Maple-Oatmeal Bread

I have one final entry for Massachusetts Maple Month. This is one of my favorite breads in the world—slightly sweet and filling. I always make a mess when I knead bread. How flour ends up on my face, I really don’t know! Luckily, the end product is worth the clean-up work.

Ingredients:

1 cup old-fashioned oats (do not use quick or steel cut)
2 cups boiling water
1 tablespoon butter
1 packet (about 2-1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast (not instant)
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons salt
5-1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour (more or less)

Instructions:

Place the oats in a large mixing bowl. Pour the boiling water over them, add the butter, and let the oatmeal stand for about 15 minutes, until it is lukewarm. After the first 10 minutes, place the yeast in a small bowl. Cover it with the lukewarm water. Allow it to bubble up for a few minutes.

When the oatmeal is lukewarm, stir in the maple syrup, the salt, the yeast with its water, and 2 cups of the flour. Stir vigorously; then add 2 cups more flour. Stir again vigorously for a minute or two; get as close to beating as you can with a mixture this heavy. Scoop up the dough (add a bit of flour if it won’t hold together to scoop), and place it on a kneading surface—a floured board or a silicone mat.

Knead the dough for 2 minutes, adding a little more flour to keep it from sticking to the surface and your hands. After those first 2 minutes, let the dough rest for up to 10 minutes; then resume kneading, adding more flour as needed. Knead for 5 to 10 minutes, until the dough feels smooth.

Place the dough in a large, greased bowl. Cover the bowl with a warm, damp dish towel. Let the dough rise until it doubles in bulk; this should take about 2 hours, depending on how warm the room is. If your towel dries out during the rising, be sure to dampen it again.

Remove the covering from the bowl, and punch down on the dough once with your fist. This lets out a lot of the air. (It’s also fun.) Cut the dough in half, and shape each half into a ball. Butter 2 bread pans, and shape each ball into an oval about the same size as your pans. Smooth the balls as well as you can with your hands.

Place the bread loaves in the buttered pans, and turn them over so that both the tops and the bottoms have touched the butter. Cover the pans with a damp towel as you did the rising bowl, and allow the loaves to rise again until they double in bulk. This should take a little less time than the first rising, perhaps an hour or so.

After 45 minutes, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. When the loaves have finished rising, uncover them, and bake them for about 40 to 45 minutes, until they are a warm brown color and sound hollow when you tap on them. Remove the hot loaves from the pans, and let them cool on racks.

Makes 2 loaves.

Stump Sprouts Maple Rhubarb Coleslaw

Lloyd measures maple syrup for his coleslaw.

My neighbor Scott Purinton is currently boiling sap night and day. Scott informed me recently that much of his Grade B maple syrup is purchased by Lloyd and Suzanne Crawford for their Stump Sprouts lodge. High on a hill in Hawley, the Crawfords house and feed cross-country skiers, small conferences, family reunions, and other groups.

Lloyd and Suzanne are committed to sustainability. They have enough sunlight to generate their own solar electricity. Of course, they serve their guests home-grown and local foods as much as possible.

I asked Lloyd whether he would share one of his maple recipes. He came up with this clever, sweet-and-sour way to use two of my favorite ingredients, maple syrup and rhubarb. I can’t make it myself for a couple of months since unlike Lloyd and Suzanne I wasn’t smart enough to freeze small batches of rhubarb puree last spring! I can hardly wait to make a big batch in May.

Note from Tinky much later: I FINALLY got around to making this recipe when rhubarb season rolled along. It has a light refreshing feeling with a little Oriental tang, thanks to the sesame oil………

Gifts from a frequent guest who is a potter, these bowls adorn the kitchen at Stump Sprouts.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1-1/2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1/3 cup stewed, unsweetened rhubarb
3 to 4 tablespoons maple syrup
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste
1 finely shredded cabbage
toasted sunflower seeds to taste

Instructions:

In a jar, combine the olive oil, vinegar, sesame oil, rhubarb, maple syrup, and salt and pepper. Cover and shake well. Toss this dressing together with the cabbage 20 minutes to 2 hours before serving. Garnish with the sunflower seeds.

This recipe may be cut in half or even in quarters. The coleslaw will be edible for a day or two before it gets too wet.

