Monthly Archives: January 2012

boiled cabbage and sausage

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I wanted to make this dish because I knew I never gave it enough credit when I was younger. You see, my grandmother used to make this all the time. It was served piping hot, with cornbread, in one of our glass bowls. I never really got to the glass bowl. I’d just stand over the stove, picking out the pieces of sausages, staring down into the steam at the goopy bits of boiled cabbage. I’d say, “I’m not hungry” and I’d sneak some breakfast cereal into the den after she was done eating. I’ll bet she was always wondering where the rest of the sausage went.

So, I said to myself, “Self, you’ve got to buck up. Pull your pants up a little. It’s just cabbage. Give it another try.” And, so, in between my obsessive viewings of Downton Abbey and trying to be social this past weekend, I whipped up a batch of cabbage and sausage.


You know what? It really isn’t bad. I’m not going to lie and say it’s my favorite food. Hah, I mean, it’s no biscuit or potato, but it’s definitely not the treacherous, horrible food I deemed it to be when I was a teenager. The cabbage kind of holds up its thickness and the sausage creates a less offensive cabbage flavor.

boiled cabbage and sausage
ingredients
1 pound minimally processed kielbasa sausage
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
dash of cayenne
2 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp all natural cane sugar
1 head cabbage, chopped

create
In a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat, sauté the sausage until cooked through. When cool enough to handle, cut into 1/2 inch slices.
Add the olive oil and chopped onion to the hot grease in the pan. Add salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cook until onion is translucent. Sprinkle on the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until flour is a blonde color, about 1 minute.
Slowly whisk in the chicken stock and vinegar. Bring to a boil. Add the sugar, cabbage, and sliced sausage and simmer on low, covered, for 20 minutes.


Boiled cabbage. Hm. Boiled…cabbage. That sounds so…unrefined. So rural. So rustic. I suppose you could call it “bubbling leaves” or something. But I think boiled cabbage works for me. Why? I’m originally from Lugoff. It is, indeed, a real place. And it’s pretty stinkin’ rural. People muddin’ in trucks. Wadin’ down in the river. Dirt roads for miles. So, yeah, boiled cabbage works.

southern biscuits with sausage

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Quick post today, guys. This was our breakfast this morning. It was calm, leisurely, and slap yo’ mama good.

southern biscuits with sausage
ingredients
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into little pieces and cold
1 cup buttermilk, cold
1/2 pound hormone-free breakfast pork sausage, or enough to make 7 patties

create
Preheat oven to 400º. In a bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and  salt. Use your fingers to crumble the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Make a well in the mixture and add the buttermilk. Mix with a spoon until just combined and use your hands to gather all of the flour.


Onto a floured surface, turn the dough out and knead (gently) until smooth, about 30 seconds.  Press the dough into a 1 inch thick circle and use a a biscuit cutter or something circular (psh, I used a cup. It was about 4 inches wide, so I made about 7 biscuits) to press straight down into the dough and twist out the biscuits. Reshape the scraps to make more biscuits. Be quick about it, though, you don’t want that butter to melt!


Place the biscuits on a baking sheet lined with parchment so they just touch each other. Bake until they are lightly golden and tall, about 20 minutes. After baking, if you’d like, you can brush them with melted butter. Let cool slightly before serving.
While the biscuits are baking, cook the sausage. I bought breakfast sausage that was already made into patties. If you are using ground, make patties into desired thickness (I like mine really abnormally thin). Cook in a pan until cooked through (internal temperature of 160º). Put a sausage patty in between a biscuit torn in half.

Happy Saturday, my friends!

field pea soup

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Y’all, today’s high is 73. Seventy-three. I think people around the world are saying, “Argh, curse you South Carolina!” as they put on their coats and go to work in the nine degree weather. I have to say that I envy you a little. I’m a wintery, bundle-up, build a fire girl at heart. There’s something about winter’s silence that is beautiful to me, snow gently placing itself on the trees, forcing you to bundle up and make one pot meals that you can eat while your hands and arms are still wrapped in a fleece blanket. Man! That sounds so glorious. That’s it. I’m making some soup.

