Easy, easy dry rub, air dried/marinated in the frig, then grilled.

Always, I’m on the lookout for a new way to do pork tenderloin. I was hosting a big family birthday party recently. Karen brought salmon, and her pistachio cole slaw, Karen’s mom brought a veggie platter, Sara brought a blueberry lemon layer cake and I filled in the rest with this pork and a big huge salad platter (see below).

This recipe for the pork came out of Southern Living a few months ago. Once you prepare the dry rub (brown sugar, smoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, dry mustard) you plop the tenderloins into a Ziploc bag with the rub. Toss it around a bit, let it sit for a few minutes, toss again, then the tenderloins are placed on a rack on a sheetpan (I used the smaller one) and they marinate in the refrigerator (yes, open, no covering) for 8-12 hours. What happens in that time is the outside of the pork hardens a bit and absorbs all of the dry rub.

When my family comes I almost always assign the grilling duty to my son Powell, or Sara’s husband John. I think they both worked at it – cooking the salmon and grilling the pork. The pork was grilled for 8-10 minutes I’m guessing (I wasn’t at the grill so don’t have an exact number), turning them occasionally, until the internal temperature reaches 140°F. If you remove the pork then, let it sit a few minutes and it rises to 145°F, which is what you want it to be. As you can see, the two guys cooked it perfectly.

I wish I’d made some kind of salsa or condiment to go with it – like balsamic onion marmalade, green tomatillo salsa, or pineapple salsa, strawberry salsa, tomato jam, parsley sauce, chimichurri perhaps, or mango chutney. It was fine plain, and we had plenty of food, but knowing my family, it would have been nice if I’d had something to go with it. Just sayin’.

There’s the salad platter I served with it. I cut Romaine in quarters (the ones from Trader Joe’s are smaller and manageable). There are nine wedges of Romaine in the center. Then green beans that I dressed with some of the vinaigrette at the last minute, halved hard boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes and some pomegranate seeds sprinkled over it all. I drizzled everything (except the eggs) with my old-favorite, creamy garlic blue cheese vinaigrette (that I made with Gorgonzola this time). There was nothing left on the platter except a few green beans.

What’s GOOD: oh, how easy this was – made the pork rub in the morning, marinated it for 5 minutes, then it chilled in the frig all day. Easy to grill – just don’t let it go too long, remove it at 140°F. Delicious. The smoky flavor comes from the smoked paprika, which was really nice, I thought. It wasn’t overly sweet at all, though on the pieces you ate with the outside edge, you could taste the brown sugar just a bit. Very good. I’d make it again – just with a salsa or sauce with it. The salad platter was SO easy too – I cooked the green beans the day before and made the dressing. The hard boiled eggs were done in my Instant Pot that morning and chilled. It took about 5 minutes to cut the Romaine wedges, dress everything and arrange on the platter. So easy and a pretty presentation to boot!

What’s NOT: hmm. Nothing that I can think of, other than you need to start this in the morning before grilling in the evening.

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A fabulous recipe from my friend Linda. It’s a favorite of hers.

My friend Linda is a great cook. My guess is she cooks more than I do, and she’s also a single person. She had told me about this recipe some time back and she recently made it again for guests and took a photo and sent me the recipe, asking if I’d like to post it on the blog. I said yes, sure would! Originally the recipe came from Ina Garten, but as Linda has made it over and over, she’s adapted it some. For one thing, Linda felt there was too much shrimp in it (Ina called for 2 pounds). And she altered the amount of veggies in it too.

There are a four steps to this recipe: (1) cook the orzo; (2) make the dressing; (3) roast the shrimp; (4) combine the orzo, the dressing, the shrimp and add dill, parsley, cucumber, red onion and feta cheese. The dish is served at room temperature. You can make it a day ahead and bring it out to warm a bit before serving. Just taste it for salt and pepper before serving. Linda says everyone who has had this loves it.

What’s GOOD: the nice big shrimp and orzo combination. The lemon juice-based dressing adds a nice acidity to the dish. Great for hot weather.

What’s NOT: nothing that Linda mentioned.

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OMGoodness. Was this ever beyond delicious.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote up a post about Vivian Howard’s book, This Will Make It Taste Good. And about my friend Cherrie and I getting together to cook for a day and making three of the flavor enhancers Vivian shares in the book. This post is about the one called Red Weapons.

