Wolf River Apples

It's time for summer apples around here - those small, early ones that are just starting to ripen.  I got these at the farmer's market on Saturday from a couple who were displaying several baskets of little apples with different names.

Ever since I read Michael Pollen's book The Botany of Desire, I've wanted to discover and taste new varieties of apples.  Even with the newly expanded collection of apples at the store (Jazz, Ambrosia, Honey Crisp) I can't help but wonder how different our apple choices would be if the Golden and Red Delicious hadn't been so perfect for...grocery stores.

So of course, I was a sucker for the hand-written sign next to these lovelies:

Wolf River Antique Apples - Best for Pies

I  cut out the cores and the little worm holes and sliced them up.  I love slicing apples for pies.  One summer, I worked in a bakery - minimum wage, no training - and loved it.  It was consistently 120 degrees in the back of this small place, no place to sit but the sacks of flour, which are not as soft as you might imagine, and lots of repetitive tasks, like washing pots and pans over and over.  I loved it.  That's where I learned to make apple pies, peel an apple skin off in one piece and get pretty even slices in a flash (but that's a story for another post!).  Back to Wolf River....

Uncooked, they had a slightly citrus, starchy flavor.  We ate a few slices with some New Moon Cheese from Chapel Hill Creamery (my favorite!) and they were great against the fresh creamy taste of the cheese.

I tossed the apples with some butter, brown sugar, oats and cinnamon, covered them and put them in the oven at 375.  My best guess at a recipe on this one:

5 small apples, sliced

2 TB butter, melted

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2-3/4 cups oats (rolled, not quick)

They baked for about 20 minutes and the apples got pretty steamy in the dish - they might have stayed more firm if I'd peeled them, but I like the skin.  They were not a juicy apple, keeping a relatively firm texture in spite of the steam, so I do think they'd be "best in pies".  Next time, I'd add a little salt to bring out their flavor more, and maybe experiment with some of the curry/pepper/spicy combinations I've seen drifting from dinner into dessert lately.

Worth the adventure.  Can't wait to see what kind of apples they have next time.

Vegetable Tatin

Remember those summer squash and tomatoes from the farmer's market?  Well, inspired by a simple recipe in Barefoot in Paris, we assembled one of the best vegetable side dishes I've had this summer.

Summer Vegetable Tatin

Saute 2 cloves of garlic and 1/2 onion (chopped) in olive oil for 5-8 minutes, until the onions begin to softenn
Spread the mixture on the bottom of a baking dish.

Slice 3 summer squash and 2 large tomatoes and arrange in the dish.  Our tomatoes were large, so I sandwiched them between the smaller squash slices.

Sprinkle the top with parmasean cheese, salt and pepper.

Bake at 375 for 25 minutes covered, then another 30 minutes, uncovered.  (if it begins to brown too quickly on top, recover).

With something this simple, the freshest ingredients make the difference.  We used small squash and Champion tomatoes, but any thick, beefy tomatoe should work.

I imagine it would have been good left-over...if there'd been any left over!

Easiest Summer Tuna Salad

This tuna salad depends mainly on two things:  good tomatoes and good tuna.  Everything else is secondary if you get those two right.  Start with cherry tomatoes - the yellow ones are really sweet around here this year, and sometimes appeal to kids who aren't great tomatoe fans.  We snip them in half with kitchen scissors, much easier than trying to cut them with a knife, and easy for kids to do.

The tuna of choice is white albacore, in water.  You may have to try a few to find the brand you prefer, but I like large, firm chunks of fish that hold together when they come out of the can. 

A sauce of  half mayonaise and half plain yogurt gives the salad some moisture without going overboard on fat or getting too rich.  From there, you can add whatever suits you that day.  We had some leftover potato salad with some chopped celery, tarragon, imitation crab and the same mayo/yogurt sauce.  Mixed that in and voila: a perfect summer salad.

Farmer's Market

Saturday morning, 7:50 am, 86 degrees already...this weekend's trip to the farmer's market needed to happen early.  We've been lucky enough to live near good farmer's markets and try to get there on a fairly regular basis.  This weekend, in the middle of our crazy heat wave, the stalls were flooded with tomatoes and squash - what a lovely sight.

I'm not a gardener - too much shade, not enough time - so aside from the kitchen herbs out back, we rely on the store and the market for good ingredients.  Luckily here in North Carolina, the farmer's market is close by and plentiful.  Little ones have sprung up at shopping centers and saturday evening music venues, but the big one under the market stalls is a regular stopping place for us.

