better than black-eyes

Just read their delicate, poetic name -- Lady Cream Peas. Can’t you feel them melting in your mouth, with perhaps a hint of dairy and plenty of salty liquor? (That’s the liquid surrounding cooked legumes, for the teetotalers out there…)

And this is just what these perfect little beans do. Ever so much more aristocratic than the lowly purple hull, yards more fragile in flavor than brash black eyes, and infinitely more complex than any that arrive in a can, the Lady Cream Pea is a precious, fresh-butter-colored legume that is a bit harder to find than the aforementioned lesser varieties.

But Canton (which, as you know if you’re from East Texas, markets everything that could possibly be sold, whether quilts or Corian cutting boards) happens to house Sides Pea Farm, and if you’re clever enough to stop by their produce stand at Highway 19 and I-20, you can snag a bag of Lady Creams for a few dollars. You’ll never go back to black eyes, even to ring in the New Year.

And have a happy one, by the way!

Lady Cream Peas

2 cups fresh Lady Creams
A pat of butter
S&P

Cover the fresh peas in plenty of water and set to a low, rolling boil for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. About five minutes from done, add the butter and douse with salt and pepper. Serve hot, and in a big bowl.

in between

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Day are a little odd, I must admit. We typically leave the lights and ornaments up until January 1, but the trees are bare of gifts and the stockings hang dull and empty. Gorging on leftovers is a given, but the guilt is steadily beginning to creep up. And it’s definitely still a few days too early to start the annual diet.

My outrageous love of holiday cooking has also begun to wane, as steadily as the bag of peppermint bark in the fridge depletes. I want simple, warm food, easily whipped up in a matter of minutes but still loaded with enough cheese to keep me in vacation mode. So I’ll share one of my favorite recipes, plus an easy, interesting way to cook pasta that lifts the lowly egg noodle to true gourmet status.

If you don’t have leeks and Swiss on hand, feel free to switch ‘em out for sautéed onions, zucchini or squash and cheddar or gouda.

Absorption Pasta with Leeks and Swiss

1 pound pasta (rotini and farfalle work best)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 leek, thinly sliced
As much chopped-up cheese as you can stand
S&P

Heat the olive oil in a large, shallow saucepan and sauté the garlic for 2 minutes. Add the pasta, stirring to coat the noodles in oil and sautéing for another 2 minutes. Pour enough water in the pan to just cover the noodles and bring to a boil. Boil for 8 minutes or until pasta is tender.

Meanwhile, sauté leeks (or other veggie) in a bit of olive oil until tender. When the pasta is done, strain and toss with sautéed veggies and cheese. Douse with salt and pepper and… you know… gorge!

sweet thing

Christmas is sheer delight simply because it provides a great excuse to make and ingest tons of candy. People pass out candy canes like coupons and share chocolates like air, and our belts complain loudly. And it is so worth it.

My number-one favorite holiday candy has always been peppermint bark. Put away the divinity, for heaven’s sake, and the pecan turtles and chocolate-covered cherries (those are just for my Daddy Tom, anyway) -- I could scarf down a full pound of peppermint bark and never be quite satisfied. Something about the crunchy mint and the creamy chocolate is more potent than the best gin. And infinitely more addictive.

I’ve always associated it with those pricey gift baskets grateful patients and cloying pharmaceutical reps shower on my doctor dad. You know, the ones full of smoked cheddar and logs of sausage and grapefruit and, occasionally, those shiny tins of peppermint bark from somewhere fancy like Williams-Sonoma. And thus, I’ve always thought of my precious PB as a bit expensive, a bit rare, a bit… riche.

Then I look it up on foodnetwork.com and realize it’s just white chocolate and crushed peppermints. Hey, I can make that, and so can you! Except I prefer PB with a backbone of semisweet to balance out the tongue-numbing sweetness of white chocolate, so my version just happens to be even better than Mr. Sonoma’s.

Peppermint Bark

2 packages white chips
2 packages semisweet chips
12 candy canes, crushed*

Line a big, flat pan with wax paper. Melt the semisweet chocolate over a double boiler (I don’t even know if they sell real ones anymore… just plop a metal bowl over a pan of boiling water) and pour into the pan, spreading evenly. Stick in the fridge for about 45 minutes to cool and harden the chocolate.

Melt the white chocolate in the same way, then stir in the peppermint. Spread the mixture over the cooled dark chocolate, then stick back in the fridge for an hour or so. Lift the wax paper out of the pan, break off giant hunks, and curl up on the couch to eat a plateful.

*This is by FAR the most enjoyable part of the process! Put the canes in a big ziploc bag, cover with a dish towel, then hunker down on the garage floor with a hammer and go to town. Pieces should range from dust-particle-size to pea-size.

family secret #2

Here's the best dadgum (and prettiest) cranberry sauce you ever had, and from a girl who doesn't much like cranberry sauce. Thanks, Uncle Perry!