The last time I was at the farmers’ market I bought a bag of dried peas from a lovely family who does their own organic farming. They were really sweet, knew everything about each veggie and how to prepare it. I even had to go back because I thought I had lost my phone (my goodness, you’d think it were a child) and they helped me follow my tracks around the market. Anyway, they were just good faces to put with the food I’d be bringing home with me. Nice people stories!

They recommended boiling the peas with a ham hock, but I’m a lame southerner and didn’t have one, so for my recipe I used, you guessed it, bacon. This hearty soup is also filled with potatoes, carrots, and, most importantly, those pretty little peas.

field pea soup
ingredients
3 strips minimally processed bacon
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 onion, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
1 cup carrots, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
salt and freshly ground black pepper
a sprinkle of cayenne
3 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 cups dried field peas, soaked overnight, rinsed, and drained
2 yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut into cubes
touch of cream

create
Soak the peas in a bowl of water overnight (this creates a shorter cooking time) and rinse well. Set aside.
In a large Dutch oven on medium heat, add the bacon and cook until crispy. Remove bacon and allow to dry on paper towels. Chop into small pieces when cool enough to handle.
To the Dutch oven (which still holds the bacon grease) add the butter and melt. Add the onion, celery, and carrots and cook until onions are translucent and vegetables are soft. Add the garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne and cook for a minute longer. Sprinkle the flour in and stir constantly for a minute longer or until the flour is cooked, turning a blonde color. Slowly whisk in the chicken stock and bring the mixture to a boil. Add the peas and cover. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 and 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Add the potatoes and reserved chopped bacon and simmer for 30 minutes longer until the potatoes are tender. You may need to cook longer (or shorter) depending on how soft you like your peas. Just before serving, stir in the cream. I think I used about 1/8 of a cup, just to make it a little richer.


Just so you know, I’m not complaining about our strange, unpredictable, “I’ll do what I want” weather. If God wants it like that, well, He is certainly better than I am. And I really do consider it a blessing to be raised in the good ol’ sunny south. Butttt…if we can fool that 73 into thinking he’s seven below because this soup is just so doggone cold-weather, wintry picturesque, well…then that’s just the bee’s knees.

apple cinnamon buckle

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I was in the marching band in high school. Jamm. Har har. Tee hee. Yes, cool to some, uncool to many, but just know that those years were some of the most rewarding years of my life. I still apply the lessons I learned to random mid-twenty-something life events now.

It’s funny, too. Though I still cherish the oh-so-important things I learned, I also remember the most random, weird things from those years. We used to compete in towns scattered around the Southeast every weekend and were like circus folk, building our tiny weekend lives in a bus, creating changing tents from uniform bags and making bunk beds out of dirty floors and spilled Powerade drenched seats. We’d always stop at state lines for stretches, pep talks, and, most importantly, snacks. Oh, don’t worry, we ate the entire ride. Gummy worms. Cheesy puffs. Ten pound bags of pure sugar. But when we stopped, that meant we were getting something made by the band moms. PB&Js. Turkey and cheese. Blueberry Buckle.

Blueberry Buckle, you ask? Our band director loved to tell us that we were going to have that as a snack after we sang our entire show and hyped us all up enough to the point that we could have sung our fight song for two and a half hours on end. We all loved him, but we’d all look at each other and say, “…What did he say? Blueberry what? Did he just tell me my shoe was untied?”  Buckle is really just a variety of cobbler, except the fruit filling is mixed in to a cake-like batter. There’s a crumble on top, so it’s kind of like a big, giant streusel muffin. Win. I’m changing the traditional blueberry buckle to an apple cinnamon buckle, using some apples my husband’s mom got us from the mountains. Another win!

apple cinnamon buckle
crumble topping
ingredients
1/2 cup unbleached, all purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp natural cane sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

batter
ingredients
1 1/2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 stick plus 2 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup natural cane sugar
pinch of salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 cups peeled apples, cut into small chunks (about 4 apples)

create
To make the crumble topping, add all ingredients to the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat for 2 minutes, until the butter is completely incorporated with the dry ingredients. Put in a bowl and set aside.


