Weekly Dish

Well, hello 2010. I am happy to see you.

My good friend Kathryn, who used to feed my family regularly when she lived just blocks away but now lives in the lovely mountains of North Carolina, wrote me and some of her other friends on the first day of this New Year. She asked for recipes and ideas for getting inspired in the kitchen. Inspiration, I find, can sometimes be a tricky thing to conjure up. The New Year often works people into an inspiration frenzy: trying to get inspired to get to the gym or back on Weight Watchers or to finish that dissertation (ahem). Those are all fine and lovely goals for which inspiration certainly comes in handy. But, like Kathryn, when I get into the groove of feeling inspired in my kitchen, I start to find inspiration in other areas of life too. I’m more likely to be productive at work, to invite people over for dinner, to watch a movie with my husband, to spend time playing with my rambunctious two-year-old, when dinner is planned, groceries are bought, and I feel excited about whatever it is I get to cook for dinner.

Now, don’t let me fool you with my New Year’s exuberance. 2009 was not a year that was full of this kind of inspiration. In fact, one of the reasons I have shown up here so infrequently is because we managed to eat the same meals over and over and over, and many weeks, I cooked very few of them. Nothing much to write home about (but thank goodness David knows his way around a recipe). There are seasons for this kind of utilitarian cooking, to be sure, and we have been in one of those. But I’m really, really tired of it.

So, starting during my holiday break, I baked. A lot.

That may sound like a perfectly insane way to get oneself back into the rhythm of inspired dinner-making. But while I do not always love to make dinner, I always love to bake. For me, there is no more surefire way to have a successful hour in the kitchen than to make cookies. No one will starve if the cookies are terrible, the house usually smells fantastic when I finish, and if the cookies are good, we have exciting snacks for a whole week or two, or fun treats to give away. Perhaps this makes me a crazy lady, but if I’m really serious about dinner, I whip up a batch of cookies, make a pot of coffee, and only then do I sit down with a blank notebook, my computer, and some cookbooks.

How’s that for rationalization? (and eventually, inspiration to get myself to a gym, whether I want it or not)

These little darlings were my favorites of the lot I baked over the holidays. Fancy enough to box up and give away as gifts, not all that difficult to make, and positively delicious to eat, I loved them so much that I made them again when we got home from our holiday travels. They’re sort of like traditional thumbprint cookies, but filled with a delectably rich caramel rather than jam, and flecked with nuttiness. It’s exactly the kind of dessert I love: a perfect marriage of salty and sweet, and goes perfectly with a cup of hazelnut coffee.

As a bonus, it provided a whole two notebook pages full of dinner ideas to boot. At least that’s what I told myself when I started the second batch.

Peace and joy for 2010 to all of you who still wander upon this little blog every now and again!

Pecan Polvorones with Muscovado Filling

–from Alice Medrich’s recipe in her lovely book, Pure Dessert

Notes: I tried these cookies both with muscovado sugar (which is available at my neighborhood grocery store, but may be harder to come by at a large chain store) and regular dark brown sugar. If you can find the muscovado, please buy it; the flavor makes for a darker, more complex and intense caramel (almost toffee-like), and it’s really the highlight here. If you can’t, dark brown sugar is a fine substitute, but next time, I might add a teaspoon or so of molasses to give the plain brown sugar filling a bit more depth. You could also add butter and up the salt for more of a butterscotch flavor. I also used pecan meal, rather than grinding the pecans myself, because I had it on hand. I can imagine other nuts would work just as well here too.

For the cookie dough:
1 1/2 cups pecans
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 t. salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, cubed
2 t. vanilla
2 c. all-purpose flour
For the filling:
2/3 cup firmly packed muscovado sugar
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/8 t. coarse salt

First, make the cookies:  In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, pulse the nuts until finely ground. It’s okay if there are a few little pieces, but for the most part, you want a gritty powder. Dump out the ground nuts and set aside.

Next, pulse together the sugar and salt a few times, and then add the butter and vanilla and pulse until the mixture is smooth (softening your butter will help this to happen quickly). Alternately, you can cream the butter, vanilla, and sugar and salt in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment (I only have a very small food processor, so that’s what I did, and it turned out fine). Dump in the flour and pulse (or mix) until the dough starts to come together; then, add the nuts. Pulse a few more times, until the nuts are thoroughly incorporated. You can knead with your hands at this point to make sure the dough is fully mixed, just flour them well first.

Now, you will form the cookies, but you can line them up really close together because they have to chill before baking. On a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat, place little balls of dough (about an inch in diameter) very close together. With your finger, make a deep hollow in each ball of dough, pressing in until you almost reach the surface of the baking sheet. Slide the baking sheet into the refrigerator and chill the dough for at least two hours, or overnight (I tried it both ways and couldn’t tell a difference).

When you’re ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 325. Line another baking sheet with parchment and take the cookies out of the refrigerator. On each baking sheet, place the cookies about an inch apart. They will spread a little, so give them some space. Bake each batch for 10-12 minutes, turning the sheets half-way through. The cookies should be lightly tanned on the tops and golden on the bottom.

While the oven is preheating, make the filling: Combine the brown sugar, cream, and salt in a small saucepan. Whisk, cooking over medium heat, until the mixture reaches a gentle boil and the sugar is fully dissolved. Boil for about 2-3 minutes without stirring.

Cool the sauce and the cookies briefly, and then, with a spoon, carefully pour the caramel to fill each cookie’s indentation. After filled, let the cookies cool completely before handling. The filling will set as it cools. Medrich says the recipe makes about 48 cookies, but I must have made mine too big; I came out with 36 the first time and 30 the second. If you are lucky enough to have any filling leftover, it is fabulous over vanilla ice cream, even in cold weather.

make granita! That’s what we’ve been doing at our house, anyway, and it’s keeping the end-of-summer doldrums at bay. For now, anyway. It isn’t that we’re sad to see the change in weather, or the start of school, or new work routines; beginnings are usually exciting to all of us. But they also inevitably mean the endings to other things, and summer, for our little family, is a season we are sad to leave. It affords us the time and space to be together that just isn’t possible during the busy schoolyear, and we relish the long days and later-than-usual nights spent at the park, the water fountain downtown, or just walking in our neighborhood.