Perry's Cranberry Sauce

2 cans whole cranberry sauce
1 cup celery
1 green apple
1 small package sliced almonds

Thinly slice the celery and apple and mix thoroughly with the cranberry sauce. Spread in a small dish and top with a thick layer of sliced almonds.

family secret #1

First, the best cornbread dressin’ you've ever had, with faux-giblet gravy, straight from my Nanny’s mouth.

Dressin’:

3 cups white corn meal
3/4 cup tablespoons flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
4 cups buttermilk

1 1/2 cups celery

1 1/2 cups onion

4 chicken breasts

8 boiled eggs

Stir together first five ingredients. Cut up about 1-1/2 cups of celery and 1-1 1/2 cups of onion. Add to the cornbread mixture. (from Nanny, “This is my idea---I do not know anyone that cooks their celery and onion in the cornbread for dressing but it is fully cooked this way.”) Heat an iron skillet on top of stove with a little oil -- sprinkle a small amount of cornmeal in skillet, pour in cornbread mixture and cook in oven about 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Turn bread out of pan and let cool. Can be cooked the day before.

Crumble cornbread.....add 3-4 crumbled bread heels OR slices as well. Cook chicken in water to make broth, remove the chicken, then pour in just enough broth to moisten the cornbread mixture. Add 3 torn-up chicken breasts to the cornbread mix. Cut up and add eggs.

**NEVER pack dressing into pan to cook, and don’t stir too much!

"Giblet" Gravy

Use the rest of the chicken broth for the gravy. Don’t use giblets -- instead use the remaining chicken breast. Also, use broth from a box to have enough. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, stir the broth with 2-3 chopped, boiled eggs and the torn-up chicken breast. Get broth to boiling. Meanwhile, put 2-3 tablespoons of flour in a glass, and add hot or warm water to make a thin paste. As the broth boils, add the flour mixture to thicken it. Season with salt and pepper, heat thoroughly, and the “giblet” gravy is done!

t-day

Ok, so I’m a little late in writing about Thanksgiving, seeing as every store is fully festooned with Christmas bows and fake greenery and December has officially begun. But hey, it was late this year, and I’m still recuperating from the delicious glut of home-cooked goodies. (Bathroom scale, thou art my current and most loathed enemy!)

I’ll keep it simple in homage to the place we celebrated, because Noonday is a wonderfully simple sort of place, a place where lots of flowery adjectives just don’t seem right. So I’ll let the food speak for itself, and, in a couple days, I'll share two family recipes that are none of my doing but still publication-worthy. The following was our stupendous menu:

* Greenberg Turkey
* Cornbread Dressin’
* Giblet Gravy
* Baked Macaroni and Cheese
* Sautéed Brussels Sprouts
* Artichoke Casserole
* Green Beans
* Cranberry Sauce (both tart and sweet)
* Sweet Potatoes, au naturel

P.S. Doesn't my Daddy Tom have great hands?? (see above)

luscious leeks

If leeks cost a nickel per bunch, I swear I’d add them to every salty dish I make. That subtly piquant taste, the delicate bite of an onion, the rich freshness they retain even when cooked… I just love those dadgum things. And they even look lovely, reclining among the cabbage and radishes at the supermarket in long, lean, lime-green stalks, as if to say, “Yes, we are the supermodels of vegetables.”

And yet, Tom Thumb has squashed my leek-a-day dream by charging three bucks for a pair. So outraged have I been by that price, I have not purchased leeks in months. But when Mom called and said they were coming to our neck of the woods for lunch and a movie, my resolve crumbled.

One of the stalks is waiting patiently in the fridge like the jewel that it is, but the other was chopped into rings, sautéed in butter and generously heaped on chicken-provolone sandwiches. And that is why I am so heartily dedicated to the worldwide spread of this fabulous vegetable! It’s not just for quiche and soup, it’s a sandwich topper. A pasta enhancer. A cheese’s richest dream. Risotto’s most cherished mixer.

I have no distinct recipe for leeks, but here’s the best method I’ve found for coaxing out their fullest flavor.

Sautéed Leeks

One tablespoon butter
Dash of kosher salt
One leek

Melt butter in a sauté pan. Cut off the rooty end of the leek and the rather tough dark-green torso. You should have about 5-6 inches of usable leek. Cut into thin discs, and (this is SO enjoyable), using your thumb, push out the rings into the pan. Toss every 2-3 minutes. They’re done when you see hints of caramel brown on the edges, about 15 minutes.

the real cookie monster

Tom Brown is a lawyer back home in East Texas. And a runner, a bear-hugger, and father to a perpetually dirty kid who made fun of me every day in the third grade. But most importantly, Tom Brown is the creator of the (eponymous) greatest cookies ever.