I love the bustle of the stalls getting set up, the overheard conversations between customers, vendors and families.  In a small town, you're bound to see people you know, or at least recognize, and I like feeling connected to this place we live.  There's a similar sense of connection that comes from seeing the food lined up in baskets and buckets, dirt still clinging to the garlic, little bunches of purslane arrayed next to the basket with a permanent-marker sign Purslane!  Try some! and the annotated apples Wolf River antique apple - best for pies. 

The sweet smell surrounding a basket of small yellow melons caught my attention and I asked the young man behind the table what they were. Sprite melons.  They're real sweet.  Taste a little like cantelope, a little like honeydew, but not like Sprite. 

How could you resist a sprite melon?

It's going to be a good week!

Clam Fritters

For me, clam fritters are a classic summer food.  They make me think of beach trips, sunshine and the willingness to try something new when you're visiting someplace new.  Kids usually like the corn and pancake-like shape of these fritters.  If you want more clams, use two cans.  You can also add other veggies to the batter, such as shredded zucchini or carrots. 

This is a super-simple recipe to mix up that kids can prepare but probably not yet cook because of the hot oil. 

One caution (learned the hard way): do not put the lid on the pan while you fry the fritters!  It's tempting when the oil splatters while they cook, but condensation will accumulate on the lid and roll back into the oil, causing canola-geysers - or worse.  Oil and water don't mix.  Better to clean off the stove....or even use a splatter guard!

The ingredients are pretty simple:

2 cups of flour
1.5 cups buttermilk
1 egg
1 can of corn kernals
1 can chopped clams
1 scallion, trimmed and sliced
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika (or cayenne if you like it hot!)

Mix and you're ready to go.  I use canola oil, enough to fill a large, heavy pan about 1-1.5 inches deep.

I test the oil with a small bit of batter.  Wen you can drop it in and it starts to sizzle right away, the oil is hot enough.  They're like pancakes, cooking until they're dark brown on each side, about 4 minutes.  If the batter is very thick, or if you make them too big, they have a tough time cooking in the middle before they get really done.  I'd suggest making more, smaller ones. 

These make a great summer dinner, especially with a salad on the side.  The recipe makes about 14-16 fritters, depending on the size, which is usually enough for two meals or one meal and many snacks!

Meat and Potatoes

My great-aunt was elegant. From her hot-pink lipstick to her blue and white china, she embodied ladylike manners for me for a long time.


She was a traditional Midwestern cook, nothing too labor intensive, substantial food, eaten in the dining room. One of the meals I remember her serving us was steak and twice-baked potatoes. I was entranced by the swirls on top of those potatoes, like icing on a vegetable. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized those were frozen, prefilled and heated in the oven. Even that discovery failed to take away the charm of those memories.

A friend of mine taught me how to make twice-baked potatoes from scratch and although they lack the piped whirls of the frozen variety, they’re just as yummy. We prepared them with a tea-smoked steak (inspired by Fine Cooking Magazine’s latest issue) and had a great meat-and-potatoes dinner.

The potatoes begin with baked russets and a white sauce.

White sauce, the basis for soufflé, isn’t hard, but I find it easiest to have all the ingredients measured out ahead of time.

1TB butter
1 TB flour
1 cup hot milk (microwaved is easiest)

Heat the butter until it’s melted, add the flour and cook for about 1 minute until the mixture is bubbling, add the hot milk in a stream and continue stirring for another 3 minutes until it’s thick and bubbling. Remove from heat. Stir in 2 TB of shredded cheese.

This is the fun part: scoop out the insides of the baked potatoes without breaking the skins, mix the insides into the white sauce then refill the skins.

When you’re ready, they go into the oven to bake, with a little cheese sprinkled on top if you like.

The steak was marinated and grilled in the usual manner, but we put a foil packet of equal parts raw rice, brown sugar, loose tea and 2 TB chai seasonings on the grate below the meat.

When it started to smoke, we added the meat and voila: tea smoked steaks.

They were fantastic. We’ll be experimenting with that technique again.

Classic, occasional, and delicious.

Snacks

A friend asked me about snacks the other day - specifically if there are ways to encourage kids to not beg for cookies but to ask for healthful snacks instead.  I had to give this some thought. 

My kids are old enough to talk with, they've spent years (practically their whole lives, as they would tell you!) hearing about the benefits of eating well and not eating too much junk.  But I'm not the sweets-and-snacks police either. We have cookies, ice-cream and other treats.  What I strive for is some balance. 