We will also be sad when the watermelons are no longer lined up in neat rows beside Mr. Buddy’s Plantation Pecan table at the Farmer’s Market. Josie loves to bend down and touch each round green fruit, until she finds just the right one for us to take home. A whole watermelon goes a long way for just three people, and sometimes, despite our best intentions, we end up with a tupperware container full of cubes that have lost their freshness.

I am happy to report, however, that we do not have to say goodbye to the mushy watermelon when it’s no longer fit for eating plain; this recipe is just the thing to transform past-its-prime mush into summer deliciousness. It also does a number on a melon that, even fresh, is just so-so (which happens sometimes when you let a two-year-old pick the one you take home).

The granita is so simple — just watermelon, lime juice, mint, and a little sugar — but it is a really fun thing to have stashed in the freezer. The mint and lime boost the watermelon flavor with a hint of contrast, and you can add as much or as little sugar as the melon needs, or to suit your taste. You could freeze the mixture in popsicle molds if you have them, but plain old ice trays and a metal baking pan worked just fine too.

We try not to keep junk food in the house, and we often have plain, fresh fruit for dessert, which usually suits us all just fine (well, except for David, who really needs chocolate after dinner to thrive). It is so nice to have a special treat, though, especially for those two-year-old moments, the ones where she’s demanding something completely absurd with all of the drama she can muster (you know, like, “Go go library RIGHT NOW,” when the library, is in fact, closed). Watermelon popsicles make a nice bartering chip. And, a bonus? The ice cubes are also heavenly when placed in a glass with club soda and coconut rum. You know, in case you need to barter with someone older than two.

I can’t believe it, but this week marks the four-year anniversary of this little site. I also can’t believe that I started this blog the exact same week I began a Ph.D. program (did I really think I would need to find something else to do?!) At any rate, I’m grateful to have this record of our time here and a little history of how I’ve grown as a cook. Most of all, though, I’m thankful that this space has brought so many friends, old and new, together over these last years. Many, many thanks to all of you who’ve visited, commented, and cooked from the recipes here; it has brought me much joy to have fellow food-lovers to share my cooking adventures with. When life gives you mushy or mediocre watermelon, may you always find a way to make granita. In our household, we think that can make all the difference.

Watermelon-Lime Granita

Half a medium-sized seedless watermelon, flesh cut into chunks (about 12 cups of loosely packed chunks, yielded about 8 cups of juice)
Juice of 3 limes
handful of mint
about a 1/2 cup sugar (this completely depends on the flavor of the melon)
Dash of salt

In a blender, puree the watermelon chunks in batches. As you finish one blender-full, pour the juice into a 9 x 13 metal baking pan. On the last go-round, add the lime juice, mint, sugar (start with about 1/3 cup), and salt. Stir this batch thoroughly into the pan of juice. Taste. If you need more sugar or lime, transfer a little juice back to the blender to adjust. Continue until it tastes like you’d like to drink it straight, on the rocks (which I highly recommend, especially if you happen to have coconut rum to add). Once you’ve got the taste as you like it, pour off enough juice so that the baking pan is no more than 2/3 full, less if you want it to freeze more quickly.* Place in the freezer, uncovered. Stir every half-hour or so for the first couple of hours, then freeze solid (this takes about 3 hours, but we never make it that long; ours is always a little slushy). Scrape out with a spoon to serve.

*The extras make fun popsicles if you have some spare small plastic or paper cups: just fill, cover with foil, and poke a wooden stick in the center. I made tiny ones for Josie in a plain old ice cube tray (without the sticks).

I started this blog because I wanted a place to write about what I love, a place to record what happens in my kitchen, and a place to share recipes with friends and family and anyone else who might find them useful. Since Josie, it isn’t just that it’s difficult to take the time to write (which it is). It’s that the whole way I cook has changed with a little person around, and I haven’t figured out how to share that process. It’s not necessarily that I cook different kinds of foods; for the most part, Josie eats what we eat, and is happy to do so. It is more about what actually happens during the cooking, a juggling act which involves very little measuring and a good deal of haste; hungry toddlers are grouchy creatures. What that means is that when it’s over each night, I generally have no idea what happened, much less recipe notes or photographs to show for it. If I tried to give you a peek into our kitchen window, most days you’d have to stand on your tiptoes to see over the piles of vegetables, a trail of plastic bowls and cups “washed” by Josie, and the tangle of books, paper, and markers that follow us from room to room. But amidst the mess, cooking is happening every day, which seems like a tiny miracle all by itself.

Corn and tomatoes are farmer’s market staples for our family during the summer months, as I imagine they are for many of you who try to eat seasonally and locally. Sometimes I find myself staring at yet another heaping pile of shiny red globes or tripping over the bag of yet-to-be-shucked corn in the corner of the kitchen wondering how on earth I will ever find a way to use them creatively. To help solve that existential crisis, I’ve been assembling a collection of recipes: a dozen ears of corn and a box of tomatoes (somewhere between 3 and 5 pounds) come home with us every Saturday, and sometimes one or both ingredients will form the center for a whole week’s worth of meals. So I thought I’d share a bit about what some of those meals look like while I remember. With a little extra prep the night before, these dinners are not terribly fancy, but they are economical, fairly easy to make, and the one, unfailing qualification in my kitchen: delicious enough to enjoy for dinner and lunch the next day.