To make this chicken and grits, you need to make the Red Weapons. They’re not hard – not in the least. But it is a separate process, and they need to be made a day ahead, at least. The red weapons mixture Vivian says will keep in the frig for 3 months. It’s a pickled kind of mixture but also contains EVOO.

What’s in it? First you cut up 2 pounds of tomatoes, put them in a bowl. Glass one if you have it. Then in a big saucepan you combine green onions, jalapenos, fresh ginger, garlic, cumin, mustard seeds, cayenne, turmeric, brown sugar, EVOO, salt, unseasoned rice wine vinegar and white wine vinegar. The mixture is heated to a boil then it’s poured over the bowl of tomatoes. It’s set aside to sit, for many hours, or even overnight. This allows all those flavors to mingle – once you refrigerate this it will stop the flavor-mingling. Because of all the vinegar it contains, it IS a pickling liquid, but tempered by the EVOO. While you heat it up and then pour all that hot liquid over the tomatoes, it semi-cooks the mixture. The tomatoes stay relatively intact.

The recipe below makes twice this amount, pictured. At right is a quart of it (half). The EVOO is sitting there on top and the red weapons and the pickling liquid below that (called for separately in most of the recipes that accompanied the red weapons recipe in the cookbook). If you make this, store it in a wide mouthed glass container (do NOT use plastic). Or you can divide the mixture into several smaller containers – just use wide mouthed ones as the congealed EVOO on top makes it hard to get to the goodies underneath.

WARNING: turmeric stains everything it touches. There’s only 1 1/2 teaspoons in the entire batch, but it gets on everything –  your counter, your clean-up sponge, and if you mop any of it up with a paper towel, you’ll sure know there’s turmeric in it. But you can’t taste the turmeric at all. Funny how that is. The tomatoes and jalapenos are the primary flavors here. Ideally the mixture is left out at room temp overnight, then it’s refrigerated.

In the cookbook, Vivian suggests you can use the red weapons for these things: on any kind of cooked egg, added to braising liquid (stews, soups), mixed into cooked rice or beans, as a sauce or marinade for grains, legumes or pasta salads, added to reheated chicken or pork, a marinade for ceviche or a dressing for crudos, chopped up with fresh herbs as a salsa, blended with mayo for a dipping sauce and stirred into potato, chicken, shrimp or tuna salad. Recipes in the cookbook include: pickled shrimp, a breakfast casserole with sausage, bread and cheese, in deviled eggs, as a condiment for fish, beef or lamb tartare, added to fried chicken, Vivian’s sausage sauce (Sunday sauce) served over broccoli, not pasta, with greens on mozzarella toast, plus several vinaigrettes.

Now, we can get on to the Chicken and Grits recipe. First, I made a huge mess trying to extract the cup of red weapons (the stuff underneath).  I removed about half of the EVOO covering it, then dug deep into the glass container to get to the goodies. You need a cup of red weapons and 1/2 cup of the pickling liquid.

I didn’t have skin-on chicken thighs, so I used boneless, skinless ones. They were lightly browned in a skillet – the big, huge 12-inch Lodge cast iron one. They were removed, then you add a chopped up leek to the fat in the pan. As it began to soften I mushed them a bit so they’d separate into rings. Then garlic is added, then the grits, the red weapons, the red weapons liquid, milk and water. The recipe suggested adding more salt, but I didn’t think it was needed. The picture here at right is of the thighs nestled into the grits (which is very liquid at this point).

If you’re using skin-on thighs, they’re nestled into the mixture and the pan goes into a 375°F oven. With skinless thighs, I baked the grits for 20 minutes, then nestled the thighs into the grits mixture to finish cooking them. The total bake time is 40 minutes and you let the pan cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Vivian suggested serving the grits with another one of her flavor bombs, a mixture called herbdacious. I haven’t posted that recipe yet. I had guests the night I made this chicken, and we did use some of the herbdacious on the top and I agree, it made it even better.

What’s GOOD: I’ll say it again – OMGoodness. So good. There is very little fat in this (except for the chicken skin if you use it plus a tablespoon of EVOO used to brown the chicken). There’s no butter, no cream. The red weapons provide a wonderful flavor to everything – chicken and the grits. I will be making this again and again – providing I have some red weapons in my refrigerator.

