tilted skillet

butternut squash pie and a Hershey’s bar pilgrim

In many ways, this Thanksgiving was like any other. My mom made stuffing with Mrs. Cubbison’s seasoned mix, heeding our menfolk’s solemn requests to not “skimp on the sausage”. We served canned cranberry sauce for the sake of tradition, and a home-made pomegranate-cranberry compote that was so delicious I’m planning to refine the recipe and post it here. As always, there was more of my from-scratch version left over than there were gelatinous ridged slices. I made sure that kale and Brussels sprouts graced the table, going so far as to sneak Brussels sprouts chips onto the appetizer spread. I always go a little rogue with the vegetables. 

But what I didn’t see coming was Papa (grandfather) turning down two varieties of my baked-from-scratch pie…for a Hershey’s bar. 

I rose early Thanksgiving morning, blending chilled butter and cold water into flour and rolling out two crusts while a butternut squash roasted in the oven. As the bitter aroma of morning coffee tangled with that of the sweet squash, I toasted and chopped pecans and blind-baked the crusts with foil-lined beds of dry rice to keep the pastry from warping. I made the custards – one pumpkin (err, butternut squash) and one pecan – adding a little of this and a little of that to two bubbling pots that threatened to boil over at the slightest sign of inattention. 

While I lovingly smoothed the top of the butternut squash pie and snacked on a candied pecan or two, my mom was in her craft room, laboring over another family holiday tradition: the costumed-candy-as-name-placard.

For every holiday dinner, my exceedingly creative mom dreams up a new way to tell everyone where to sit. Much to the delight of our dinner guests, there’s usually candy involved. And this year, she went big time and used full-size Hershey’s bars cloaked in paper pilgrim costumes.

That night, after everyone had their fill of turkey et al., Mom and I whisked away the plates and set to whipping cream to top the pies. With a flourish of pomp and circumstance, we deposited the pies on the table just inches in front of Papa – who, much to my amusement, was a square or two away from polishing off his Hershey’s. The pilgrim’s hat lay crumpled next to his napkin.

I thought he’d be thrilled with my pies. Never before had I been given the honor of holiday pie duty! Certain he’d want a slice of both, I asked him anyway. “No pie!” he said. “I can’t fit another bite.”

Temporarily crestfallen, I pressed him. “I made them myself!” I implored. “The crust, the butternut squash puree, the pecan custard…”

I had hardly finished bestowing praise on my pies before he responded with a resolute “I don’t care!” and the last bite of his Hershey’s. As best I can remember, until then Papa had never rejected anything I’d said, made, or done. His sweet tooth is outrageous. These things should have worked in my favor, but this Thanksgiving, I gave thanks for Papa and his peculiarities.

Papa’s 89. His days are measured by happy hours at his retirement home, visits from my mom, and good meals. I could learn a thing or two from him about how to live, and at age 89, he knows what he likes. Even if it’s a Hershey’s bar. In about a month’s time my desserts will be put to the test once again. If past Christmas dinners are any bellwether of those to come, my dessert nemesis will likely come in the form of a Snickers bar-cum-snowman, a miniature present box filled with hard red candies, or a wee sleigh carrying a load of M&Ms. I’ve got my whisk and my apron, and I’m ready.

delicata squash fries with Sriracha mayo

It’s life’s little discoveries and epiphanies from which I derive great satisfaction. I still remember when I made the connection between Target and its eponymous logo. I remember because it wasn’t very long ago. Or the time I discovered that the big pot of ‘green garlic’ I inherited last year was actually a variety of non-flowering tulip. I remember because I put tulips in my omelet, and it turns out most people consider tulips inedible. My stomach agreed with that assessment.  

More recently, after years of roasting and sautéing Brussels sprouts, I had a Brussels sprouts awakening at a restaurant in San Diego. I ate two orders just to be sure, but now I know that the fast track to addictive Brussels sprouts involves frying them in pork fat, and serving them with lots of cheese and, of course, more pork.

We’ll save the Brussels sprouts for another day, because last Tuesday was the day I had an epiphany while standing alone in my kitchen with a delicata squash. Doing so is hardly an unusual event, given my love of winter squash and decorative gourd season. As its name suggests, the delicata squash is delicate. Its skin, unlike the skin of most winter squash, is edible. A medium delicata squash is the perfect size for one person, unlike many monstrous winter gourd specimens.

The funny thing about delicata squash is that I’ve only ever seen them cut into little half moons. The half moons are lovely and the textural contrast between crunchy skin and soft flesh is appetizing, but why is it that everyone – from prep cooks and home cooks to fancy chefs and cooking instructors – thinks the delicata is an one-trick squash?

