Category: Food

As long as you’re making grits, make too much. Bring the leftovers back the next day as fried grits.

Grits and polenta are notoriously hard to brown. But if you shape the grits into patties before they cool, wrap the patties in a paper towel to help remove excess moisture, and put them in the refrigerator until the next day, they’ll brown reasonably well.

As long as you’re firing up the grill to roast a winter tomato, why not grill everything but the egg? The grits above were grilled, as was the fake Morningstar sausage.

It’s actually kind of nice being out on the deck in January weather, cooking over a hot grill. It’s particularly nice to have a breakfast with a campfire flavor.

The tomatoes above were grilled on a gas grill. The sausage is Morning Star fake sausage.

Those winter tomatoes almost look real in the grocery store, don’t they? Then you get them home, and they’re tasteless and mealy. They’re barely fit for salads. I know of only one way to get some taste into them — grill them.

Yesterday I broiled the tomatoes in the oven, with some parmesan. This morning I grilled them, with nothing but salt and pepper. The grilled tomatoes, by far, were tastier. Luckily, the grill is on the deck just outside the kitchen door, so getting to the grill is convenient for small jobs like grilling tomatoes for breakfast.

It’s sad to see the eggs go pale in winter. It’s the grass and green things the chickens eat that make the yolks so deeply colored. It’s not that there isn’t some grass in the orchard in the winter. Rather, it’s that the turf is very vulnerable to damage in the winter if the chickens scratch too much. So in the winter the chickens stay mostly in the bare garden, where they can do no harm. Getting orchard time is a treat for the chickens during fine winter weather.

About those grits. I feel like a salesman because I’m always promoting the Cuisinart CSO-300 steam oven. But it’s the best way of cooking grits I’ve ever seen, by far. Just put the grits in an uncovered ovenproof bowl, 3 parts water to 1 part grits. Cook them on “super steam” at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. Then let the grits sit, covered, for about 10 minutes before serving. The grits come out perfectly cooked without any need for stirring and dealing with grit splatter.

These tomatoes were broiled in the oven, with parmesan

One food that is not pale in January: the New Year collards. December was warm and wet, perfect for collards. I got these collards at a local grocery store. They were grown in South Carolina.

There is no way to make pancakes into a truly healthy breakfast. But, sooner or later, we’re all going to give in to the temptation of eating them. I’m always looking for ways to make eating comfort foods more of a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

To be sure, it has been decades since I’ve eaten a pancake made of white flour. Yuck. My flour of choice at present is sprouted whole wheat flour. But it’s still just flour. How might we get the carb load down and the fiber and nutrition load up?

I’ve often used cooked apples as a topping for pancakes, but how might we do that with raw apples? This morning I grated two Granny Smith apples (the KitchenAid shredder made quick and easy work of it). I tossed the apples in maple syrup with some cinnamon.

That meant one pancake for breakfast instead of two, plus two fewer apples waiting in the refrigerator for me to figure out what to do with them. The apples were yummy prepared that way. There are worse crimes.

A common supper at the abbey is pasta and vegetables. The default pasta sauce probably (I’m ashamed to say) is parmesan and cream. But variety is nice, and parmesan and cream make a pretty heavy sauce.

I’m still working on refining this recipe, but here’s a working version with some ideas for improvement.

Toasted sesame sauce

2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon pepper sauce (such as harissa sauce)
4 cloves of garlic

1 to 2 tablespoons peanut butter

Combine the sugar and vinegar in a small skillet. Simmer it until it starts to thicken. Pour it into a small bowl and set it aside.

Sautée the garlic lightly in the sesame oil. Add the soy sauce and harissa sauce and let it simmer for a few minutes.

Add the peanut butter to the vinegar mixture. Stir it until it thickens.

Add the peanut butter and vinegar mixture to the contents of the skillet. Stir and simmer. It doesn’t have to mix perfectly. A sauce that’s slightly broken is just fine.

Peanut butter makes a great thickener for sauces — soups, too, for that matter. Vary the amount of peanut butter to get the thickness that you want. If 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil is a little strong on the sesame for you, then substitute olive oil for some of the sesame oil. Any vinegar will do. Obviously rice vinegar gives it a bit more of an Asian flair. Harissa sauce is available at some grocery stores, including Whole Foods. In a pinch, use ketchup and a dash of hot sauce! Don’t hesitate to use more than a mere teaspoon if it suits your taste.