What’s NOT: well, only that you need to plan ahead at least a day to make the Red Weapons first, then the chicken and grits later.

RED WEAPONS: printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open)

CHICKEN: printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open)

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You are going to love these. I mean it.

In my last post I told you about Vivian Howard’s latest cookbook, This Will Make It Taste Good, and about the various “flavor heroes,” she calls them, that she relies upon in her restaurant and home cooking. To make this recipe above, however, you have to make one of her flavor heroes, the one she calls the “Little Green Dress.” Hereon referred to as LGD! I suppose that’s a take on every woman’s need for a “little black dress,” except that here, the color is decidedly green, not black.

The flavor hero recipe has a preponderance of Castelvetrano olives in it, plus shallots, garlic, vinegar, capers, some anchovies (which you don’t taste at all – but you know – anchovies are one of the umami flavors), fresh parsley, fresh mint, EVOO, hot sauce and salt. You pour this into a clean glass jar, and if you haven’t used it within a few days, pour a little layer of EVOO on top so it doesn’t spoil. It will keep for several weeks that way.

If you’re not familiar with Castelvetrano olives . . . well, they’re a more ripe olive than the traditional green olives – not in color, just in how they pickle them, I guess. They have a milder flavor and they’re not as piquant (sour).

Once you make this flavor hero, then you add some of it to – – in this case it’s canned tuna, a little bit of mayo, and some minced celery and you’ve got a fantastic lunch. Vivian slices avocado and puts that on the cracker first, then piles it with the tuna salad. I forgot the avocado that day, but I made it again the following day, and used some avocado on one, and a sliced egg on the other.

You may THINK this is not worth the trouble, but I’m tellin’ you, it is. I don’t think I’ve ever had canned tuna taste this great. I’m serious. When my friend Cherrie and I got together to make three of the flavor heroes, we made this tuna salad cracker for our lunch. Cherrie and I were both blown away by how flavorful it is. FYI: I buy the line-caught Wild Planet albacore tuna from Costco (blue can, in a stack of about 5).

But, I do need to tell you about Wasa crispbread crackers. I remember them vaguely from my youth – my mother used to buy them. I have no recollection what we ate them with. They come in various grain flavors – I bought the whole grain. They’re not a good cracker to eat by themselves – even Vivian Howard says they taste kind of like cardboard. But they have a very unique characteristic (not mentioned in the book) that once you pick up that little slate of cracker, piled with goodies, you can bite into it without risking cracking the whole cracker and making a big mess. It stays intact as you munch on down. I suppose you could make the tuna salad and use other crackers, but I’m certainly a fan now, of Wasa crackers. I don’t know whether all grocery stores have them – I finally found them at my small, independent market near me.

It’s been two days since I had this for my lunch, and as I write, I’m craving another serving of those tuna crackers.

What’s GOOD: (the flavor hero, the LGD): so unique, and I hope to find more ways to use it. The cookbook includes many recipes using small amounts of it. (The tuna cracker): it’s sensational. I’m craving it. So delicious. Once you have the LGD made, it’s so very easy to make the tuna salad and you’ve got a simple but flavor-packed lunch.

What’s NOT: well, if you’re not willing to put in the effort to make the LGD, then you won’t be able to enjoy the flavor of the tuna snack crackers. I’m telling you, you don’t want to miss this flavor puch. FOMO!

LGD printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

Tuna printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

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It isn’t often that I devote a blog post to a cookbook, but this one is so unusual that I needed to. Everything about this cookbook, This Will Make It Taste Good, is unusual, IMHO.

So, let’s back up a bit . . . I really admire Vivian Howard. I have her first book, Deep Run Roots, which is more an homage to her unique little town, Kinston, North Carolina, than it is anything else. There are recipes, lots of beautiful photographs and plenty of down-south kind of stories about the bountiful produce and meat that come from the South. But more specifically to her locale. Kinston is a tiny, tiny town. When she and her husband (Ben, now her ex-husband) moved back to her home town they decided to open a restaurant. They did – she was the chef, and that’s the series A Chef’s Life she created for a year or two. That’s when lots of people fell in love with her witty, down-home, no-nonsense style. I had a reservation at her restaurant in 2020, and then Covid hit. No travel, no restaurant eating, nada. My trip to see one of my granddaughters graduate from Clemson got canceled. Well, we all remember – everything got canceled.

