What We Want to Eat Right Now

No picture. Sorry, but I just need to get this memory-jogger to you immediately. Hot, much? Don't feel like doing any cooking to speak of? (Or is it, of which to speak? Nah.) Around our place, we have been in the throes of remodeling. The house is basically a construction zone. I am busier than normal; however, we all still need to eat semi-regularly, so I am all about easy, and this fills all bills nicely. I would call this Shrimp Scampi, but southerners call it Barbecue Shrimp. In my Beyond the Bay cookbook from the Junior League of Panama City, FL, there is a recipe for Barbecue Shrimp I and another for, get ready for it, Barbecue Shrimp II. There is also a broiled shrimp recipe which is really Barbecue Shrimp III in disguise. Here is my cobbled-together, winging it version.

Barbecue Shrimp a la Lori
serves 4-5

2 lb. headless large shrimp, unshelled, thawed
1 T. (several dashes) Worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, minced (don't go nuts and put more -- we want to taste shrimp, too)
few dashes hot sauce, such as Tobasco
juice of 2 lemons
generous grinds of black pepper
four pinches kosher salt (scant 1 t.)
1/2 c. butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the shrimp in a single layer in a large pan. I used the bottom of my broiler pan, lined with foil for easy clean-up. Sprinkle with remaining ingredients except butter. Slice butter into thin pats and arrange over the shrimp.

Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes or until all shrimp have turned pink. Stir and serve immediately with the best crusty bread you've got for sopping up all that butter sauce. Set out a few bowls to hold the shrimp shells. Eat with your fingers, please.

Now get up and go cook something good.

Strawberry Time!

It’s strawberry time, one of the best times of the year. The season is a little late due to a cool spring, but that only means they are all the more welcome. Probably our favorite way to celebrate the scarlet gems is with a dessert I learned 14 years ago in the kitchen of an old friend of my mother’s. I know how long it’s been since I have been making this because my youngest child was four weeks old when I visited this lady and was fed this treat. Geviene used canned “grands” biscuits, but taking the trouble to make homemade biscuits really lifts this dish to a much higher plane. She and her family call it Strawberry LOL because one of her daughters-in-law said it reminded her of a dessert a little old lady might serve, and the name stuck. It is Strawberry LOL to us, too, despite the fact that it makes guests think we are calling it Strawberry Laughing OutLoud. It tastes so good you may in fact chuckle audibly on taking the first bite, which would not be inappropriate in the least.

Do I need to say use fresh, local strawberries? I didn’t think I did. Now, get up and go cook something good.

Strawberry LOL
Serves, oh, maybe five or six people, unless you have a real shortcake hound in your bunch

Biscuits:
2 c. self-rising flour
¼ c. shortening
generous 2/3 c. buttermilk
¼ c. melted butter in a shallow bowl
½ c. granulated sugar in a shallow bowl

Berries:
1 qt. ripe strawberries, hulled and quartered or sliced
granulated sugar to sweeten berries, approx. ¼ -- 1/2 c.

about 1 c. cold half and half or heavy cream for serving

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, cut shortening into the flour with a pastry blender until it resembles crumbs and small peas. Add the buttermilk and stir just until the dough comes together. If necessary, sprinkle a little water on any stray flour mixture and give it one or two stirs to incorporate. Now you can be wonderful and turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, knead the dough 6-10 times, pat or roll it out to 3/8” thickness, and cut out biscuits w/ a 3” round cutter. Or, you can be lazy and use an ice cream scoop to plop blobs of dough into your floured hand. Pat each blob into a rough biscuit shape. Either way, place biscuits in a small baking pan as you form them. They can touch or be separate as desired. You should end up with about 10 or 12. Now, clean up your dough-making mess if you are icked-out by dough mess like me, and wash your hands so you can mess them up again.
3. Dip each biscuit into the melted butter and then dredge in the ½ c. granulated sugar. Return to the pan. Set aside while you work on the berries.
4. Toss the prepped berries with ¼ -- 1/2 c. granulated sugar, to your taste. I use the leftover sugar from coating the biscuits and add some more if needed. Set aside to allow the berries to release their juices. Make ahead note: You can complete the recipe through this step, if desired, earlier in the day. Cover and chill the berries, and cover the biscuit pan with foil or plastic wrap and chill it, too. Remove the biscuits from the fridge about 30 minutes before you are ready to bake them. They may not rise as much as freshly-mixed biscuits, but I have never heard anyone complain.
5. Bake the biscuits for 12-15 minutes, checking and removing them when they are light to medium golden brown. This is the tricky part – all of the eaters have to be sitting at the table, spoons in hand, and past the “amen” – this is a dessert that needs to be consumed within moments of its completion.
6. As soon as the biscuits are out of the oven, assemble individual servings: into a bowl place one hot biscuit, top with a spoonful of sweetened strawberries, and finish with a generous splash of half and half or heavy cream. If you’ve done it right, you’ll hear a little sizzle when the berries and cream hit the hot sugared biscuits. Eat right away, and bless the God who thought of strawberries.