This recipe makes a modest amount of sauce. Double it or triple it as needed. Top it with nuts, if you like. Crushed roasted peanuts work great.

By the way, I use whole wheat linguini.

Once you’re on the slippery slope of good homemade pizza, you’re bound to fall into the decadent land of stromboli. I saw a stromboli at Whole Foods (where they bake very good pizza, by the way) and I knew that I was doomed to try it at home.

This stromboli is filled with cauliflower, seared brussels sprouts, fake sausage, mozzarella, parmesan, and garlic. I partly cooked the cauliflower by steaming it before putting it into the stromboli. The crust is like a pizza crust. This crust is half unbleached flour and half whole wheat sprouted flour.

This was my first effort at stromboli. It came out a bit ugly, but it was good. It seems there are multiple methods for shaping stromboli. I’d recommend some Googling and watching some YouTube videos to find a stromboli method that works for you.

I used the slash-and-braid method of shaping the stromboli.

Here’s a traditional abbey-recipe pie that you can make all winter. A friend gave me some home-grown sweet potatoes, and I resolved to make a pie out of them. I had not made a sweet potato pie in ages, because usually I go for pumpkin pie. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, proper cooking pumpkins were hard to find this year. But sweet potatoes are easy. Stokes County, North Carolina, is a great producer of sweet potatoes, and the friend who gave me the potatoes knows the good ones — he used to be an agricultural extension agent and helped commercialize our sweet potatoes.

As usual, I study a lot of recipes to get concepts, then I go off in my own direction. I wanted this pie to have a whiff of rum and citrus. Here’s the recipe:

Sweet potato pie

1 1/2 pounds cooked sweet potatoes
1 cup sugar (3/4 may do -- use your judgment)
1/2 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice
2 eggs

1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon rum

Separate the egg yolks and whites. Beat the whites until they are stiff. Add the remaining ingredients and beat like the dickens. Pour the mixture into an unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes or until properly done. The pie will rise like a soufflé while baking, then sink as it cools.

It has been years since I’ve had distilled spirits in the house. I actually went to the Walnut Cove ABC store today and bought rum especially for this pie. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a little rum around for the holidays.

I would not recommend boiling the sweet potatoes. You’ll boil all the flavor out of them and make them soggy. Baking them, then removing the skins after they’ve cooled, is the way to go.

My pie and quiche crusts are always homemade. It’s just 2 cups of unbleached flour, half a cup of olive oil, and enough cold water (just a few tablespoons) to moisten the dough. You know the procedure for pie crusts, right?

This pie is delicious. I’m going to have a second piece now.

It’s casserole season. I wanted to experiment with the casserole’s layered French cousin, the terrine. What I ended up with was a bit too rustic and Irish looking to properly be called a terrine, but it sure was good.

I used a layer of peas, a layer of carrots, a layer of kale, and a layer of breadcrumb dressing similar to holiday dressing. I used grated cheese to hold the carrots together, and some beaten eggs to hold the pea, kale, and breadcrumb mixtures together. I used a lot of celery and onions in the dressing, and a bit of sage.

If you use nice ingredients for your layers, and if you season everything nicely, you can’t go wrong. Casseroles take time, but they make fine leftovers, so all things considered casseroles probably cut down on overall cooking time.

Bread never goes uneaten. Either it’s made into toasted bread crumbs or French toast, or the chickens get it.

Is it just the time of year? For some reason, I had been thinking a lot about hearty dessert breads — things with carrots and pumpkins in it. I saw some carrot cake sitting on the counter in a country restaurant, and it almost overcame my will power. But I resolved then and there to make a healthier version at home.

As usual, I looked at a lot of recipes for ideas and inspiration, then came up with my own recipe. I call these treats cupcakes because “cupcakes” is a nicer word than “muffin,” but in truth they’re probably muffins, because they’re a bit heavy to be called cake. However, add a little cream cheese icing (I did, with a whiff of nutmeg in it) and the difference between a muffin and a cupcake fades.

I also confess that I splurged again on equipping the abbey kitchen. I have never owned a stand mixer, though I have always admired the design of the Kitchenaid mixers. They’re beautiful machines. In the past, I’ve felt that I couldn’t justify the cost of a Kitchenaid mixer (or find the counter space for it). But I finally deceived myself into believing that the purchase was justified. For one, I make pretty much all my own bread. That’s a lot of kneading, and a heavy-duty mixer does a fine job of it. For two, I wanted to be able to make good homemade mayonnaises with home-laid eggs and good olive oil. And a little whipped cream every now and then never killed anybody.

