Though I make my own variation of spaghetti sauce rather than following my mom’s recipe, this process reminds me of family and of growing up. I strongly identify with the foods of my heritage – part Polish, part Italian – and I refuse to purchase jarred pasta sauce because I grew up with homemade. There is something beautiful about cooking food with a deep family connection.
I think we pretty safely established last year that I love rhubarb. Given that, it should be no surprise that I was completely on board when my friend Lauren suggested that we bake rhubarb upside-down cake before our recent Sunday evening date to see Bridesmaids.
That Saturday – the day of The Rapture That Was Not, we met at the farmer’s market to purchase the goods. We decided to go all out even though the world might not exist for us to bake the next day, heading directly to my favorite stand and purchasing that tart, wonderful fruit. We thought we were done, as we had the main ingredient for the cake.
And then…we came to the strawberries. You know my weakness for strawberries. The strawberries whispered to me, tempting me with their sweet summery scent, and Lauren mentioned that she’d never really had one of my pies. Before I knew it, I had berries in my bag and a little less money in my pocket. I love feeding people pie.
Thankfully, the world still existed on Sunday, so we gathered around noon and began to chop fruit (her) and make dough (me). We made a smaller version of last year’s victory pie (recipe via that link) – this time, with a gluten-free crust – and I still think it’s my favorite strawberry-rhubarb pie ever. If Lauren‘s longing gaze is any indication, she agrees.
But this isn’t about the pie.
Once the pie was in the oven, we tackled The Cake. We broke out the hand mixer to get the right consistency. We zested. We macerated the rhubarb. We heated butter and brown sugar for the perfect topping. We subbed a gluten-free all-purpose flour blend from Bob’s Red Mill for the flour in the cake. We were ready.
Then: a small error in judgment. We decided that my 9-inch regular cake pan would work fine, and we put my 10-inch springform pan back in the cabinet. At the time, this seemed to make sense – until we put the toppings in the pan, followed by the batter, and it looked…really full. Of course, we had no choice but to move forward at this point. The clock was ticking, we had a date for Bridesmaids, and obviously, we couldn’t waste all of the perfectly delicious cake elements. We forged ahead, placing a cookie sheet underneath the cake pan when the cake went into the oven.
That, dear friends, was a wise choice.
An even better decision, however, was when we pulled that whole mess out of the oven to test the cake, and realized that:
a) the overflow batter was basically done baking, and
b) we could eat that with pie filling on top.
That was just what we needed to tide us over until the rhubarb upside-down cake, in all its glory, was ready. Ten minutes before we needed to leave, we removed The Cake from the oven, danced around my kitchen, and took this photo for you to see its beauty.
Lessons learned:
I’m having an amazing food week.
When I’m cooking on a regular basis, most weeks are pretty fantastic food-wise. This is not to say that I’m the most incredible cook – though I certainly hold my own in the kitchen. Rather, it’s about the fact that when I cook for myself, I tend to select the foods that bring me the greatest joy or fondest memories, and this week has held a lot of good food memories and rich tastes.
The first, of course, is strawberry season. I said it last year and I’ll say it again: I love everything about them. I love those sweet little red gems. I don’t care that they’re $8/quart at the farmer’s market right now; I will pay it. I can’t walk by a stand, smell the scent of fresh strawberries, and not purchase them. I ate an entire pint on Friday and bought more on Saturday. I’m certain that strawberries are one of nature’s most perfect foods when purchased locally and in season. Tomatoes are up there as well.
When I was growing up, we often had pancake breakfast on Sunday morning. I don’t usually get pancake cravings these days, though since I stopped eating gluten in January, I’ve been craving carbs a lot more. This was the first successful batch of pancakes I’ve ever made – for some reason, pancake batter and I don’t usually get along – and it was nice to feel a Sunday tradition again. Paired with local bacon and topped with apple vanilla bean preserves that the lovely Autumn gave me, this was utterly delicious. Plus, I made enough for leftovers…
This is how you start the week right.
* * * * *
What foods bring you the most joy?
I think it’s time that I declared this to the world: I love foods made with cornmeal. Cornbread? Fantastic. Corn muffins? Delicious – especially with some fresh fruit mixed in. Grits? Be still, my heart. And then…there’s polenta.
A few years ago, I was making polenta on a regular basis. It was a staple in my diet thanks to its affordability and versatility. A cup of cornmeal, once cooked, makes four to six hearty servings, and it can be served as breakfast, lunch, or dinner depending on the topping. So why did I stop making it? Good question. Thankfully, I remedied this last week as I work to stick to a tighter grocery/dining out budget.