Day One: usually, I try to cook and use the corn as quickly as possible; the farmer I buy it from has picked it the day before, but once harvested, the sugars start to break down, and the corn starts to lose its flavor. (It’s still good after day 3, but best before that). If I want to make a dinner where the main event is the flavor of the corn, that usually happens on Monday. One such recipe that’s all about sweet, fresh corn is a very simple soup.

This recipe is based on Sara Foster’s Summer White Corn Soup. The genius of the recipe is the broth: while you’re preparing everything else, you put a big pot of water on to boil, add the stripped corn cobs, basil stems, onion trimmings, and a palmful of salt. The boiling water leeches out all of the vegetable’s goodness, so that the finished soup tastes of little else but sweet summer corn. I make twice as much as I need for the soup and reserve it for corn and tomato risotto later in the week.

I serve the soup with crusty bread, rubbed with butter and garlic, and a big salad. For company or a special occasion, I like to top the soup with boiled shrimp.

Sweet Summer Corn Soup
–adapted from Sara Foster, Fresh Everyday

6 ears sweet corn, shucked and stripped from the cobs, cobs reserved
1/2 cup milk
1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
1 sweet onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 small new potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
4 cups corn broth (see method below)
coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced

First, start the broth: in a large stock pot, cover the stripped corn cobs, basil stems, and onion and garlic trimmings with 4 quarts of water. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to a simmer. It will reduce quickly, so keep an eye on it; if it reduces by more than half, add more water. You should end up with about 2 quarts of broth.
Meanwhile, put the corn kernels in a small saucepan with the milk. Heat gently over medium heat, just until the milk bubbles and foams. Reduce the heat and simmer for another 5-7 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a larger saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium, and add the onion. Cook until very soft and beginning to turn golden, about 15 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for another minute or two. Add the chopped potato, 4 cups of broth, and half of the basil. Turn the heat up to medium-high. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and taste. Add more if it needs it. When it begins to boil, turn it down to a simmer and cook for another 20 or 30 minutes, until the potato is soft enough to mash with a fork.

Next, puree half of the corn-milk mixture in a food processor or blender. Stir the puree into the soup, and add the remaining corn and milk. Salt as needed, and serve with the remaining basil leaves sprinkled on top. The leftover corn broth will keep in the fridge for a week or so, and indefinitely in the freezer.

In an attempt to create some meaningful patterns and routines in what might otherwise be characterized as a chaotic existence, I maintain rigidly to a few, basic rules: 1. no work on Sunday; 2. buy most of my produce from the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, and 3. read for fun before I fall asleep at night and on Sundays when I’m not working. I know, I’m quite the rebel. But when one’s job is to read, for class, for the dissertation, for a conference paper, to reclaim the act of reading for pleasure feels strangely exhilarating. Sometimes, I only make it a few pages in before I’m out cold, but other times, I find myself buried into my pillow until very late, captivated and fighting off sleep to keep reading.

I’ve been an avid reader for most of my life, but contrary to what most people assume about a person getting her Ph.D. in English, I’ve never been one to love the “right” books. I couldn’t get into many of the assigned novels in high school–besides the ones for Mrs. Reynolds, the best English teacher ever–and I’ve always been drawn to a genre that finds little acclaim in the world of high literary theory: the life story, either told as a biography, by someone else, or as a memoir, by the person herself. I think it might have started with Pete Maravich, that famous basketball player whose biography I found on my dad’s bookshelf and who inspired me to spend the better part of a summer trying to learn to dribble everywhere I went (I was spectacularly unsuccessful and took up tennis instead).

However it started, a genre I’ve enjoyed recently has been the food memoir, people who retell part of their life according to what they ate or cooked. Over the holidays, I read Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte, a lovely (and often self-deprecatingly funny) collection of stories about her relationship with a man first known to the reader as Mr. Latte, and later as Tad. In it, one of the things Hesser learns about herself (and she’s a food writer by trade, so this comes as no shock to the reader) is that she tends to cook new things often, but that she lacks what she refers to as a “repertoire,” a passel of recipes that she cooks really well and is known for. Here, according to Hesser, are the qualifications for a repertoire: “I wanted it to contain recipes that represent who I am, what I find pleasurable, how I live. It should express my true sensibilities as a cook, not my ambition. And all of the dishes should be simple enough that I could make them at a moment’s notice” (190-91).

I’ve never thought of myself as a particular kind of cook before, but after reading that description, I decided that I am one who tends to cook the same dishes again and again until I’ve perfected them, out of habit, yes, but also because I find that I am more intuitive than rule-following in the kitchen, and so the more I make pound cake by feel and by memory, the better the pound cake tastes. It’s one of the reasons I started this site, in fact, to record and share the recipes I know and do best. Not all of the recipes posted here are time-tested, many are records of experiments, but a good many of them are things you might find on our dinner table on any random weeknight.

Because I tend to cook seasonally, with whatever I find the farmers at my market have grown, my repertoire tends to change as one season gives way to the next. A hallmark of any season, however, is soup: in summer, I love to make eggplant and basil bisque; in fall, sweet potato soup often shows up on our weekly menus, and in the winter, there are many, but my favorite is this Italian White Bean Soup. Spring, I’ve realized, is missing a staple soup, and thankfully, Amanda Hesser not only revealed to me what kind of cook I am, she also provided that missing link: carrot and fennel soup.

Both carrots and fennel tend to appear at the beginning of spring in my part of the world, while the oranges are still lingering from winter, so the ingredient list makes this recipe nearly a perfect fit for this time of year. It is also, as luck would have it, a perfect soup for my marriage: David cannot abide the texture of completely pureed soups, but I’m not a fan of overly brothy ones. Pulsing this soup just a few times at the end of cooking gives it a chunky texture we both liked. The flavors are perfectly balanced too. I’ve made it twice in the last two weeks, so I’d say it’s a keeper, especially if these two vegetables keep showing up at the same farmer’s table in the weeks to come. Happy spring, friends!