Alone in my kitchen with the delicata squash, I went rogue. I rotated that squash 90 degrees and sliced it into long, lithe spears. Tossed with warming spices and roasted at high heat, the squash fries emerged from the oven caramelized and slightly crispy on the outside with soft, creamy interiors. Dipped into a quick Sriracha mayo (with homemade Sriracha and homemade mayo!), the long delicata spears were nothing short of a minor miracle.

za'atar-deviled eggs

It’s only fitting that my Halloween celebration this year was entirely food-focused. Halloween fell on a Wednesday which, being a weekday, is in my book a night reserved mostly for parties of the dinner variety. My cooking buddy Amy and I wanted a festive menu for our Wednesday night feast, minus the garish food coloring and grotesque shapes often synonymous with spooky food.

Instead, we went the way of the wordsmith, devising a menu of ‘devilish’ fare. Our cocktail of choice, kill devil punch, sported a raspberry-induced not-quite-blood-red hue. Devils on horseback and deviled eggs served as appetizers. We crisped chicken al diavalo-style wings on the grill, and capped off the night with pumpkin devil’s food cake whoopie pies sandwiched with lemon-almond meringue frosting.

It really wasn’t fair to serve anything alongside the devils on horseback which, for those of you unfamiliar with the lesser-known varieties of bacon-wrapped edibles, are unfathomably delicious, grilled bacon-wrapped dates. They’re not the type of appetizer over which people play nice and refuse to take the last one off the plate.

That said, I’d like to make a case for the deviled eggs, which were consumed with only slightly less gusto than the devilish equestrians. Inspired by the za’atar my new friend Tammy gave me last weekend at Eat Retreat (more on that later), I added a few interesting touches to the deviled eggs’ usual one-two punch of mayonnaise and mustard.

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely destroy at least a couple eggs when trying to peel them. I try every trick in the book – using week-old eggs, adding vinegar and a lemon wedge to the boiling water, chilling the boiled eggs in an ice bath for hours. I chalk up my regular egg peeling failures to my absurdly fresh CSA eggs, but either way I base my deviled egg recipe on nine eggs, rather than a full dozen. I usually mash up the deformed bits and pieces with some greens, mayo, and mustard, and spoon the deconstructed deviled eggs atop crackers.

let’s do this together: olive curing at home

My love affair with olives started at a tender age, and rather incongruously. Around age four, I became one of those allergy kids for whom grass, trees, pollen, and dust bunnies under the bed elicits a strong immune response. Between sneezes and sniffles, I learned how to pour stiff drinks for my papa (grandfather). 

A lifelong fan of the gin and tonic, Papa would let me pour the gin, so long as I remembered to only pour for as long as it took to count to three. It’s a family joke that my “one, two, three” sounded more like “onnnneeeee, twoooooo, threeeeee”, so Papa probably got more than he bargained for during my formative bartending years.

The best part about making Papa’s drink was the olive jar. Plump and stuffed with garishly red pimientos, the olives were super-salty and perfectly sized for my little mouth. I couldn’t get enough of them, or their brine. Like most little kids, I wanted to do everything my papa did, but pouring myself a stiff gin and tonic was not in the cards. Instead, Papa created a cocktail especially for me that consisted of water and a jigger of olive brine on the rocks with three olives impaled on a toothpick. We’d sip our cocktails together, and I’d almost always ask for more olives. 

It wasn’t long before my parents identified the main source of my allergies: the olive tree growing outside my bedroom window. The olive tree came down and I started a round of allergy shots, but my love for the little green orbs never wavered.

Papa the cocktail master

Fast forward 24 years, and I still love olives. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t enjoy a few. These days, I hardly ever eat the pimiento-stuffed olives of my youth, instead favoring such varieties as the hard-to-pronounce castelvetrano, shriveled oil-cured black olives, and big Sicilian olives stuffed with garlic and citrus rind.

This past weekend at the Redwood City farmers’ market, I happened upon a small bucket of raw green olives at one of the few organic vendor’s stalls. Although I probably have at least a pound of already-cured olives at home and plenty at my disposal at any grocery store, I couldn’t turn down the chance to spend months curing my own in what is a fairly laborious process.

I’m going to make this post the first in a thrilling miniseries about the fascinating world of home olive curing, and I encourage you to join me! Fresh olives are available at farmers’ markets in olive-growing regions in late September through most of October. There are many ways to cure them, but the underlying goal is to remove all of the bitterness from their main phenolic compounds, oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol. These compounds give extra-virgin olive oil its coveted bitter flavor, but eating whole raw olives is an experience I wish on no one.