And for the past decade or so, he has generously bestowed these oh-so-mouth-watering cookies upon our family, which has the good fortune of his friendship and, by extension, his cookie-receiving circle. In fact, I’m so darn special I got a batch of ‘em sent to me while at art school in Paris — a gift even more delicious considering the lack of peanut butter in grocery aisles of the “culinary capital of the world.”

At their gooey hearts, these are simply peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies. But if you have a handful of similar recipes, even a drawerful, I demand you toss them aside like the rubbish they are. Because even though no one can make a Tom Brown cookie quite as well as Tom Brown, any copies are more than worth the effort.

Tom Brown Cookies

2 eggs
2 sticks melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 bag chocolate chips

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix together the first seven ingredients, then add the flour. Stir in the peanut butter and chocolate chips, and bake for 7-9 minutes.

a savory marriage...

…of artichokes and crab, that is.

As a rule, I am not a mayonnaise fan. The word itself, even the sight of it, causes my uvula to tense up a bit, in preparation for the inevitable gag.

But as any Southern cook knows, mayonnaise is a necessary evil for truly creamy texture. Dips, salads, dressings, even tomato pies… all require the addition of a glutinous dollop (and Miracle Whip just doesn’t cut it, either.) The French use crème fraîche; we use raw eggs and oil. Nuff said.

And in the gloriously salty relationship of artichokes, crab, and a healthy dusting of parmesan, it is the glue that makes this marvelous mixture so very miraculous. (There’s enough alliteration for you to last till Christmas.)

This particular recipe is passed down from my mom, who snatched it from a lady named LuAnn Schoppe (I know this solely because her name is written on the recipe), and it’s perfect as a culinary launchpad for the holiday season. It’s a quick, easy, scrumptious appetizer to accompany the requisite mixed nuts and champagne punch bowl.

Artichoke Dip

1 can artichokes, drained and chopped

1 can white crabmeat, drained
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup parmesan
2 minced garlic cloves

Mix all ingredients; chill and serve.

sweetmilk

Happy birthday, dear wee dad!

The odd, yet enticing, photo above stands as a tantalizing preview of the chocolate dulce-de-leche bars you will receive in a scant two days. Take this as an early birthday card.

Yes, father, I have crafted my very own dulce de leche. You should have seen it… simmering and frothing in a sweet, milky puddle in my Calphalon pan which was a wedding present from your own wallet (though somehow I doubt you remember). It was a rich, fragrant, swirling whirlpool of goodness -- more delicate, more fragile, more dairy than its petty American counterpart.

Sigh.

I think it’s pretty obvious by now who should be getting the fattest inheritance.

Dulce de Leche

2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
A splash of vanilla

Scald milk in a heavy pan by stirring occasionally over low heat until steam breathes gently from its surface. Add the sugar, soda and vanilla, slowly, and stir till it dissolves. Cook over medium heat for an hour, stirring every 5 minutes or so. Be sure to remove it from heat the instant it thickens into a gorgeous, tawny syrup.

one step closer

Just look at that crust.

No, really. Take a good, long, lustful look at that crust. The glistening, caramel pool of maple custard lapping at its flaky borders. The seductive lack of a single slice of perfect, all-homemade pie.

At last, I have surpassed one more obstacle on the oft-treacherous road to becoming a Great Southern Cook. Not chef. No self-respecting Texas-bred woman would call herself a chef. That’s a word for Yankees and Europeans. But the Great Southern Cook… now that is an elusive title reserved almost exclusively for those with at least five grandchildren. I’m hoping to get there by the time I find my first gray hair. (Overachiever is my middle name.)

And this decadent disc of dessert, a.k.a. maple pie, brought me one step closer. The filling is rich, eggy, and tooth-cracking sweet, the result of a recipe from a tiny yellow book I picked up at a syrup stand during our honeymoon in Vermont. The crust hits much closer to home… my precious Nanny passed along the recipe after my most recent disastrous attempt at an all-homemade pie. Your eyebrows may greet your hairline when you read about mixing milk with Crisco, but the whole thing is just plain tasty and easy as… pie. (Forgive me.)


Maple Pie

2 eggs
2 yolks
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Lightly beat all the eggs in a medium bowl. Whisk in the brown sugar, cream, maple syrup and vanilla. Beat long enough to dissolve the sugar. Pour filling into a pre-baked crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes, until center is almost firm.


