Blackberries!

As I've posted in this blog before on numerous occasions, I love berries but especially blackberries. [Just do a blog search of my blog on "blackberries" in the column at left: yes, it's too hot and I'm too lazy to link them for you today!] Blackberries are the blueberries of the South and if you live in the Northeast or northern locations where blueberries prefer the acid soil and grow readily, you will know what I mean. Warm and juicy from the sun, not too sweet and a bit tart, all purply and plump, they are the perfect medium for so many things: fruit salad, peach-blackberry cobbler, jam, yogurt and even tossed onto French toast. Oh yes, and muffins: we've already made several batches of those, too.

An early trade card for Butter-Nut Bread, with gnomes!

Here is my easy recipe for French toast: it is the only breakfast I can get everyone to agree upon without a fuss. Of course, when you make it with your own farm-fresh eggs, maple syrup from a former neighbor in New Hampshire, and blackberries picked right from your own bushes, you can't go wrong. I have to say, however, that Butternut® White Bread, the equivalent of Wonder®, makes a fine vehicle for the egg batter. It is even better when you've left the bread out overnight or just barely soak it in the egg mixture. Otherwise, you will have French glop!

French Toast (serves four)

•  4 large eggs
•  3 cups milk (or combine cream, milk, Half-n-Half or whatever is on hand**)
•  1 teaspoon vanilla
•  1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
•  2-4 slices of white bread per person
•  butter for your skillet and for slathering
•  real maple syrup (accept no substitutes: otherwise you are drinking high fructose corn syrup! OK, so you could also use sorghum molasses, too, a favorite here on biscuits)

**just don't use skim milk

Mix all ingredients with an egg beater, except for bread. In the meantime, heat a generous tablespoon of butter in your skillet on medium high. Let sizzle. Have plates ready. Briefly, especially if bread is fresh, dip one piece at a time in the prepared egg batter (I can fry 3-4 pieces at once in my skillet) and take right out of the batter and place on skillet. Cook, briefly, on each side of bread until firm, browned and no liquid is showing.

Stack and serve with butter, maple syrup and a handful of your favorite berries or fruit. Also goes well with thick bacon or sausage patties.

We'll probably have this in our house on our first day back to school on Wednesday. Yes, the school year is here again, even though August is probably the hottest, most summer-like month in Kentucky. This was the fastest summer ever, even though the boys had three months off (but we get a lovely temperate May and all of June on the other end so we can't complain). Despite the heat here, we do enjoy this season on the farm and we plan to languish in our last days of summer vacation together.

On that note, I'm nursing a summer cold so I'm off for a nap and a good read--not necessarily in that order. For me, and with everyone in a routine again, the fall months will bring more structured time for writing and I'm looking forward to that. I may, if the fates allow, even have a real, live salaried writing-related job opportunity in the wings, too. I'll keep you posted. Either way, I'll keep blogging when I can. And I may as well nap while I still can, too!

Real Simple Suppers

Chicken-Broccoli Casserole a la Catherine (see below)

This blog post today is honor of Real Simple Magazine's 2009 Essay Contest–of course I entered it and remembered a few weeks ago that winners (first and runner-up) would be announced by phone and/or email "after January 3." The topic was "When Did You Realize You Were a Grownup?" (Mmm, now that I think about it, maybe I was not convincing enough–there are days that I still feel about 22 or 12, in my head, of course.) I spent a week crafting that essay back in early September, after hearing about it from my friend Edie, a Cupcake (the hardest part was reducing it to less than 1,500 words–is that a surprise?). I liked my essay, very much, but they got thousands of them and you never know what the editors are looking for in an essay contest. However, if you are a writer, or an aspiring one, I highly encourage entering any essay contest.

I rarely buy Real Simple because I find it really hard to slog through at times because it's far from simple in execution–it also bothers my ADD between having to surf over the huge amount of ads (even in this poor economy, so that is good for the prosperity–and popularity–of the magazine) and the brief snippets of information. [I had to also chuckle a few weeks ago while watching The Joy Behar Show. She was talking to the woman who did everything Oprah told her to do for a year, while blogging about it. Of course she also got a book deal! At the end of the conversation, Behar said, "A lot of these magazines...like Real Simple is the most complicated magazine I've ever read–it just gets you doing more things!" Exactly. Or to quote Fred Armison on Saturday Night Live impersonating Behar, "So what! Who cares?"]

And let's also point out here that the magazine title is not even grammatically correct: here is their defense of that in a response to a letter to the editor: "You are right to notice that Real Simple as our title is not grammatically correct. Although, we chose to emphasize the magazine's focus on the real and the simple, so we decided to go with the colloquial title over the strictly correct one." No sour grapes here, just some objective observations as it can be the gimmicky dumbing down in life which sometimes cloys.

Even though I can be a competitive person, I'm not a sore loser. The award went to Andrea Avery Decker of Phoenix, Arizona and she deserves congratulations for winning out of the thousands of essays submitted and I look forward to reading her essay. She will receive $3,000 for the publication of her essay ($2 a word is a good price in this magazine market, even though I was getting $1 a word twenty years ago) and a trip to New York City to meet the editors, see a Broadway show, and stay in a nice hotel.

To be honest, I was starting to obsess, how can I tell them that I don't want to fly? Or that I'd want to bring my 9-year old boy whose life goal at the moment is to go to the top of the Empire state building, even though his mother is terrified of heights? So I'm not terribly disappointed–who needs that kind of pressure? [But I had wanted to be the second essayist in my family to win an award and that kind of recognition. My grandmother Louise Truslow Grummon wrote "An Individual Struggles in the Age of Automation" in the early 1960s and won first prize and $5,000 with the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company! And my grandmother should have published more than the occasional magazine article, too. Her essay, is still relevant almost 50 years later and one day, when I can find it again (I am working on family archives this year), I'll reprint that essay here.]