Preheat the oven to 350º and position the rack to the lower third of the oven. Butter and flour an 8″ cake pan. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon until fully combined. Set aside. In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar, and salt for several minutes, until fluffy like a cloud, scraping the sides as needed. Add the vanilla and mix well. Add the eggs one at a time, fully mixing the batter between each one. With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture until just incorporated. The batter is thick. Add the apple chunks and fold in by hand. You will probably say, “Geez, ya want some dough with your apples?” All of those apples will keep the batter moist.


Spread the mixture in the cake pan in an even layer. Get a handful of the crumble topping and squeeze it. Then, sprinkle it over the batter. Continue until you’ve used all of the crumble topping and it’s sprinkled evenly over the batter. Bake for 1 hour, until the topping is golden brown and a toothpick returns clean from the center. Let cool for 15 minutes and invert onto a cake plate.

“And just why is it called buckle?” Ha! You think I know all. I’ve heard it’s because the crumble topping cracks in the baking process, giving it a buckled appearance. Mine didn’t really look buckled, so I’ll take a whack at the definition. An apple cinnamon buckle is the edible apple pie-like seatbelt on a giant candy airplane with licorice pilots and gumdrop flight attendants. Ittttt’s…definitely the first one.

whole wheat flatbread with caramelized leeks and bacon

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I was racking my brain last week for recipes that involved an unfamiliar (to me) food item. Leeks kept throwing themselves at my thought life. Not that they’re some sort of crop that grows on the moon or in a remote village or that they’re so incredibly rare and sought after that they’re five-hundred dollars an ounce. No, no, they’re simpler than that, almost mysterious, but very beautiful. You see ‘em in the store all the time. Tiny white stalky-like part on the bottom with mile-high leaves that look absolutely inedible. So simple, yet so intimidating to me because I had no idea what to do with them. But this week it was time to take a chance. Alright, exquisite-looking version of an onion, you’re coming home with me.

Once I had the bunch of leeks, I felt empowered. I had gotten over my leek hump and, actually, they’re not intimidating at all. They’re bright, fun to cut, and right now (yes, you guessed it) they are in season in the good ol’ Carolinas. Check, check, and check. Oh, and in this dish, they’re paired with bacon. Double check.

This flatbread is not really a pizza. It has no cheese, no sauce. It’s more like a crunchy, flavored slice of bread. You could eat it alone or alongside soup or a salad.

whole wheat flatbread with caramelized leeks and bacon
dough
ingredients
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon active yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

topping
ingredients
4 strips minimally processed bacon
2 tablespoons butter
1 bunch leeks, white and pale green part only, thinly sliced, and well-rinsed
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar

create
To make the dough for the flatbread, start by dissolving the yeast in a bowl with the warm water. Let stand for 2 minutes. Put the flour on a smooth work surface and make a well in the center. Slowly add the yeast water, olive oil, and salt until the flour absorbs the liquid. Knead until the mixture becomes a dough consistency. You may need to add quite a bit of flour to keep everything from sticking. Divide the dough in half and place each half in a separate, floured bowl. Cover with a warm, damp cloth and let rise at room temperature for at least an hour. The dough should double in size. You will only use one half of the dough in this recipe. I froze the second dough, but you could cut the dough ingredients in half if you’d like.


While the dough is rising, make the topping. In a Dutch oven, cook the bacon until crispy. Remove the bacon from the pan and chop into small pieces when cool enough to handle. Set aside. Add the butter to the grease and allow it to melt. Add the sliced leeks, salt, and brown sugar and stir to combine. Over medium-low heat, let the leeks cook, stirring occasionally, until they are translucent, brown, and caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat.