That year of mostly lock-down was so difficult. As a widow I struggled some with the loneliness. I waved to my neighbor occasionally. I saw people outside my car when I picked up online groceries and they delivered them to my car. A few times in those first months I took a drive in my car – just to get out of the house. There were hardly any cars on the road. It was eerie, like we’d just survived some gigantic earth shift or a global catastrophe. But other than that, was it a whole year we stayed at home? It was ugly. Just sayin’.

For Vivian, their Kinston restaurant closed (and has stayed closed since – I think she said somewhere that it was very difficult to get help because of the very rural outpost of a town it’s in). During Covid, she stayed home helping to raise their twins (and she was still married then) and she decided to write another cookbook, this one. She’s since opened a restaurant in Charleston.

THIS BOOK: Over the years of being a chef, she adapted recipes from lots of places and created lots of her own, obviously. She went about creating 8 or 9 “flavor heroes,” she calls them. These are recipes/concoctions she makes regularly that she uses to enhance all kinds of other things (finished dishes – other recipes, meaning they’re added TO something) from appetizers, main dishes, to salads and veggies, to desserts. She created them for the restaurant, and I think I remember correctly, she eventually had an employee make these up in gigantic batches. It was probably her full time job! She sells them online too (for a steep price) at Handy & Hot (in Charleston).

So far I’ve made three of them (the ones pictured). It’s a bit difficult to categorize this book – to explain the flavor heroes. All of them have very unusual names – not necessarily explanatory about what they are. Like the first one, the very first one she created, she titled “Little Green Dress.” In texture it looks kind of like pesto, but trust me, it’s NOT pesto.

Another one she called “Red Weapons.” It’s a tomato based concoction that separates into 3 layers once finished and the various layers are used in different ways, separately, or in various quantities in another dish. It’s very labor intensive to prepare, but you end up with double the amount you see at right (which is four cups – so it makes eight cups). My friend Cherrie and I got together for an entire day and made the three pictured here). Since Cherrie and I shared it, four cups is about right for me!

Another one is called “Herbdacious,” and that’ll be the one I’ll post first.  We made a wonderful tuna salad crunchy cracker thing for lunch for ourselves using herbdacious, and we prepared meatloaf using one of them. Might have been the first flavor hero one, LGD. Both are green, one more chunky than the other and totally different flavor profiles. I haven’t yet baked the meatloaf, but I’ll post all about it eventually.

There’s an unusual sauerkraut flavor hero, another with preserved lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit (like preserved lemons that we know, but with the added other citrus fruits). Another one she calls “Community Organizer,” which has a very interesting provenance (you’ll have to read the book). Mostly that one is added to savory dishes, also tomato based. Another one is called “Quirky Furki Umami” which is seaweed driven. Another is called “R-rated onions” (mostly they’re caramelized onions).

So far I’ve only tasted the herbdacious used in the tuna salad on a cracker, and all I can say is that it was fabulous. I cannot WAIT to make it again – I think I have enough to do that from the leftovers. The herbdacious provided flavors that just burst in your mouth.

Vivian is a GREAT writer – she’s so funny. I can imagine she’d have been a handful as a child. She writes for the magazine Garden & Gun – (it’s one of my favorite magazines) and with every issue I can’t wait to see what her new column has to say. If you’re anxious to try something, you’ll find the recipe for LGD if you click through to the magazine. Her columns are not always about food – one was about the dating life of a well-known chef (herself) when you’re in your 40s and haven’t dated for mostly two decades. It was LOL funny.

SO, this book . . . if you have someone in your life who is a good cook, and likes taking on some relatively heavy-duty cooking projects, he/she might find this book well worth it. You wouldn’t have to tackle three of these in a day like Cherrie and I did – you could do just one. I’m looking forward to trying the Red Weapons in a baked dish with feta cheese and shrimp (or swordfish). Even if you’re not a cook, but you enjoy good food, you might enjoy reading the book just for Vivian’s witty writing all by itself. This cookbook might not be for everyone because each recipe for a flavor hero is a bit of a challenge (maybe except for the R-rated onions). I can’t wait to start using some of the flavor heroes in my everyday cooking. But first, I’m digging out the leftover tuna mixture and will make myself another lunch of crackers with it.