My system has been to make a batch of polenta at the beginning of the week, and then throughout the week as I’m cooking dinners, I’ll have a variety of sauces and other toppings to bring with the polenta for lunches. In the past week and a half, I’ve topped my lunches with eggs over-easy and arugula; sausage, olives, and goat cheese; tomato sauce with ground beef; and, my current favorite, sauteed asparagus and mushrooms with lemon juice, butter, and thyme.
That last one is the perfect meal for spring, and I can’t resist eating it.
Polenta
2 c water
1 c unsweetened almond milk (or milk of your choice)
1 c polenta (corn grits)
2 tbsp salted butter
black or white pepper
Combine water and almond milk in a medium-sized pot, and bring to a boil over high heat. When liquid reaches a rolling boil, turn heat down to low and stir in polenta. When polenta and liquid are combined, add butter and stir. Continue to simmer, stirring regularly, until polenta reaches a thick oatmeal consistency. (Note: The instructions I’ve read say that polenta will take 20-30 minutes to cook. Mine usually reaches the thick consistency within 10 minutes. Cooking time may vary for you.)
When polenta has thickened, add pepper to taste and stir. Turn off heat and serve.
You can also pour the polenta into a rectangular baking dish – mine is 1-1/2 quarts – and refrigerate, covered overnight. After that, you can slice pieces, reheat, and serve!
Lemon Butter Asparagus and Mushrooms
3 c sliced crimini mushrooms
2 c asparagus, chopped into one inch segments
2-1/2 tbsp salted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp dried thyme
pepper to taste
In a non-stick pan, heat 2 tbsp olive oil and 2-1/2 tbsp salted butter. When butter has melted, add asparagus and mushrooms. Saute until asparagus is tender, about 7-10 minutes. Add lemon juice, thyme, and pepper. Serve over polenta or as a side dish.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine mentioned these brownies, and I knew I had to adapt them to be gluten-free. I’m a sucker for Cadbury Creme Eggs; they’re one of the seasonal treats that I look forward to most every year. I also love baking brownies, as they’re quick, a perfect chocolate fix, and easily made sans wheat flour.
As I looked over the original recipe, I knew how I’d easily adapt the flour mixture; my go-to is to swap in 2/3 white rice flour and 1/3 tapioca flour, and I figured that would work perfectly here. I knew I only had sweetened cocoa powder on hand, so I decided to cut back the amount of sugar by 1/2 cup – something I’d probably do even with unsweetened cocoa powder. These babies are sweet, and they don’t really need the extra sugar. Mine came out with my favorite fudge-y brownie texture, and held together quite nicely once you scooped them out of the pan.
And remember: Easter is only a few days away, so discounted candy will be up for grabs soon! I may have to stock up on the caramel eggs for my next batch…
Gluten-Free Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies (adapted from Gingerbread Bagels)
5 Cadbury Creme Eggs, halved (9 halves for the brownies, 1 for your mouth)
1/2 c white rice flour
1/4 c tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
1/2 c sweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp finely-ground sea salt
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 c bittersweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly grease a 9×9 inch baking pan. Slice Cadbury Creme Eggs in half using a paring knife. Set nine halves aside; eat one.
Blend flours, cocoa powder, and sea salt thoroughly in a small bowl. Set aside.
Combine sugars, melted butter, and vanilla extract in a medium bowl. Stir thoroughly with a spatula until well-mixed. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.
Add half the dry ingredients to the wet, stirring until just combined, then add the other half. When dry mixture is integrated, add chocolate chips, folding them into the batter.
Pour batter into baking pan, spreading it with a spatula to cover the bottom of the pan evenly. Bake for 20 minutes, remove pan from oven, and neatly press the Cadbury Creme Egg halves into the brownies. Bake for 5 more minutes, or until a toothpick/knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
Cool the brownies before cutting.
My internet friend Robyn loves overnight oats. I’d never heard of them before reading her blog, and after seeing all of her delicious posts, I was intrigued.
The problem is, I am pretty terrible at prepping food for the next day before I go to bed. Embarrassing confession: I’m one of those people who occasionally often falls asleep on the couch while reading or internetting, and then I’ll wake up, brush my teeth, and promptly settle into bed.
Morning is the time when I really shine.
Because I was so curious about the magic of overnight oats, I decided to see whether I could make them happen in the morning with delicious results. The answer: YES.
This has become my go-to weekend breakfast, as it’s substantially cheaper than cereal, more filling, and just as easy. I mix up the ingredients before I shower, and by the time I’m ready, my breakfast is waiting. Delicious food before heading out for the day is a good thing!
30 Minute Oats
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup almond milk (or whatever you prefer)
1 tbsp agave nectar*
1/4 cup slivered almonds*
1/4 cup berries (frozen from last summer!)*
Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Mix thoroughly and place in refrigerator for approximately 30 minutes. Stir once more and enjoy!