Never-Fail Pie Crust

Stir together 7 tablespoons shortening and 1 teaspoon milk. Boil a bit of water and measure 3 tablespoons, adding to mixture. Add 1 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and roll that baby out on a floured surface. Bake at 375 for about 10 minutes.

maplemoon

On Saturday morning, my husband and I slept till noon, snuggled under mounds of blankets, and feasted on maple-infused French toast… basically, we relived our Vermont honeymoon on a cool Texas morning.

Almost two years ago, we spent a drowsy week in Stowe, a rolling, picturesque dot of a town dressed in mist and fog. And because we happened to choose a wonderful, tiny bed-and-breakfast called the Timberholm Inn, the highlight of our day was often breakfast. With a daily cookie-and-tea hour, roaring fire, and no other inhabitants, we had the place (and the breakfast table) all to ourselves. Which meant a regular, mid-morning spread of epic proportions.

Despite the mushroom-white cheddar scramble and maple-soaked sausage, our favorite dish was a simple one — maple-infused French toast — and a decadent one to boot. Two pieces of this and you’re irresistibly drawn back to bed for another hour. Our hosts were delicious enough to actually send me the recipe, and though it takes some preparation (the stale bakery bread and real maple syrup are required), the payoff is beyond sweet.

It’s thick, soft and creamy on the inside, the lightest bit of crunch on the outside, redolent with butter and maple syrup and crowned with a dusting of powdered sugar. And I’ve decided to re-dub this breakfast/dessert “Soporific French Toast,” because the combination of half-and-half, eggs, butter, bread, and syrup is about as strong as a full dose of Nyquil.

And what the heck, I’m feeling generous today. I’ll actually give you the recipe.

Soporific French Toast
(with many thanks to Rich & Darrick)

1/2 loaf good bread, thickly sliced
1/2 stick of butter
5 eggs
3/4 cup half-and-half
1/2 cup pure Vermont maple syrup
1 tablespoon pure vanilla
Pinch of ground nutmeg

Slice the bread by hand the night before and leave out to dry. The next morning, melt butter and set aside. In a bowl, mix the eggs, half-and-half, syrup, vanilla, and nutmeg. Add the butter and blend well with a whisk. Pour the egg mixture over the bread (best to lay them in a casserole dish) and let the bread soak for a full hour. Griddle with plentiful butter to a golden brown. Top with powdered sugar and more maple syrup.

autumn omen

There is no one in the world as devoted to sweets as my mom. She inhales vanilla ice cream and gulps down peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies (a future post, if you’re lucky), yet somehow retains her slim little French figure. So unfair.

But she has perfected the simplest recipe for the most luscious, spice-replete cake you can imagine. For we autumn aficionados (that’s basically all Texans, since late September is our first taste of relief from the blistering summer), it is the perfect prequel to whet our appetites for all things fall. *And just WAIT for the warm, thick, sumptuous dishes I’ll be fixing in the coming months!

This cake is most mouth-watering when packed with very ripe, fresh pears, and even better when those pears were picked up in the horse pasture of your parents’ ranch-estate in Noonday. They’re ugly little buggers when harvested, lumpy in shape and freckled with black pinpoints, but a quick peel unveils the sweet, pearly flesh beneath. And that flesh is just waiting to dive into a Bundt pan. Trust me.

Pear Cake

4 very ripe pears
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable or canola oil
1 teaspoon nutmeg (feel free to add more!)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (feel free to add more!)
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl by hand, adding one at a time and stirring thoroughly after each addition. Lightly spray a Bundt pan and pour batter in. Bake for 1 hour and 10-15 minutes in a 300-degree oven.

ode to the noonday onion

O little, bulbous vegetable of Noonday,
How desperately I love thee!
How satisfying your papery sheath,
How perfect your promise to me!

Deep in the summer you are bestowed upon me
By grandparents lovely and generous,
And rich is the flavor that awaits my mouth
It makes the Vidalia, well, onerous.

Your layers offer sweet temptation,
Your flesh with its crunchiest bite.
Your diminutive size is a true treasure,
Your scent a piquant delight.

Never shall I forsake your pearly skin!
Never your luscious taste!
For whether on burgers or straight off the grill,
But for you, my mouth shall be chaste.

not quite there

I like pie.

I’m a custard pie fiend. A brown sugar pie master. And the forerunner of maple pie in the Randall-Boone culinary lineage. But fruit pies… thou hast thrown the gauntlet down.

A clump of strawberries and rhubarb, already chopped, has been tucked in my freezer door since the Great Jam Day of ’08, especially reserved for my first attempt at crafting a wholly-from-scratch, kick-butt fruit pie. And for once, my fierce independence in the kitchen (i.e., my refusal to stick to a recipe) served me wrongly.

The one recipe I followed, from the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens, produced a crust that was passable but flavorless. Thus, I will not reveal that recipe here but vow to continue a dedicated search for the perfect homemade crust, because I simply cannot believe that Marie Callender has upstaged me so easily.

