Last January, after our friends Kathy and Rick had spent weeks packing, snow shoveling, ice dam cursing, moving and unpacking, they invited us to lunch. We sat around the granite island in their new kitchen and savored, steamy bowls of cauliflower cheese soup. It was the first pot of soup made in their new home. I asked Kathy for the recipe, she shared it with me and said I could share it with you. Here’s how she (and I) made it:

Hot biscuits, right out of the oven, with soft butter complemented the steamy cauliflower soup perfectly, and a bowl of tapioca pudding completed this white meal.

Before anyone from the color patrol reaches for a telephone or computer to register a complaint, I will explain why I call this a ‘white meal’. Sure there were flecks of orange from the carrots, dots of red and black from the peppers and I admit that the cheddar and cauliflower where not absolutely pure white and yes, the biscuits had a slight golden touch; but, this dinner was as white as the snowy day with brown flecks of beech leaves, bits of red chimney pipes and the gold of Gracie’s coat as struggled to make a perfect doggy snow-angel.

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Rainbow Carrots

(I wanted to share my most recent painting, Rainbow Carrots, even though carrots have nothing to do with this post. )

The first step is to dispose of all of the half-filled jars of mystery sauces that have accumulated since we returned from Italy last spring. The second, and perhaps more difficult part is resisting the jars of exotic sauces at the market. I will make do with only three jars of sauce, mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise. The mustard is grainy Dijon mustard, the ketchup is what remains of the homemade ketchup I made as a Christmas gift for Charles, and I will make mayo as we need it.

Usually, mayo is made with either an egg yolk or a whole egg but recently I made Maionese de leite, a mayonnaise that comes from Portugal. This creamy, egg free sauce, made with milk and flavored with a hint of garlic is less sticky and bit more watery than traditional mayo but it can be substituted for traditional mayo. An immersion blender is necessary to make it. Here’s how I did it:

Homemade mayonnaise is delicious whether it’s traditional egg based mayo or creamy milk mayo but, if your New Year’ resolution is to spend less time in the kitchen, mayo from the grocery store is the right choice for you. Happy New Year!

Here’s a link to my recipe for Mayo made with eggs. 

Download and print a label for your homemade mayo here.

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The unusually wet and humid September brought extraordinary fungal inhabitants to my garden — none of them edible. Most prolific were the freakish, foul-smelling, dog stinkhorns, good only as subjects for a photo or two before they withered. Not that I would trust myself to eat any mushroom that might poke up amongst the yellowing hostas and rambling morning glories. I’m no mycologist, nor have I been schooled in the ways of forest foraging like my friends in Eastern Europe.About ten years ago, I began what would turn out to be perennial work with an old Soviet era film studio in Vilnius, Lithuania. The former propaganda mill had been retooled to serve the needs of low-budget Hollywood movies and TV shows like the ones we were making for The History Channel. Whether filming re-creations of Viking battles or an enactment of Attila the Hun entertaining Pope Leo I, many of our locations were in pine forests. In autumn, mushrooms sprang up everywhere. At lunchtime, all of the Lithuanians on the film crew disappeared into the woods to forage for wild mushrooms. They returned with bags of boletes, chanterelles and other, more unfamiliar beauties. Everyone was completely confident in their mushroom identification skills that had been passed down for generations.

Still, my husband Rob insisted that I not take any mushrooms to cook for dinner. He changed his mind when we saw fresh chanterelles being sold for few Litas a pound  at the city farmers’ market. I prepared them in the local way – sauteed with onion and bacon. They were delicious.

Before we left Lithunaia to return to Baltimore, I stopped at a market stall for a string of dried mushrooms of an undetermined kind. I hung it as a decoration, next to antique baskets on a rack above my green Aga stove. All winter, their distinctive forest fragrance lingered in the kitchen as a reminder of Lithuania.

The following spring, two Lithuanians who had worked on our film crew called to take us up on our offer of a place to stay should they visit  the U.S. We had become especially fond of this young couple whose comical banter could have been the genesis for the characters Latka and Simca on the old TV series, Taxi.

