Last Supper of Summer

Although I squawk about the coming cold, I really do love the change of seasons and Autumn is one of my favorites. I am sorry to say goodbye to Summer, with all the lovely produce and the warm weather, but I'm excited about this new season, too. I am all excited about creating my October dinner menus & have already picked my First Rainy Day of Fall soup for the year. Tonight, in honor of the Autumnal Equinox, I am making pumpkin waffles for our first fall dinner. Last night, for the final supper of summer, I thought a salad was appropriate, so we had a chicken piccata salad with roasted kale and fresh blackberries. I picked up a mini pie from Achatz, a Michigan 4 Berry pie. I had tried their cherry pie before and been unimpressed, but a friend was singing their praises the other day, so I decided to try again. I remain unimpressed. Grand Traverse Pie Company's pie, on the other hand, is dangerous for me to have in the house!

The original salad recipe is Rachael Ray's, but I've tinkered with it a little bit. You could probably do a very successful vegetarian version with fried or baked tofu or vegetarian "chicken" & veggie broth instead of chicken broth. You can also lessen the amount of olive oil in the salad and grill or broil the chicken instead of breading without destroying the meal. Low sodium broth is a good idea, too. I almost always use that instead of the regular sort.

Chicken Piccata Salad

1 1/2 lb. small red potatoes, quartered

12 oz. green beans, halved

1/4 c. + 2 tbsp. olive oil

3-4 tbsp. capers

Chopped parsley

Juice & zest of 1/2 lemon

Salt & pepper

1 egg, beaten

1/2 c. flour

2 chicken breast cutlets (the fancy, thin sort you usually see with chicken piccata)

1/4 c. chicken broth

Splash of dry white wine

Cook the potatoes until they are almost tender, but still firm. Set aside in a colander with a slotted spoon and add the green beans to the same water. Cook a couple minutes, then drain. Cool veggies slightly. Whisk together 1/4 c. olive oil, 1-2 tbsp. capers, 3-4 tablespoons chopped parsley, lemon zest, and half the lemon juice. Add the vegetables, along with salt & pepper to taste. Toss gently. Season the flour with a little salt & pepper. Heat 2 tbsp. olive oil. Dredge the chicken in the flour, then dip in egg. Dredge once more in flour, then fry until it is golden brown and cooked through. Remove from skillet and cut into strips. Put broth and wine in skillet and deglaze the pan. Add 2 tbsp. capers, 2 tbsp. parsley, rest of lemon juice. Put salad in 2 shallow bowls or on 2 plates. Top with chicken and drizzle with sauce. Serves 2, with lots of potato-green bean salad left for the next day's lunch. Or 4, if you add a couple more chicken cutlets. 

My default kale recipe is raw Tuscan Kale Salad, but when the weather gets cooler, sometimes it's nice to have warm kale, instead. Plus, this stuff is completely addictive. Completely. Again, you can cut the olive oil by half. Just make sure to toss the kale well so that it all gets a hint of oil. 

Roasted Kale

1 big bunch curly kale

2 tbsp. olive oil

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Tear kale leaves into bite-size pieces (if you hate throwing away the stems, they can be added to a pot of veggie trimmings you are simmering to make broth---if you don't want to make it right away, just keep a gallon zipper freezer bag in your freezer and toss various veggie ends in until the bag is full). Toss with the other ingredients. Let sit 5-10 minutes. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet and roast 2 minutes. Stir and roast another 2 minutes. Serves 4. Or 2 kale-greedy people.

