Each year I look forward to watching the Great British Bake-off and although some of those theme weeks are a bit wonky, it’s interesting to observe skilled bakers ply their art.
This madeleine recipe was part of the Celebrity Bake-Off Challenge for SU2C (Stand Up to Cancer) in 2022. They were easy to bake, and even though my chocolate decorating skills are a bit underwhelming, they were quite tasty.
I’m pretty certain that Prue and Paul would tell me these madeleines were quite the mess and send me packing. You can find the recipe for Prue Leith’s Maple & Pecan Madeleines here. The only substitution I made was to use actual maple syrup in place of the maple flavoring.
Sometimes the Fall rollercoaster gets the best of me, but last night I hopped off and opened up my trusty and well-loved 1977 edition of the Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen for a little cuisine inspiration. As usual, it was right there for the taking.
The spicy mixture of sauteed sweet peppers, onions and garlic – the holy trinity of flavors if you ask me – layered with cheese and topped with an egg-based custard was delicious, of course, and made a nice lunch leftover. There were a couple of little modification I made: first, throwing a bit (maybe 1/2 a cup) of leftover red wine into the sauteed peppers and letting the liquid cook off added a layer of flavor AND used up some red wine. Secondly, I used all Greek-style yogurt and no sour cream.
Mexican Pepper Casserole
Ingredients
6 medium bell peppers (use a mix of red and green)
1-1/2 cups thinly sliced onions
2 TBS butter
2 TBSP olive oil
3 medium cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp each of salt, cumin, and coriander
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp each of black and red pepper
2 TBSP flour
For the egg custard-beat together
4 large eggs
1-1/2 cups sour cream (here’s where I used the beautifully thick Greek Yogurt I can get locally)
To Assemble
1/2 lb medium sharp cheddar, sliced thin (I used up a mix of hard but meltable cheeses just because)
Paprika
Method
Slice the peppers in thin strips.
Heat butter and olive oil in skillet. Sauté onions and garlic with salt and spiced until the onions are translucent.
Add peppers. Sauté over low heat for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle in the flour. Mix well and sauté until there is no extra liquid (here is where I threw in the bit of leftover wine – still kept on heat until there was no more liquid in the skillet).
Butter a deep casserole. Spread in half of the sauté, top with half the sliced cheese. Repeat the layers.
Pour egg-custard over the top and sprinkle with paprika.
Bake (covered) at 375 F for 40-45 minutes, uncover for the last 15 minutes.
When I have an opened bag of chocolate “laying around”, I need to look for ways to use it, especially when the chocolate is the “good stuff” (in this instance, Guittard).
While it has been way too hot for baking, the temperatures have moderated a bit, so this morning, I opened up my copy of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours, and discovered a perfect solution to my dilemma. If you don’t have this wonderful baking guide (I love the “Playing Around” ideas), the link will bring you to some purchasing options – mine would definitely tend toward supporting Independent Bookstores.
The addition of cinnamon to the batter makes for some pretty pleasant aromas while these cookies bake up. Fortunately, you won’t have too long a wait – 12 minutes tops.
The cookies can be found on page 75 and include the following ingredients:
If you are a subscriber to the Washington Post, you can access the recipe and scale it up or down.
Adapted by the Washington Post from “Vegetarian Viet Nam” by Cameron Stauch, this is a tasty AND colorful dish. Heed the warning that turmeric will become a laundry nightmare, so wearing an apron is essential.
This is an easy recipe to pull together on a busy weeknight and the author even suggests a substitute for Chinese chives for those of us who do not have easy access it.
From the time we were first married, Adrien and I had a Boston Globe newspaper (print edition) delivered to our home. While we no longer subscribe to the Globe for a variety of reasons, when we did, I used to look forward to each Wednesday because of the Food focus.
Unfortunately I cannot give credit other than to cite the Boston Globe sometime between 1977 and 1990, but this recipe was one I came across while weeding my recipe collection which was preserved in a recipe box. One of us took the time to cut out the recipe so that it fit neatly on a 3 x 5 inch index card. The card is both aged, yellowed and stained, a testament to how frequently we cooked from it. Also, Adrien’s handwritten asterisk in the top right corner was our shorthand for something we enjoyed cooking, and undoubtedly cooked again and again.
After digging this card out of the recipe box, I of course had to try it once again. Not only was this a quick and inexpensive recipe to pull together, it is vegetarian – all of which explains why we must have made it frequently.
So, here goes -if anyone does have the original sourcing, I’d love to give them credit!
Spinach Casserole with Thyme
Boston Globe
Ingredients
Butter to grease casserole
2 TBSP butter (I used coconut oil)
3 eggs
1 package (10 oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 cup small curd creamed cottage cheese
2/3 cup (about 2 oz) coarsely grated Cheddar cheese
3 TBSP flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp thyme
Method
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and 1-1/2 quart casserole and set aside.
Melt the 2 TBSP butter in a small saucepan and set aside to cool slightly (or use coconut oil as I did).
Beat eggs in a large mixing bowl.
Add spinach, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, flour, salt, thyme and melted butter. Stir until ingredients are well combined. Pour mixture into casserole.
Place casserole in oven and bake until mixture is set and slightly puffy, about 1 hour. Serve immediately.
Mollie Katzen’s recipes are always a hit in our house and this one, from 2013’s The Heart of the Plate, was no exception. It is the perfect summer salad as fresh cukes and tomatoes are in abundance, and it is easily adaptable – as I quickly discovered when I neglected to buy fresh corn at the farmstand this week.