While I roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots for dinner, our young guests, let’s call them Latka and Simca, sat at the kitchen table sipping wine and entertaining us with their first impressions of America as seen from the windows of the Greyhound bus that had brought them from Newark airport to Baltimore. Suddenly, Latka looked around as if he had just realized that he was no longer on the bus. How surprising, he exclaimed, to see in our American kitchen a woodstove so like the one his grandmother had.

“It’s not a woodstove and it’s not even American,” I laughed. I had owned the Aga for less than a year — its novelty hadn’t worn off and it didn’t take much to get me boasting about its unique features – it was always on and there are no controls to adjust. To hear me tell it, the great cast iron Aga was an all but a human presence in my kitchen, producing the finest meals imaginable and requiring absolutely no effort on my part. “Why,” I went on, “it cooks bacon perfectly. I just throw it into the roasting oven. There are no messy splatters to clean up!”  Simca noticed the string of dried mushrooms and asked why we hadn’t eaten them.

During dinner, we reminisced about shooting battle scenes with Huns and Romans in the cold and mud of the previous autumn. We told our guests that we had to attend a meeting early the next morning and I showed them where to find bread, cereal, milk and jam and they assured us they’d be fine until our return. I offered to show Simca how to use the special Aga toaster but she assured me that she would have no need to cook anything.

Lithuanian Bacon

When we returned from the meeting, the smell of bacon wafted from the house. Our guests, who were watching television, jumped up as we came in. We knew by their long faces that something unfortunate had happened. “Latka is very sorry, Char, for the destroy of your fine stove,” whimpered Simca.  As we headed for the kitchen, I couldn’t imagine anything that would really damage the Aga. Then Latka began a dramatic reenactment, complete with hand motions, of what had happened.

It had begun with the discovery of his favorite food, bacon, in the refrigerator. Recalling my comments from the night before, he had thrown the entire pound of it onto the cast iron floor of the roasting oven. Then he went to help Simca with the TV remote. When he returned to the kitchen, bacon fat was flowing like a river down the front of the Aga and across the floor.  He managed to remove the bacon, consume some of it, (very tasty he said), and clean up the fat that had oozed out of the Aga. He paused before he nervously opened the roasting oven door and showed me a huge greasy, black stain. He said, “Is very bad, no?” I reassured him that it would burn off eventually even though I wasn’t sure that it would.

I remembered their visit on a rainy Saturday a few weeks ago as I was cleaning the pantry, organizing drawers and preparing the kitchen for autumn cooking.  I used the wire brush that came with the Aga to sweep out the roasting oven. The grease was gone – it had taken a few months but it finally did disappear. I removed all the utensils from the rack above the stove and loaded them into the dishwasher. Then I gave the rack a good scrubbing. After re-arranging my collection of old biscuit tins and dusting the antique baskets, I took down the equally dusty decade-old string of dried mushrooms and gave it a quick swish in warm water. Restored to pride of place, they again filled the kitchen with the dusky scent of the forest. All is in readiness for my favorite cooking season.

If you should be lucky enough to have some chanterelles, here is how they are prepared in Lithuania and on my lovely green Aga.

For one pound of mushrooms: gently wash and dry them and  trim the ends and remove any soft spots. Drop them into boiling salted water and cook for twelve minutes. Dice three ounces of bacon and fry it. Add a diced, medium yellow onion to the pan. Drain the mushrooms and add them to the bacon and onion along with a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Cover the frying pan and continue cooking over low heat for seven minutes, stirring several times. Serve for lunch with hot potatoes.

Char sent me this timely link from Saturday’s New York Times.

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Matthew and Alison have a “veg” box from Riverford Farm delivered every Thursday. The organic vegetables and fruit come in a reusable cardboard box and are accompanied by seasonal recipes and news from the farm. The “veg” box, augmented with a bit of meat or fish, milk, cheese and eggs and miscellaneous items like fresh ginger and hot peppers from the grocer at the train station, is the center of their healthy and sustainable diet. This week’s box had leeks, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, parsnips, fennel, potatoes, onions and baby bok choy.