Carrot and Fennel Soup

–adapted from Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser
The making of stock from the fennel stalks and carrot tops is my addition to the recipe, but I found it added an extra layer of flavor that heightened the carrot-fennel flavor combination. Plus, it’s always handy to have a good vegetable stock in the freezer, and this recipe makes twice as much as you’ll need for the soup. But if you need the soup today, water, or other vegetable stock will work fine too. I wouldn’t use chicken stock, though; the flavor will overwhelm the vegetables.
1 medium, or 2-3 small fennel bulbs with stalks and fronds (should give you about 1 1/2 cups sliced bulb)
1 1/2 pounds carrots, with tops (about 4 cups carrot slices)
Trimmings from: onion, garlic, and/or celery
2-3 quarts water
1 T. coarse salt
cracked pepper, to taste
1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, sliced thinkly
Juice from one orange (about 1/3 cup)
1/4 cup sour cream, plus more for garnish
Salt and cracked pepper, to taste

First, prep your vegetables and make stock (I do this at least a day before I’m planning to make the soup): Trim the carrots, and peel if necessary (if I buy mine fresh from the farmer, I just scrub them really well), cutting off the green tops and removing the tough ends. Trim the fennel, cutting of the stalks, and removing the feathery fronds. Set fronds aside, and add all other trimmings to a big soup pot. Cover with water, and sprinkle in 1 T. salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Bring to a rolling boil, and let it bubble for 10 minutes or so. Turn the heat down so that the pot is simmering, and let it stew for several hours (I start mine in the morning and turn it off when I start dinner; by the time we’re cleaning up the kitchen at the end of the day, the stock is cool enough to put away). Let it cool, reserving about 4 cups for the soup, and freezing the rest. This should yield about 2 quarts stock.
To make the soup, heat the oil and butter in a big pot. Thinly slice the fennel bulb, and cook over medium heat until very soft and golden. Meanwhile, thinly slice the carrots and garlic. When fennel is changing color and soft, add the carrots and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the carrots begin to soften. Sprinkle with salt. Cover with 4 cups the stock and simmer until the carrots are very soft, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the orange juice, sour cream, and all but a handful of the fennel fronds (for garnish). Using an immersion blender or a food processor, pulse the soup a few times, leaving some large chunks and an uneven texture. If soup has lost its heat, return to the stove until warm. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of fennel fronds. We’ve found that a soft nutty whole-grain bread toasted and smeared with goat cheese makes this a delicious and filling dinner.

My best friend, maid of honor, and college roommate is having a baby boy in a month or so. Christy is one of those friends who has been in my life for so long that even though we haven’t lived in the same state, much less the same dorm room, for years, being with her feels as easy and comfortable as putting on my oldest pair of tennis shoes. Here she is at Christmas:

Isn’t she adorable? This is her first baby, and I cannot wait to meet him. To celebrate, friends of hers gave a shower last weekend. If we lived nearer to one another, I would have loved to have the shower at my house, but instead, I volunteered to make the cake. There are a million reasons why this was a foolish thing for me to do: she requested chocolate with cream cheese frosting (I asked), I’ve never made a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting; the time that I have to experiment with baking is exactly zero; and, well, I’m really not that good at cake-baking.

Oh, I love to do it, don’t get me wrong. But patience, precision, and neatness are far from my strongest qualities, in the kitchen or otherwise. This list might have made a more reasonable person hesitate before assembling a recipe that can best be described as experimental, but, inspired by the possibilities of this cake at Smitten Kitchen, the combination of raspberry filling, chocolate, and cream cheese sounded so good that I spent the better part of a Sunday making the cake and praying the rest would come together when the party arrived.

My plan was to bake the cake in three pans, two to freeze and use for the actual event, and one to test with the filling and frosting to make sure the flavors worked. But, that third layer was lying around when we had dinner guests, and I couldn’t help but serve it: it looked so velvety and rich, and we had raspberry jam and whipping cream in the fridge: that would be a close enough approximation, right? The “test” version got rave reviews, but when I split the cake to spread the jam over it, I realized how moist and crumbly it was. This meant great flavor — it is a delicious, darkly chocolate cake, but I was apprehensive about assembly for the party. What if it fell apart when I put it together? Oh well, I had another month to worry about it, so I put the layers in the freezer and assumed I would have another chance to do a real trial run.

Fast forward to last week, the week of the party, and you can see how this story ends: the best laid plans and all of that. But, I am happy to report that the flavor of this cake happily makes up for the imperfectness of its appearance. No one will suspect that it came from a bakery, but that’s a good thing: it looks and tastes completely homemade. As long as you’re prepared to embrace that fact, rather than hide it beneath perfectly smooth frosting, I hope you’ll be as happy as I am to have this recipe in your stash when you need a special, celebratory cake. I decorated it with blue pansies from my mom’s yard: the P is for Pierce, the lemon leaves and pansies around the bottom are to cover up the places where the frosting rubbed off in the car, and the raspberries are to hide the places where I accidentally knocked off an edge when I removed the cake cover. I told you I wasn’t very good at this, but if I can do it, you can too. It’s so yummy, I think you’ll be glad you did.

Deep Dark Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Filling and Cream Cheese Frosting
–adapted from Gourmet, March 1999; Smitten Kitchen; and Bon Appetit, June 1999

A word about this recipe: I pulled together this cake from several sources and made a few changes. The cake recipe calls for the batter to be baked in two 10-inch pans. I have 9-inch pans, so I baked three cakes, but I only used two for the one you see in the picture. The cake freezes nicely, so next time I make it, I’ll keep the extra layer in the freezer to use another time. Once defrosted, the cakes are very moist and prone to tearing; be very careful when assembling them (or feel free to re-assemble any layers that fall apart as I did. Just don’t tell anyone). The raspberry filling makes more than enough to fill a four-layer cake, so be generous, and you’ll probably still wind up with leftovers. It’s fabulous on toast, ice cream, or stirred into yogurt. And the frosting makes a lot too, but since I am terribly messy when it comes to that step in the process, it’s always better for me to have more than I need. I  take a small container of frosting with me to fix any blemishes that occur on the journey.