My method for the filling was pulled from a bunch of different recipes, and while the flavor was lovely and rich, the texture was two steps away from gluey. So the recipe I’m providing now is much improved from what I originally followed, and it should produce lovely, rich, juicy results.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Filling

3 cups chopped strawberry and rhubarb
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar

Stir it all together and, what the heck, just pour it in the boxed M.C. crust from the supermarket.

melon goodness

Watermelon itself is sweet, cool, summery, and totally cliché; watermelon pudding is sweet, cool, summery, and totally bizarre. I don’t know about you, but I’m the type to consistently choose unusual over normal. When I spotted the recipe for Sicilian watermelon pudding in the August issue of Saveur, I knew it was a dessert destined for my mouth.

Beware: the recipe sounds très simple, but it will ruin your entire kitchen. I mean, fat, pink, sticky globs everywhere. You can fix this problem by cleaning as you cook, but that just sucks all the joy out of creating a big, beautiful mess. Don’t even try this without a large, fine sieve and a lot of time. As with most pudding, you’ll be hunched over a big pot, forced to watch and stir til it boils, for about 40-45 minutes.

But I’m giving you the pessimism before optimism. Truth be told, once the pudding has attained a lovely coolness in the refrigerator and is topped by a quivering dollop of whipped cream, it bursts in your mouth with its gorgeous, forceful watermelon flavor. The texture is certainly odd at first, but the taste is unbeatable.

Gelo di Melone

6 cups watermelon, seeded and in chunks
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Whipped cream, for garnish

Purée watermelon in a blender until liquefied, and set aside. Whisk together sugar and cornstarch in a big pot or saucepan. While whisking, drizzle in liquid fruit. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping bottom with a spoon. (Easier method: stir very regularly, occasionally cover pot with top to speed boiling.)

Boil, stirring constantly to prevent scorching, for five minutes or until it thickens slightly. Remove from heat and whisk in the vanilla. Using a rubber spatula, push and scrape the pudding through a fine sieve into a bowl. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4-6 hours.

To serve, spoon pudding in small bowls and top with a hearty amount of whipped cream.

BBKing

My husband is incredible for a million reasons. He lets me order stuffed-crust pizza on a regular basis, inhales everything I cook with true appreciation, and cleans the dishes every night since I’m the chef. Rarely does he venture into the kitchen, unless it’s to microwave salsa or brew iced tea.

But he had a hankering to try making his own barbecue sauce, and spent hours pilfering through recipes before he settled on a favorite. (Many tweaks were made, so it’s his recipe now.) I swear I didn’t say a word, look over a shoulder or pick up a spoon while he cooked it up, and it turned out to be a masterpiece. Rich and salty (none of that sweet, molasses-y barbecue in my house), it gets a considerable boost from fresh garlic and a big splash of beer.

We debuted the stuff smeared all over shredded chicken for a party a few nights ago, and he got rave reviews. In fact, we’ve decided our last name deserves to be in the very title of the sauce. Therefore, here is the world premiere of… Bar-Boone-Que Sauce!


BBQ sauce

2 tbsp. vegetable oil
Small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tbsp. chili powder
20 oz. bottle of ketchup
1/2 cup Shinerbock
3 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp. coarse-ground Dijon mustard
4 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
S&P

In a saucepan, cook onions in oil over medium heat til tender. Stir in garlic, cayenne, and chili powder and cook for one minute. Add ketchup, beer, vinegar, water, brown sugar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, S&P. Partially cover and simmer until slightly thickened, about 15-20 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning, if you like, with Tabasco.

blender salsa

Any true Texan will tell you that close behind (or sometimes in front of) a love of home cookin’ falls the brilliant, gut-stuffing adoration of Tex-mex. We hold that the best Mexican food is not just found in our state, it’s got a heavy dose of Texan in it, too. Hence the abundance of orange cheese and salty, salty chips.

Like most good Texans, I cherish a good, bracing salsa. My husband is a bit more devoted… he consumes at least one gallon of salsa every two weeks. It’s an addiction which I feed gratefully. (Hey, at least no empty bottles or video games are involved.)

So when Nanny and Daddy Tom loaded me down with a Wal-mart bag full of tomatoes from their garden, my gut reaction was to try something new and something for him — homemade salsa. Typically I don’t use a recipe when I make something simple, and this time was no exception, so forgive me if the measurements are a bit loose. Salsa should cater to your tastebuds anyway. This variety (cleverly fixed in a blender) has a robust tomato taste with a subtle cilantro and onion aftertaste and a final kiss of jalapeño.