Then I learned that Kitchenaid makes a shredder/slicer attachment, so that sealed the deal. Previously, I have sworn by the Wear-Ever hand-cranked shredder (no longer made, but often available on eBay, where I got mine several years ago). Since the Kitchenaid follows a similar (though motor powered) design, I had high hopes for the Kitchenaid shredder.

The difference between the two shredders is a wash, really. The Kitchenaid shredder cones are slightly larger, and the Kitchenaid is probably safer because of its feed system, but the Kitchenaid blades aren’t as sharp as the Wear-Ever blades, and when making slaw with the Kitchenaid the cabbage is a little bruised and crushed (not necessarily a bad thing). Then again, it may take me some time to figure out the best way to cut cabbage in chunks and feed it to the shredder. Carrots, however, shred beautifully. The Kitchenaid shredder attachment (sold separately) comes with four slicer/shredder cones. I’ve tried only two of them so far.

Here’s my recipe for cupcakes with shredded carrots, apples, and coconut.

Heavy but reasonably healthy cupcakes

1 1/2 cups grated carrot
1 apple, peeled and grated
1/2 cup dry, unsweetened, store-bought shredded coconut

1 cup stone ground whole wheat OR sprouted whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 eggs
1/2 cup oil (I used olive oil)
2 tablespoons milk (if needed)

Sift the flour and combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Set it aside.

Whip the egg whites until they’re stiff but not dry. Add the other ingredients including the egg yolks except for the milk and dry ingredients and mix well.

Add the dry ingredients to the mixture in portions, mixing as you add. The batter should be pretty thick, but if it’s too thick, add the milk.

Put the batter into a cupcake pan (I used paper liners). Makes about 10 cupcakes.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until the cupcakes pass the toothpick test (about 205 degrees F internal temperature).

I feel guilty and acquisitive and materialistic for spending money again on the abbey kitchen, but I do like fine machines. And I would like for the abbey kitchen — a serious and well used kitchen — to be able to do everything that a commercial kitchen can do, though in a smaller way.

My old way of making slaw, and still a fine machine

A different — and not necessarily better — way of making slaw

Cabbage shredded with the Kitchenaid shredder

The pumpkin above is a proper “pink pumpkin” for cooking.

I have never used canned pumpkin and never will. It has never made sense to me to open a can for something that’s so easy and fun to work with. However, it’s getting more and more difficult to find cooking pumpkins. Increasingly in the fall, the pumpkin market is flooded with the bright-orange, ugly shaped, so-called Halloween pumpkins.

A friend who works for the county’s agricultural service had posted a photo on Facebook of a bunch of Halloween pumpkins. That seemed like a good opportunity to ask a knowledgeable person why old-fashioned cooking pumpkins have gotten so much harder to find. He posted this, which perhaps was copy/pasted from elsewhere. I apologize for not knowing the original source:

“The bright orange non-edible pumpkin is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the 1960’s Massachusetts farmer John Howden wanted to breed a pumpkin that was easy to carve (Jack-O-Lantern). The criterion — thick stem (lasts longer), shallow ribs, and thin flesh relative to its size (easier carving) — resulted in the Howden variety pumpkin. The Howden totally dominates the Jack-O-Lantern market today. The public desire for other decorative pumpkins led to the proliferation of bright orange pumpkins that dominate roadside markets, grocery, and big box stores.”

So there you have it. I needed a cookable pumpkin for a pie this week, and I finally found one at one of our local treasures, Priddy’s General Store.

If I had a field (and I don’t), I’d love to grow pumpkins. They need more space, though, than I can provide.

And here’s a bit of pumpkin trivia. While writing Oratorio in Ursa Major, I wanted to light an outdoor festival as it might have been lit in 48 B.C. Knowing that jack-o-lanterns come to us from Europe and that pumpkins didn’t, I wondered how all that worked. The research was clear enough — the early Europeans used turnips for lanterns the same way we now use pumpkins. Once pumpkins became available, pumpkins ruled.

Above, rolling out the crust after the pumpkin flesh had been cooked in the steam oven. Pumpkins produce a lot of juice when they’re cooked, and the pumpkin flesh needs to be well drained before making a pie. I always save the pumpkin juice for soup stock.

A field of the wrong kind of pumpkins, near Bell Spur, Virginia