove the breasts and slice them into strips, dip in the marinade again, then finish cooking. The batch pictured above didn’t get that last step because the head griller had already turned the meat over and it was deemed “too late” to do the slice. So we just slathered more of the marinade on it and allowed it to cook that way. It’s very moist as long as you don’t overcook it. Remove the chicken when it reaches about 150-155 degrees, allow to sit a few minutes then slice and serve. Discard the marinade as it’s contaminated.

You could boil the marinade down if you wanted to and make it a sauce, but it might take longer than you have to devote to it since the chicken cooks in nothing flat. I’m going to try that sometime. The chicken is extremely low in fat because the marinade has no oil in it at all. None. So it’s just the fruit juices that help it retain moisture. Our family from Placerville was here, and they deemed it good. My daughter Dana has made this a few times and recommends buying the pineapple orange combination juice (Dole makes it) instead of using separate canned juices. Makes good sense to me. I may stock up on that, because I never have pineapple juice on hand.

The original recipe called for double the ingredients for the marinade, but I’ve been perfectly happy with a smaller quantity and if it’s marinated in a plastic bag, you can turn it over and back, and all the chicken is in contact with the liquid.
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