Serves 12 to 15.

Betsy's Breakfast Bread Pudding

Most people use maple syrup as a condiment rather than an ingredient. Here is a recipe for something on which you pour the syrup.

Betsy Kovacs babysat for me when I was little—and I in turn babysat for her children as a teenager. The pattern would probably have continued forever if I had had kids when I was in my twenties. As it is, we are still friends, and I appreciate her adorable children (and now grandchildren!) as much as ever. Disconcertingly, Betsy looks almost EXACTLY the way she did when she was babysitting for me (maybe even a little younger and cuter).

Betsy calls this dish French toast. I have rechristened it breakfast bread pudding because (a) it is one, sort of, and (b) I see pudding everywhere. (Yankee magazine did, after all, dub me the Queen of Pudding!)

Betsy’s rich concoction has a couple of advantages over conventional French toast. First, it is ready to eat all at once so you avoid the awkwardness of batches. Second, the prep work can be done the evening before you bake the pudding so it’s a handy thing to serve brunch guests.

Betsy usually makes a big batch of this for entertaining. She uses a whole loaf of bread (usually challah) and fills two large quiche pans. I was cooking for two so I made a tiny batch. This involved 2 to 3 slices of bread, 1 to 2 eggs, and slightly less than 1 cup of liquid. I had no challah so I used a dense homemade white bread.

I have left quantities vague as she did so that you can make as much or as little as you like. Betsy tells me that her version is usually a little browner and crispier than mine (I was a bit paranoid about burning the thing!) so feel free to leave it in the oven a little longer.

Betsy and her Jack

Ingredients:

a “tight” bread like challah, at least a couple of days old
unsalted butter as needed
eggs (4 to 6 for a whole loaf, depending on how eggy you like things: I say go eggy!)
enough milk or cream or a mixture to cover the bread (I used a mixture, with more milk than cream)
cinnamon to taste (I used 1/2 teaspoon for my small dish)
sugar (2 tablespoons for a whole loaf of bread; I used 1/2 tablespoon)
freshly grated nutmeg to taste (I used 1/4 teaspoon for my small dish)

Instructions:

Butter your baking dish or dishes. Slice the bread. Butter it on one side, and place it butter side down in the baking dish. Break up the bread as needed so that the bottom of the dish is covered.

Butter the side of the bread that is now facing up. In a bowl whisk together the eggs, milk and/or cream, cinnamon, and sugar. Pour this combination over the bread. Add a little more milk and/or cream as needed to make sure the custard goes just under (or just to) the top of the bread. Do not go over the bread as this will make the pudding erupt in the oven.

Grate the nutmeg over the top of the pudding. Cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least an hour and up to overnight. The bread should absorb all (or almost all) of the custard.

When you are almost ready to bake the pudding, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Bake for 20 minutes or more until the top of the pudding turns golden brown. The custard will puff up but deflate after it hits the table. Serve with lots of maple syrup. A large batch (2 pans) serves 8 to 10. My tiny batch served 2 to 3.

Betsy says that leftover pudding may be wrapped in plastic wrap after cooling, then frozen and reheated in the oven at a future date (sans plastic wrap, of course).

Maple Musings (and Maple Glazed Carrots!)

Pardon me if I wax slightly sappy in this post. I’m talking about maple syrup so a little sap doesn’t seem inappropriate.

I like to think of cooking as a folk science. The science part is indisputable. Most cooking tasks—whisking, boiling, baking—are simply applied chemistry. We read books to help us figure out just the right formulas to create using our culinary versions of test tubes. Sometimes we experience a scientific breakthrough and discover a new formula in the kitchen.

Nevertheless, many of our most beloved formulas for cooking have been handed down to us, like a family story or a favorite lullaby. Perhaps the best analogy is a folk song.

My neighbor, composer Alice Parker, uses this analogy a lot. She points out that we don’t know who wrote a song like “Wayfaring Stranger.” In fact, the very definition of a folk song is that the composer and lyricist are anonymous. A song like this belongs to all of us, and we re-compose it every time we sing it.

(A choir director for whom I once sang that very song at a Lenten service thought I re-composed it a little too much, in fact, but I stuck to my guns and my version of the melody.)