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Brownies – oh my – so rich and decadent. A different technique.

Today, I’m also philosophizing a bit about cookbooks. If you want to jump to the recipe write-up, scroll down further.

Lately, I’ve been having a talk with myself. About my cookbooks. My couple-hundred or three-hundred cookbooks. And don’t get me wrong, I love my cookbooks. But how often do I really go to those shelves to look or hunt for recipes? Truthfully, not all that often. Case in point . . . this recipe. I had decided to make some brownies. But as I looked through my MasterCook recipes on my computer, not a one jumped out at me. I wanted to try something new, and there were only about 5 or 6 brownie recipes that I hadn’t made before, and none suited me. So I went to my more recent cookbook purchases . . . so maybe I should say here . . . I still buy cookbooks, even though I tell myself not to. Sometimes I give in and buy one anyway. I’ve had to resort to storing my cookbooks in various other places in my house. Some are upstairs in my study (mostly cookbooks I can’t give up but rarely view), others are on various shelves and cupboards in my kitchen and family room. I’ve begun having to stack a cookbook or two sideways on top of a shelf full of cookbooks. I’m running out of room. And you may recall, about 3-4 years ago I donated at least 100 cookbooks, ones I almost never referred to. It’s an addiction. What can I tell you?

So, let’s talk for a minute about cookbook writing . . . in many of my older cookbooks there are very few author notes. In the cookbook world those are called “headnotes.” That little paragraph – tucked in between the title and the list of ingredients. In most of the recipes from the Joy of Cooking, there are NO headnotes. Even some of the old tomes from Betty Crocker and such, there are no notes to give you an idea about the recipe – you know, the things like “the reduced balsamic glaze is what makes this dish special.” Or, “don’t eliminate the almond extract even though there’s only 1/4 teaspoon in it.” I do love those headnotes, so going to my more recent cookbooks there were lots of headnotes. I grabbed one book after another, still hunting for just the right brownie recipe to try, not finding anything that I fancied. I have several books that are just about baking. Nothing there, either.

I’ve been thinking, that in my spare time (oh dear, do I really have any?) I should go through all of my cookbooks and mark them with sticky notes. Maybe I should add the actual recipes to my MasterCook online file. We’re talking thousands here! What a lot of work. I don’t know that I have it in me! Would you? But when I’m thinking about a recipe, what I don’t do, usually, is go hunt in my cookbooks. Part of that is the intervention of the internet. We need only go to a browser, put in a search term, “brownies” and the internet will provide hundreds. Likely thousands of recipes. Magazine recipes seem to come up first. Now that Bon Appetit and that group charge to access their recipe files, I’m no longer a fan. I subscribe to numerous food magazines so why wouldn’t I have access to the recipes online? When my subscriptions run out for a few of them I’m going to let them lapse. This practice annoys me. So far, Southern Living, Sunset, Food & Wine, and Garden & Gun are free for internet searching and browsing. If any of those begin charging a fee to access online I might just drop those subscriptions too.

I do have a subscription to EatYourBooks, a website that keeps track of all the cookbooks one owns (obviously you have to input the titles into your “library”), and as time has gone on, people have indexed all the recipes in most cookbooks out there. And so, let’s say I want to make lamb stew. I can go to my EatYourBooks website and hunt for “lamb stew,” and it will tell me what cookbooks I own contain a recipe for lamb stew. Then I have to go find the book and look it up. I was very enamored with the idea at first, and I used it quite often. But as time has gone on, I don’t research things there very much anymore. In this case, I could have gone there, input “brownies” and probably gotten a list a mile long for brownies. I just did a search and it provided me with 130 entries. Probably if I were to be searching for a recipe for brownies that contain sour cream, I could have done a more refined search and found fewer (a more manageable) number of recipes to locate. Some of the ingredients are listed along with the titles. In this case, I didn’t have a preconceived idea about ingredients in my brownies. So that website wouldn’t have helped me unless I were willing to devote a lot of time researching brownie recipes in my cookbook results. As it is, the cookbook I eventually used I don’t have listed in my “library.” Obviously I need to update the list!