The recipe calls for pearl barley, red onion, scallions, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, a sweet red (or orange pepper) and corn. My substitution for the corn? A half-and-half mix of thawed frozen peas and thawed riced cauliflower (a leftover ingredient from another recipe).
Mollie Katzen’s Summer Corn and Barley Salad recipe, found on page 120, suggests more enhancements: edamame, cilantro, parsley, avocado – and more. You get the picture. And we can personally vouch for the deliciousness of this salad on the day after.
We’ll definitely be breaking this one out again before corn season is over.
The serving dish is a piece from Edgecomb Potters in Edgecomb, Maine, a must-stop whenever we are traveling in the Mid-Coast of Maine.
This delicious soup – served hot or cold – comes from Jacques Pépin’s Simple and Healthy Cooking, written in 1994. One of the best things about this cookbook, besides the usual amazing dishes Chef Pépin shares, is that the nutrition information has already been calculated. That makes it easy for folks who need to monitor particular kinds of foods.
While I’ve had this book for quite a while and have made several recipes from it, this was the first time I can recall making this delicious Tomato Potage. On a hot summer night with ripe tomatoes and basil in plentiful supply, it was a perfect centerpiece for a light supper.
Only one of the 3 lbs. of fresh tomatoes needs to be peeled, making this truly an easy recipe as well as a tasty one. The recipe can be found on page 53 of Simple and Healthy Cooking.
I usually stay away from breakfast pastries, but every once in a while, I need to fulfill a craving. This week, I wanted to make a muffin – one that I could bake and that would allow me to account for what I ate.
Sally’s Baking Addiction was the jumping off point for this muffin which uses nonfat Greek yogurt (yay!) and chocolate chips. Sally’s muffin recipe (linked here) yields 36 mini muffins. I however, had a larger muffin tin with just 6 muffin cups. While Sally’s muffins clock in at 45 calories per muffin, the larger ones I was able to bake would be 45 x 6 or 270 calories. A treat, for sure, but one I could account for.
I also skipped the chocolate chips. I know that’s sacrilegious, and a little crazy for this chocoholic, but, I had a small portion of King Arthur Baking’s cinnamon bits to use up.
If you are thinking of making these muffins for yourself, here is the link to Sally’s Baking Addiction. Be sure to read through the notes as they are a terrific resource for adapting this to your own taste.
Ingredient List (my substitutions are in italics)
All purpose flour
Baking soda
Ground cinnamon
Maple Syrup
Light Brown Sugar
Nonfat Greek Yogurt
Melted butter or coconut oil (I used the coconut oil)
Egg white
Vanilla extract
Mini Chocolate Chips (I used cinnamon bits, not cinnamon chips)
How have I missed this cookie perfection in Joanne Chang’s 2010 book, Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe? This buttery (of course), chewy blend of dark chocolate, coconut and nuts is exactly the kind of cookie to perk up a day.
Found on page 110, the ingredients include
Butter (lots of it)
Brown AND cane sugars
Rolled Oats
Sweetened shredded coconut
Toasted pecans
Dark chocolate
Eggs
All-purpose flour
If you aren’t fortunate enough to live near a Flour Bakery, get your hands on the book and try this out. You won’t regret the effort (or the calories).
Roast Beet, Caraway and Crème Frâiche Salad with Arugala from Melissa Clark’s Dinner in French
Today, July 9th would have been my Dad’s 104th birthday, and so, in his honor I give you… roasted beets. (Just kidding. Dad really did not like beets one bit. As kids, we sometimes threatened to “hide” them in his mashed potatoes, thereby tricking him into eating beets, Ahhh kid-logic. It never occurred to us that the bright red beets might be quite visible in those creamy mash potatoes.)
Roasting beets can be a really messy prep. My modus operandi is generally to peel the beets before roasting which always resulted in a bit of a mess: stained hands, stained cutting boards, stained EVERYthing. Despite that inconvenience, I love the darn things, raw or cooked, and so I continued to put up with the messiness.
Recently I came across an easier and foolproof way to roast beets. Here’s it is:
Preheat the oven to 400 Fahrenheit. (Also good is to oil a dutch oven with a lid – more cleanup but also more environmentally friendly)
Scrub and trim the greens from the beet roots. Use the greens as you want – but make sure to scrub those beets well.
Oil the beets (skin on) lightly and sprinkle with salt. I put a bit of olive oil on my hands and rub the outside of the beet.
Wrap the beets in foil packet OR (see above) place in a single layer in the dutch oven with the lid on. The main idea here is to keep the beets in a single layer.
Pop the pan into the preheated oven. If wrapping the beets in foil, putting them on a baking sheet makes it easier to pull in and out of the oven.
Depending on the size of the beets, roasting can take 25 minutes (small beets) to an hour (larger beets). Check for doneness from time to time – they’re ready when you can stick a sharp knife through them with no resistance.
Let the beets sit until they are cool enough to handle. I usually use a paper towel or sharp paring knife to slide the skins off the beets. (Your fingers could still sport that beautiful red color so wear gloves if you wish).
Trim away any extra root or stem and slice them up (or leave whole and refrigerate for when you want to use them).
This recipe for Roasted Beet, Caraway, and Crème Frâiche Salad with Arugala, from Melissa Clark‘s Dinner in French (pictured above) is a great way to make an elegant salad with beets as the main character.
Four Nights A Week 