In the meantime, here is an easy and tasty recipe we tried this month from Real Simple (I can't find the issue again but the recipe is also on-line–just click on the recipe title, below). And in their honor, I hereby christen this occasional "In the Pantry" segment: "Simple Suppers". I also follow it with my own recipe for a similar dish that I made last night. Both are good for a cold winter's night when you really want something warm and creamy but pseudo-healthy, too. You could also substitute whole wheat or other pasta for the shells or noodles–and go nuts with fresh herbs if you have them.

Cheesy Baked Shells and Broccoli from Real Simple

• 3/4 pound medium pasta shells
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsps flour
• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (or other cheese or a combo)
• 1/8 tsp ground or grated nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1-16 ounce package frozen broccoli

1. Heat broiler.
2. Cook the pasta according to the package directions.
3. Meanwhile, heat the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk and cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, 4 to 5 minutes.
4. Add 1 1/2 cups of the cheese and stir until melted. Stir in the nutmeg, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1⁄4 teaspoon pepper.
5. Add the pasta and broccoli and toss to combine. Transfer to a broilerproof 8-inch square or another 1 1/2-quart baking dish. Sprinkle with the remaining 1⁄2 cup of cheese. Broil until golden, 3 to 4 minutes.

This recipe reminds me of the creamy noodly-ness of Stouffer's® Tuna Noodle Casserole that my mother sometimes liked to get–they also had a really good Scalloped Apple dish and Spinach Soufflé, which I've used to make the base of a very good Northern Italian pasta sauce.

Simple Chicken-Broccoli Casserole a La Catherine (this is an easier variation of this recipe)

• 1 shallot, minced
• 3 Tbsps garlic, minced
• a splash of olive oil and a bit of butter
  
• 4-5 chicken breasts (I used some pre-marinated ones we had in the freezer to use up)
• 1 18-oz can Progresso® Creamy Mushroom Soup Vegetable Classics (finally, canned soups with only a few ingredients and ones that you can read–and NO MSG! I find it fairly cheaply at my local Walmart and stock up on it for this reason)
  
• 1 head broccoli (or a bag of frozen broccoli florets)
  
• 8 handfuls of egg noodles (When I can't get homemade noodles from a local friends, I like to use Mrs. Miller's Old-Fashioned Extra Wide® which we get at Sunny Valley bulk foods)

TOPPING:

• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• 2 Tbsps melted butter

1. Set oven to 350 degrees. Boil water for pasta, add a bit of salt, and cook broccoli al dente in a steamer basket over the pasta if you are set up for that–or separately.
   
2. Sauté shallot and garlic in melted butter. [You might also want to add some sliced fresh mushrooms but I didn't have any.]
   
3. Add chicken chopped into chunks.
4. Cook chicken only a few minutes, gently tossing while stir-frying until almost done.
5. Add mushroom soup and salt and pepper. Set aside off burner.
6. Drain noodles and broccoli (make sure broccoli is still quite green) and toss in with the chicken mixture. (I sauteed and baked in the same pan–my Le Creuset Dutch oven.)
7. Top with topping that you've made by melting butter, tossing in bread crumbs and cheese.
8. Bake for about 30 minutes until bubbly–or broil, briefly, until bubbly.
9. Serves 5-6 people.

And now for a teaser: this Gooseberry Crumble with Vanilla Pouring Custard looks much better than it actually was, in my opinion (although my husband loved it and that speaks volumes–our boys wouldn't go near it, sadly, but they do love my casserole creations). I made it and baked it along with the casserole. The custard was passable but could have been thicker. The crumble was my own assemblage of ingredients but the gooseberries were a bit tart on the old pucker, despite the added sugar. We picked them last summer and I've been wanting to do something with them ever since (they freeze as easily as cranberries). But I need to tweak the recipe first, having never baked with gooseberries. Thanks to our own lovely eggs, the custard is really that yellow! I'll work on this for a future installment.

Simple Pot Roast

Pot roast is the ultimate comfort food–serve mashed potatoes or whipped parsnips along side of it, or hearty, buttered egg noodles. Gravy made from the reduced juices is also delicious. I made this for supper last night which was the perfect ending to a winter day.

Roast beef and pot roast are among two of many reasons I probably could never become a vegetarian, even if I wanted to for ethical reasons. OK, and steak and a good hamburger, and the occasional roast lamb, too. They are also two of the dishes that I feared making properly for years. Most of us have suffered through really tough pot roast in our lives and I've certainly made a few of those myself. But I learned through trial and error–and this really fabulous and easy recipe–that the secret to making both perfect roast beef or pot roast is similar: slow and low.


Look for boneless, pink cuts of meat with lots of good marbling–that's what you want for the most tender, fork-cut pot roast.

With pot roast it's a slightly different process because you want to first braise the meat on all sides in order to start the necessary break down of the connective tissues–those great grisly bits marbled into a cheaper cut of meat (which is ideal for pot roast–you don't want anything too lean). And yet, it is similar to roast beef, too, which I like to cook quite high for about 20 minutes to sear it and form a good crust before reducing the oven temperature. This essential braising is what eventually leads to tenderizing the meat with its slow-cooking in the oven. It is also what gives a "well done" (in the flavor and texture sense of the word) pot roast its melt-in-your mouth characteristic.


You can use almost any combination of vegetables and additions to cradle your pot roast while it's cooking, but here are the basics.

I rarely use a crock pot any more but you could probably make this in a crock pot–I just can't guarantee the outcome. I fear those, too, for most varieties of slow cooking because "crock pot" pot roasts are what created my anxiety about making them in the first place: after a day of stewing, even after the requisite braising and then in the cooker on low, they were tough and awful. Fortunately, you can replicate that slow-cooker process in your own oven with even better results.