If you want to make dessert of the blackberries, they are excellent with a dollop of dulce de leche. You can usually find this Latin caramel confection in the grocery, but if you can't, you can also make it by removing the label of a can of sweetened, condensed milk, lowering it carefully with tongs into a pan full of boiling water, and letting it boil, on its side so that it can roll, for 3 hours. Make sure there is always plenty of boiling water in the pan, as lots of water around the can prevents it from overheating and bursting open. If you see the level of water dropping, simply add more boiling water. When the 3 hours is up, you will need to exercise still a bit more restraint, as it's extremely important to allow the contents of the can to cool to room temperature before you open the can. If you skip this cooling step, you could get an eyeful of burning milk caramel as it geysers out from the can. Anyway, at the end of the 3 hours, remove the can carefully with tongs from the water and ALLOW TO COOL to room temp. It is superb, once cooled, but if you hurt yourself making it, you will not enjoy it nearly as much as you will if you are patient.

La Luna Cooks For Uppity Book Women: Split Pea Soup & Oatmeal Chip Cookies

Last Friday night at this time, I was just slipping a batch of Amish-style oatmeal chip cookies into the oven so I could arrive at book group with them still warm. I had a pot of split pea soup bubbling on the stove, ready to be tipped into the crockpot for the trip down the road.

The cookies were part of the La Luna Cooks Mrs. Yoder project, just what I happened to be making for the day. The split pea soup was chosen very deliberately, based on the book we discussed. Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief is set in Hitler's Germany. It's a wonderful book, full of pain and death and luminous, beautiful life. The mama character is constantly serving pea soup, cobbled together from scarce rations. Therefore, it was the natural choice. We also got to enjoy chocolate chip cookies brought by Brenda & Sue's gazpacho.

Since there have been requests for these recipes, here they are:

Split Pea Soup for Saukerls

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp. olive oil

1/2 tsp. oregano

1 & 1/2 tsp. salt

A good grinding pepper

3 carrots, peeled & diced

3 potatoes, diced but not peeled

1 lb. dried split peas

64 oz. chicken stock

In a soup pot, sauté onions, garlic, oregano, salt, & pepper in olive oil until onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the rest and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook on medium-low about an hour or until split peas are tender. You will want to stir fairly frequently so the bottom doesn't burn. Adjust seasonings. Serves 6.

Oatmeal Chip Cookies

3/4 c. butter

1 & 1/4 c. brown sugar

2 eggs

2 c. flour

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c. oatmeal

1 c. nuts (I used chopped pecans)

1 c. chocolate chips

1 c. butterscotch chips

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix butter and sugar together. Add eggs, flour, cream of tartar, soda, & salt. Finally, add oatmeal, chocolate chips, & butterscotch chips. Drop by tablespoons onto greased cookie sheets. Bake about 10 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen.

La Luna Cooks Mrs. Yoder: Taco Salad & Apple Pudding

Tonight, I finally reached a more substantial section of the cookbook, after spending last week in the breads and desserts world (which wasn't, by any means, a bad place). Taco salad is the first entry in the "Salads" section. Jeannene is ecstatic to have arrived at a savory dish, although she's equally excited that much of the section consists of Jell-o salad in various permutations. I'm a bit of a Jell-o purist and, despite my weird adoration of strawberry pretzel salad, I tend only to tolerate the addition of fruit to my Jell-o. No marshmallows, no cool whip, no whipped cream, no nuts, and, for the love of all that is holy, no celery or other vegetable matter! But, I somehow ended up loving pretzel salad, so maybe ribbon salad, Under The Sea Salad, and 7-Up salad won't be as abhorrent as I fear. I do have a lot of food rules, don't I?

In addition to the taco salad, I needed to make up for missing Monday's recipe, apple pudding. The two don't seem very much to go together, but today's rainy weather allows admirably for apple pudding, which is infinitely more like cake, with a brown sugar sauce thickened with fruit pectin. But more on that in a moment.