So, I kept perusing my cookbook shelves and pulled out an old one. Actually I bought the book used, probably about 10 years ago, but it’s from 1987. The Nantucket Open-House Cookbook. Sarah Leah Chase is an accomplished chef and cookbook author. She likely has 8-10 cookbooks to her name, the most famous she co-authored with Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso (the Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook and  Silver Palate Desserts). The work on those books put her on the map in the culinary world. She wrote two little cookbooks (on her own and all her other books are her own, not shared authoring) about bicycling, with food in mind, through France (in general) and the other one through Burgundy. I’ve made several recipes from those books over the years.

THE BROWNIES: There was one brownie recipe in this cookbook, and it was the headnotes that grabbed me front and center. Chase owns (or owned, I don’t know) a food shop/bakery on Nantucket, and these brownies were a regular on the menu. Everyone wanted the recipe – nobody could figure out what made them different. They were a bit crusty on the top but dense and almost wet inside. Finally, Chase decided to share the recipe in this cookbook. She explains that the recipe origin was Maida Heatter’s Palm Beach Brownies, but Chase made a few changes, mostly in the technique. When I went online, there is a bakery in Indiana with Chase’s original name from her Nantucket store, Que Sera Sarah. So maybe she’s now moved to the Midwest.

And, indeed, these brownies use three very unusual techniques. First, the 10-minute batter (sugar, eggs, extracts, espresso powder) is whipped up at high speed in a stand mixer for 10 minutes (yes, TEN minutes). Set the timer; don’t guess. Secondly, they are baked in pure convection. Apparently that’s what creates the top crust of the brownie – it hardens almost. And lastly, the brownies must be refrigerated a minimum of 6 hours before even removing from the baking pan or cutting.

The batter is easy enough to put together – but as I mentioned just above, the sugar and egg mixture has to be mixed at high speed for 10 minutes. Makes the batter very airy. It’s interesting that you do that because the finished brownies are very dense. Once poured into a foil-lined and butter-greased 11×9 pan, they bake with pure convection for 18-20 minutes at 350°F. And they’re to be removed from the oven immediately. No guesswork – she suggests you stick a toothpick in and there should be WET batter on the toothpick. I used a metal pick and there were some wet crumbs, so I hope I didn’t over bake them.

When they come out, I guess, they’re way too soft to manipulate. They cool in the pan (so that probably took about 2 hours), then need to be refrigerated for 6 hours or overnight. I lasted about 4 hours before I removed the foil sling from the 11×9 pan (and because they were cold, they came out of the pan easily in a nice big slab) and cut off one end and sliced it up for the photo at top. I have to confess – I forgot to add the walnuts. Crazy me! I’d taken the walnuts out of the freezer, put them in a bowl and into the microwave just to take the frozen chill off of them. Then promptly forgot to add them to the batter. Oh well. I’ll probably freeze most of these brownies – there’s no reason they wouldn’t freeze well enough. I’m guessing you’re supposed to keep them in the refrigerator. Not sure, as the recipe doesn’t say. Just that the finished brownies must be refrigerated before removing from the foil sling and sliced up.

What’s GOOD: the brownies are really good. They’re very sweet – I might use a bit less sugar if I made them again. The chocolate flavor certainly comes through, and the texture is almost fudgy, but it’s not fudge by any means. Hard to describe. Definitely these are not light, cake-type brownies; far denser than that. And yes, there definitely is a little crust on the top too. It’s not thick enough to be visible except from a side view, but yes, it has a bit of a bite to it. Guess you’ll have to make them yourself and come up with a better description of the texture. Help me out here if you do.

What’s NOT: only that it has some unusual techniques – the 10 minutes of batter-mixing, and the 6+ hour of refrigeration before cutting and eating. And you need a convection oven to make these exactly as the author does.

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Can you tell I made this on the 4th of July?