Folk songs cannot be copyrighted, although arrangements of them can. Similarly, it is impossible to copyright a list of ingredients, but one can copyright the words one uses in the directions for a recipe. We don’t value folk songs or recipes any the less because they are not “original.”

In fact, we often value them more because they have sprung up in different places and been modified as they go from singer to singer, cook to cook. We certainly value not having to come up with something completely new every time we get out the guitar or the saucepan.

Musical tradition and culinary tradition are miracles we celebrate everyday.

At this time of year I’m particularly grateful for the tradition of boiling down the sap of sugar maples. Just as it’s hopeless to pinpoint the very first person who ever opened his or her mouth and sang “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger” (or “I am a poor wayfaring stranger” or any other version of this lyric) it’s impossible to figure out who first made maple syrup.

We assume it was a Native American since the original residents of New England were sweetening their food with maple long before Europeans arrived. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine how the first maple syrup came to be made. Did someone accidentally poke a hole in a tree that was near a cooking pot and then notice that the resultant food tasted extra sweet? We’ll never know.

I do know that my neighbors who have sugarhouses do what they do in large part because it is part of the history of their families and of this region.

I’m lucky to live in a place where a folk food tradition like maple still exists–where people are willing to do the hard work necessary to nurture the trees, maintain the sap lines, and boil (and boil and boil and boil) the sap. And I treasure the liquid amber they produce.

Here is another recipe that celebrates that tradition and the diversity of dishes one can make with New England’s folky, sappy mud-season staple.

Maple Glazed Carrots

I love stretching the uses of maple syrup beyond breakfast and dessert. These carrots get a lot of sweetness out of just a little syrup. (And they’re easy!) Feel free to use whole cut-up carrots instead of baby ones if you like. If you want to add to the feast of flavors, add a little minced fresh ginger to the maple mixture—or toss some fresh dill on top of the carrots when you serve them. I think the dish is pretty terrific as is.

Ingredients:

28 baby carrots
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons sweet butter

Instructions:

Bring the baby carrots to a boil in a pot of lightly salted water. Boil them until they are ALMOST done. (This won’t take very long.) Put 2 tablespoons of the water in which they boiled in a small sauté pan. Drain the carrots, discarding the remaining water, and rinse them in cold water to stop them from cooking any longer.

To the 2 tablespoons water add the maple syrup and butter. Heat this mixture until the butter melts. Add the carrots and toss them in the liquid. Continue to cook over medium-low heat, covered but tossing frequently, until the liquid almost evaporates (about 5 to 10 minutes). Serve immediately. Serves 4.

Sugaring Off at South Face Farm

March is Massachusetts Maple Month according to the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association. This organization of professional and amateur maple farmers is headed by Tom McCrumm of Ashfield. I figured I couldn’t visit a more appropriate farm than his to kick off my maple recipes this month so I headed recently to South Face Farm.

The sugarhouse at South Face Farm looks exactly as a sugarshack should. It sits on a quiet road, not far from Route 116 in Ashfield. Its low ceiling provides eaters with a sense of intimacy, and its décor is old fashioned. Old food tins and antique cooking implements line the walls. Large windows (many of them sporting a jug of amber syrup) look out on the farm Tom and his wife Judy Haupt steward.

The sugarhouse restaurant is open only about 12 days a year, on weekends during maple season. Nevertheless, Tom told me, those 12 days are vital to his sugaring enterprise. “The only way you can make a living in this business is to have a roadside sugarhouse and sell,” he told me, characterizing what he does as “agriculture as entertainment.”

“You’ve got to cut out the middle man. You’ve got to produce a good-quality product and sell it directly to the customer.”

Tom invited me into the kitchen to watch Skylar Abbatiello of Ashfield make one of the sugarhouse’s signature foods, corn fritters. Skylar is a lanky, genial high-school student who is in his fourth year at the sugarhouse but his first year of cooking. He sounded proud of having worked his way up through the ranks at South Face Farm. Tom told me that this pattern is common among the restaurant’s staff members, who are both local and loyal.

The kitchen definitely had a family atmosphere. Skylar was confidently and carefully supervised by the sugarhouse’s head cook (and kitchen designer), Bonnie, an Ashfield resident who preferred not to supply her last name. Bonnie explained that she and Tom McCrumm had developed the sugarhouse recipes to emphasize scratch cooking and local ingredients. The blueberries, eggs, milk, and ice cream served at the restaurant are all local—not to mention the maple syrup!