My cooking dish of preference for most things is my Le Creuset® covered dish–the medium baker, which I think is a bit more than a gallon capacity. The nice thing about Le Creuset® cookware, which is now being widely imitated, is that it's baked enamel-over cast iron finish means that it is already seasoned–and it's also easier to clean. It's my favorite pot in the house and when lidded it works like a Dutch oven. A few years ago my husband got me a starter set for Christmas at Sur la Table and I use this particular piece practically every day and for all sorts of things. [I even got one for a friend and she calls it her "magic blue pot"–and it was Edie who taught me about braising. In fact, I used up some of her Bee's Wing Farm garlic, which was a welcome gift.]

So here is the recipe for "Simple Pot Roast," from my edition of American Classics by the editors of Cook's Illustrated. It has since been updated and I've made many recipes from this cookbook, and many from a few others in my collection that they published. What you can count on from their cookbooks, like their magazines (they also publish Cook's Country, to which I subscribe), is that you know they have tested the recipes–and tweaked them–dozens of times. They also write about their methodology, and sometimes the background of a recipe and its history, in further detail which is ideal for anyone who might want more information on what went into the end results. Or you can just cut right to the well-defined recipes. I don't always like a wordy cookbook and theirs can be short on photographs, but it's like following the detailed steps of a scientific experiment while also easy to make–as long as you first do what they say and embellish on your own later.

Simple Pot Roast from American Classics
[This is the basic recipe–in true form, only broken down into more steps. It also goes on for several pages of commentary and variations, which I did not include. I highly recommend this cookbook and others from Cook's Illustrated. Here is more information about the book.]

The editors recommend chuck-eye roast. I'm not sure what our cut was but I bought it two years ago at the co-op outside of Hanover, New Hampshire and it was another "bottom of the freezer" find. I'm convinced that with double-wrapping, meat can be frozen forever and taste just as good when it's thawed.

• 1 boneless chuck-eye roast (or any pot roast cut), about 3.5 pounds
• salt and ground pepper
• 2 Tbsps. vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped medium (I used a large one)
• 1 small carrot, chopped medium (I used a 1-lb bag of baby carrots and halved them)
• 1 small rib celery, chopped medium (I used half a bag of celery)
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced (I added more garlic)
• 2 tsps. sugar
• 1 cup canned low-sodium chicken broth (I used my own from the freezer)
  
• 1 cup canned low-sodium beef broth
• 1 sprig fresh thyme (I rarely have this on hand!)
• 1-1/2 cups water
• 1/4 dry red wine (I omitted this part because of time issues)

1. Adjust oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 300 degrees. Thoroughly pat the roast dry with paper towels; sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

2. Heat the oil in a large heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (see Le Crueset®, above) over medium-high heat until shimmering but not smoking.

3. Brown the roast thoroughly on all sides, reducing the heat if the fat begins to smoke, 8-10 minutes.

4. Transfer the roast to a large plate; set aside. [The roast might look done in this photograph but it still has to be slow-cooked in the oven. We like Penfold's Shiraz with beef and lamb dishes. You can also add shallots with your onions, which I forgot to do.]


5. Reduce the heat to medium; add the onion, carrot and celery to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the garlic and sugar; cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

6. Add the chicken and beef broths and thyme, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen the browned bits. Return the roast and any accumulated juices to the pot; add enough water to come halfway up the sides of the roast. Place a large piece of aluminum foil over the pot and cover tightly with a lid (this step is very important!); bring the liquid to a simmer over medium heat, then transfer the pot to the oven.

7. Cook, turning the roast every 30 minutes (I don't bother with this step), until fully tender and a meat fork or sharp knife easily slips in and out of the meat, about 3.5 to 4 hours.

NOTE: At this point you can take out the vegetables and cook down the juice and transform it into your own meat gravy (much better than just the reduced juice, I think). If you don't want to add the wine, drink it while waiting or preparing the dish. I also serve the root vegetable mass on the side as there are many good cooked carrots which are too good to toss.

8. Transfer the roast to a carving board; tent with foil to keep warm. Allow the liquid in the pot to settle about 5 minutes, then use a wide spoon to skim the fat off the surface; discard the thyme. Boil over high heat until reduced to about 1.5 cups, about 8 minutes. Add the wine and reduce again to 1.5 cups, about 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

9. Cut the meat into 1/2-inch-thick slices, or pull apart into large pieces; transfer the meat to a warmed serving platter and pour about 1/2 cup of the sauce over the meat. Serve, passing the remaining sauce separately.

Holiday Fare, Part Deux: Easy Bûche!

I have a huge magazine problem. I keep telling my husband it's "market research" as I do, from time to time, sell an article to a national magazine. [Sheer laziness keeps me from doing that more intently and nor do I have a lot of patience with non-responsive editors, even those I have worked with before. Blogging, while it doesn't pay the bills, can be just as gratifying.] But being a foodie and loving lifestyle imagery in that "jump in the pavement painting" Mary Poppins-y way–even though I know from experience how staged these photos can be, at least those rooms look magnificent and inviting for that magazine moment–I would buy them any way. I also have a huge "can't-seem to throw-the-magazines-away" problem, but that's a blog post for another day. So is finding the answer to the question of "why do you even buy food magazines when most recipes are on line today?" I suppose for the same reasons that I will never buy an Amazon Kindle® (and I stand true to what I wrote in that blog post at Cupcake Chronicles two years ago). But it's a rhetorical question in our household and fortunately my husband doesn't even realize this fact or he would likely complain about my hundreds of cookbooks and the magazines.

So here's what's fun about piles of magazines, especially during a quieter holiday week at home like this or on winter evenings or when your husband and kids keep flipping back and forth between The Three Stooges and Looney Tunes marathons on New Year's Eve and you are feigning "quality time" with your family. Occasionally I will sit in my comfy chair and go through them, clipping recipes or ideas (my good artist and writer friend Edie uses them for her collage art). Many magazines actually survive "my cut" unscathed or missing only a few pages and I hate to just toss them. I used to give them to friends or the "swap shop" at the town dump back in New Hampshire and this might be one reason I've let them pile up here these past two years. [Yes, I have no friends! Well, or at least sensible friends here who don't read a lot of magazines...]