For the cake:
3 ounces good-quality semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
3 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup butter, melted (1 1/2 sticks)
1 1/2 cups well-shaken buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Line three 9-inch round cake pans with parchment paper; spray with cooking spray or grease with butter. Preheat oven to 300 degrees (F). In a small bowl, stir the chopped chocolate into the hot coffee until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.

Sift the dry ingredients together into a large bowl:sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Then, in the bowl of your electric mixer, beat the eggs until thickened and pale yellow, about 3-5 minutes. With the mixer running, slowly pour in the melted butter, buttermilk, vanilla, and coffee-chocolate mixture. Beat until well-combined.

With the mixer on very low speed, add the dry mixture. Turn the mixer up to medium and beat just until you can no longer see any trace of the dry ingredients.

Divide the cake batter evenly between the three cake pans. Bake at 300 degrees until a knife inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean, about an hour (I set my timer for 50 minutes and checked all three cakes every 5 minutes after that — the cake on the bottom rack finished quicker than the two on the top).

Cool the cakes completely in their pans. Run a knife around the edge and invert the layers onto racks (or parchment paper if, like me, you don’t have racks). When the cakes are completely cooled, peel off the parchment, and either, set them aside for assembly (instructions follow), or wrap tightly in plastic and foil to chill or freeze. They can be made ahead of time and chilled in the refrigerator for a couple of days, or the freezer for a couple of months with good results.

For the raspberry filling:
2 10-ounce bags frozen raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 T. cornstarch, sifted
Squeeze of lemon

Puree the raspberries in a blender or food processor; then press through a fine mesh sieve with a wooden spoon to remove seeds. This takes a while, so be prepared (this is a good job to do while the cakes are baking). In a small saucepan, stir the berries and sugar together, and sift in the cornstarch (or else you could end up with lumps). Stir in a squeeze of lemon, and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook and stir until the mixture thickens, about 3 minutes. Set aside to cool completely. The raspberry filling can also be made ahead and chilled or frozen.

For the frosting:
4 8-oz packages cream cheese, softened
10 T. butter (1 stick plus 2 T.), softened
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 t. vanilla

Whip the cream cheese and butter in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla and the sugar. Chill until the mixture is a spreadable consistency (not too hard, but not too soft).

To assemble the cake:
If the cakes are frozen, defrost overnight in the refrigerator. Split two of the cakes to get four thin layers. Lay the sturdiest one on a flat surface (either on the cake plate you’ll be serving it on or on a sturdy transferable plate), and spread with a light layer of cream cheese frosting, just enough to coat (I dollop small spoonfuls and then spread). Ladle a generous amount of the raspberry filling on top, spreading to within 1/4″ from the edge. Top with the next layer, and continue this pattern until the last layer remains. Place it on top and frost the cake all over with the cream cheese frosting. Refrigerate until time to serve.

You all know the craziness which is our life; I have made no secret of the tightrope between home, work, home-work, work-at-home, marriage, parenting, etc. across which we madly dash day-in, day-out, and sometimes in-between the two. I hope that it either makes you feel less alone (yay! other people live crazily too!) or relieved that your own life is not this stressful (whew, at least my life is not this crazy!). I also hope that you have an hour or two in your day like our 5-7 pm, the time I’ve come to affectionately call the dinner hour.

In order to preserve some semblance of sanity for all of us, we’ve tried to set aside those hours for the three of us to spend in and around the kitchen. We usually sit Josie in her high chair right in the middle of our small space, and feed her dinner while we get our own evening meal together. Before we were parents, our nighttime eating patterns were haphazard and casual, wandering into the kitchen whenever hunger struck, leisurely pulling dinner out of our pantry and fridge, without a lot of fuss. These days, if dinner isn’t well underway by the time Josie needs a bath, we’re in serious danger of going to bed on yogurt and granola, especially if there aren’t leftovers.

So, as we hear grown ups are prone to do, we’ve developed somewhat of a dinnertime routine. It is, by far, my favorite time of the day — I am with my very favorite people, doing one of my very favorite things. But also, it invariably gets done, this making of dinner, and usually, it is, if not very fancy, very satisfying and good for my food-loving soul. If I accomplish nothing else in the span of 24 hours, something from start to finish that I can look at and say, “I did that today,” I at least usually manage to make dinner for my family.

When I tell you that this past week started with not one, but two, disastrous meals in a row, I hope you understand that I mean it when I say that it nearly sent me over the edge. The week before, we’d started classes with a sick baby, which meant no childcare, two sleep-deprived teachers frantically trying to prepare for students while comforting, holding, rocking, and carrying around campus a puny, sniffly toddler. It was quite a week. We survived the weekend and hoped Josie was getting better, but on Sunday, her fever spiked, so we took her to the doctor to discover that she had an infection in each ear.

By Monday evening, when I sat on the stool in my kitchen, stirring the risotto, I was sorely in need of a victory. Onions, garlic, white wine, arborio rice, and a whole quart of chicken stock were in the process of dissolving my exhaustion when I noticed something small and brown on my spoon. And another beneath a grain of rice. And, then they were everywhere, tiny little bugs. Bugs. In. My. Risotto.