I asked Tom McCrumm about the ice storm in December, which damaged a lot of New England sugar maples. He informed me that his losses were moderately bad. “I lost ten to 15 percent of my taps,” he noted. “I put in a lot of time and labor for cleanup and replacing pipeline. It was a big expense.”

Nevertheless, he added, he perseveres. “I did what farmers have done for centuries. You put your head down and plow ahead and hope that next year is going to be better.”

Skylar with Fritters

South Face Farm Corn Fritters

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
3/4 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
3/4 cup corn—fresh, canned, or frozen (if using frozen, thaw and drain; if canned, just drain)
oil as needed for frying
lots of South Face Farm maple syrup

Instructions:

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper. In a separate bowl, beat together the milk and egg. Stir in the corn; then stir in the dry ingredients. The batter will be stiff.

Preheat the oil in a deep-fat fryer (or preheat a frying pan with at least a couple of inches of oil) to 350 degrees. Using a small scoop or a spoon, gently place quarter-cup blobs of batter in the oil. Do not overfill your pan; if it is too full the oil will cool off. Do not make larger fritters, or they will not cook through and will be doughy in the center.

Cook the fritters in the oil for 6 minutes, gently shaking them from time to time. Carefull remove and drain them. Drizzle maple syrup over the fritters. Makes about 10 fritters.

Irish Cottage Soda Bread

I can’t imagine celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day without a little soda bread, so called because it gets its leavening from baking soda rather than yeast. This is my favorite recipe to date for this treat. It comes from a now defunct store in Summit, New Jersey, called the Irish Cottage. Every year the store had a soda-bread contest, and this was one of the staff’s favorite winning recipes.

If you don’t have a way to use a quart of buttermilk, you may buy buttermilk powder in the baking section of large grocery stores. Add the required amount to the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder, and use water when the recipe calls for the buttermilk.

Ingredients:

4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) cold butter, cut into six pieces
1 cup dried cranberries (you may substitute raisins if you like)
1 egg
1-1/3 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
green sprinkles (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a large cookie sheet or line it with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. With two knives or a pastry cutter cut in the butter. When you are finished there should be only tiny bits of butter left. Add the cranberries.

In separate bowl (or a 2-cup measuring cup) mix the egg, buttermilk, and baking soda. Combine them with the flour mixture, stirring just until the dry ingredients become moistened. Form the dough into a ball.

On a lightly floured wooden board knead the dough for 3 to 5 minutes. Form the bread into two mounds, place them on the prepared cookie sheet, and gently make a cross on the center of each mound with a serrated knife. Add a few sprinkles if you like.
Bake the mounds until they are golden brown in spots, about 35 to 40 minutes.

Makes 2 loaves.

Jan and I wish you a Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

The Orange or the Green?

Katherine Scott Hallett circa 1890 (Courtesy of Bruce Hallett)

A few days ago I decided to get ready for Saint Patrick’s Day. I foraged in the basement for my light-up shamrock (which a neighbor whom I shall not name says makes the house look like a low-rent tavern). I affixed it to a window and went into the closet to pull out green clothing. My mother looked at the green shirt, glasses, and hat I extracted and said, “Your great grandmother would have been appalled.”

Indeed, Katherine Scott Hallett was not a person known for wearing green on March 17. Born in 1860, she died long before I was born, but I have heard stories about her all my life. To say that my mother disliked her grandmother would be an understatement. Mad Katie (as we sometimes call her in the family) had no tolerance for little girls with spirit. My mother was chock full of spirit.

They couldn’t even make it through greeting each other without getting into a fight. Katie only wanted to be called “Grandmother,” deeming any less formal name beneath her dignity. She also believed that the word “hello” was sacrilegious. In her view it was just an excuse for saying “oh, hell” backwards. Of course it gave little Janice a great deal of pleasure to arrive at the red brick house in Clyde, New York, and holler, “Hello, Grandma!” at the top of her lungs. Things went downhill from there.