Every taco salad I've ever eaten or seen has come in a crispy corn tortilla shell, with varying amounts of lettuce, shredded cheese, and chopped tomatoes accompanying a mound of taco meat. This was a little different, more akin, as Jeannene observed, to a walking taco in a pan instead of in a Fritos bag. One of my favorite things about Boot's PeeWee football games, for which we had to arise wretchedly early on a Saturday morning and which we often spent out in the mist and rain and cold, was when it was time for lunch & we could get walking tacos & more coffee from the concession stand. The only things better were getting to extrovert with other football moms and the grin on Boot's face when he excitedly asked if we saw him [insert technically detailed football term for a play here, which will sound as understandable as Greek to me]---& of course, as far as he needed to know, we had. All of us moms. Every single play. Never distracted by chatting. Not once. Completely following the game. Yeah. That's it. (Have y'all seen the meme featuring Maria Von Trapp, twirling around in the mountains, with the words, "This is me not giving a [expletive variable but here deleted] about football season" yet?)

Anyway, this taco salad is basically taco meat with a bunch of onion, tomato, kidney beans, cheddar cheese, and crushed Doritos added. Well, crushed Doritos was my interpretation of Mrs. Weaver & Mrs. Yoder's "taco flavored chips." I guess Chili Cheese Fritos would have worked, as well. When it came to the addition of shredded lettuce, meant to be mixed into the whole bunch, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Once lettuce, particularly shredded lettuce, has gotten warm and soggy, it nauseates me. Therefore, I left it out & allowed Jeannene to do as she pleased (mixing it in, of course---she is quite the food mixer and especially delights in corn mixed into mashed potatoes with gravy). I put my meat mixture on top of the lettuce and liked it just fine because the lettuce remained cool and crisp. I liked it quite a bit actually, although I wouldn't want to eat huge quantities of it purely for health reasons, even though I used the leanest ground beef available. I did end up adding more spices. The recipe called only for a packet of taco seasoning, but it tasted bland, so I added some chili & cumin.

The only thing I couldn't stomach was the dressing. It was like taco dessert, but not nearly so delicious as a Choco-Taco (which I don't like much, but am willing to eat on occasion). Horrifyingly sweet---1/4 c. sugar to 4 oz. Thousand Island dressing with a little taco sauce and a little seasoning. I could probably have nightmares about it pretty easily, really. I did try a tiny smidge on a corner of my meal and it was better on the food than when sampled plain, but still appalling. Jeannene didn't think it was as bad as I did, but she did opt for sour cream instead of dressing. I thought it was just fine plain.

In fact, it was rather a bad night for sauces. Perhaps I erred in using Can-Jel fruit pectin for the "clear jel" called for in the recipe? Since I am not a canner---not even sure if I've ever participated in such a thing---I didn't know exactly what I was looking for. The sauce called for only water, brown sugar, a weensy bit of salt, and the aforementioned thickening agent. Unfortunately, although I did mix the pectin with water as directed, something occurred. Not only did the sauce not thicken, but when I tasted the watery result, it was tart, like I'd added lemon juice and vinegar, both.

The "pudding" itself was delicious, however, a sort of blondie with apples & pecans. A perfect autumnal dish, I would absolutely make it again and would happily serve it to company just as I served it tonight, with a little round of good quality vanilla bean ice cream or, better yet, Salted Caramel from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream (they do ship---http://jenis.com). I had hoped to drizzle a smidge of Treat Dream's caramel sauce over the top (www.treatdream.com---they're not Jeni's, but if you're in SE Michigan, they're definitely worth a stop), but could not find it in the fridge. Perhaps it looked tasty to our youngest? Really, though, all this treat needs is the ice cream. Or, it could be eaten out of hand for a casual accompanying sweet in a lunchbox or picnic basket.

Monday's dinner, hot chicken salad, was edible but not, in my opinion, good enough for me to post the recipe here. Hot chicken salad should not, in my opinion, be just like cold chicken salad that's been heated. This was. If, however, I do find my good hot chicken salad recipe, I will post it. Last night, we were invited to dinner at a new friend's house. She is an enthusiastic fan of sauces and dips from Robert Rothschild Farm in Urbana, Ohio (www.robertrothschild.com). I can testify from previous experience to the deliciousness of their artichoke dip and their raspberry sauce, but didn't know they made spaghetti sauce until Brenda mentioned it. We had the roasted portabella & roma tomato sauce and it was definitely yummy, with a definite bit of heat to it, almost a hint of Cajun flavor, even. Brenda had said she didn't want to have it until they had company because it was so special & I felt so honored that we were chosen. I love going to dinner at other people's houses because I get to have things I wouldn't ordinarily think to make. It's always a real treat, especially with such congenial company.