I panicked, David took over and cleaned the pot out while I put Josie to bed, and we had grilled cheese sandwiches — all in all not the end of the world. But on Tuesday, after I’d grated and juiced lemons, minced garlic and jalapenos, and measured out the wine for pasta sauce, when the same tiny bugs floated to the surface of the penne I was boiling, I have to say that I teetered on the brink of insanity. If David hadn’t restrained me, I might have thrown out the entire contents of our pantry and eated a bag of potato chips for dinner. For the rest of the week.
You can imagine the trepidation with which I approached the dinner hour on Wednesday, and I resolved to use only food out of our refrigerator: that usually means soup or eggs. With the leftover roasted potatoes from Sunday’s dinner, half a bag of mixed veggies I fished out of the freezer, and the chicken stock I made on Tuesday afternoon to replace what had disappeared down Monday’s drain, a hearty, warm soup came together on my stovetop, without a single insect in sight. It may not have been much to look at, but it was real, homemade food, and at the time, it tasted like the best potato soup I’d ever had. What follows is not so much a recipe, per say, but an instruction guide for how to use what you have on hand and emerge victorious. It was, for this home cook, the formula that saved my dinner hour, and consequently my week.

What’s-In-Your-Fridge Vegetable Soup

What you need:

• Fat: Rendering bacon fat adds a nice flavor to potato soup, and that’s what I did for this version, but a combination of butter and olive oil will work fine too.
• Vegetables to saute for flavor: onion, garlic, and carrot was my combination, but you could also use shallot, celery or bell pepper.
• Other vegetables: I used 2 cups of leftover roasted potatoes and half a bag of frozen broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, but if you have two heads of broccoli, or a bunch of carrots, or mushrooms, use them instead. Just make sure to think about the flavor combo; if you want mushroom to be the dominant flavor, don’t crowd it with another strongly flavored veggie like broccoli.
• Liquid: Homemade stock is always in my freezer; I used chicken stock for the potato soup.
• Garnish: I finished the soup by stirring in 1 T. cream and 1/2 cup grated extra sharp cheddar cheese. It had been a bad week — you can always sprinkle with toasted nuts or a dollop of creme fraiche if you want to be fancier.

What to Do:
I feel silly typing up instructions because I’m sure everyone knows how to make soup, but I’ll tell you a few things that I think make a difference in the final product. First, the basic method: saute the flavoring vegetables over medium heat until they’re soft and beginning to brown; I start with onion and carrot and add the garlic after the other two are soft. Next, you add the other vegetables, coat with the fat and flavoring, and stir in the liquid.
What makes it good (in my humble opinion):

• Puree half of the vegetables. This will make the soup thicker without added fat or calories, but still leave you a rustic texture to the finished dish.
• Coarse salt with flavor, like sea salt, not the iodized stuff. A lot of salt, and sprinkled in a handful at a time, after each step in the process, not right at the end. Taste as you go to make sure you aren’t over-salting and that the soup has enough flavor. Salt is what will coax humble potatoes and cauliflower into deliciousness.
• Homemade stock. I know, I know, this seems like a lot of trouble. But I’ve started keeping a bag in my freezer for vegetable trimmings, and after about two weeks, it’s full enough to make a huge vat of stock that will last at least a month, maybe more. And if you have the remains of a chicken, even better. It really does make a big difference in the overall flavor of soup, in my opinion.
• Simmer for as long as you can. The longer the soup has to hang out on the stove, the more its parts will melt into one, happy, yummy flavor.
• Eat with plenty of crusty bread. It’s mostly just vegetables and water, so why not?

As I said, this is not rocket science. But it has been reliable for us, and, in this season of life, reliable is what we need. Thankfully, the bugs in the pasta were the low point, Josie’s ears are cleared up, and the soup restored normalcy and comfort to our dinner hours. A small victory, perhaps, but a sweet one.

Whew. What a year. How often I’ve wished that I’d found the time to stop in here and tell you more about it, but, as it turns out, this past year swooped in like a mother cat and snatched us up by the backs of our necks, dragging us from one destination to the next without once stopping to ask us if we were ready to move again.

The number one reason for that constant motion, of course, is that we started 2008 with a docile infant, just learning to crawl, and ended it with a toddler who runs full-throttle everywhere she goes, laughing gleefully or shouting, “No, no!” at the top of her lungs, depending upon her mood and whether or not the cat is doing something that displeases her (poor Matilda, our little black kitty who joined our family in the spring; it seems she can do nothing right as far as Josie is concerned.) The presence of a toddler makes our days full and chaotically busy and delightful and maddening all at the same time. And that’s without adding in work and school.

One happy obstacle completed in 2008: I passed my General Exams and am now, officially, a candidate for the Ph.D., a distinction known in the academic world as A.B.D. (all but dissertation). The dissertation is a big, momentous thing looming ahead, but it is only one thing. And since I’m a girl who likes to pour my intellectual concentration wholeheartedly into one, focused job at a time, that feels like a huge relief. For now, our immediate task ahead, is for David to finish his thesis show and graduate (hooray!) with his M.F.A. in May. I can’t wait.

In the midst of all of this, I am, slowly, learning how to be a cook in this still-new parent-teacher-student life, and I hope to occasionally document the ways that this season is changing how dinner gets on the table (as it still manages to do, miraculously). One way is that we always have good eggs in our refrigerator. At our local farmer’s market, eggs are such a hot commodity that if you aren’t there promptly at 8 a.m. when the bell rings signaling the start of business, you’re usually out of luck. It’s one of the only days of the week we’re thankful to have an early riser: Josie gets us there on time, and usually, we come home with eggs.

And it’s a good thing: they have sustained us through many, many a long week. This preparation is one of my favorites for when we have an abundance of Swiss chard in our garden, which, this year has been pretty much all the time, save the hottest months of the summer. You poach the eggs right in the pan with the greens, so it’s a one-dish meal, and except for the cooking of the eggs, it’s a fairly lazy method: the onions can be left alone for a while to carmelize, and then the greens can wilt at their lesiure after that. Chard is laden with nutrients, but the flavor can be a bit astringent; in this dish, the bitterness is all lost beneath the cloak of creamy yolks and buttery onions. It’s a particularly satisfying meal on a cold night, a warming end to a long day. Or year, as the case may be.