My Great Grandmother's House (the painting is signed "B. Christian")

What, you may ask, does this have to do with Saint Patrick’s Day? Katie came to this country from Canada, but her family was Scots-Irish. They took part in one of the waves of Irish settlement by Protestant Scots. These settlements were encouraged, even sponsored, by the English. For centuries the rulers of England deluded themselves with the belief that if they kept bolstering the Protestant portion of the Irish population they would eventually weaken the hold of the Catholic Church and subdue the will of the Irish to rule themselves.

As a Protestant Irishwoman, Katie believed in wearing orange on Saint Patrick’s Day to celebrate the victory of Protestant William of Orange over his Catholic father-in-law, James II of England, in the battle of the Boyne in 1690. This Irish victory helped ensure that William and his wife Mary sat on the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It also ensured that Protestants would have the upper hand in Ireland for centuries to come, leading to violence and resentment on both ends of the Irish religious spectrum.

To Katie wearing Orange on Saint Patrick’s Day was a tactic in the ongoing battle between Catholics and Protestants. This battle remained vital to her family long after they settled on this continent.

In many ways, I have sympathy for Mad Katie. Far from most of her family after moving to the United States, she lost her husband to pernicious anemia at a relatively young age. In her middle years the rigidity of her personality morphed into dementia. She became even more alienated from those around her.

I have a feeling that at some level she had a genuine affection for my mother, who by all accounts was a pretty cute child. (Today she’s a cute old lady.) Sadly, Katie was unable to express that affection.

So—what am I going to wear for Saint Patrick’s Day? I hesitate to don either orange or green at this point for fear of reigniting the war Katie kept fighting well after it should have been over for her. I could try to emulate the Irish flag and wear a bit of both, throwing a little white in between. I’m not sure that color combination would do much for my figure, however.

At this point, I think I’ll bow out of the orange-and-green wars and wear blue. This color was originally associated with Saint Patrick; there is actually a color known as Saint Patrick’s blue. Of course, I’ll probably still have to don a shamrock or two.

Happily, I can pay tribute to both Irish Catholics and Protestants by whipping up some traditional Irish dishes in my kitchen. My great grandmother may have hated her Catholic neighbors. Nevertheless, she was as partial as the next Irish-American girl to such foods as soda bread and Irish stew.

I dedicate this year’s Saint Patrick’s Day-related posts to her memory and to the Irish heritage that many Americans share.

Irish Stout Cheese Spread

I have to admit to a secret love for processed cheese spreads. There’s something comforting and just plain yummy about them. I hate to read the labels on the commercial ones, however. So I’m making my own instead. This spread has all the creaminess of store spreads, but I know what’s in it, which is reassuring.

If you want to make this savory spread even prettier, use a yellow Irish cheddar to create a golden dip. A note to food-processor neophytes like me: if you use the food processor, don’t try to scrape the spread off the blade with a rubber spatula. We ended up with a “secret ingredient” in our first batch: red plastic!

Ingredients:

1 head garlic
2 to 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (for roasting garlic)
salt and pepper to taste (for roasting garlic
6 ounces stout
1 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 8-ounce brick cream cheese at room temperature
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Creole seasoning

Instructions:

First, roast the garlic. You won’t actually need the entire head of garlic, but it’s silly to roast less than a head. For instructions on roasting garlic see the “Springtime Irish Stew” post below.

Allow the stout to flatten a bit (you may do this while you roast your garlic if you like).

In a food processor or electric mixer, blend the cheeses and 1 tablespoon of the stout. Add the 1 teaspoon garlic, the Worcestershire sauce, the mustard, and the Creole seasoning. When they are well blended slowly pour in the remaining stout.

Let the cheese spread mellow in the refrigerator for 2 hours or more before serving. Makes at least 1 quart of spread.

Michael's Potato Cheese Soup

Michael (left) and his partner Tony (Courtesy of Carolyn Halloran/West County Independent)

Potatoes are central to Irish cuisine and have brought both joy and tragedy to the Irish people. This recipe comes from Michael Collins, the chef at the Green Emporium in Colrain, Massachusetts, now a pizzeria. Michael likes to serve hearty soups along with his pizza. This one reflects his Irish heritage and therefore serves as an appropriate addition to a Saint Patrick’s Day (or week!) menu.