Seriously, if anyone reading this in Kentucky would like my magazine cast-offs, let's meet for coffee and they're yours! I will gladly meet you somewhere: Lexington, Berea, Frankfort, Midway (I'm always looking for new restaurants, too). I'll also be traveling back to New England by way of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Woodstock, New York and possibly northeastern Ohio in mid-February with a big empty Honda Pilot. If there are a lot of you, let's use this as a reason to meet up in the New Year: there are plenty for all. Old copies of Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Victoria, Country Living, Country Home, Paula Deen, Old-House Interiors and the occasional O Magazine or MS Living in the mix, and oh so many random lifestyle and shelter pick-ups...I do keep all copies of King Arthur's Baking Sheet, Cook's Country, and Mother Earth News (and any magazine with an article of mine in it, of course). In sum, I do my darnedest to keep the foodie and shelter magazine trade flourishing.

When Gourmet suddenly went under this fall, I returned to Bon Appétit and might, I said might, even subscribe again. I can understand why Condé Nast kept that magazine over Gourmet (although there is so much about Gourmet that I enjoyed: Ruth Reichl's editorials, the essays about food from writers, Jan and Michael Stern's column on "Road Food") as the recipes are more user-friendly and there are great theme issues.


I could have bathed in this easy espresso cream, it was that delicious.

All of that was my usually lengthy preamble to a recipe from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appétit. I wanted to make a Bûche de Nöel this year but time, as always, was my enemy and it just looks, well, so needlessly involved (even though I, one day, will make meringue mushrooms). Also, when you have a friend who is an extraordinary baker, and could easily be, and has been, a professional, and who made the most magnificent bûche a few years back for your husband's birthday, the same one who makes amazing pies (Rosemary, sorry, I have to give you credit here), it's hard to imagine even coming close.

So when I saw this easy variation on those fabulous old "Famous Chocolate Wafer" icebox cakes–did your mother make those in the 60s with whipped cream?–I said, "She's gotta have it..." It was the perfect Christmas Day dessert which we brought to the Hursts for supper after Temple got his "Friendship quilt" (and yes, that will be my next blog post in the New Year: that marvelous quilt!). I would happily make it again for just about any occasion. [And kudos to King Arthur Flour Company for shipping out their espresso powder the very next day, along with some other ingredients, without my paying an additional surcharge. I used to get to their store and bakery several times a year when I lived in New Hampshire and now return from annual treks to New England with large sacks of their flours.]


Before I served this, the boys and I scattered fake candy "rocks" around it...and I forgot to bring some holly! But you could certainly make yours look more festive than in this picture!

Super-Quick Mocha Yule Log from Bon Appétit (December 2009)

Chocolate wafers. Coffee. Whipped cream. Does it get any better than this? [NOTE: I used chocolate wafers sold in bulk at our local Mennonite bulk foods store (for ice cream sandwiches). They were almost as good as Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers® but certainly more readily available. And no, I did not make the meringue mushrooms, either...next time!]

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar plus additional for garnish
• 1/4 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder [This would also be good in any chocolate cake.]
• 2 cups chilled heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 9-ounce package chocolate wafer cookies
• 8 purchased vanilla meringue cookies [I couldn't find any...]

1. Sift 1/2 cup powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and espresso powder into small bowl. Using electric mixer, beat cream and vanilla in large bowl until soft peaks form. Add cocoa mixture and beat until stiff peaks form.
2. Spread 1 side of 1 chocolate wafer with 1 rounded teaspoonful mocha cream; top with another wafer. Continue layering wafers and mocha cream for stack of 5 cookies. Place stack on its side on long platter. Repeat making stacks with remaining wafers and some of mocha cream; form log on platter by attaching stacks with mocha cream. Using offset spatula or rubber spatula, spread remaining mocha cream over outside of log to coat. Cover; chill at least 2 hours. Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled.
3. Place platter with yule log on work surface. Using fork, gently pull tines of fork along length of frosting on log to create design resembling tree bark. Sift powdered sugar over log to resemble snow. Arrange meringue cookies or Meringue Mushrooms (click for recipe) along sides of log. Cut log on diagonal into thick slices. Serve immediately.

Et voila! Bonne Année et bonne santé!

Holiday Fare: Roast Beef 101

A hearty plank of roast beef served with Yorkshire pudding, oven roasted potatoes, and creamed spinach–all holiday traditions in our combined families.

I have to really crow about our roast beast this year. First of all, it was recently excavated from the bottom of our chest freezer on the back porch. That alone is something to crow about. Allow me to recap the scene here about a week ago:

SCENE: A small doublewide kitchen on a ridge in Kentucky, a few days before Christmas.

Tired Old Wife: "Remember, hon, when we got that huge roast at Kroger's last year on sale and we cut it in half?"

Tired Old Husband: "Um, I think so." (reading the paper, feet propped up, sort of not really listening)

Tired Old Wife: "Well, I'm almost positive it's in that freezer somewhere..."

Tired Old Husband: "I take it that means you would like me to look for you?"

Tired Old Wife: "Yes, but only when you have a minute..."

Tired Old Husband: "You mean, like 'right now,' don't you?"

Tired Old Wife: "Well, yes, that would be nice...thank you so much. You know, before I forget...I would go myself, but you know I'd fall in if I start reaching into the very bottom, being of gnome stature and all..."

Tired Old Husband tromps out to back porch. Fusses because freezer is covered with Tired Old Wife's cookie doughs in various covered plastic containers and a bunch of items that won't fit in the kitchen refrigerator, and a box of apples in various states of decay. Rummaging and fussing can be heard for several minutes.

Tired Old Husband: "Found IT!"