A Long Way to a Quick Meal

Landscape designers speak often about the need for a garden to have “good bones.” The bones of a gardening space are what the eye sees when all of the color, bloom, and even foliage are stripped away – basically what you see in the winter. It is the manmade features like walls and walks and the outline of the plant trunks and stems that give structure and shape to the space, and if the bones are poorly designed no amount of pricey plants or careful color combinations will make the garden truly beautiful.

Good bones are terribly important in cooking, too, and this week’s soup is an example of that principle. Did you have a ham for Easter? Many people, including my mom, prefer boneless hams for their ease of serving. I can certainly enjoy a perfectly oval slice of boneless ham, but years ago I became a bone-in kind of gal, culinarily speaking, and a bone-in ham is a joint of meat that keeps giving far beyond the day it emerged from the oven to delight the holiday diners.

Whether you turn your ham leftovers into fried rice or creamed ham and vegetables on toast or baked macaroni and cheese with ham or fried ham with gravy and biscuits, toward the end of the week you may find yourself looking , as I did, at a big ham bone with a little bit of meat clinging to it. If that is your situation, may I recommend you to strip every bit of meal possibility out of your ham by finishing with a pot of ham and bean soup? It’s frugal, it’s simple, and most of all it is delicious.

Ham and Bean Soup
serves 6-8

1 ham bone
1 c. water
stray ham leftovers, if you have any
1 T. butter or vegetable oil
1 large onion, medium dice
2 stalks celery, medium dice, optional
¼ c. chopped fresh parsley, optional
4 cans (14 oz.) navy beans, undrained (or about 7 cups of freshly cooked beans w/ cooking liquid)
salt and pepper to taste

The night before you plan to serve the soup:
This is a slow cooker method, although you can easily make it on top of the stove. Pick every little piece of ham your fingers can find from the bone, put the ham bits into a covered bowl, and refrigerate for later. Put the stripped ham bone and the cup of water into the slow cooker and cook on low overnight.

Meanwhile, heat a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the one tablespoon fat and the onion and celery. Saute slowly until the vegetables are tender. Scrape into a bowl, add the chopped parsley to the bowl, cover, and refrigerate.

In the morning:
Remove the ham bone from the slow cooker and discard. Fish out anything that fell off the bone that you don’t want in your finished soup, but you shouldn’t need to strain the broth.

Stir in the veggies you sautéed the night before and the ham bits. Stir in the beans. Cover with a healthy grind of black pepper and stir that in. Cover the slow cooker and cook the soup on low all day while you go about your business. Thin the soup with a little hot water if it is too thick, although it should be fairly thick. Taste before serving to see if it requires any salt, but it will probably be just right. Serve with cornbread, or follow dear Marion Cunningham’s advice and make her old-fashioned gingerbread to serve with this soup – an odd but delicious pairing.

Straddling the Seasons

In my corner of the globe, early April is the transition from winter to spring. While on a walk one short week ago I saw what must have been the first grass mowing of the season in my Tiny Town. I was eager to catch the summer’s-coming scent of freshly cut grass streaming from this overachiever’s machine, but all I could smell was wild onion. See, I thought, the grass isn’t even high enough to cut. Just a few days later, most of the responsible neighbors have made the first pass over their yards with their mowers and are no doubt wondering what’s up with us. Spring springs suddenly sometimes.