I get to look forward to congenial company tomorrow night, as well, when we join several folks from Jeannene's plant at a hog roast given by Mulefoot Gastropub (a terrific new restaurant in Imlay City, Michigan, named after the heirloom breed of pigs that is their focus---website at www.themulefoot.com) as a fundraiser for the Stone Soup Food Pantry. Not only do we get delicious roast pork, but they will be sampling new menu items as passed appetizers and there's going to be live music! Should be a roaring good time!

So, I will need to catch up on last night's peanut butter pie assignment and tomorrow' s barbecued hamburgers. Perhaps Sunday when we have the kids over for Sunday dinner, which is our new tradition, now that Pie and Bubbles live close enough to visit for dinner. This first Sunday, Jeannene made an old-fashioned roast with wonderful veggies, a big salad, and fruit kebabs. My contribution, in order to stay out of her way in the kitchen, was to pick up a strawberry pie & a cherry pie from a new grocery we discovered, Papa Joe's in Rochester.

Bacon & Egg Salad Sandwiches

My wife usually doesn't dig it when I make egg salad. She never eats it on purpose and when she sees it on the menu, she groans. I really like it. Perhaps I should just make it for myself during the day while she's at work, but I just have to make it for supper every now and again. There is actually a backstory to her eschewal of egg salad. You see, back when she was young, her older brother used to mow the lawn barefoot. Then, he would come inside and sit at the kitchen table, clipping his toenails. Some people would be totally skeeved out by his even clipping them in a common area of the house, but the kitchen table??? But it gets worse. When he was done, he would just leave them there on the  table! Blech.

Now, if you have ever had teenaged sons, you will not be surprised that such a thing could happen. However, you might be surprised at what finally happened. If you have siblings and grew up in a household like Jeannene's, though, you might not be so surprised. As siblings do, Jeannene and her brother who is closest to her in age got tired of Jeff's gross, green toenail clippings on the table. I don't imagine her mom was too thrilled, either. So, the time came when retribution became inevitable. Joel & Jeannene decided to be sweet and make egg salad for lunch. However, they weren't so sweet, after all, because they put his toenail clippings in the egg salad and fed it to him!!! He never noticed.

If you ever come have egg salad at our home, I promise we won't serve it with any body parts in it. And, if you aren't too revolted by this story ever to eat egg salad again, this is a pretty awesome sandwich! Even Jeannene loves it.

Bacon & Egg Salad Sandwiches

8 slices bacon

8 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

1/3 c. mayonnaise

1 tsp. chopped fresh dill

Salt & pepper

12 slices pumpernickel, toasted

Romaine or red leaf lettuce

Tomato slices

Cook the bacon crisp. Mix eggs, mayo, dill, salt, & pepper. Make sandwiches, with bacon, on toast. If you're like me, you'll want your sandwich cut in half diagonally. Serves 4.

Rosemary, Ham, & Manchego Scones

I love scones. They are one of my wife's favorite things ever. That said, I am forever complaining about the lack of savory scones in shops that sell them. We often stop for coffee as we head out for errands or church on weekends. Jeannene has a (sweet) scone or a house made granola bar or some other such breakfast. I am often stumped as to what I might eat because I am very seldom a sweet breakfast sort of person and few coffee places have plain croissants worth eating. Without a little something substantial to start my day, I can get cranky or start feeling bad fairly quickly. There must be a reason it's hard to find quick breakfast foods in coffee shops, but I can't figure it out. Probably, it has to do with the fact that I'm kind of a weirdo about breakfast! Anyway, I discovered a Rachael Ray recipe for scones that is perfect for my needs, although it doesn't solve the "what to get at a coffee shop" conundrum.  I can't imagine that other folks wouldn't also find them completely swoony. This is my version & it makes 4 large or 8 small scones. Vegetarians won't even miss the ham, if left out.

