Comfort food

The sun has gone back behind the clouds and I'm feeling stretched thin today, so tonight we are having comfort food for dinner. I'm going to make The Splendid Table/Lynne Rosetto Kasper's 21st Century Mac and Cheese and some collards. I'm going to try the collards with tomatoes like I had down in NC. The Mac and Cheese recipe is one of my favorites and doesn't require making a white sauce (not that white sauce is hard to make, I just have never found it terribly fun). The onion and garlic blended in it gives it a punch and makes it feel a bit more grown-up.

Do you have a favorite comfort food recipe? If so, send it my way.

Here's the recipe (with my alterations)

21st Century Mac and Cheese

Serves 4 and doubles easily.

• 1/2 pound (2 cups ) raw penne pasta, cooked and drained (I like Trader Joe’s whole wheat penne--it adds a nutty flavor and unlike some whole wheat pasta, doesn't turn to mush.)
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1 small clove garlic
• 3/4 medium onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 generous cup (5 ounces) shredded good quality, extra-sharp cheddar cheese
• 5 ounces cream cheese, cut into small, sticky cubes
• 2/3 cup (3 ounces) shredded Gruyere cheese
• Generous 1/8 teaspoon each hot red pepper flakes, salt, and freshly ground black pepper
• Generous 1/4 teaspoon sweet Hungarian paprika
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup Panko or regular bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a shallow 1 1/2 quart baking dish with non-stick spray, and add cooked pasta.

2. In a blender combine egg, milk, and garlic, and blend. Add onion, cheeses, peppers, salt, and paprika, and blend 'till all mixed up. Pour over the pasta. Casserole could be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated up to 24 hours at this point.

3. To bake, bring casserole close to room temperature. Melt butter in a small dish or pan and toss Panko or bread crumbs with it. Spread over top of casserole. Sprinkle with a little more paprika if you like the stuff. Bake about 20 to 25 minutes, or until thick yet creamy. If top is not golden, slip under broiler for a minute. Remove from oven, let stand about 5 minutes, and serve.

Tag, you're it

Along the same lines as the interview blogging phenomenon, I have discovered from my friend and terrific blogger, Lynne, that there is a book "Tag" game going on. She tagged me as one of her required three book junkies, so here is my response to the questions:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I haven’t read Fahrenheit 451 since high school so I had to look this up to find out the rules. Apparently, “the main character joins an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.” I’ll choose a book that I’d love to have the opportunity to re-tell over and over to people: Charles Baxter’s First Light.

The last book you bought is:
I, too, am a library junkie. I usually buy books as gifts and I gave 3 people Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated this past year for Christmas. The year before I gave copies of Rosina Lippi’s Homestead. Those two were probably my favorite books of 2004 and 2003 respectively.

The last book you read:
I keep a running list with comments as a subset of this blog.

What are you currently reading:
The same link as above applies to in-progress books. I rarely have just one going because I need a selection of books that will suit whatever mood I’m in and the circumstances in which I’ll be reading.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
I’m going to be uncharacteristically cheerful here and assume I would be rescued after a nice period of relaxation. So rather than stock up on the classics, I’d bring some books I’d like to re-read:

1. Michael Cunningham, The Hours
2. Esther Freud, Summer at Gaglow
3. Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy
4. Jane Mendelsohn, I Was Amelia Earhart
5. All of these are writers I admire and I want to learn from their craft, so I'm going to stretch the rules and make my fifth book my novel-in-progress Strange Animal. I'd also like a pen, if that's not too much to ask...

What three people will you pass the stick to, and why?
Well, that assumes that anyone is reading this blog…but what the heck. If any of them are reading this, I’d like to ask these questions of three of my writer friends Ami, Mary Jean and Sarah. They are all so perceptive about good writing and I’m hoping they’ll continue to share their insights with me.
As far as I know none of these folks have decided to occupy their spare moments by blogging, so they’ll just have to e-mail me with their answers. Sorry if this breaks the blogging trail of connectivity.

Recipe--Healthy Banana Muffins

By popular demand, here is the recipe for the healthy banana muffins. Ian ate 4 yesterday (and Fiona shredded one all over the back seat of the car, grrrrr. She definitely is a salt-tooth not a sweet-tooth) so I think they will become a regular feature over here.

Thanks for all the food inspiration. —Sue'’s mention of couscous and the beautiful weather yesterday have my brain considering the couscous artichoke walnut salad that’s in the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home book (which I find far more palatable than the regular Moosewood cookbooks.). It'’ll necessitate another trip to the store for some fresh dill (separate gripe: why is there no single store in Ann Arbor where I can get everything I need? I find myself continually roving between Meijers: —good produce, Hillers: —good meat, fish and exotic grocery items, Busch’s: —good meat and grocery items, Krogers—: good grocery/shelf items, Whole Foods: —expensive as hell, but good meat, usually good produce, cheese and bread, and Trader Joes: —some of the few foods that Ian eats plus good frozen stuff....It often hurts my brain trying to figure out where to do the damn shopping).