It can be hard to know what to eat. The temperatures are so changeable, and our appetites change with them. Warming midday weather makes me plan a lighter dinner, but by the time the sun goes down and we sit down to eat it is chilly enough to make us wish there was something hearty on the plate. At breakfast and lunch I find myself nibbling, rather like the rabbits that appear in the yard and watch for the first garden lettuce as eagerly as I. In contrast to the summer when I want food so light as to feel like nothing at all in my stomach, in spring I want to eat something very fresh but substantial enough to make me know I have had something to eat.

It can be a hard desire to fulfill, but this small plate does the job admirably – a few perfectly hard-cooked eggs, a little cured meat, my favorite spring vegetable, and a piquant dunk for every bite. It is pretty and cheerful and tasty. It is light and still substantial. The individual ingredients are substituteable, and it is a cinch to put together if one has thought ahead a bit. It works as a lunch for one or a party platter for a crowd. Most of all, it is just what I want to eat right now.

Orange Mint Mayo
makes about ½ cup

½ c. good mayonnaise
zest of one orange
about 1 T. chopped fresh mint
1 T. juice squeezed from the orange

Stir together in a small bowl. Serve with just about everything. My favorite go-withs are hard-cooked eggs, cold cooked or smoked salmon, prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, plain asparagus, cold ham, or cold boiled potatoes.

Soup for the Sick

I am sick. Oh, don’t worry – it isn’t anything earth-shattering. It’s just an extra-persistent strain of the flu, a little thing we are calling The Plague around here. I’m not the sickest I have ever been; instead, it is a wearing out kind of illness – I’m getting worn out while my body tries to wear it out. I am well enough to get up and do little jobs a few times each day – fold a load of laundry, tidy up a bit – but sick enough to take lots of lying-on-the-sofa breaks. Well, really, the longer stretches of time are spent on the sofa, so I guess that makes the doing-little-jobs activities breaks from lying on the sofa. You sense my feverishly confused thinking here, I am sure.

Days of lying on the sofa leads to a lot of thinking, feverish or not. One thing I have spent some time thinking about is goals. One of my personal goals is to write regularly, and that is one of the reasons I started this blog. I do write pretty regularly on another blog, but this one has languished for almost a year with no attention. My new goal is to write for one hour at least five days per week. This is a more specific statement of purpose about writing than I have ever made before, and I admit to a smidgen of fear about making it. For some years now in the cobwebby part of my mind, I have nursed the thought that when my childrearing days are ended I will have more time to write and it will be interesting to see what develops from that. Frankly, I do not know what I hope develops, which I realize is not the path to success according to most experts, but there it is. I do believe more and more, however, that nothing much can develop then without more rigorous workouts now. Hence my new goal.

What are the obstacles to achieving it? The kids, mostly. Parenting adolescents takes a tremendous amount of energy, I find, as well as diminished opportunities for Mom to use the computer as their schoolwork demands more and more keyboard time. My work in our homeschool co-op takes a significant chunk of my days as well. Time, energy, time, energy. Do I have enough of these to write for an hour a day? I think so. I hope so. Time will tell.

Clean-out-the-fridge Soup for a Sick Day
Serves 2-3

Search through the fridge for possible ingredients. Pull them out and arrange them on the counter. Contemplate:
a rotisserie chicken, nearly intact
cooked rice, about 1 cup packed (not that I measured it)
about-to-go-funky baby spinach, about 3 cups packed (not that I measured it)
heavy cream nearing its expiration date

Gather non-clean-out ingredients:
1 small onion
butter
all-purpose flour
1 14-oz. can low-sodium chicken broth

Dice the onion. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a 2 quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for a few minutes. Sit down and rest for a bit.

Get up and chop the spinach. Add it to the onion, stir, cover the pot and let it sweat until wilted and bright green. Meanwhile, remove the meat from Mr. Convenience Chicken’s thighs and chop coarsely. Rest a little more.