He warns that the soup is quite heavy; if you look at it closely, you’ll see that it’s definitely NOT low in fat. Serve it in small quantities as part of a balanced lunch, however, and you’ll enjoy it without feeling too guilty.

We tend to think of potatoes as not terribly full of flavor, but this recipe shows that they can star in a dish. It occurs to me that chives might be nice as a garnish instead of the suggested herbs……..

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 cup chopped leeks or green onions
3-1/2 cups diced potatoes
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 cup grated cheddar cheese (a little more if you must, but don’t go overboard)
1/2 cup milk or half and half
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill or parsley
crumbled bacon for garnish (optional)

Instructions:

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and leeks or onions. Sauté for 5 minutes.

Add the potatoes and stock. Bring the soup to a boil, cover it, and simmer it for about 15 to 20 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked through. Mash the potatoes a little if you see large chunks, but don’t get rid of them entirely.

Stir in the remaining ingredients (save a little of the herb for garnish), and cook for 1 minute more, stirring. Crumble a little bacon on top if you like for extra flavor (and calories, I fear). The leftover parsley or dill also looks nice on top.

Serves 4 to 6.

Springtime Irish Stew

We still have a lot of snow in the hills of western Massachusetts, but I know spring is on its way.

The sun shines in on my bed a little earlier every morning, delighting my cat Lorelei Lee. (I don’t have to look out the window or feel the sunlight. I can identify the exact moment the rays land on the quilt because I suddenly hear purring.) Of course, losing the hour of sleep this past weekend was a little hard on both Lorelei and me, but we love having more light in the evening.

Maple syrup taps have begun appearing on neighborhood trees, and sugarhouses are starting to boil down the sap to make New England’s best known elixir.

Best of all, new baby animals are making their way into the world. Erwin and Linda Reynolds in Charlemont reported the other day that they had THIRTY-ONE little lambs at their Erlin Farm! Naturally, my mother and I had to pay them a visit.

I think my mother may have been more excited to see our friends than the lambs. Erwin and Linda embody the extended meanings of the terms shepherding (guidance) and animal husbandry (love). They have within them huge stores of common sense and heart. My mother is as sensitive to those qualities as the lambs seemed to be.

(Courtesy of Leon Peters)

The lambs we saw at Erlin varied in age between six days and five weeks. The oldest were just learning to use their little knees to leap into the air. One would suddenly execute an awkward jump on all fours; then a couple of others would try and ALMOST manage. I’m sure within a day or two many will be airborne.

My mother and I fell especially in love with one of Erwin and Linda’s “bottle babies,” Bandit. Erwin explained that sometimes the ewes have too many lambs to feed or just don’t come up with enough milk. At that point, Erwin and Linda take over with formula. They have take extra care of the bottle babies since these lambs don’t get the natural immunities that come from drinking mother’s milk. Bandit looked pretty happy and healthy—and utterly darling. I’m hoping she gets to be a mother next year instead of being turned into lamb chops.

It makes me a little sad to think that most of these adorable babies will someday become food. Nevertheless, I’m happier cooking and eating lamb from Erwin and Linda or from my neighbor Paul Cooper than I am consuming lamb from far away. I know that these lambs led happy lives in a beautiful place. (I also know that they were fed a healthy diet.)

Erwin and Linda gave me a bunch of recipes from the American Lamb Board, some of which I’m sure will make their way into these pages soon. Meanwhile, in honor of spring—and Saint Patrick!—here is a recipe for lamb stew.

The recipe gives the potatoes and carrots maximum flavor by mixing them in with the lamb from the very beginning of the cooking. Its drawback is that by the time the stew is done the pieces of potato and carrot have become very small. If you like, you may wait until after the first hour to add them to the stew pot. They will have more integrity that way.

I like a crazy mixed-up stew so this method suits me just fine.

Erwin and Linda with Baby Bandit

Springtime Irish Stew

Ingredients:

1 head garlic
2 to 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (for roasting the garlic)
salt and pepper to taste (for roasting the garlic)
1-1/2 pounds boneless lamb shoulder
8 baby potatoes, cut in half
1 onion, sliced
6 carrots, cut into chunks
a handful of parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon dried)
salt and pepper to taste (I use a generous teaspoon of salt and 10 turns of my pepper grinder)
2 cups (possibly more) stock—lamb if you have it, but beef or chicken will do

Instructions:

First, roast the garlic. (If you are disinclined to roast, you may skip this step and chop up a couple of cloves of raw garlic for the stew instead. I think the roasting is rather fun.) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pull the outside skin off the head of garlic, but leave the individual skins on the garlic cloves.