The old couple examines the 12 pounds of solid, boneless Delmonico roast. The old label was still on it and they'd paid about $110 for 24 pounds (about $4.58 a pound for excellent meat–at half price), which saved then about $120 with the use of their Kroger® card (the original roast was well over $200). It was double-wrapped in foil and had been placed in a zippered freezer bag (one of those really large ones). After a year in the bottom of their chest freezer, dread overcame the Tired Old Wife.

Tired Old Wife (somewhat vexed): "Do you think it has freezer burn?"

Tired Old Husband (somewhat annoyed but aware that his wife is generally prone to needless fretting): "We'll see–There's no sense getting yourself all worked up about it...yet."

Tired Old Wife sets up coffee maker and pats roast thawing on the counter for good luck before turning on nightlight and heading to bed.

Loud applause as kitchen set goes dark.

+ + +

We were supposed to have had it on Christmas Eve, late in the evening "Le Réveillon-style," after our deliveries of baskets of food and banana bread. But we were exhausted from that and my sensible husband suggested we have it Christmas Day at noon instead (our traditional Christmas dinner is usually served around 5pm but we were going to the Hursts for singing and the quilt-giving so I thought, this year, we'd have a French Réveillon, but served well before midnight).

When it thawed and I looked it over, there was not one bit of freezer burn to be seen or felt and the meat was still a lovely fresh pink. Maybe it had somehow "dry aged" itself in the freezer or maybe it was our "Christmas miracle" of the season. Either way, you'd never have known it had been frozen for twelve months. Vive le boeuf!



About ten years ago, after years of struggle and occasional blind luck, I finally asked a restaurant chef how they always managed to get pink, juicy roast beef straight through. "First I braise and raise (the temperature) and then it's slow and low," he said. All you need, apart from a really good roast, is a reliable roasting pan and an even more reliable meat thermometer. Here is my recipe for succulent, juicy, fool-proof roast beef (that is, if you follow the directions!).

Christmas Roast Beef

1. Get the best cut of beef you can, ideally on sale: Delmonico is great but there are others. [Don't hesitate to ask the guys behind the meat department at your local box store, either. They love to be asked and will tell you all you want to know about meat and what the best cut is for the price you want to pay. Make sure it has some fat on it, but not too much. That marbling is what gives it the flavor.]
   
2. Put the fresh, or thawed, meat in the pan, fat side up, to come to room temperature, several hours before roasting.
3. Slather the meat all over with coarsely ground pepper, sea salt and fresh minced garlic and dried rosemary, if desired.
4. Heat oven to 450 degrees and place meat thermometer in the middle of the roast, piercing it towards the center. Put just a bit of water in the bottom of the pan, perhaps 1/2 inch.
   
5. Place roast in center of oven and cook roast at 450 degrees for 20 minutes (make sure you set your timer).
6. After 20 minutes at 450 degrees, turn oven down to 250 degrees (without opening oven).
7. Cook until meat thermometer registers "rare" for beef or 60 degrees Celsius (or 140 degrees Fahrenheit), about 2 hours.
8. Take beef out of oven, remove from pan to platter and put tin foil all over it. It will continue to cook slowly to "medium rare" while you make the gravy and/or Yorkshire pudding. [Transfer juice to another pan to make gravy if you plan on using roasting pan for Yorkshire pudding and return pan, with suet or lard in it (several tablespoons) to oven and turn up to 475 degrees, for 8 minutes**]
9. If there are those who want more "well done" pieces of beef, give them the ends or stick a piece or two back in the oven for a few minutes.
   

**For Yorkshire Pudding recipe: follow the recipe for "Uncle John's Popovers" but triple the ingredients, as found in this blog entry, but put batter in the roasting pan (instead of individual cups), after you've melted a bit of suet or lard in it first. PHOTO–The Yorkshire Pudding should be suitably puffy and egg-y, as it crawls up the sides of your roasting pan. Slightly crispy on the bottom, and somewhat glistening on the top is also good. But never, and I mean NEVER use bacon fat as I did this year: always always use suet or lard in the pan before pouring in the batter–butter if nothing else.

NOTE: This dinner would also be a great option for New Year's Day or Eve. We traditionally do a big brunch on New Year's Day after just sort of lolling around at home on New Year's Eve with various hot and cold appetizers.

Cocoa and Brownies

Today was the kind of day that I love: raw, cold and rainy. I've been doing a lot of puttering around and organizing this past week–much needed after two years. Call it delayed fall cleaning or pre-Christmas decorating frenzy (I've promised my boys Friday) but either way, I'll take it (as will my husband). When I clean and organize I do it right: I start with the bookshelves and work inward in the space. Just having my books dusted off, shelves cleaned with Murphy's Oil Soap® (love the smell!), and organized again, speaks volumes for me (hee hee!). PHOTO: Cocoa served in a favorite cup and saucer combo in the Country Fare pattern, originally made by the Zanesville Pottery Company in Ohio before it was bought, and somewhat altered, by Louisville Stoneware. The aqua and chocolate brown combination of color remains one of my favorite colorways. I have collected the pattern for about 20 years after remembering a few pieces in this pattern, and cocoa in them, at my grandparents' New Hampshire farm.

Well, I don't enjoy this kind of weather for days on end–maybe sometimes–as I do welcome the sun. As I have "November in my soul" I rather embrace our four months of November-like winter weather here in Kentucky, especially as we no longer experience the prolonged heavy winters of the Northeast. It suits my natural inclination to burrow in and nest, to not have the excuse of sunshine and gardens to make me feel guilty about wanting to be indoors.