In subsequent posts, I’ll keep you updated on the progress of my olives as they sit in a bucket of water (okay, there’s a little more to it than that). Stay tuned! This is going to be exciting.

beef and bacon Bolognese with roasted spaghetti squash

In college, the pinnacle of my culinary creativity involved mixing various cereals together to create a special blend that I ate in place of, or as a supplement to, many dining hall meals. Quaker’s Life and some sort of granola with severely dried raisins usually filled most of my bowl, but on special occasions the dining hall staff would, to the delight of many, mix things up with the addition of Kashi or Puffins. It was an exciting time.

Although I now live less than three miles from my former cereal mecca, my culinary endeavors have expanded to new horizons – horizons that include turning on the stove, using a chef’s knife, and treating my refrigerator and freezer like stationary pack mules. Old habits die hard, but with a twist: while you won’t find a box of Life cereal in our house, a jar of homemade granola has a permanent residence nestled behind the fruit bowl on our kitchen counter.

Last weekend, many hands and spoons were dipped into the granola jar as I had a couple college friends staying with us for our five year reunion. While we spent most of our time tailgating, catching up with former classmates, and brunching, I managed to fit in a few home-cooked meals for the gang. One dinner turned into a cooking lesson with a dear friend who, now in graduate school across the country, has taken an interest in learning to cook.

Over her last couple visits, I’ve taught her a few basic dishes, including vinegar-braised chicken and Thai curry. On Sunday, I showed her how to make a streamlined and admittedly non-traditional beef Bolognese with roasted spaghetti squash. It’s a basic version of the type of hearty fare that seems right for the season, especially for people who live in regions with distinct seasons. I am not one of those people, but I find myself craving lots of warming, meat-based meals this time of year.

As she packed up Monday morning, I tucked a couple homemade blueberry muffins into her bag for the long flight back home. I took her to the airport, and came home to an eerily quiet house. I heated up the leftover Bolognese and ate it for breakfast. Special cereal it was not, but I couldn’t help mixing it up by topping my bowl with a few shavings of hard goat cheese and a handful of Marcona almonds. Old habits die hard.

100 pounds of apples

When I get it in my head that I want to do something, there’s usually no stopping me. Call it OCD, call it persistence, or if you’re my fiancée, call it annoying. As soon as we settled on Chileno Valley Ranch for our wedding venue, I decided I wanted to bake apple pies for our wedding dessert from apples we’d pick at the ranch. This meant 25 pies, or 50 crusts, to be delicately rolled. It meant procuring 75 pounds of apples and 60 sticks of butter, and finding a giant freezer on the cheap.

I couldn’t figure out how I was going to accomplish this feat on my one kitchen counter, or how I would store them. I talked over ideas with friends, violated the cardinal rule of George and my relationship (no talking to George when he’s asleep) to discuss my latest thoughts on the pressing matter, and pored over spreadsheets (with formulas!) I created to map out the process and recipe scaling.

Finally, after much ado about pastry, I settled on the best idea yet: apple crumble. Call it brilliant, call it the easy way out, or if you like good food, call it delicious. I worried that the humble crumble would be too rustic a dessert for a wedding, but then I remembered that there’s a good chance a mooing cow will interrupt our ceremony, and that I’ll have hay and dirt stuck to the bottom of my dress, and I got over it.

I modified my spreadsheet – more apples and oats, less butter – and assembled an apple-picking dream team to head up to the ranch to pick 100 pounds of organic heirloom apples this past weekend. We denuded a couple Mutsu trees, eventually bagging close to 160 pounds. Leaving the difference for the ranch owners, Mike and Sally, to sell at the farmstand, we loaded up the station wagon and cruised back over the bridge, apples a’plenty in tow.

Back at home, I capitalized on George’s offer of help by parking him in front of the manual peeler/corer/slicer. I manned a giant bowl of acidulated water and two bubbling pots of apples with brown sugar and cinnamon, and in no time flat (okay, maybe six hours) we had prepped and cooked all one hundred pounds! George became a master of the apple machine, using his fine motor skills to yield long strands of perfect apple peel. It’s probably also the last time he’ll ever offer to help me in the kitchen.

After cleaning up the sticky apple residue coating every surface in our kitchen, I returned the next morning to prepare the crumble topping. The checker at Whole Foods was highly suspicious of my Sunday morning purchases as he rang up my green juice and 40 sticks of butter, but I just smiled and said “Everything in moderation!” Back at home with my food processor and a big mixing bowl, I crumbled away as our previously sticky kitchen absorbed little puffs of flour here and there, until it looked like a light dusting of snow had settled on every surface.