I want them to learn to make good choices in what they eat.  I do believe that by participating in the preparation, they're more likely to eat whatever it is you've put together.  

Even little kids can help put peanut butter or cream cheese in celery sticks and push rasins in (Ants on a Log).  They can dip carrot sticks and apple slices into yogurt or peanutbutter.  Playing with your food is an acceptable way to encourage kids to try new things.

I do have a one-bite rule, they have to try one bite of everything.  I believe the fastest way to create a stubborn, picky eater is to force them to eat things they don't like.  Every parent knows that kids' tastes change more rapidly than the latest findings in food research, so trying to keep up with them will drive you crazy.

I also believe that hungry kids will eat what's available, within reason.  So not keeping your pantry stocked with foods you don't want them to eat is a good strategy.  There have been many times I've said "all I have is cheese, yogurt, cereal, or fruit, you choose."  No cookies, no whining.  The only thing that's gotten us to this point is consistency.

So what's our deep, dark secret?  The snack jar.

I keep this jar filled with foods from the borderlands.  The pre-packaged items that go into lunches, camp bags and occasionally hungry-afternoon-kids.  They know these are mostly for taking other places, not for eating at home, and I don't fill it with things they can't resist.  But they're available in a pinch.

In an ideal world, I'd always have enough frozen muffins, banana bread and fruit around the house and lunches would be packed only with fresh foods and homemade goods.  In my real world, it's a combination of our best effort, and the snack jar.

Comfort Food

One of the kid-chefs was sick this week.  After several missed meals, he thought he could hold down some cinnamon-sugar toast.  This was what my mother made me when I was sick, and I bet every one of us has some preferred comfort food for when we are sick.

I keep some cans of chicken-noodle-soup and a shaker of cinnamon-sugar on hand for when we're not feeling well.  I've also developed a personal yen for spicy foods when I feel a cold coming on. 

What do you long for?

Musings on White Dishes and Dinner Time

We've been getting a lot of use out of our white dishes lately.  My mother sent an assortment with some of the ramkins, oval platters, a casserole and a tart pan I remember from her kitchen.  I love their clean white shapes all piled up in the open cupboard and the way they dress up some of our simple meals. 

For a while, we were lighting candles at dinner most evenings too, but with the longer days it hasn't seemed necessary.

A few small things like that help make dinner more of an event, even when it only lasts for a portion of the time it took to make the food!  One thing I've come to discover about preparing the meal together is that it's easier to eat, talk and move on with the evening.  When I used to do it all myself, I felt like we needed to sit at the table for enough time to make the cooking "worth it."  Now, the cooking is always worth it.

I wonder how long the average dinner lasts.

Birthday Cake

My chocolate-adverse chef requested a vanilla cake with strawberries and white icing for her birthday dinner this year.  Since she offered to help, I obliged.

I used an adapted lemon cake recipe to make a tender white cake.  Like several others I've tried this year, it called for a thick batter that you lighten with whipped egg whites just before baking.

Missing a little off the top?

No problem: we made some strawberry coulis,

Covered the bare spot and layered on some strawberries,

Added a top and some icing,

And had ourselves a party!

I think we'll try to adapt this one to about half it's size for next year!

Endless Summer

Summertime always stretches out in my mind as a long opportunity to catch up on all those things I've been putting off.  And of coures, it always sneaks up quickly, throwing my routines off, bringing just as many   new ideas and as new minutes of sunlight.  Ah, summertime, whoever said your living was easy?

A month into it, the routine is a little more settled, and we've had time to tackle a few of the chores, making room for some fun.

We spent the holiday weekend with friends, riding horses and exploring a new place.  Our assignment was simple: dessert.  In an effort to keep refining the strawberry tart, we tried a new version and, apologies to our hosts, it wasn't quite as good.

You can see here that the dough was a little too thick around the edges, but instead of sacrificing some, we crammed it in.  That wasn't a good idea because the corner of the crust came out underbaked.  I also used this white quiche pan, instead of my metal one with the removable edge, so the crust didn't crisp as much as usual.  This recipe was a very basic sweet crust, with a little sugar and no eggs.  The last one we made was more like a cookie dough, with more sugar and eggs - it was more tender and made a better crust for these cool summer tarts.

Of course, we hadn't yet tried the crust, so the kid-chef filled it with our pastry cream and made a great whirl of strawberries on the top.  We all took turns critiqueing the results and I think we've got the right combination down now.

Phew!

On to the next summertime task!