On Thursday, we had “veg” box stir-fry and bok choy with black beans for dinner. Here’s how Matthew did it:

“Veg” Box Stir-Fry

He washed and sliced enough leeks, carrots, cabbage and broccoli to fill a medium bowl, about four cups. For the sauce, he combined a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, a heaping teaspoon of cornstarch, two teaspoons of hoi sin sauce, a tablespoon of toasted sesame seed oil and a tablespoon of sugar in a small bowl. He heated two tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large pot, added three small, whole, dried chili peppers, two cloves of garlic and a one-inch knob of ginger root, both minced. As soon as we could smell the garlic and ginger, he added the vegetables. After the vegetables had cooked for five minutes, he added the sauce and cooked the vegetables for two more minutes.

It took less time for Matthew to cook the bok choy than it took for me to set the table and serve the stir fried vegetables.

Bok Choy with Chinese Black Beans

He rinsed and quartered three heads of baby bok choy, put a splash of vegetable oil, about two teaspoons, one clove of minced garlic and a tablespoon of rinsed, salted Chinese black beans and the bok choy into a cast-iron frying pan over medium-high heat. After the bok choy had cooked for a minute, he added a tablespoon of white wine, turned the bok choy over and cooked it for another minute.

We evaluated dinner as we ate it. The texture of the crisp bok choy and the sweet/sour sauce on the stir fried vegetables were pluses, forgetting to remove the whole chili peppers before serving the stir fry was a negative. We awarded dinner four-stars.

On Saturday, I bought a pint of strawberries and a small container of double cream, (heavy cream in Vermont), at the train station market so that I could make strawberries and cream French toast for Sunday breakfast. Here’s how:

Strawberries & Cream French Toast

I rinsed the strawberries, removed their leafy caps, sliced them and combined them with a tablespoon of sugar. I toasted four pieces of sunflower seed, whole-wheat bread. I combined two eggs, two tablespoons of cream, a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter of a teaspoon of nutmeg in a shallow bowl. I put the toasted bread into the egg mixture, set it aside for ten minutes, turned the slices over, waited ten minutes more so that the bread would absorb the eggy mixture, and then sauteed the bread in butter in a medium cast iron frying pan over low heat.

I found a whisk and recruited Matthew to whip half a cup of the cream. When the French toast was golden, I sprinkled each serving with a teaspoon of sugar, added a generous helping of strawberries and a scoop of whipped cream to each plate. We sat in the sun, enjoyed our breakfast and tried to decide what we should make for dinner.

Here’s a link to the Riverford Farm website. If you live in the UK you may be able to arrange to have a Riverford box delivered. Whether or not you have a veg box delivered, the Riverford site has a great variety of recipes here.

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A gluten free, complete protein it was called the ‘mother of all grains’.

With all of this to recommend it, I decided to add it to my pantry. My first quinoa creation was a resounding failure – a mushy mixture that tasted like wet laundry, (Actually, I have never eaten wet or dry laundry, but that’s the best description I can come up with).

Clearly, it is important not to overcook it and to add flavor at each step of preparation.

My second try, a salad inspired by the fresh flavors of tabbouleh, was a great success with no resemblance to wet laundry. Here’s how I made it:

Quinoa Salad

I rinsed two cups of quinoa in cold water to get rid of the bitter coating before putting it into a heavy bottomed, shallow pan over medium high heat. Ten minutes of constant stirring and the seeds were light brown and aromatic.

Initially the quinoa stuck to the bottom of the pan, but when it was ready it began to dance around in the bottom of the pan, (perhaps inspired by the reputation of its tumble weed cousin).

With the pan off the heat I stirred in two cups of vegetable broth, then increased the heat, brought it to a boil,  reduced the heat, covered the pan and left it to simmer until al dente, about eighteen minutes. I drained the remaining liquid from the quinoa, and set it aside, covered for five minutes, before fluffing with a fork and transferring to a large bowl to cool. These steps resulted in a flavorful and non mushy base for the salad.

I added two cans of rinsed and drained beans, one soy and the other white kidney, the chopped leaves of a bunch of flat leaf parsley, half a cup of sliced scallions, a pint of halved cherry tomatoes and the zest of one large lemon.

For the dressing, I combined the juice of the lemon, a large tablespoon of grainy Dijon mustard, half a cup of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Gently stirred together and served at room temperature, it was a crowd pleaser at a vegetarian dinner of three substantial salads.

notes: any canned beans will work, you may want to brighten the taste with the addition of a bit of wine vinegar, the parsley could be replaced with basil, purple onion instead of scallions, a minced chili pepper or a bit of cayenne pepper would add some heat. Add or subtract flavors to suit your palate.