Salsa

8-9 ripe, fresh tomatoes
3 jalapeños
2 small Noonday onions
2 cloves garlic
7-8 sprigs of cilantro
Generous amount of salt
Big sprinkle of garlic powder

Cut tomatoes in wedges and pulverize in a blender. Set aside. Trim and halve the peppers, removing the seeds of two of them. Finely dice the onions, garlic and peppers (a food processor works wonders here). Trim and roughly chop the cilantro leaves. Add all ingredients to the tomato mixture, give it a good stir, and season to your liking with salt and garlic.

Eat up!

Sidenote: I apologize in advance if you don’t have Noonday onions, which are the greatest in the world, but market varieties will suffice. I suppose.

noonday delights

Admittedly, my husband and I are not the richest people in the world. So the weekends we spend at Tulgey Wood, my parents’ sprawling, gorgeous ranch-estate in Noonday (population: 512), are like precious little getaways. And they’re always chock-full of delicious food, because I’m fortunate enough to count my veggie-loving, French mama and my casserole-touting, Texan Nanny as part of my culinary heritage.

Friday night’s meal was fresh, homegrown butternut and acorn squash, sliced tomatoes, and bread-and-butter, which cancelled out the ample spread Nanny prepared after church on Sunday. Devilled eggs, tuna salad, chips and dip, more tomatoes, peach cobbler and another… more interesting… dessert.

Tomato cobbler.

I’ll give you a few seconds to let that one sink in.

Apparently Nanny’s love of the sweet flesh of summer tomatoes prompted a years-long desire to try her famous cobbler recipe, just with cut-up tomatoes instead of fruit. The result got mixed reviews, but you have to appreciate an adventurous spirit in the kitchen. (As long as there’s a tried-and-true alternative for your guests… peach cobbler never fails!)

golden chicken

There are few things that genuinely terrify me in the kitchen. One of them is whole chicken. The first time I bought one, I didn’t let it thaw properly, then found the necessity of poking and prodding the poor chicken’s… hole… completely disgusting. As in, I danced around the kitchen shrieking until my husband came in and had a go at it. Even he joined me in (manly) shrieking after a couple seconds.

So until I screw up the courage, I’ll settle for cleaned, separated chicken parts that come in a neat little package at the supermarket. My favorite are drumsticks, which are about two bucks for five and highly appealing when roasted.

I can’t take full credit for this method; the basics come from the quirky French mind of Clothilde Dusolier, blogging doyenne of Chocolate & Zucchini, the best food blog… well, ever. The best part is, it’s easy to customize and mold to your own tastebuds.

Easy Oven Chicken

Drumsticks
S&P

Prepare meat by rubbing it with S&P, or any other spice you darn well want. Or cloak it in barbecue sauce. Or Italian dressing. Or drizzle some olive oil and tuck in a few sprigs of fresh herb and garlic cloves around it. The possibilities are endless.

Lay the meat in a glass or metal baking pan (lightly grease the bottom if you’re not using oil on the chicken). Stick in a 360-degree oven, leave it in there for an hour, and presto! Perfect, juicy, crunchy-skinned chicken.

cucumber babies

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I was surely an… odd child. I preferred reading to sweating, styled my own hair, wrote plays and forced my brothers into the boring princess roles, and generally attempted to wear as many colors as humanly possible on any given day. And though I had a couple Barbies and stuffed animals, in the summertime, my doll of choice was a cucumber.

My grandparents had a lovely, sprawling vegetable garden that produced an abundance of lovely, sprawling cucumbers. I mean, cucumbers as long as your arm and thick as a saxophone. They weren’t much good for eating or pickling, and somehow my Nanny and I decided they’d be best for playing. Cradled in the crook of my arm and wrapped with a couple of banana leaves for blankets, the cucumber took on the life of a doll after Nanny gave it a cartoonish, Sharpie face.

See? Odd, and yet, so cool.

I still love the sweet, crisp crunch of a cucumber, whether in pickle or fresh form. (I haven’t tried the former yet; that will be a future, autumnal post.) Always best when gleaned by the bag-ful from someone’s garden, these babies are delicious in a million different ways. Here are a few of my favorites:

* Chopped and tossed with fresh tomatoes, olive oil, feta cheese and garlic.
* Sliced up like chips and eaten with a coating of S&P.
* Diced and substituted for relish in tuna salad.
* Julienned and stuffed into falafel.
* Thinly sliced, on any sandwich.
* The French way: chopped and mixed with fresh mint, sea salt and a bit of plain yogurt.

Sidenote: The modern version of my cucumber baby, dubbed “Little Boonie” by my delightful Nanny, currently resides on my windowsill. It’s a comforting piece of décor.

guffaw-scrawls

Oftentimes the greatest recipes are the simplest. And there’s nothing like a warm snickerdoodle to convince you of that. That soft, pillowy texture, that creamy, buttery taste and all dusted with crystals of cinnamon and sugar… bet your mouth is watering right now.