*These are my standard ingredients, though I sometimes add in shredded coconut or nut butter. Inspired by Robyn, I may try them with cocoa powder soon.
Note: Picture taken prior to mixing to avoid photographing a bowl of mush!
I buy nearly all of the food that I cook at home from my local farmer’s market, so winter is a fun (read: challenging) time, as many of you are aware. I’ve also cut dairy (except butter) and wheat out of my diet, so I feel like I’ve been re-learning to cook and bake for myself in a lot of ways.
When my friend Emilie visited recently, we wanted to stay out of the cold (read: hang out on my awesome couch with Arrested Development and knitting), so I threw together a butternut squash and apple soup from our trip to the market the day before. I hadn’t yet stocked my pantry for a lot of wheat-free baking, so then what for dessert?
I’d overestimated the number of apples that I needed for the soup, so we settled on baked apples. Below is more of a guideline than a recipe, but it’s delicious and a great way to use pantry items – or, if you’re like me, some of the many bags of fruit occupying your freezer. Everything I used except the sugar, salt, cinnamon, and cashews came from the farmer’s market.
Also, baked apples make a tasty breakfast the next day!
Baked Apples
as many apples as you would like to eat, cored
handful of brown sugar
handful of frozen sour cherries, halved (or any type of berry)
handful of frozen raspberries, halved
handful of cashews, roughly chopped (or any other nuts)
sprinkle of finely ground sea salt
cinnamon to taste
1/2 tbsp salted butter per apple
1/2 cup apple cider
1/4 cup maple syrup (grade b)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Place cored apples in baking dish of appropriate size. Combine brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, cherries, raspberries, and cashews. Fill apples with the mixture, and top each apple with 1/2 tbsp of salted butter.
Stir together apple cider and maple syrup, and pour into baking dish on top of apples.
Bake for 30-35 minutes, basting apples with cider/syrup mixture every 7 minutes.
Save remaining juices to eat over ice cream, if your apartment is as absurdly hot as mine.
Before I move into talking about 600 ways to use zucchini – it is, after all, nearly that time of year – I want to discuss this garlic scape pesto more. Have I mentioned how peppery and garlicky and creamy and generally delicious it is? Yes? Well, it is. I like this pesto, and I wanted to come up with ways to use it. After all, I made 1/2 cup for my first batch, and then plenty more with the giant bag of scapes. (I’m pretty sure this pizza, which Jeanne told me about on twitter, is in my future.)
Remember way back at the beginning of this blog, when I told you how much I like roasting chicken? Well, I bought a chicken at the greenmarket the same day that I got all of those garlic scapes. I enjoy experimenting with chicken, and it’s hard to screw up. I started thinking that the pesto could be a good rub between the skin and the meat, plus I had that lemon that I’d used for the juice in the pesto, and those potatoes from my CSA, and those green beans from the greenmarket…
Pesto Roasted Chicken with Potatoes
2 or 3 potatoes
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon
1 medium onion (about the size of a tennis ball)
1 chicken (I usually get a 3 lb bird for the two of us)
1/4 c garlic scape pesto
salt
pepper
Preheat oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash potatoes and chop into one-inch pieces. Add potatoes to a baking pan (I used my 9 x 13 pyrex dish lined with aluminum foil) and toss with olive oil. Peel onion, and slice lemon and onion into 1/2-inch thick rounds.
Rinse chicken with cold water, and pat dry with paper towels. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to separate the skin from the meat as best you can. I try to separate it on the thighs and back as well as the breasts. You want to separate the skin enough to get your hands under it.
Using your hands, spread the pesto under the skin. It’s gloppy and messy, but do your best to coat the chicken evenly everywhere you lifted the skin. Use about 1 tbsp of the pesto on top of the skin and inside the cavity.
Once you’re done giving your bird a pesto rubdown, take the lemon and onion slices and stuff them inside the cavity. I never keep twine around to tie the drumsticks, so what I do is cut a little slice in the skin near each of them, and then you can tuck the end of the drumstick through that to hold them in place.
Push the potatoes to the sides of the baking dish, making room for the chicken in the middle. Put the chicken in the center of the dish, and sprinkle salt and pepper over it and the potatoes (especially over the potatoes).
Bake for about an hour and twenty minutes, or until a meat thermometer reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit in the thighs (Make sure you aren’t hitting a bone).
Allow the chicken to rest, breast-side down, under a foil tent for about ten minutes before carving and serving.
I’m kind of in love with garlic scapes. They remind me of some weird vine out of a horror novel – think The Ruins – and I think they’re really tasty. I usually chop them up and use them in dishes in lieu of garlic cloves…until now. Because last week, Madura Farms Mycomedicinals, the mushroom purveyor at my local greenmarket, was giving away a shopping bag full of scapes to every customer. How could I pass that up?