Download and quinoa salad recipe with an ingredients list here.

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Watercolor painting by Carol Egbert

Saturday, white puffy clouds danced across the cobalt blue sky, the grass was freshly mowed and my Kindle was giving me that ‘come hither’ look. It was a day to make one of my favorite (nearly) no-cook, (almost) zero effort dinners. This dinner has four steps:

• Determine menu
• See what’s in the pantry and fridge
• Go to market for what isn’t
• Pull dinner together

Charles and I decided to split the tasks. I decided we would have roasted chicken with pink ginger sauce, sesame noodles and a nectarine salad. I found soy sauce, cayenne pepper, vinegar, canola oil, garlic, honey, sesame seeds and sesame oil in the pantry and mayonnaise, sour cream, catsup and pickled ginger in the fridge. Charles went to the market to get a rotisserie cooked chicken, a box of pasta, scallions, fresh ginger and some nectarines. I got lost in my book and snoozed a bit.

When I woke up, I put a large pot of water on the stove over medium heat. In less than half an hour after Charles returned from the market, we sat down to an Asian inspired summer dinner. Here’s how we did it:

Sesame Noodles

I salted the pasta water, turned up the heat and, when the water was boiling, stirred in half a pound of linguini. I made the sauce for the noodles and Charles carved the chicken while the noodles cooked. For the sesame sauce, I used a wire whisk to combine a quarter of a cup of soy sauce, one tablespoon of sugar, one teaspoon of minced garlic, one teaspoon of minced fresh ginger, one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, two tablespoons of toasted sesame oil, a wee pinch of cayenne and three tablespoons of canola oil. After cooking for seven minutes the pasta was tender, a bit softer than the usual al dente, but just right for a salad eaten at room temperature. I put the drained pasta into a large serving bowl, poured the sesame sauce in and tossed the noodles until they were coated with the sauce. I cut three scallions into thin slices and sprinkled them on top.

Download and print sesame noodle recipe with an ingredients list here.

When he had finished carving the chicken, Charles made the Pink Ginger Sauce.

Pink Ginger Sauce

He combined one tablespoon of finely minced, pickled ginger with two tablespoons of mayonnaise, two tablespoons of sour cream, one teaspoon of catsup, a pinch of cayenne and one teaspoon of fresh lime juice. He put a generous puddle of sauce on two dinner plates.

In twenty minutes, we had everything ready but the nectarine salad. Charles cut two nectarines into thin slices and I mixed up a simple sauce of a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of honey, a teaspoon of lime juice and a pinch of salt. He poured the sauce on the nectarines, gave them a quick toss and put a serving on each plate. I added a serving of sesame noodles to each plate, Charles added a drumstick and a thigh to his plate and I choose a wing and a breast for mine.

We made dinner in less than thirty minutes and there were enough leftovers for lunch in less than five minutes on Sunday. It was fun, quick and collaborative. There is lots of room for substitution in these recipes – pasta can be any shape you like, I used linguini fini; lemons can be substituted for limes; leftover roast beef or pork can stand in for the chicken; apricots, peaches or melon alone or in combination would make a lovely salad; and, maple syrup is a wonderful substitute for honey. Pickled ginger is found in the sushi cooler, if you can’t find it, use a teaspoons of minced fresh ginger root. The absolutely essential ingredient, not to be omitted, is a snooze – either before, during or after dinner.

Download and print pink ginger sauce recipe with an ingredients list here. 

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The dark pink lentils in my pantry, labeled either as Red or Egyptian lentils in the market, don’t have a seed coat so they will disintegrate into a smooth puree as the soup cooks. Here’ s how I made it.

Lentil Soup

To begin, I sauteed one leek, one onion and three medium carrots, all cleaned and sliced, in one tablespoon of unsalted butter and one tablespoon of olive oil for about five minutes or until they were softened.

Then I stirred in flavors from the East, two large cloves of garlic, crushed, one tablespoon grated fresh ginger, one rounded teaspoon ground cumin, one teaspoon turmeric, half a teaspoon ground coriander and a large pinch of crushed red pepper flakes and cooked another minute before I added two cups of rinsed red lentils and five cups of water.