Eggs in a Nest
I found this idea in Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the informational and interesting story of her family’s move to a farm and conversion to locally grown food; you can find more recipes and information on the book’s website. It’s a great read, particularly if you’re interested in how we eat affects the world around us, and one of my favorite parts is that Kingsolver’s college-aged daughter, Camille, contributes recipes and meal plans at the end of each chapter. This recipe is an adaptation of her version.
1 large bunch Swiss chard, or other leafy green
1 large, or 2 small sweet yellow onions, coarsely chopped
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter
3 cloves garlic
Coarse salt and cracked pepper
6 eggs
1-2 tablespoons heavy cream (optional)

Remove the stems from the chard leaves and wash all very, very well. Wrap the leaves in dishtowels to dry and set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the oil and butter together over medium. Chop the onions and chard stems into pieces roughly the same size, and dump into the skillet. Stir occasionally, but let them cook until the onions are brown and very, very soft, about 20 minutes. In my opinion, the flavor of the dish comes from well-caramelized onions, so don’t skimp on the time here; if you need longer, say because you’re bathing a baby or something, you can always reduce the heat and let them continue to get all golden and yummy. They’re pretty forgiving as long as the heat isn’t high enough to scorch them.

While the onions are cooking, roughly chop the chard leaves; I like to roll them into long skinny cylinders and slice them into thin ribbons, but whatever works for you.
Once the onions turn brown, season with salt and pepper, and add the garlic. Cook for another minute or two and dump in the leaves. Stir to coat with the onion mixture until the leaves are wilted. Turn the heat down to medium-low.
Make six depressions in the greens, each large enough to hold an egg. Carefully break an egg into each depression, making sure to keep the yolks in tact. Spoon a tiny amount of cream over each egg. Cover and cook the eggs for 4-6 minutes, depending on the size of your eggs and how well-done you like your yolks. When done, sprinkle a little coarse salt over all. We like to serve ours with biscuits or hearty whole grain toast.

If anyone is still out there checking in from time to time, I wish you and yours a full and happy 2009. Thank you for bearing with me as life has swept me away from this space for longer and longer periods of time; it means a lot when I hear from one of you to know that a recipe has been useful or that you’re visiting for the first time. I hope you and I both will have many reasons to return this year.

Yes, that’s snow! In southern Louisiana!

Not many people envy the suffocating August heat that cloaks southern Louisiana in a perpetual swirl of steam — of this much, I am sure. But with that steamy heat comes another sort of coat, a wild, hairy, green one. As the sun and rain work their steamy magic, the growing things in these parts seem to go a bit mad. The jasmine vines on our deck appear to grow inches overnight, the basil replenishes its pinched stems within what seem like hours, and the grass erupts in a wild, verdant party every few days or so, despite the best efforts of my lawn-tending husband. The green simply cannot be stopped.

Josie, for her part, is happiest to join right into the green chaos, scampering to the door first thing in the morning, itching to get outside and dig in the dirt. She is so clearly her father’s daughter.

What this means for cooking of course, is that it needs to be both quick (too hot for stove-standing) and alive; our bodies seem to long for food that echoes the green of the ground. One of the simplest ways we’ve captured that greenness lately is with this so-easy preparation for green beans — blanched to slightly soften their crunch, and then tossed with butter, toasted cashews, and honey. Salty and sweet, with that fresh-from-the-garden bite, these beans often find themselves alongside other simply prepared vegetables for a veritable summer garden feast at our house. They also make a lovely heat-of-the-afternoon snack, rewarmed from the fridge, and excellent fodder for a baby learning to explore all kinds of foods.
In any case, I am happy to be taking enough breaks from exam-writing to enjoy the lush end-of-summer growth outside my backdoor, even if just to watch my daughter play in the dirt. I hope one day she will learn to coax living things from it like her dad does. Maybe she’ll even be in charge of our first crop of green beans. Until then, at least she’s happy to eat them.

Green Beans with Cashews and Honey

1 pound fresh green beans
3 T. butter
1/2 cup salted cashews, coarsely chopped
2 T. honey
Coarse salt, to taste

Wash the green beans and snap off the tough ends. Blanch in salted boiling water for just a few minutes, no more than 5. Drain the beans and set aside.

Melt the butter over medium heat, swirling to prevent burning. When it starts to turn the slightest bit golden, add the cashews and cook, stirring, for several minutes, until the nuts are fragrant and beginning to brown. Add the honey, and stir until it melts, another couple of minutes.
Return the beans to the pot, stirring to coat evenly with the sauce. Sprinkle with coarse salt and serve immediately.

–From Come On In! Recipes from the Jackson Junior League, Jackson, MS

Hello, hello. It’s been so long, I know. I have, for some time now, been longing to come here and share what we’ve been up to with all of you, and, well. You all know how that pesky time is. Despite all your best intentions, it just keeps right on going.

In fact, I don’t have much of it to spare, but I did want to stop in for just a moment. I am in the midst of one of those degree milestones — my defense of my comprehensive exams is in just a few weeks, so I am writing like a mad woman, and have been reading and researching for months. So, it isn’t that I haven’t wanted to post. David has taken over nearly all of the cooking (and most everything else too), and Josie is busy toddling around the house carrying, usually, a book in one hand and a kitchen gadget of some sort in the other. At the moment, she’s wielding a wire whisk and Erving Goffman’s Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. And that’s as fitting a picture of our life as I can imagine.

So, while I wish I were here to tell you all about the birthday party I threw in May for me, my sister, and Josie, as we celebrated our thirtieth, twenty-first, and first birthdays respectively, these pictures will have to do the talking for me.

The cake is one of the only exciting things I’ve made in a while; it’s a simple recipe, but I doubled it to get the three layers plus cupcakes for the kids, and one that I formed into Josie’s very own strawberry (her favorite food in the world) for the top.