Add a heaping tablespoon of flour to the pot; stir until smooth. Pour in the broth, stirring all the while. Stir in the rice. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook for 10 minutes or so until slightly thickened, stirring occasionally. Turn away from the food when another coughing fit strikes. Cough up a lung. Consider its possible use in the soup. Decide against it. Stir in about ½ c. heavy cream and the chicken. Simmer a few minutes more. Taste and adjust seasoning. Store in fridge to eat later. Take a nap.

Hello, Herb

Do you like tarragon? Do you know what it tastes like? I mean fresh tarragon, not old dry dust from a jar. Tarragon tastes a little like licorice, but I don’t like licorice and I love tarragon. It tastes a little sharp. It tastes green.

If you want to jazz up your cooking in the easiest possible way, make it your firm determination to start a little herb garden THIS YEAR. Yes, I’m shouting – quit putting it off. If you are putting it off, you are probably over-thinking the whole thing. Just go to Lowe’s or your friendly neighborhood plant place and get a couple or four pots of herbs. Get basil if you are past the frost free date by a week or two (or come back later – basil is a must!). Get thyme, get chives, get parsley (flat or curly – please yourself), and by all means get French tarragon. Ok, that’s five, but I won’t tell. I won’t even say anything if some dill and sage follows you home, too. Or, if rosemary tucks itself into your car, who will complain? Not me.

Ok, once you’ve brought them home, stick them on the north or east side of your house for a couple of days to harden them off. Then dig one hole for each pot you couldn’t resist and plant. Pick a sunny place for all of these. No, not shady, not semi-shady – sunny. Good. Water them if it’s hot for the first week or two. Give them a good drink 1-2 times a week if it’s not. After a couple of weeks, ignore them except to pinch off pieces for the rest of the growing season.

Thyme, chives, tarragon, sage, and rosemary are perennial, so they will be your friends for years. Basil must be planted every year, but we forgive it because it is the best thing ever. Dill usually self-sows so it acts like a perennial. Easy peasy.

Tarragon and chives are the first herbs to refresh themselves in late March/early April in my growing zone 6. They make wonderful partners in salad dressings, egg dishes, fish and chicken dishes, and on asparagus, another treasure of the lazy spring gardener who somehow had the foresight to plant some years ago.

If you are so fortunate as to have some tarragon at your disposal, try this dressing. It is adapted from one in Southern Living. It takes a couple of minutes to stir up and you will want to eat it on everything. It is wonderful on green beans and roasted potatoes as a warm salad. Spoon it over a lettuce salad with cooked chicken for a main dish. I enjoyed a simple supper for one last night of a few slices of cheese, a slice of toasted homemade bread, and blanched asparagus drizzled with this dressing.


Creamy Tarragon Dressing

1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons snipped chives
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon

1. Whisk together first 6 ingredients in a small bowl until combined. Gradually whisk in oil in a slow, steady stream, whisking constantly until smooth. (Or use stick blender to emulsify dressing.) Whisk in green onion and tarragon. Use immediately, or store in fridge for a few days. Let chilled dressing stand 30 minutes before using.

Yield: Makes about 3/4 cup

Easter, Plain and Fancy

I sort of forgot about Easter. Because we celebrate Christ’s resurrection every Sunday, Easter does not have the significance for us that it has for many. We usually color Easter eggs and have some candy, but a busy schedule and ever-aging adolescents made this the first year we forewent the egg-dying, and a smaller amount of candy given to us a week or two before the holiday got consumed well in advance of the day itself.

So, Easter basically slipped my mind until Saturday in the late afternoon when an image of “ham” cruised through my brain. The Husband graciously ran to the grocery store to get the half ham I requested, but I should have been more specific, because he came home with a spiral-sliced, already glazed hunk o’ yuck that cost twice what your basic, let-the-cook-doctor-it-up ham would have set us back. Ah, well. I was uncharacteristically silent about my disappointment. I had a few potatoes chasing around the pantry and some frozen vegetables. With these humble ingredients I threw together a plain Easter dinner, just the sort my less-adventurous family members prefer:

Baked Ham, with a strangely chemically-smelling glaze that ends up tasting fairly ok
Basic Mashed Potatoes
Buttered Corn
Green Beans
Martin’s Potato Rolls (one of the best things on the planet)

I enjoyed my meal, but I have to admit I felt a little let down, or at least decidedly un-festive. At least it took very little time to cook.