I think I bought those salad servers for Sara about 10 years or so ago. They were perfect for this family gathering. See that lovely wedge of caramelized fennel in the center? THAT is the star of this dish, by far. If you’re not familiar with fennel, you should be. In its raw form I chop it up finely (or shave it with the peeler) in my regular green salads I have many nights of the week. Fennel has a kind of licorice taste – but it’s faint – don’t think licorice sticks at all. Once roasted, the fennel becomes smooth and satiny in flavor. Me-loves-fennel either raw or roasted!

Here’s the sheetpan of fennel, bacon and pancetta:

Salad: In this case I had baby spinach, arugula and some Romaine for the salad. The fennel, bacon (and pancetta, as I had both), garlic, brown sugar (I used Monkfruit), olive oil, salt and pepper are tossed together, then roasted on a sheetpan for about 30-40 minutes. You want the bacon to be crispy. After roasting let the pan sit out until you’re ready to dress the salad.

Meanwhile, make the simple red wine vinegar-lemon juice-honey and oil dressing. SOOO good all on its own, but it’s the perfect counterpoint to the salad. When you’re ready to serve, combine all the salad greens in the bowl, toss with some of the dressing, then add in the fennel and bacon (and pancetta), and add more dressing until just the right balance. Taste for salt and pepper (I don’t think it needed either). Serve immediately. My notes say that Phillis Carey made this at a cooking class. I don’t know why I never told you about this recipe before – since it’s so good! I found the recipe online (Giada) although she used only pancetta in her salad. Hence, since I had both bacon and pancetta, I used some of both.

What’s GOOD: oh, this salad was so unctuous. The fennel is the star, as I mentioned above. You’ll wish you had 3 or 4 wedges of it on your salad portion, it’s that good. The sturdy greens were perfect for the salad and the red wine vinegar dressing was just right to cut the richness of the bacon. Must of salad can be readied ahead of time.

What’s NOT: nothing, really. You do have to prep the fennel and roast the bacon and fennel together – that takes a bit of time, but it’s time well spent when you taste the finished salad.

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Cute little bites – shortbread layers and a luscious chocolate filling in between.

As it happened, I made these in a slightly smaller Pyrex baking dish than I should (like an 8×11?) . . . so these delicious bites were taller (thicker) than intended. If you make it in a 9×13 as you’re supposed to, they’d be a better proportion of shortbread cookie type layers and the delicious chocolate layer. These disappeared in a hurry. I gave some to a neighbor, a friend, another friend who just lost his wife, then the last few just kind of disappeared, period.

These are easy to make. First you melt the chocolate chips, cream cheese, and evaporated milk in a heavy-duty saucepan or a double boiler. If using a saucepan, watch carefully so the chocolate doesn’t burn on the bottom. Once everything is melted, remove from the heat, add walnuts and almond extract, and set aside to cool a bit. Then make the pastry layer (flour, sugar, butter, eggs, walnuts and almond extract – which I added because I like almond flavoring). Half of it is pressed into the bottom of a greased 9×13 pan. Then pour over the chocolate layer and spread it out to cover. Then the crumbs of the remaining pastry layer are sprinkled over the top. Then it’s baked for 35-40 minutes until the top is golden brown.

Easy. Let the bars cool until they’re cut-able, then store in the refrigerator. Warm to room temp before serving. They freeze well. This recipe came from a P.E.O. California cookbook my friend Cherrie gave me – it was submitted by Collette, from a P.E.O. chapter in Morgan Hill (that’s here in California).

What’s GOOD: everything about these were good. Loved the layers. Loved the chocolate. Easy to make. For me, this recipe is a keeper.

What’s NOT: nothing in particular; loved these.

printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

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Need a quick, easy soup – even if it’s summer – taco soup is always welcome.

It’s been a few weeks ago that I made this, but I recall that I was in a hurry to get it done – so I perused some online recipes for quick taco soup, and came up with this variation. It has all of the usual ingredients (although I added celery – not sure that’s an authentic addition to taco soup, but I like celery, what can I tell you?) and a shortcut of using a packet of dry taco mix. First I sauteed onion and celery, then added garlic, chopped red bell pepper, a chopped up poblano pepper, the package of taco seasoning mix, a punch of ground cumin (because I like it a lot). Then I added a package of ground beef (you could use ground turkey or one of the non-meat substitutes, or it could be vegetarian easily enough without any protein added). Once it was no longer pink, and separated into lots of little bite-sized pieces, I added tomato sauce, a can of tomatoes and pinto beans. And some water. It simmered for a grand total of 30 minutes. Done. You could make this in the Instant Pot – but the sauteing of the various veggies and the beef would take longer, but probably under pressure it would be done in 8 minutes.