Healthy Banana Muffin recipe

1 C all purpose flour

1/2 C whole wheat flour

1/4 C white sugar

1/4 C either brown sugar or honey

1 C wheat germ (I like the toasted kind)

3 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

2 medium sized bananas, mashed (3 if you want really moist, heavy muffins)

1/2 C milk

1/4 C canola oil

2 eggs

1/2 C chocolate chips

preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Measure dry ingredients into bowl and stir well.

Combine wet ingredients in a bowl and mix 'till blended.

Add wet to dry all at once, stir just until all the dry stuff is incorporated, then stir in the chocolate chips.

Spray muffin tins with non-stick spray or line with papers, fill 2/3 full. For small muffins, bake 15 minutes, for big ones between 20-25 minutes. Makes about 18 small muffins, 10 or so large.

Happy Baking!

Chez Moi….

The fridge has been restocked and it is time to start cooking again after my week off!

I woke my son up with these relatively healthy banana muffins (part whole wheat flour, lots of wheat germ, and yes, some chocolate chips for the under-5 picky eater set).

It’s Indian food for dinner tonight:
A north Indian Chicken Curry recipe that I got out of Fine Cooking back when I still subscribed to it and probably the stewed Indian Green beans from Madhur Jaffrey’s great book Quick and Easy Indian Cooking (minus the mushrooms she calls for), raita and some plain basmati rice.

Later this week I’ll try the scallops with soba noodles recipe (I got to the Asian food store for the soba noodles over the weekend, but still need to track down the scallops).

What are you cooking? Inspire me.

Weeee're back

The Smoky Mountains were gorgeous. I’ll try and stay focused here on the 4 Obsessions review of our week away (for a few pics of our camping, canoeing and some damn cute kids, check out the pics I uploaded to Flickr)

Writing: none. No computer, thus no writing.

Reading: Got more than half way through Blindness which I am really loving; beautifully written, intense ideas, and lots to think about. Half a book is not bad when traveling with the under-5 set and having to alternate pages (no, not chapters, pages) of my book with Blueberries for Sal and The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broomhandle (which has one of my favorite lines in all of picture-book-dom “They chubbed their chubs and looked around and chubbed their chubs again”), which were Fiona’s favorites on this trip. Ian’s favorite was his latest anatomy book. I found myself reading to him about how the kidneys process urine…

Knitting: I finished the knitting for the mustard sweater, and yes, it necessitated 3/4 length sleeves. It pisses me off that the pattern (from Stitch and Bitch book 1) was so far off on the yarn requirements. I calculated the yardage and even purchased an extra skein, but for my sister’s sweater, it turned out 2 skeins off and for mine, 1 off. For Anna’s, I bought the 2 extra skeins, but I bought the yarn for mine through Elann and unfortunately they didn’t have any more for me to buy. I’ll try and block it this week and then do the crochet around the edges.

Cooking: Like I mentioned before we left, this was a week off from cooking for me. I did some damn good eating though. Brian stepped up to the plate (the jet-propulsion camping stove) and made some delectable back-woods food. Here is a photo of him whisking eggs for a fresh-chive omelet one morning. What is not to love about a man who has his own camping whisk?

And we managed to have a good quantity of the Southern food that we can only make (not find in restaurants) up here; while in Asheville visiting friends, I had some fabulous collards which were stewed with tomatoes, rather than the usual ham hock. I liked them a lot, probably even more than the traditional kind, and believe me, I can pack away a LOAD of good collards when I come across them. And I had some good corn relish and barbequed pork, too.

Now that I'm back in my kitchen, there is a Scallops with Soba Noodles recipe that I want to try. And I just got my latest copy of Cook's Illustrated and they have a how-to for marinated flank steak. I've never had a successful flank steak cooking experience (though I have managed to make some very expensive shoe leather with flank steak...). And due to an immensely frustrating experience in Lexington, Kentucky in which we did NOT get to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, Alfalfa's (we got there at 2:10 and they locked the doors at 2 pm so we could just look inside the big windows at all the lucky people eating their delicious lunches and had to choke down Subway crap instead), I will be assembling the sandwich I intended to order there in my kitchen.
Recipe:
My version of the Alfalfa Avocado Grill
Take two slices of whole grain or really good bread (today it will be Zingermann's traditional Jewish Rye), smear one side with a thick layer of hummus, put some sharp white cheddar cheese on the other side, in between, pack in some sliced avocado, tomato and alfalfa sprouts. Grill 'till cheese has melted and the bread is golden.