Preheat oven to 400º. To assemble the flatbread, remove one of the doughs from the bowl and punch it down on a floured work surface. Pull and flatten the dough until it’s very thin, but is without any holes. Evenly sprinkle the leeks and reserved chopped bacon over the dough. Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. On a baking sheet, bake the flatbread for 15 minutes or until the dough is crispy.

“So, what’s up with whole wheat flour?”

Well, it’s basically what it sounds like. Whole wheat flour is made with the whole grain (ding! health food buzzword) and during the process of actually making the flour, the outer coating called the bran (ding!) and the germ (ding! Dang, another health food buzzword. We must be on to something here) is left, unlike refined, bleached flour. The bran has lots of fiber and the germ, which is basically the grain kernel’s embryo, has lots of nutrients. And whole grains lead to more consistent energy levels in your body, better digestion, and can perhaps help you feel fuller longer.

Lesson over, go eat some flatbread!

roasted root vegetables

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This past week I trekked on down to the local farmers’ market looking for inspiration or something that screamed, “Cook me. Cook me.” I guess I’ve been in a food funk, not that I haven’t wanted to cook or that food did something offensive or unjustifiable to make me say, “I’m appalled, I will eat you no longer.”, but my appetite has been quite boringly blah. I’ve been craving toast. And plain rice. And really thin soups. And pie. Wait, pie? Yeah, my body wants summery fruits like blueberries and strawberries and other things that grow when it’s a million degrees outside.

But enough is enough! No more of this nonsense. Self, you know you wait all year for the wintry goods South Carolina has to offer and you will take advantage of it. No talking back. That’s where the market comes in. It’s filled with tons of in-season, organic produce and friendly, down-to-earth farmers, and lots of stuff for winter cooking motivation, like root veggies. Root vegetables are called root vegetables because, well, they’re roots. They grow in the dirt. They’re the edible, underground part of a plant. They’re neat! Chillin’ down in the ground, gettin’ all cozy while the rest of the world freezes above it, the strong ones that survive the winter. Not that we have much of one around these parts, but, you know.

I chose to roast a combination of sweet potatoes, turnips, beets, and carrots. The carrots I found at the market were wild. They’re called purple haze carrots and have the same normal carrot color on the inside, but are surrounded by a dark purple colored outside. They taste slightly sweeter than your standard carrot and are good for freaking people out.

You know what else? Before this, I’ve never really had beets before! Or turnips! Well, I technically did have beets once, pickled, served alongside cheesecake at Junior’s in Brooklyn, but really? Cheesecake and beets? Let’s just say, cheesecake was gone. Beet bowl remained full. So, don’t be scared. I think they have a bad reputation as being grossly healthy, but you know what happens after these guys hang out in the oven for a while? They get caramelized and really sweet, like little bite-sized…like little bite-sized…well, like little bite-sized sweet vegetables. That’s all I’ve got.

roasted root vegetables
ingredients
1 sweet potato
1 turnip
1 bunch beets
1 bunch carrots
several tablespoons of olive oil
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

create
Preheat the oven to 375º. Peel the vegetables and wash thoroughly. Cut them so they’re all about the same size (for even baking) and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle the vegetables with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss them around with your hands until evenly coated. Roast for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are tender and can be pierced with a fork.

Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica. I’m sorry. I had to do it.

harry potter’s pumpkin juice

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Oh no! It’s happening! Hurry up and stop me before I post another recipe that’s saturated with glimpses of what appears to be the beginning of a Harry Potter pumpkin series!

Too late.


harry potter’s pumpkin juice
ingredients
1 pumpkin’s worth of roasted pumpkin purée
2 cups apple juice
1 cup white grape juice
1 cup pineapple juice

create
Place the cooked pumpkin in a large fine-mesh sieve over a bowl and push the pumpkin through using a rubber spatula (I don’t have a sieve, so I just used a plain ol’ sifter). Scrape and mash as you push; it will take several minutes. Discard the pulpy mass left in the sieve. Stir the sieved pumpkin in the bowl to evenly distribute the juices, and then measure out 1 cup.