Rosemary, Ham, & Manchego Scones

1 small box Bisquick (the 5-8 serving size)

3 tbsp. finely-chopped rosemary

1/2 c. heavy cream

A pinch of salt

1/8 lb. ham, chopped

1/4 c. shredded manchego cheese

1 tbsp. orange zest (cut up the orange for a fruit side dish!)

2 tsp. sugar (Don't omit this. I was tempted to, but it's an important counterpoint)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix together everything but sugar, being careful not to overwork the dough. Shape into 4 large or 8 small mounds on an ungreased baking sheet. Sprinkle evenly with sugar and bake 10-12 minutes for large scones or 7-8 minutes for small ones.

Mixed Greens with Goat Cheese Rounds & Grapefruit Balsamic

This wonderful salad is my version of Alice Waters' Goat Cheese Salad. For years, I've wanted to make a salad with baked or fried goat cheese rounds, but for some odd reason, it's seemed intimidating to me. Perhaps I was afraid the cheese would melt and ooze all over the place? Anyway, I am past that fear now and this is a salad that's terrific to serve guests to give them a little something special. By the way, if you are unfamiliar with Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, I would urge you to educate yourself. Alice Waters is one of my food heroes, a pioneer of the movement back toward using fresh, local foods that are in season and are sustainably produced. Chez Panisse, her Berkeley restaurant, is on my foodie bucket list. If you want to treat yourself to a new cookbook, her The Art of Simple Food is a good choice.

Mixed Greens with Goat Cheese Rounds & Grapefruit Balsamic

1/2 c. good quality olive oil

4 sprigs thyme

1 bay leaf, crumbled

4 oz. goat cheese, cut into 4 rounds 

1/2 c. breadcrumbs/panko

2 tbsp. grapefruit balsamic

Salt & pepper

6 c. mixed greens

Marinate cheese in 1/4 c. oil with thyme & bay leaf for 2-12 hours. Place on a small baking sheet and chill thoroughly. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease a small baking dish with the oil from the marinade. Coat the chilled goat cheese rounds in crumbs. Bake 5 minutes, until bubbling and golden brown. Whisk 1/4 c. oil with grapefruit balsamic. Season with salt & pepper. Toss with greens to coat. Divide greens among 4 salad plates, topping each salad with a goat cheese round. Serves 4. (This is also good with added dried cherries and walnuts)

Salmagundi Casserole

As fall arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, my thoughts begin to turn to casseroles that will stick to our ribs and keep us warm. In a rainy, chill Michigan April, this casserole did the trick admirably and I believe it will be a cold weather staple in our house. It only needs a big, gorgeous salad and a loaf of warm bread to make a wonderful meal. The spices will make your house smell completely homey. Serves 4-6.

Salmagundi Casserole

1 c. rice

1 tbsp. oil

1 onion, minced

1 green pepper, chopped

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. chili powder

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. coriander

1/2 tsp. pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 lb. ground beef (I use the extra-lean)

16 oz. tomato sauce

1 1/2 c. corn

1 c. chicken broth

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spread rice evenly in the bottom of a greased 13x9 baking pan. Heat oil in a pot. Cook the onion, green pepper, and salt in the oil until tender, 5-7 minutes. Add spices and cook until fragrant, just a minute or two. Add garlic and cook another 30 seconds. Add beef and cook until browned. Add tomato sauce, corn, and broth. Bring to a simmer. Carefully pour over the top of the rice. Cover tightly with foil and bake 35-40 minutes. Allow to cool 10 minutes before serving.