The same Saturday that I came into my scape bounty, I had the pleasure of meeting Jennifer of In Jennie’s Kitchen. I like her approach to food – how could I not, with her passion for Italian cuisine? – and she’s wonderful to chat with in real life! At any rate, I was browsing around her website for recipes, and I came across her garlic scape pesto. That fit my qualifications: Uses lots of scapes at once? Check. Freezer-friendly? Check.
Of course, at the same time I was readying myself to make the pesto, my oregano was flowering like crazy. By crazy, I mean that there were flowers and buds on about half the plant. I like oregano, and I can take a hint.
I used Jennifer’s recipe as a jumping-off point and added some other flavors I enjoy. I used it on roasted chicken – I’ll tell you about that soon – and I always love pesto on pasta and bread. I think I need to go home and make some more.
Garlic Scape and Oregano Pesto (adapted from Jennifer Perillo)
Makes one cup.
12 garlic scapes
1/3 c almonds
1/2 c grated Romano cheese
1/4 c oregano
4 basil leaves
1 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/4 tsp salt
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/4 c + 1 tbsp olive oil
Add the scapes, almonds, cheese, oregano, basil to a food processor, and pulse until they are finely chopped.
Add the butter, salt, and lemon juice, and pulse until the ingredients begin to blend.
Begin adding the olive oil one tbsp at a time, until you reach desired consistency.
Eat on everything.
After not making time to post for two weeks – it’s my busy season at work! – I’ve got so many photographs, recipes, and stories to share. Since pie seems to be everyone’s favorite topic, I figured I’d start with a post about that!
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been involved with Gotham Girls Roller Derby since 2007, first as a skater for the Bronx Gridlock, and now as their manager. When you’ve been working together for a while – practice three or four nights a week, plus other events – you start to develop team traditions, superstitions, and inside jokes. The more you bond off the track, the better your connection will be when you’re skating together as a team. You trust each other.
Throughout those three and a half seasons, one of the traditions we’ve developed is sharing a victory pie for each bout that we win. That’s 13 pies so far: we play four bouts per season including the championship, and have only lost one in that time frame. One of my other teammates usually bakes; however, after our last bout, she was hosting our team barbecue, so we decided that I would take a turn. I have, after all, made a few pies in my time.
I still had plenty of rhubarb left from rhubarb fest, and at that point, strawberries were still plentiful at the greenmarket, so I’d picked up quite a few. The perfect early summer victory pie? Strawberry-rhubarb. One of my teammates doesn’t eat sugar, so I looked up some information about baking with agave nectar and went for it. If nothing else, I knew it smelled amazing when it came out of the oven, and it looked stunning in the yellow pie dish my teammates gave me as a manager’s gift at the end of last season.
I’d be exaggerating if I said that people dove at me when I arrived at the barbecue; however, I mean it when I say that the 12-inch, deep-dish pie plate was empty in under ten minutes! I’m pretty sure there isn’t a better way to spend a summer evening than celebrating victory, conversing, and sharing pie with friends.
Part of why I’m telling you this particular story is that I believe that pie is an amazing food that carries on a long tradition of friendship, community, and sharing food. My friend Lauren is in the last days of her Pie in the Park Kickstarter project, and she needs your help to make it a success. She’s planning to publish a Pie in the Park cookbook, which will include stories of baking, recipes, and pie tips. Proceeds from book sales will go to Clinton Hill CSA to help fund their low-income shares. The money raised from her Kickstarter project will help cover printing costs, as well as paying the book’s designer and illustrator a fair rate.
If you love pie as much as I do – and I’m pretty sure you do – consider donating!
Either way, you can still enjoy this recipe.
Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie, sans Sugar
Makes one 12-inch pie.
1 unbaked double crust
5 c rhubarb (1 lb)
4 c hulled and halved strawberries
1/3 c cornstarch
3/4 c raw agave nectar
1/4 c spring wildflower honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/8 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and coat the bottom and sides of 12-inch pie plate with butter.
Roll out half of the dough for the bottom crust. Put in pie dish and crimp the edges of the crust.
Combine the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl, making sure that the fruit is thoroughly coated with the cornstarch, sweeteners, and seasonings.
Roll out the other half of the dough for the top crust. If you prefer to do a lattice crust, cut the dough into long strips.
Pour the fruit mixture into the bottom crust. Top with the rolled out dough or the lattice.
Bake for 15 minutes, then add a foil ring around the edge of the pie plate to prevent the crust from burning. Bake for 25 more minutes, and allow to cool before slicing and serving.