These are my husband’s favorite cookies, and the recipe happens to be the very first cookie concoction I ever tried. Of course, chocolate chip is the classic starter for a preteen baker, but after my eyes locked on the word “snickerdoodle” in the cookbook index, there was no going back. Little did I know the recipe produced, oh, about six dozen cookies. My sugar-lovin’ dad was delighted, but I was hot and sweaty by the time I’d shoveled all the cookies off the pan.

So here is your fair warning: you’ll have cookies coming out your fridge, pantry, freezer and ears with this recipe. Totally worth it.


Snickerdoodles

3 3/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 sticks butter at room temperature
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar

Stir together the first three ingredients and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs, milk and vanilla and beat well. Gradually add flour mixture and beat til combined. Chill the dough for about an hour (or 20 minutes or so in the freezer). Roll dough into one-inch balls, roll around in a bunch of cinnamon and sugar, then place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.

pearls of wisdom

Today I was heartbroken to learn that Mississippi leads the nation in obesity. Closely followed by Tennessee and Alabama. Sigh. Texas, oh Texas, where is your fire? Until now, you always made good on your promise that everything would be bigger (and so much better) within your hallowed borders. I’m disappointed, mother land, truly disappointed.

One food item sure to tip those scales in our favor is the infamous corn-on-the-cob at our state fair. For four dollars, you can pile on all the calories you walked off among the bright lights and whirling machines with a giant ear of corn quite literally dunked in a vat of butter. (Let us all pause in reverence of the very concept: a vat of butter.) I’d imagine that baby has as many calories as five candy bars. But who’s counting?

However, lest our population dwindle because of that ever-pesky heart disease, today I proffer a beautiful, flavorful, simple way to make corn-on-the-cob that will make your mouth water and your waistband gape. I guess health really is more important than winning at everything.

And hey, we were once a full-fledged republic. Try to top that, ol’ Miss!


Perfect Corn-on-the-Cob

A couple ears of corn
Two teaspoons olive oil
S&P

Husk and clean corn. Brush each ear lightly with olive oil, sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper (or other spices - chili powder’s a good one), and wrap each ear loosely in foil, twisting the ends to seal each “packet.” Stick them in a 350-degree oven for 25 minutes, unwrap, inhale that delicious steam and immediately devour.

on love, and tomatoes

On a long, yawning Saturday, when you’ve nothing better to do than go for a swim or crack open a new book, the delicious and almighty Cheesewich stakes its culinary claim. A rather simple affair with bread, cheddar, garlic and butter, the Cheesewich exists wholly in dedication to my all-time favorite summer produce (see how deftly I avoided the fruit-vegetable argument?)… tomato.

There are a few tests to ensure that you have the right tomato for a Cheesewich. If your tomato does not fulfill all of these requirements, I say drop it into a homemade marinara and leave my precious Cheesewich be. It cannot abide a lesser specimen.

First, the tomato must utterly overtake your palm when you pick it up. If it is the size of a tangerine, laugh in its face and toss it aside. Second, the tomato must be so richly crimson that when the first slice falls off its shiny face you helplessly gasp in delight. Third, the tomato must have been gathered from your own garden or bought from a roadside stand or farmer’s market.

Once you have the crucial item in hand, nothing will make better, more immediate use of it than a Cheesewich. I don’t know what your family calls it, but we Randalls (and now Boones) dubbed this sucker a Cheesewich, and since my dad is the number-one Cheesewich chef in the world, I’m taking his word for it.


Cheesewich
(makes two)

4 slices of good bread
1 tablespoon of butter
Garlic salt
2 handfuls of cheddar
A Perfect Tomato

Brush 2 slices of bread with the melted butter and generously sprinkle garlic salt on top. Then generously sprinkle cheddar cheese on the two naked slices. Bake the bread, topping-side up, on a foil-lined baking sheet in a 375-degree oven (or broil) for about 5 minutes, until cheese is fully melted and bubbling in a mouth-watering fashion. Remove, slide onto two plates, and mound slices of fresh tomato on the cheesy side. Top with the buttery side, and eat immediately.

Sidenote: Keep a pile of napkins on hand for this one.

cobblin' genius

I trust that I’ve already convinced you of my die-hard love for Texas peaches. Now, allow me to convince you of the utter necessity of falling in love with my Nanny’s recipe for cobbler. Sure, there are hundreds, even thousands maybe, of sweet little grandmas championing their cobbler methods above all else, but to them I say, “Prepare to meet your doom.”