Place the cup of sieved pumpkin in a pitcher along with the apple juice, grape juice, and pineapple juice. Stir vigorously until the pumpkin is completely dispersed. Chill the juice until it’s very cold.
Before serving, stir the juice well, as the pumpkin will settle to the bottom. Fill glasses with ice cubes and pour the juice over the ice.

This recipe is, again, taken from Dinah Bucholz’s The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. Pumpkin juice in the Potter series is like the wizarding world’s water. The characters drink it all the time. I remember reading the books and becoming so incredibly thirsty every time Rowling mentioned it and craving this juice, something I had never even had before. The juice is very fruity, almost punch-like, with a not-at-all overpowering pumpkin oomph.

Right now, you’re like Harry. You must down that glass of pumpkin juice, for you’re about to do something very important. Be careful, though. Someone may have slipped some Veritaserum into that goblet.

harry potter’s pumpkin pasties

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“A pasty, sometimes known as a pastie or British pasty in the United States, is a filled pastry case, associated in particular with Cornwall in Great Britain.” -Wikipedia

Just to clear things up.

“Oh, shoo. She’s on that pumpkin kick again.” Tempted, but no. One of my Christmas gifts this year was, check it, The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, written by Dinah Bucholz. I guess my Harry Potter journey began (imagine the celesta starting to play Hedwig’s theme) one summer while in college when all of my friends either went home or got jobs in other areas. So, I was left to work and do other random nonsense in Columbia, like read. It was then that I realized that J.K. Rowling was a flippin’ genius and, despite my roommates’ pleas for me to leave my bedroom and their desperate attempts to keep me alive by shoving cookies and PB&Js under my door, I ended up reading the first six books in a little over a month. My hair was thin and my nails torn unbearably short while I anticipated the release of the final installment and, because I was out-of-town, sent my very non-dorkish sister to the bookstore in the midst of the robe-wearing, wand-waving, spell-screaming Potter wannabes at the store’s book release party. She survived. And I got my book.

Harry and his friends ate lots of really cool, very traditionally British, sometimes very interesting foods. These pumpkin pasties showed up several times throughout the series (Bucholz specifically cites the Sorcerer’s Stone, chapter 6) and guess what? Muggles can eat them now, too. Sheesh. Nerd. Right here.

I will mention that I changed the pasty crust recipe slightly, as I don’t like to use shortening. Instead, I just used all butter. Also, I mixed the crust mixture by hand rather than using a food processor.

harry potter’s pumpkin pasties
pasty crust
ingredients
1 1/4 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 tbsp natural cane sugar
1/4 tsp salt
8 tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into chunks
4-6 tbsp ice water

filling
ingredients
1 cup roasted pumpkin purée
1/4 cup natural cane sugar
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

create
Place the flour, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl to combine. Scatter the very cold butter in the flour mixture and quickly crumble it into the flour until it resembles little peas or coarse meal. Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of cold water over the mixture. Toss the mixture together until it starts clumping together. If it’s too dry, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time (better too wet than too dry). Gather the dough into a ball (you may need to turn it onto a floured surface and knead a few times to keep it together) and pat it into a disk. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour.



For the filling, combine the pumpkin, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a mixing bowl. Mix well. Preheat the oven to 400º. Roll out the dough 1/8-inch thick. Use a saucer to cut out 6-inch circles.
Put 2 to 3 tablespoons of filling in the center of each circle of dough. Moisten the edges with water, fold the dough over the filling, and crimp with a fork to seal the edges. Cut slits to make vents (you are also welcome to brush the tops of the pasties with an egg wash for a more golden-brown color). Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 30 minutes or until browned.


I hope you enjoy this little hunk of Harry’s world. Pretend you’re on the Hogwarts Express while eating these. Oh. And my very non-dorkish sister? Yeah. She is now obsessed with HP. It happens to the best of us.