Today, I sit in my somewhat reformed kitchen with 36 quarts of apple filling in the fridge and 11 gallon bags of crumble topping in the freezer. Our wedding dessert will winter in my friend Neal’s subzero freezers, where it will be right at home among many pints of organic ice cream. If all goes to plan, come May, our wedding guests will dig into bowls of warm apple crumble and vanilla ice cream as we celebrate in the barn next to the apple orchard. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Middle Eastern-spiced roasted sweet pepper dip

fried eggs on a homemade brioche bun with plenty of Middle Eastern-spiced roasted sweet pepper dip...breakfast perfection!

Since my brother Jimmy moved up to the Bay Area about six months ago, I’ve settled into a nice routine of cooking and sharing many meals with him and George. The three of us usually consume a quantity that would feed about six normal people, so I tend to favor hearty, filling fare. The nights of passing off a large bowl of roasted cauliflower and cheese as a meal are relics of my past life as a single girl in the city.

By no means am I complaining. Frequent dinners with my guys afford me the chance to cook new foods for an audience that will eat anything. I cook more meat, pork, and poultry, and have enjoyed expanding my culinary repertoire to include many members of the animal kingdom.  

Although I eat more animal protein now than I did a few years ago, my disinterest in plain food – be it cauliflower, chicken, or cod – hasn’t changed. I’m not the type to willingly eat a big slab of anything sans a sauce, dip, or spread. Some of my favorite combinations are the simplest: roasted chicken with garlicky aïoli, flaky white fish with pesto, grilled sausages with mustard, anything with peanut sauce. I’d be hard pressed to think of an animal protein that, in my estimation, wouldn’t be improved by a dollop of something with a contrasting flavor and texture.

Last week, with Jimmy and George both out of town, I revisited my single girl meals of yore. Instead of a few heads of cauliflower, I had a roasted chicken (and all of the skin to myself!) that I planned to enjoy throughout the week. I thought about making aïoli, but I also knew that with no one around, I’d end up eating not only the whole chicken and all of its skin, but the entire batch of aïoli – which includes over a cup of olive oil – in a matter of two or three days.

In the interest of health, I decided to make a big batch of a vegetable-based sauce to enjoy with my chicken. The Middle Eastern-inspired red pepper dip I settled on simultaneously dispatched with most of my three pounds of CSA sweet peppers, and replaces much of the fat of my beloved aïoli with smoky, lower fat roasted peppers. Earthy cumin, salty preserved lemon, and tangy pomegranate molasses contribute lots of interesting flavor.

I call this a dip as it’s rather thick, but you could thin it out with olive oil for a more pourable consistency. I like plating a crispy-skinned chicken thigh and a handful of roasted or blanched green beans with a couple big spoonfuls of the pepper spread. It contains such a high percentage of vegetable matter that it could even be a fitting side dish. Keep in mind that using mixed color peppers like I did (red, green, purple, etc.) will yield a brown sauce. Pureeing pretty colors together does not a pretty sauce make.

This recipe makes a lot of red pepper dip, which isn’t a problem for me. It would also be great spread on sandwiches, swirled into a bowl of soup, or tucked into an omelet. The possibilities are endless! And thank goodness, lest a piece of protein sit on my plate naked.

slow-roasted tomato, onion, and garlic frittata

I really should’ve stayed home this weekend. My garden, currently dominated by watermelon vines dying a slow death (WHY?) and monstrous kale trees, needed tending. Our CSA box was actually overflowing this week, and I’d just picked up a month’s worth of meat, seafood, poultry, and pork from Real Food Bay Area. A box of stationery and these pieces of oddly-shaped paper called ‘envelope liners’ laid in wait on top of our printer, ready for a save the date printing extravaganza.

It was almost a three-day domestic goddess blitzkrieg, but instead I headed south to the land of sun, beaches, and more sun: San Diego! Between trips to visit the grandparents (affectionately termed by our family The Geriatric World Tour), quality beach time, and skeet shooting at my uncle’s secluded house in Alpine, I managed to fit in a bit of cookery.

We went to the farmers’ market and I marveled at the unusual produce we don’t often see in the Bay Area: green-shelled macadamia nuts, passion fruit, vibrantly-hued eggplants the size of my thumb, and thimble-sized gherkins that looked more like tiny watermelons than they did heirloom cucumbers.