All of our driving rain today–as Aunt Cynthia said, "It's raining bullets out there!"–is heading to the New England in the form of a big snowstorm. [All evening it's been raining so hard that my satellite Internet has been fading in and out–I'm hoping I can post this and upload photographs before bedtime**] I'm thinking of our daughter who is thrilled that they are finally skiing where she works in Vermont and of my mother and my friends all cozy in their New Hampshire houses with their wood stoves going and the snow falling down. Snow days were always a gift back home: a day of quiet when the world outside seemed to surround with more than a soft white blanket, but a needed pause and buffer. Here on our ridge farm we now have fences, even one enclosing a few acres around the doublewide, and it just feels so cozy and safe, even if our gate has a "welcome" sign on it. Add the rain and the wind and it's bliss on a December day.

I once wrote about this phenom in one of my first essays for the former Victoria Magazine and sometime I will reprint it here or include a PDF link to the original scanned article (it is not on-line as yet but I do intend to get links to all of my published articles over the years on my website). That essay spoke of how I organized all of the books at the farmhouse where I grew up, way back in the spring of 1988, and how that process both grounded and reconnected me with the people and places in my life. Then I was nesting before the birth of my oldest child; now I am settling in, finally, to my new life in Kentucky. That's really what it's all about: finding a place for everything and everything in its place–and finding a place for ourselves in the world. One closet, cupboard or room at a time–one book, one person, one experience, one moment at a time.

With the rain and gloom I decided we all needed a massive chocolate infusion! One of my favorite series as a child, and still today, are the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald (who also wrote the classic farm memoir, The Egg and I, about her chicken farm in Washington state). These kinds of, what I call, book memories are what I was reminded of today while I was making homemade cocoa and brownies for my boys when they came home from school:

Mrs. Foxglove was baking brownies. Thick chewey chocolatey nutty brownies. The kind her four children loved. She slid the last pan into the oven, lifted Solomon the black cat down off the kitchen stool where he was drooling up at Alma Gluck the canary, and sat down herself.

It was a very dreary February day. The sky was gray, the snow in the yard was gray and slushy and a cold raw wind was swooshing around the house...The brownies were baking beautifully. She switched the bottom pans to the top shelf and the top pans to the bottom shelf, then closed the door and put the milk on to heat for the children's cocoa.

From "The Crybaby Cure," Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald (1957)

Most of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories (in four collections–illustrated by Hilary Knight, of Heloise fame, and later by Maurice Sendak, with a fifth one added in recent years, reassembled posthumously) start with a cozy domestic scene in a family, with a stay-at-home mother preparing some sort of lovely snack or meal (the books were written in the late 1940s and 1950s post-War era that predates even my own nostalgic childhood). That image of domestic bliss is soon shattered by some kind of childhood malady which eventually requires the mother to break down and call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, the neighborhood "good witch" and grandmother-to-all who swoops in and solves all sorts of things with magical cures and her innate understanding of the childhood condition. What else would you expect from a woman who lives in an upside-down house filled with treasures, bakes constantly and whose husband was a pirate and buried his treasure somewhere in the back yard? [It goes without saying that she wears an apron and smells of vanilla and baked sugar cookies.]

So you can see that loving children the way she does, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle just naturally understands them even when they are being very difficult, which is of course why all the mothers in our town call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle whenever they are having trouble with their children. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle always knows what to do and then of course she has a big cupboard of magic powders and pills and appliances to help cure children's bad habits.

All of this is a usual long-winded preamble to a recipe! Here is my standard, without fail brownie recipe (it only fails if you lengthen the cooking time, unless you like dry brownies) that, if baked properly, replicates "baked fudge." But there is a fine line between underdone and overdone here so beware! Also, these only take a few minutes longer to prepare than a boxed mix but are likely more expensive in ingredients–worth every indulgence in extra cost (unless you buy your Bakers® chocolate and butter on sale, like I do).

If you can't decide between whipped cream or mini-marshmallows, by all means, please use both!

I always make the standard hot cocoa recipe on the side of the Hershey's® Cocoa box (also better than boxed cocoa mixes–and you can liven it up at Christmas with peppermint extract or Schnappe's®). I've probably posted these brownies here In the Pantry before (but I'm too tired to check). If so, here they are again–they are that good:

Brownies "Cockaigne" (from the mid-1970s edition of The Joy of Cooking)

• 4 squares unsweetened chocolate (1 oz each)
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup chopped nuts, optional (walnuts or pecans are best)

1. Melt chocolate and butter together on low heat; cool until warmish but not hot.
2. In the meantime, beat eggs, salt and sugar until light and frothy, preferably with an electric mixer.
3. Stir in cooled melted chocolate mixture, but not all the way.
4. Before chocolate is thoroughly mixed, add flour and nuts. Stir just until moistened.
5. Pour into a 13x9" pan (or large jelly roll pan–although this will require a bit less cooking time and create a thinner brownie) and bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

You can also make substitutions like peppermint or almond extract, or Grand Marnier, for the vanilla. Chopped up candy canes or Andes® or Heath Bar® pieces (all variations I made for a recent bake sale) also work well in place of nuts. You might try Cinnamon Red Hots at Valentine's Day or even a bit of cinnamon in the mix. Otherwise, there is no use messing with perfection!

**NOTE: I am posting this on Wednesday morning, December 9, after our storm ended and the satellite would let me do so–even this morning it is a struggle with the high winds. I miss DSL! There, I've said it. I also have never figured out what "Cockaigne" means, either.

Turkey Noodle Casserole

Mmm, mmm, good! Turkey Noodle Casserole made without the addition of any Campbell's Soup® products, thank you very much!

At this point in the game, we're all fairly tired of T-U-R-K-E-Y! We kicked off turkey season with a hearty turkey dinner while our daughter was here visiting in October (as she couldn't join us for Thanksgiving because of the ski resort season back in Vermont), then we went to a benefit turkey dinner in Crab Orchard in mid-November, another turkey dinner at the children's school, and another at a pastor friend's Baptist church (try as he might, we probably won't join but we might pop in now and then–you see, we would like to find a church but we're sort of grazing right now). That is an average of one turkey dinner, with all the fixings, a week for the entire month before Thanksgiving!