Those classic, crusty strips criss-crossing fruit in a Pyrex dish? My Nanny tosses her hair at them. (She might stick out her tongue, too; she was a pre-kindergarten teacher after all…) Instead, she has concocted an easy-as-pie, even-more-delicious way to fix cobbler that results in pools of buttery juice, mountains of caramelized dough and valleys of sugar-soaked fruit — and all that after about five minutes of kitchen time.

And on an occasional summer afternoon, after Daddy Tom (her husband, my grandfather) wanders out toward the four stalwart peach trees bordering the driveway in their front yard and comes back with a couple jewels in hand, she’ll whip up one of these babies with fresh peaches from their very own land, and nothing tastes sweeter.

Believe me, you don’t know how darn lucky you are that I’m sharing her recipe with you.

Nanny’s Cobbler

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter or oleo
1 cup flour
Pinch salt
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup milk
3 cups fruit (peaches!!)

Melt butter in 1 1/2-quart dish for oven. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and 1 cup sugar. Stir in milk. Pour into middle of melted butter. Place fruit in the middle of the dough. Pour 1 cup sugar on top of the fruit. DO. NOT. STIR.

Stick the whole thing into a 325-degreee oven for 50 minutes to an hour. In my immortal Nanny’s words, you’ll get a “crazy crust great tasting cobbler.”

Sidenote: Every time Nanny invites us up for dinner we hope and pray cobbler will be waiting in the wings. It usually is, and it tends to be even better with a hunk of vanilla ice cream on top.

jam session

The expanse of time after noon til suppertime in the South is usually so blistering hot it feels like a wet electric blanket has been tossed over the whole world. It’s a time best reserved for naps, mint juleps and porch swinging. Unfortunately, many corporations in our great nation do not understand this.

As a teacher, however, I thumb my nose at them and enjoy long bouts of reading and cooking in air-conditioned comfort, though gin gimlets tend to be my favorite alcoholic company.

Last week, in an effort to buck up my status as Southern housewife, I strapped on my apron and headed for the kitchen, bravely entering the realm of a cooking pastime I just knew would result in sticky, messy disaster: jam-making. I was armed only with gritted teeth, high hopes and a simple recipe I’d found on the Internet.

And while the jar sterilizing, strawberry and rhubarb chopping and bubble watching were more time-consuming than I’d figured, the whole thing ended up being a smashing success. Especially considering I’d imagined ending up with gallons and gallons of ruby-hued jam and no where to put it but Tupperware. The recipe below is tweaked a bit for clarity, but best of all, it’s manageable. You’ll end up with about 2-3 cups of homemade jam — not 87.

Berry Jam

2 1/4 cups cane sugar
2 1/2 cups crushed berries (feel free to add those deliciously tart crimson stalks, too)
A squirt of lemon juice

Start by thoroughly cleaning your jam jars by sticking them in a boiling pot of water. Remove the pot from heat, and let the jars sit in there until you’re ready to pour the jam. Clean the lids by dunking them quickly in the boiling water. The hot jam mixture works better with warm jars and lids.

Mix up the sugar, berries and lemon juice in a good-sized pot on high heat, stirring regularly until the mixture comes to a boil (this will happen faster than you think). Reduce heat to medium, and continue cooking at a slow boil (20-30 bubbles on the surface is ideal) for about 15 minutes. Mixture will still be thin but pretty as a jewel.

Fill jars immediately (funnels are a good idea here) and cap. Line them up on the windowsill so you can admire them as they cool. Once they’re about room temperature, put them in the fridge and enjoy within the hour!

Sidenote: My husband can’t stand preserves and jam, and he thought this stuff was to-die-for. There’s the true measure of success.

peachy keen

Georgia may be known across the country as a land flowing with milk and peaches, but we all know the sun shines brightest (and most hellishly) in Texas. And that means fuzzy-skinned fruit just as sweet and succulent as the ones produced by our Southern neighbors.

As soon as mid-June comes around, the skinny roads meandering through the Texan countryside play host to scores of itty bitty fruit-and-veggie stands, most of them run by overall-clad, dusty farmer’s wives or retirees with a piece of straw in their mouths. They stick signs by the side of the road with squished, painted letters promising “Shelled Peas! Melon! Jacksonville Tomatoes!” and, if you’re very lucky, one of those signs will hold the seven juiciest letters in the summer alphabet: p-e-a-c-h-e-s.

I don’t care if your wife is in labor or you’re already late for a funeral — when you see one of those signs, you pull over just as fast as you can. Take the two minutes to hand over a couple crumpled bills for that precious mound of homegrown peaches, almost always balanced in a little basket, then carefully dumped in a plastic Wal-mart bag for your enjoyment. At least when you get back in the car and time rushes you on, you can dampen its obnoxious ticking with your first bite of that gorgeous, peachy flesh.