I picked up some of the usual suspects, including pastured eggs, garlic, and fragrant cherry tomatoes. Before the skeet shooting and sunbathing commenced at my uncle’s house, I whipped up a frittata that perfectly complemented a big watermelon-strawberry salad and my uncle’s homemade smoked pork sausage.

Although I prefer to finish frittatas in the oven, there’s no reason you can’t cook them all the way on the stove if you don’t have an oven-safe skillet. If you go stove-only, keep the heat a little lower and prepare to keep lifting up the edges to let the uncooked eggs run underneath. A larger skillet will speed things up, but isn’t necessary. If you want to get really fancy, you can try to flip the whole thing over. This is a great way to throw 10 expensive eggs on the floor, if you’re into that kind of thing. Sometimes I am, but not when I’ve got a house full of hungry would-be skeet shooters.

homemade birthday burger barbecue

In honor of my man becoming an old man (30! You heard it here last.), I threw a birthday dinner party for a group of friends from his residency program. With their crazy schedules and proximity to hospital cafeterias, these guys eat too many meals that are at best forgettable and, too often, not unlike the slop sadly served to patients. When George said he wanted to do a burger BBQ for the dinner, I decided to really blow out the theme and make everything from scratch. I would give them the opposite of the processed, questionable fare to which they’ve become unwillingly accustomed.

Fortunately, my DIY fiendishness gave me a leg up in the preparations. I already had an arsenal of three types of homemade mustard and a couple jars of both fermented and vinegar-pickled carrots and cucumbers crowding the refrigerator door. A glut of dry-farmed CSA tomatoes made DIY ketchup an obvious choice. I’d reserved a couple eggs from the weekly dozen for aïoli since, even though I love mayo made with raw egg yolks, I’m really picky about the eggs’ quality when serving that mayo to others.

Had I been a true DIY-er, I would’ve started months ahead of time and made cheddar cheese. Instead, I bought pungent clothbound cheddar from Vermont and overcompensated by making light brioche burger buns from scratch. Although mine were misshapen, homemade buns are orders of magnitude tastier and more interesting than even very good store-bought versions.

To round out the meal, I made our favorite potato salad, a big green salad with shaved vegetables and vegan Caesar dressing, and a triple-berry spelt crust pie with soft pillows of unsweetened whipped cream. To start, we munched on some one-bite watermelon wonders and tortilla chips and the best salsa, ever.

One of George’s friends took his shirt off in the middle of dinner, which I assume means he was enjoying the meal so much he couldn’t contain himself in his clothing. Or that the temperature in our house was approaching the temperature inside our oven. One or the other. The next morning, I ate leftover potato salad while the birthday boy ate a substantial wedge of ‘breakfast pie’. Some things never change, even when you get old.

one-bite wonders: melon, feta, and mint

When it comes to summer fruit, I think melon gets a bum rap as the unexciting alternative to the season’s darlings, berries and stone fruit. As one of the hardiest fruits around, melons are colorful yet ubiquitous stalwarts on ‘seasonal fruit platters’ all year long. While a South American melon can survive midwinter transcontinental travel, by the time it reaches our shores its flavor and color is at best insipid. Contrast these globetrotting melons with the musky, heavy orbs currently weighing down rickety tables at Bay Area farmers markets. A ripe melon (besides most watermelons) is a bit soft to the touch and emits a pleasantly musky, slightly fermented scent. When purchasing melons, I also check to make sure that there’s a light-colored spot somewhere on the skin. This means that the melon was left to ripen on the vine, in the field.

Our CSA proffers only stone fruit and berries (poor us), so I’ve been supplementing our weekly fruit allotment with all sorts of heirloom melons. Beyond the trifecta of watermelon, honeydew, and cantaloupe exists an incredible variety of melons. Like books, you really can’t judge an heirloom melon by its cover. Such was the case when I cracked a green-skinned watermelon and found yellow flesh inside! Heirloom watermelons never got the memo to go seedless, so prepare yourself for some deseeding…and maybe a seed spitting contest?

Although I’ve been plowing through a melon every few days, I reserved some for an easy appetizer I served at George’s birthday dinner party last weekend. The salty-sweet melon bites were a light and fitting start to the rest of the meal, a homemade burger bar that warrants its own post at a later time. This appetizer is easy, so I’m not going to write a formal recipe here. Simply cube the ripe melon of your choice, top with a small mint leaf and a chunk of good-quality (preferably brine-packed) feta cheese, and skewer the three ingredients together with a toothpick. Just before serving, drizzle the whole plate of them with syrupy balsamic vinegar and sprinkle with freshly-ground black pepper.