So imagine our boys' delight when I announced in Liberty this evening after our chiropractor appointments (Dr. Michael Turner at Back and Body loves to see us coming and he is a dear person with great talents, a friendly staff and reasonable rates) that I had a turkey noodle casserole at home in the oven on timed bake! Oh, my, you could hear the hollerin' all the way home! There was a brief attempt at lobbying for Mexican food but I said if I get dragged in there one more time, I'LL go on strike! (Nothing against it, we have just dined there a little too often and options around here can be limited.) So we compromised: I'm going to Danville tomorrow with friends and won't be home until late, and Dad can take the boys out to the Mexican restaurant. Fine. Throw in the promise of a few after-homework chess games, and it's a deal.

The one thing I do get upset about is when I bake a casserole, no matter how creamy, it dries out. Perhaps I should have baked it for 30 minutes instead of the 45 on timed bake. I have always loved tuna noodle casserole, made with white tuna, so you can readily substitute chicken or turkey for that (especially if your husband grouses about tuna noodle casserole–some childhood memory). You can even substitute crab meat, langostinos (mini-lobsters in many freezer sections) or shrimp for the white meat. Last night I made "creamed turkey" with a white sauce and with the leftovers assembled this easy casserole for supper tonight. It's even kind of turkey tetrazini-ish (I suppose if you substituted spaghetti that it would be). But the best part is that, finally, a week later, the turkey is ALL gobble, gobble GONE!

Turkey Noodle Casserole a la Catherine

• leftover turkey bits (about 4-6 cups, or more)
• 1 bag of frozen broccoli bits
• 8 tablespoons butter (1 stick)
  
• 1 shallot or small onion
• 2 garlic cloves minced (or more to taste)
  
• 1 package sliced mushrooms (this was the one thing I did not have on hand!)
  
• 3/4 cup flour
• 2-4 cups whole milk and/or half-and-half
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 cups breadcrumbs (I make my own by lightly toasting crumbled bread)
• salt and pepper (I also use paprika and dried chervil or parsley)
• 4 tablespoons fresh parsley if you have it
• 1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
  
• 16-ounces very wide egg noodles (or whatever your preference: I use Mrs. Miller's®)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Boil water and cook noodles according to package instructions. Lightly steam broccoli until just done (I do mine in the same multi-steamer pot with the pasta).
3. While water is heating, make ROUX/White Sauce by melting 6 tablespoons butter. To this add chopped small onion or shallot, minced garlic, and mushrooms. Sauté for a few minutes. Add flour until blended and stir quickly. Slowly add milk/half-and-half and whisk gently until thickened (you must watch this part carefully). Add more liquid if too thick: you want a sauce that is like a good gravy in consistency. Add salt and pepper and other seasonings to taste (you can also add a few tablespoons of chicken stock base and there are many out there that don't have MSG in them). Take off heat once thickened.
   
4. Stir in chopped turkey, chopped fresh parsley and sour cream and 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese.
5. Drain noodles and immediately toss back in with white sauce mixture. Add broccoli and stir gently.
6. Pour into greased, large 2 quart baking dish or a 13x9 dish.
   
7. Melt remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and toss with 2 cups of breadcrumbs to coat and any seasoning you'd like (if you use homemade breadcrumbs). Toss in the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese after you've combined the bread and butter. Sprinkle equally on top of casserole.
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until slightly brown and bubbly.

To counteract all of that casserole-y goodness, serve with a tossed salad and a glass of good white wine!

PS The Casey County News ran my story on the sale of Hazel's Store today. You can read it on-line here.

Sweet 'Taters!

I've never been exactly fond of sweet potatoes (or sweet 'taters as many say here). I gagged down the "candied yams" in childhood to the point of complete avoidance (my husband says they aren't the same thing, and I think he's right: it's the difference between canned peas and fresh).

In October I took a shot of one of our boys holding a 6.5 pound sweet potato that a Mennonite friend had grown. It was mammoth and complete with bulging veins, just like a muscle. Well, of course I had to cook it up for Thanksgiving. Problem was that we had so much food I didn't really have room or time for it. So I baked the potato, cooled it and scooped out the flesh and put it aside for another day (which was tonight, for supper, along side, are you ready? MORE TURKEY LEFTOVERS!).

As I'm a big recipe clipper–and magazine reader (but, as I tell my husband, they're for "research" for possible publication outlets–and that is true and it does occasionally pay off, or at least helps pay for my magazine and book budget)–I came across a recipe in the November issue of Martha Stewart Living for Sweet Potato and Sage-Butter Casserole that I thought I might try. More savory than sweet, with no added sugar enhancement, it was a big hit, even with me and was redolent of a good whipped butternut squash recipe. I had the cooked sweet potato, some more leftover mashed potatoes, and even some homemade bread crumbs on hand, with butter and seasoning, in the freezer. As I had double the amount of potatoes called for, I made plenty and now have another casserole for the freezer. My version is slightly different (I added shallots and garlic and avoided a few steps by precooking the potatoes) and appears below (in its original quantity form as written by MSL, with my notations in italic):

Sweet Potato and Sage-Butter Casserole

• 2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces (I baked and mashed them)
• 1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces (I used leftover mashed potatoes which likely imparted more creaminess)
• 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus 1 ounce (2 tablespoons), melted
• 2 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage (you can find most fresh herbs now in the produce dept. of most larger grocery stores)
  
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk, warmed (I used part half half-and-half and part whole milk)
  
• coarse salt (I use Kosher) and freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup fresh breadcrumbs (from 3 slices white bread, crusts removed)