Garnishes are optional – but they help – I used cilantro, sour cream, green onions for sure. The second time I had it I added a few crumbled tortilla chips and some bell pepper. Any of those work – whatever suits your family’s preferences.

It was better the next day – soups always are. And what I didn’t eat in the first three days I froze for another quick meal another day.

What’s GOOD: only that it was finished in about an hour – the prep work did take a bit of time, but some of it can be done while the initial sauteing is being done. Easy soup. It didn’t have time to develop a lot of complex flavors – a simple soup, cooked in a jiffy.

What’s NOT: nothing really – it isn’t going to win any blue ribbons at the fair, but I was happy I got it done in under an hour and provided a bunch of meals afterwards.

printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

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There are SO many recipes out there in the ‘verse for meatloaf. How do you choose?

My friend Dianne and I hosted a PEO fundraising event awhile back and did a menu from Erin French’s cookbook, The Lost Kitchen. I already posted the cocktail we made, the Cider & Rosemary Prosecco Cocktail, and in the photo for the cocktail was a cute little board with the whole menu on it. Here’s the next set of recipes.

We’re talkin’ meatloaf here. So, can I say this meatloaf is all that different from others? Well, yes and no. What’s different: quite a lot of carrots, a lot of shallots, pecorino cheese (that’s certainly different!) and more than a usual amount of bread cubes. Listening to podcasts, or reading articles about meatloaf, more and more chefs reveal that they use a lot of bread in their meatloaf – because it makes it tender. I don’t think my mother used any bread or breadcrumbs in her meatloaf. I might have used a little bit in my old tried and true meatloaf. Hence my old standby is kind of a firm, very firm chunk of meat. I definitely like this better, despite not really wishing I have to add carbs to make it tender. But hey, if it tastes better, then yes, I guess I’ll have to incorporate this into recipes from now on.

Erin suggested a variety of sides to choose from (including just mashed potatoes) but I thought the parsnips would be a different side not many people would make themselves. Many of our guests had NEVER had parsnips before – some didn’t even know what they looked like. They’re shaped like big carrots, but they’re a kind of off-white color. They’re quite hard to cut, but become tender when they cook. They’re naturally sweet – not as sweet as sweet potatoes, but still they have a lot of natural sugar in them. Trader Joe’s carries them now and then – I guess when they’re in season. Particularly around the holidays.

The glaze on the meatloaf is a ketchup based one (with brown sugar and Dijon added). I love the topping – wanted some of it with every bite. And I wanted a bit of parsnips with every bite too. Make plenty – you’ll be surprised how well it goes with meatloaf.

All of our guests raved about both dishes and wanted the recipes. We got to talking about meatloaf and many at our table had their own little twists that became family favorites. It was decided that next year Dianne and I are going to do a meatloaf cook-off. She’s going to make two types and I’m going to make two types (all four of them different) and we’ll have sides and a dessert. Maybe we’ll include Ina Garten’s turkey meatloaf in the mix too — not sure. It’s excellent, but I think we’d be comparing apples and oranges to choose between and try to compare a beef/pork meatloaf with a turkey one.

Really, I loved Erin’s Dad’s meatloaf. It WAS very tender, and tasty from the added carrots, shallots and Pecorino  – and the bread! The recipe below makes two big loaf pans of it – you could easily halve it, though. I’m sure portions would freeze easily, however! And the parsnips were a big hit. I have loved parsnips ever since I first tried them in England many years ago. They’re a standard side dish in British cuisine. You don’t have to do much to them to make them delicious – this with butter and heavy cream. Yummy.

What’s GOOD: Loved the meatloaf and the parsnips. The additions in the meatloaf make for a very tender loaf – more tender than usual. And the parsnips are such a lovely sweet surprise. And they go so well with meatloaf. Both recipes are keepers.

What’s NOT: the meatloaf does take a bit of prep (you could use a food processor to hasten the process) but so worth it. Parsnips are a cinch.

MEATLOAF: printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

PARSNIPS: printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

. . .

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