I covered the pot, brought it to a boil, reduced the heat to a simmer and cooked until the lentils were tender, about forty five minutes.

To finish the soup, I stirred in two teaspoons of vegetarian soup base, one diced zucchini and a tablespoon of fresh lime juice, adjusted the salt and pepper, and simmered for five more minutes.

Two slices of buttered toast and a bowl of lentil soup, a perfect dinner for a chilly Spring evening.

Download and print lentil soup recipe with an ingredients list here.

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Before Julia, salad was a wedge of iceberg lettuce topped with bright orange salad dressing poured on top. Cakes, either chocolate, yellow, or spice came as a mix. Mayonnaise was not something one ‘made’. Onion soup was a brown powder to be mixed with sour cream as a dip for potato chips. Cheese was American, Swiss or cheddar. Seasoning consisted of salt and pepper and perhaps a decorative sprig of curly parsley that was pushed to one side before whatever it was decorating was eaten. Shallots, capers, garlic, leeks, fresh herbs, and olive oil were exotic ingredients found in foreign kitchens.

In 1967, newly married and living across the road from The French Market, in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC, I considered lunch from the French Market a treat. It might be a sandwich on a crusty baguette with rare roast beef, salami, brie, or pate, with butter, or Dijon mustard. Some days I chose an assortment of salads – mushrooms a la Grecque, carrots in mustard vinaigrette with fresh dill, marinated green beans with olives, and potato salad in lemon vinaigrette. I was hooked.

I loved the scent of garlic, lemon rind and parsley that the market’s butcher minced for the lamb roasts he skillfully turned into perfect replicas of duck decoys that waited in the meat case until clever cooks roasted and served them.

Another man prepared escargot. He pushed cooked snails into shells and then filled them with a mixture of sweet butter, garlic, parsley, and ground almonds. I knew I was a foodie, an term that did not exist in 1967, when I bought two metal snail pans, two small forks, and two snail holders, metal tools that looked like eyelash curlers gone wrong. Snails were easier than macaroni and cheese.

Other than snails, I cooked simple dinners, familiar fare – pork or lamb chops, hamburgers, or chicken breasts, boiled, baked or mashed potatoes and frozen corn or green beans. The only cook book I owned was a paperback called Cook Book.

Then, on September 27th, 1967 Julie Child came into my kitchen when a friend gave me Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Until that moment, I hadn’t occurred to me that I could cook the sort of food that came from the French Market. I began reading and discovered that I had already met the first requirement – I was indeed “servantless”.

I read ‘Mastering’ as if it were a novel, struggling with the weirdness of spelling and pronouncing French words such as pâte à choux and crème pàtissèrie. I discovered that vegetables could be carefully cooked, and sauced, and read about complex desserts with amazing names.

I decided that bifteck hachè à la Lyonnaise would be my first Julia dinner. Yes, I was feeling bold, but after all, its English subtitle was Ground Beef with Onions and Herbs. French hamburgers!

Here’s how I did it.

Bifteck hachè à la Lyonnaise - French Hamburger

I cooked half a cup of diced onions in a tablespoon of butter over medium heat until they were translucent, about ten minutes and then combined them with three quarters of a pound of lean ground beef, a tablespoon of butter, half a teaspoon each of salt and pepper, a pinch of thyme (purchased from the French Market), and one egg. I used a wooden spoon to mix it all together, and then made four patties that I chilled for half an hour.

Carefully following directions, I rolled the patties lightly in flour and dusted off the excess. The floured patties went right into a tablespoon each of butter and oil that had begun to foam in my cast iron skillet. I followed Julia’s directions, cooked the hamburgers for about two minutes on each side and then put them on a platter while I finished the sauce.

It was simple, pour out the fat, add half a cup of liquid and boil rapidly until thickened. The recipe suggested either stock, beef bouillon, red wine, white wine, dry white vermouth, or water.  I used red wine and remembered to scrape the bottom of the pan to dissolve the tasty brown bits into the sauce. Finishing the sauce meant removing the pan from the heat and swirling in two tablespoons of butter that thickened the liquid into a light sauce. With mashed potatoes and green beans waiting at the table, I poured the red wine sauce over the hamburgers and dinner was ready.