1. Place sweet potatoes and potatoes in large saucepan; cover with water, and season with salt. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 9 minutes. Drain; pass through a ricer into a bowl [NOTE: I HATE ricers! So I used a good old-fashioned potato masher and then finished it off later with an electric mixer. The masher makes it a bit more textured and rustic.]
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Melt 1 stick butter in small saucepan (or skillet, as I prefer, especially as I added 1 large minced SHALLOT and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh GARLIC to the butter/sage mixture while it was melting) over medium heat, swirling occasionally, until golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from heat; add 2 tablespoons sage. Stir butter mixture and milk into potatoes. Season with salt and pepper (at this point I whipped the mixture further with an electric mixer as I had not riced it first). Transfer into a 2-quart casserole dish. (Mixture can be refrigerated for up to 2 days.)
3. Combine bread crumbs with 2 tablespoons melted butter and remaining 1/2 tablespoon sage. Season with salt and pepper. Toss to combine.
4. Top potato mixture with bread crumbs. Bake, uncovered, until bubbling around edges and breadcrumbs are golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes. (If browning too quickly, tent with foil.) Let stand, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
   

[I did not tent the casserole but the recipe advises that if you use cold, precooked potatoes you might have to add about 10-15 minutes to the cooking time.]

Enjoy! I hope to blog a bit about Thanksgiving. It was a blessed occasion. If not this year, there is always next year. I hope your day was special.

Chicken Corn Noodle Soup!

Do you remember the hardback book in the teeny tiny little Nutshell Library (published the year I was born in 1962) called Chicken Soup With Rice? I was never a big Where the Wild Things Are fan, although I liked the movie (the illustrations were too freaky and the plot too scary a concept for me as a young child–that book came out the following year in 1963) but I always treasured this little lesser known collection of four books illustrated by Sendak.

The small illustrated cardboard box in itself was a tiny treasure to behold (and hold in little hands) and, as with all of Sendak's illustrations, I would spend much time looking at them before I could even read (Sendak also illustrated a few of the books in the Mrs. PiggleWiggle series by Betty MacDonald). I'm sure I got it in a Christmas stocking from one of my first Christmases–I even have a vague memory of opening it–and I am fairly certain I'd kept the books all these years and I expect, one day, to find them again in their little "Nutshell" box. [But hark, a voice from yonder Amazon says, "Still in print!" So this year my boys and their cousins will get a set, too, under their Christmas trees.]


The Nutshell Library also has the story of Pierre, who didn't care–and yet he always seemed a perfectly delightful boy to this precocious young girl.

The month of February in Chicken Soup With Rice.

Its full title is actually Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months (I had forgotten the subtitle) and it takes a journey through the year of a boy having chicken soup in every month and season. Through the wonders of the Internet I even just discovered that there was a musical based on the Nutshell Library called Really Rosie, that came out in 1975, and an animated program, with music by Carole King. Sorry to have missed that one, but then again, I was 13 by that time and probably considered myself "too mature" for children's picture books.

So anyway, all of this memory lane of children's books is just preamble to what we had for supper. I've been wanting to make a popular Mennonite (and Amish) recipe for "Chicken Corn Noodle Soup" for the longest time, especially now that we have all of that corn and our own chickens in the freezer. My friends Anna and Irene have often raved about it to me and I've since found variations of the recipe in several community cookbooks. You could add just about anything you want to the recipe but the beauty of it is in its simplicity–and the combination of corn, chicken and hearty egg noodles is what you will remember. I also like that you cook the chicken in the soup pot while making the broth, rather than boil the bones from a roast later on.

This recipe for "Chicken Corn Soup" was adapted from a recipe found in a nifty little devotional book I picked up a few weeks ago at our local used bookshop, the Book & CD Hut, in Somerset. I read all kinds of books but I'm a sucker for little devotionals–this book is called The Simple Life–Devotional Thoughts from Amish Country by Wanda E. Brunstetter, Barbour Publishing, Ohio: 2006 and still available here. What's especially nice about it are the recipes from her friends that follow each reading.

Chicken Corn Soup
[Mattie Stoltzfus]

• 1 large chicken (make sure to remove guts, etc.)
• 2 1/2 quarts water
• 4 cups corn
• 1 package egg noodles (I used a 1# bag of "Amish Wedding" Kluski noodles)
• salt and pepper to taste

[NOTE: I also added a few tablespoons of Watkins Chicken Soup & Gravy Base to the stock (no MSG!), as well as a few tablespoons of fresh chopped garlic, 1 medium chopped onion and 1 cup of thinly sliced carrots to the stock pot–all sautéed with a good healthy portion of fresh chopped parsley. I also add sweet paprika and a bit of marjoram to taste–as I never measure seasonings.]

1. In a large kettle, boil the chicken in the water. [NOTE: I added some sea salt and several dried bay leaves to the water, as well as some fresh-ground pepper.]

2. When cooked thoroughly, remove the chicken, reserving the broth. Cool and remove the meat from the bone and cut it into small pieces. [NOTE: At this point I returned the bones back to the broth and boiled again for about 20 minutes before straining–I also added a bit more water to this process. This re-stocking, so to speak, will make a heartier broth. Meanwhile, in a larger stock pot, I sautéed the onion, garlic, carrot and parsley in a bit of olive oil.]

3. Strain the broth, put into larger stock pot [with above additions, if desired] then add corn, noodles, chicken, and seasonings to taste.

4. Cook (about 15 minutes) until noodles are soft. The amount of noodles added can be adjusted according to the thickness desired. The amount of corn and water can also be adjusted.


The nice thing about using a free-range chicken, especially your own, is that the flavor is out of this world and there is minimal fat in the broth.

We had hearty portions of the soup for supper tonight and there is still plenty left over to freeze and for lunch tomorrow. I have another "Chicken Corn Soup" recipe "for a crowd" but I'll save it for another day: it makes four times this amount of soup that this recipe makes and plenty to serve, can or freeze. And perfect for the flu and cold season ahead. Next time, we all agreed: more GARLIC! "Happy once, happy twice, happy chicken soup with rice."