Mostly, we’re surviving, reveling in the delightful curiosity of our daughter, and enjoying simple fresh food. I hope, once I’m through this part of the process, I will be back in the kitchen and back here to tell you about it.

In the mean time, pictures will have to do.

Thanks to all of you who have written to tell me that you found an old recipe that was useful or that you hoped we were all okay or that you missed my posts. Your encouragement has meant a lot, especially on days mired with the fog of research (which has been most of them lately).

Happy summer to all.

Towards the end of February, I get a little antsy. Some might call it cabin fever, but that isn’t really accurate; I get out of the house often enough. No, my end-of-winter jitters stem from the kitchen end of things. I look in the fridge, especially at the end of the week, and I try hard to get excited about finding a creative use for the bunch of carrots languishing in the crisper or the bag of sweet potatoes that seems to never end.

But sometimes I just can’t do it.

And, so, sometimes, instead of concentrating my energies on making a healthful dinner out of the seasonal ingredients I’m desperately trying to still adore (but am secretly wishing to bid goodbye for a time), I make dessert instead.

Please don’t tell anyone.

It’s just that dinner can get a bit routine come March. We eat lots and lots of broccoli: simply steamed and tossed with sauteed garlic, dressed up a little more with cashews and soy sauce, tossed in pasta, folded into an omelet with caramelized onions, pureed with chicken broth and cheddar cheese for soup. And while I love all of these meals — truly, I am thankful that farm-fresh broccoli bears only the slightest resemblance to its tough-stemmed bland cousin carried in supermarkets, and I happily toss the tender, earthy-tasting florets and stalks into all manner of meals. These quick dinners get us through the winter without breaking our budget or sending us calling for take-out.

Yet, at the end of the day, especially fickle, neither winter nor Spring days, I find myself staring into the recesses of my tiny pantry hankering to do something more with my culinary energy. Something with a little more fanfare than broccoli, again.

Last week, when this urge struck, I found a bag of Meyer lemons calling out to me, as they so often do to waken me from my winter slumber, and they asked, quite emphatically, to be made into a simple cake.

Because I grew up in the South, heiress to a whole host of vintage recipes calling for ingredients that I don’t normally buy now that I’m a little fussier about things like chemical additives and artificial sweetners, I particularly love the idea of taking an old recipe and revamping it. I heard about this one, for lemon-lime ice box cake, on NPR’s lovely segment, Kitchen Window, some time in the fall, and when I saw those Meyer lemons, I knew this cake was the one for me.

I wasn’t so concerned with the green that make the original recipe lemon-lime, — I like the striations of yellow, personally — so I stuck with lemons for all of the citrus flavor and left out the food coloring. And, while I’m sure run-of-the-mill lemons would work perfectly fine, if the season has left you any Meyers, their tempered tartness and hints of sweet florals make this cake truly irresistible.

So irresistible, in fact, that it might just get me from broccoli to asparagus. Maybe even, come fall, I’ll be wishing for winter days and the lemons they bring. That, my friends, would be a powerful cake.

Happy Easter to one and all!

Lemon Icebox Cake
Just a single layer, topped with a simple whipped cream topping, this cake’s humble appearance belies its big flavor. Which, to my mind, makes it an even better candidate for taking to an event, like an Easter dinner — no one will expect the buttery, lemony explosion as they take the first bite, and you, the humble baker will get all the praise. Not that that’s why you bake for others, of course, but just in case it’s an added bonus you appreciate.

A couple of ingredient notes: I find measurements that suggest how many lemons you need for the amounts of juice and zest to vary so widely that they are unhelpful; I measured the quantities of both as I used them, but especially for the zest, it’s okay to estimate. Fresh lemon juice is absolutely essential; yes, it takes time to zest and squeeze all of those lemons, but the result is well worth the effort.

As for the curd, a high-quality store-bought version would probably be fine; the original recipe calls for stirring it with a little water, so that it’s the right consistency to pour over the cake. I found that the texture of homemade curd, especially just after it’s made, worked perfectly.

Lemon Ice Box Cake

For the cake:

3 cups cake flour
3 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 cup butter, at room temp
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk (whole milk works too)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 t. grated lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside.

In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and continue to beat until the mixture has doubled in volume.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, and with a rubber spatula, fold in the flour mixture and the buttermilk, alternating by thirds, until both have been incorporated. Stir in the juice and zest.

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan, and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until just moist (not wet) in the center. Turn the cake onto a rack to cool.

For the curd:

1 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1 T. grated lemon zest
4 large eggs, beaten
2 T. butter, diced

Whisk together the juice, sugar, zest, and eggs in a small saucepan. Stir constantly over medium-low heat, until the mixture thickens and coats a spoon. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter. When the cake has cooled slightly (it’s fine if it’s still warm, just not oven-hot), poke holes all over it with the bottom of a wooden spoon. I like to poke holes of varying depths — for some, go all the way through to the bottom, for others, just a prick in the top, and then, some in between. Pour the curd over the punctured cake, allowing it to seep into the holes. I had about 3/4 cup of curd left over. Let the cake stand while you whip the topping.

For the topping:

8 ounces mascarpone cheese, at room temp
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 t. grated lemon zest
4 T. lemon juice

Whip the cream on high until soft peaks form. Add the powdered sugar, zest, and mascarpone; beat on medium-low until just combined. With the mixer running, slowly pour in the lemon juice. Spread the topping over the whole cake.

If you beat the mixture too long, the mascarpone will curdle, but that’s okay; it will smooth out some when you spread it on. And if it gets really lumpy and ugly, it will still taste good, but if you’re concerned about the appearance, whip some extra cream by itself to spread on top (like I did).

You can serve it warm — straight from the pan — or refrigerate and serve it cold. We liked it equally well both ways. It cuts into neater pieces once it’s been chilled.

–Adapted from April Fulton’s adapted recipe on NPR’s Kitchen Window