Wine sauce – red wine sauce on a hamburger – Who knew that it could be so simple, so tasty, so French?

Download and print cookie recipe with an ingredients list here.

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No need to worry - Soe is in charge.

We met Michelle and her husband Burmese husband, Soe, at the Cafe Minerva. I invited them to sit with us and in less time that it takes to figure out how many c’s there are in cappuccino, Soe and I were talking about food. We finished our coffees and decided to walk to the market together.Michelle and Charles walked together and talked about the challenges of speaking Italian and as I shopped, Soe talked about what he would cook if he had a kitchen in Ortigia. I had a kitchen. He had a menu in mind. We decided to have dinner together. It would be a Burmese dinner with shrimp, orange salad and green beans and Soe would be in charge.

Red onion, garlic mint & citrus leaves

When Soe and Michelle arrived, he began by trimming and slicing.

Celery leaves, ginger, red chili, citrus & mint leaves

He cooked like a classically trained French chef. I tried to stay out of his way as I watched him assemble a tray of ingredients for each dish.

We made the savory orange salad first. Here’s how we did it:

Orange Onion Salad

I cut the peel and pith from six blood oranges, cut each orange into eight pieces and put the pieces into a shallow bowl. In Burma, this salad would be flavored with fish sauce and kaffir lime leaves. Instead of fish sauce, we used a tablespoon of chopped salted anchovy that had been rinsed and soaked in cold water for ten minutes and then drained. Instead of kaffir lime leaves, we used a tender leaf from a branch of oranges. I stirred in the anchovy and finely minced orange leaf, Soe added a couple of teaspoons of fresh mint leaves, half a small red onion that had been thinly sliced, and poured on three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.  A quick toss and it was ready and we moved on to the green beans.

Download and print orange onion salad recipe with an ingredients list here.

Spicy Green Beans

I blanched the green beans in a large pot of rapidly boiling salt water until they were barely tender, shocked them with cold water and drained them. Soe sauteed the shrimp heads in a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. After they had cooked for three minutes, he lowered the heat, added a tablespoon of sweet paprika and two tablespoons of white wine and continued cooking it for two more minutes. He poured the mixture into a strainer and used a spoon to force the liquid into a small bowl. He wiped out the pan with a paper towel, put a tablespoon of oil into it and when the oil was hot he added two cloves of thinly sliced garlic and half of a thinly sliced red onion. When the garlic and onion were cooked, he added the pre-cooked green beans, stirred in the paprika-wine sauce and cooked the mixture until the beans were hot and covered with the sauce.

Download and print spicy green bean recipe with an ingredients list here.

It was time to cook the shrimp. Soe had bought a kilo, about two pounds, of large, nearly five inches long, whole shrimp at the market. He cleaned them by removing the heads, splitting the shell with scissors in order to removing the dark vein but he did not remove the shells from the shrimp.

Spicy Burmese Prawns

And then, he turned into a Burmese whirlwind. I couldn’t keep up. I know he used a large, frying pan to stir-fry thinly sliced red onion, garlic, fresh ginger and a few small, dried hot peppers. I think he added a splash of white wine after he added the shrimp.  It seemed as if the shrimp were cooked in less than three minutes. To finish them, he turned off the heat, added a tablespoon of water, (a Burmese technique to keep the shrimp from overcooking and becoming rubbery, he said), added a generous handful of tender celery leaves and there may have been some fresh basil in the mix. Perhaps some mint, maybe orange leaf, I don’t know – I lost track of what he was doing.

Dinner by Soe!

Dinner was amazing, the food was perfect, the conversation non-stop. It was unimaginable serendipity. After Soe and Michelle had gone back to their hotel, I tried to remember how he had cooked the shrimp, I tried Googling Burmese Shrimp but couldn’t find anything that resembled what he had cooked.  I’ll have to invite them to come to Vermont and ask Soe for another cooking lesson.  Even though I can’t tell you how he made the shrimp, I promise that the orange salad recipe works and I hope you will try it. Don’t worry if you don’t have a fresh citrus leaf you can use the zest from one orange instead.

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