With only four diners, we had a lot of ham leftovers, but that’s fine, because I love, love, love leftovers. This morning, I got inspired to make a second Easter dinner to eat tonight, just because I’m in charge of the kitchen and I can. So, the menu for Easter Monday is:

Leftover Baked Ham
Vegetable au Gratin
Deviled Eggs with the First Herbs of Spring
Rolls yet-to-be-determined
Salad

About the deviled eggs: we’re at the time of the year when I take a tour of the yard nearly every day, hoping, hoping to see something obviously alive amongst all the brown and dead. So far, the first straggly chives have appeared in their clump, needing a haircut to the ground before they give us the really good stems, and the tarragon has sprouted frost-bitten, sad little shoots right above the surface of the dirt and still below last year’s thick, sharp cut-off stems. I brought the handful of chives and a couple of tarragon shoots inside, gave them a thorough wash, and will pick out what’s usable for the egg filling.

The Vegetable Gratin was intended to be a gratin of spinach. My mom gave me one of those enormous tubs of baby spinach before they went out of town a few days ago. It was past using fresh, but I knew it would be fine to cook. The only way my family happily eats cooked spinach is if it’s coated with lashings of cream and handfuls of cheese, and a spinach gratin is one of my favorite spring dishes, but when I cooked that large amount of spinach, it characteristically wilted down to a depressingly small amount of food. So, I scavenged the fridge and freezer for more veggies to add to it. I came up with a bag of frozen cauliflower and a Tupperware bowl of leftover cabbage and carrot mixture from St. Patrick’s Day last week. Also, I was the fortunate possessor of a hunk of French Comte cheese, so I was in business. Vegetable gratins are a valuable dish for the cook to have in his or her repertoire because they taste delicious, get less-loved veggies into the bodies of family members, and use up all manner of kitchen extras.

Now get up and go cook something good.

This is my veggie gratin, still naked of buttered breadcrumbs and unbaked. It'll look better when it comes out of the oven. Trust me.

Vegetable Gratin

serves about six diners


about 4 c. cooked vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, spinach, chard, cabbage, turnips, butternut squash, onion – or any combo that sounds good)
2 T. butter or margarine
2 T. flour
1 c. heavy or light cream or half and half
salt and pepper to taste
pinch nutmeg
about 1 c. shredded cheese (Swiss, Gruyere, cheddar, or a smaller amt. of Parmesan)
stale bread, cut or torn into small pieces, about 1 c.
a little melted butter for tossing with the bread crumbs, about 1 T.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees if you are completing the recipe now. Put the cooked vegetables into a large bowl and set aside. If using spinach, chard, or cabbage, make sure it is very well drained. Set aside.

Melt the 2 T. butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour until the mixture is completely smooth, reaching all over the pan with a heat-proof spatula spoon or whisk. Allow the mixture to become bubbly while you stir constantly. Pour in the cream and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Stir in the seasonings. Taste. It should be perhaps a little more salty than you prefer, especially if the vegetables are unsalted. Congratulations, you have made a béchamel sauce. If you stir the cheese into the sauce off heat until it is melted, you will have made a Mornay sauce. Now don’t you feel clever?

Add the béchamel sauce to the bowl of vegetables. Stir in the cheese. Mix everything gently but thoroughly. Turn into a greased casserole. If serving later, cover the dish and refrigerate until about 45 minutes before serving time.

Mix the bread crumbs with the melted butter and sprinkle them on top of the vegetable mixture. Bake, uncovered, at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes, until all is golden brown and bubbling. Let stand for five minutes before serving.

A spoonful of the leftovers will be delicious as a filling in your morning omelet.