Cut off the tips of the garlic cloves. (See photo.) Place the garlic head in a small baking dish. (An ovenproof ramekin does nicely.) Drizzle oil all over the exposed parts of the garlic, using your fingers to make sure the oil touches all the visible garlic. Sprinkle salt and pepper overall. Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil.

Bake the garlic until it feels soft, about 30 to 40 minutes. Allow it to cool until you can touch it; then squeeze the individual cloves out of their skins and into a bowl. Mash the garlic with a fork. Set it aside while you prepare the lamb.

Trim off any excess fat you can from the lamb, and cut it into small chunks.

Place about 2/3 of the potatoes in the bottom of a Dutch oven. Arrange the onions and garlic over the potatoes; then put the carrots on top of the onions and garlic. Place the meat on top. Sprinkle at least half of the parsley and all of the rosemary on the meat, plus the salt and pepper. Top with the remaining potatoes.

Pour the stock over all, and place the Dutch oven on the stove top. When it boils, turn it down and cover it. Simmer the stew for 2 hours, stirring occasionally to keep the food from sticking to the pan and adding more stock if necessary.

Just before serving sprinkle the remaining parsley on top of the stew to give a hint of fresh green.

Serves 4 to 6.

A Hug in a Bowl: Faith's Tunafish & Noodles

Today I have a guest blogger, my friend Faith Montgomery Paul. As kids Faith and I spent summers together at Singing Brook Farm in Hawley, Massachusetts. She’s probably the first person apart from my family I ever cooked with. We made a ton of fudge and cookies to share with our friends as teenagers! Along the way we cooked up a friendship that has lasted for decades.

Faith returns to Hawley every summer with her husband Arnold and her son Ian, one of my all-time favorite kids. We only see each other a few days a year, but we’re in touch by e-mail all the time, and it feels as though we’re still just around the corner. She wrote me a few weeks back and said she was in the mood for tuna-noodle casserole, and I said that sounded like a blog post to me!

When I made the casserole (the photo is of my version; I’m sure Faith’s looks neater!) I didn’t have any canned mushrooms so I sautéed a few fresh ones and popped them in. I also threw a little paprika on top because I just love paprika. And I mixed the salt, pepper, and onion granules into the sauce so they would spread out (sorry, Faith; I just can’t help messing with recipes a teensy bit).

Anyone else who would like to share thoughts and recipes is welcome to do so; after all, the name of this blog is “In OUR Grandmothers’ Kitchens.”

Meanwhile, here’s Faith………

Comfort Food

Everyone has his or her own definition of comfort food, and I would be hard put to define it conclusively. But I know it when I eat it. It can take the sting out of winter, or heartbreak, or too much STRESS, at least temporarily. It’s warming and sustaining and non-threatening (no exotic ingredients here!). It’s like eating a hug in a bowl. Usually, it’s something that my mother Jane made when we were growing up. Sometimes it involves noodles, sometimes cheese — sometimes both!

Winter is my prime time for comfort food, because I really don’t like winter very much. Yeah, the snow is nice when everything looks impossibly like a postcard. Yeah, it’s great that my son gets to ski (every Tuesday, all day, with his school — great school — but that’s another story). Yeah, I know we only get the other three seasons because we have winter. I get all that. I still don’t like wearing all these clothes and having my hands cold from November to April. I don’t like days with more darkness than sunshine. Really, I’d just like to eat my weight in chocolate around Thanksgiving (possibly Veterans Day) and then sleep until Memorial Day.

So, along about now, when it seems as if winter might not end, I dig into my memories of childhood and produce: tunafish and noodles. Other people might call it tuna noodle casserole, but in my family it’s “tunafish and noodles.” And here’s how my mother made it.

Ingredients:

about 1/3 of a 1-pound bag of medium-width egg noodles
2 cans tuna packed in water
2 ribs celery, chopped (more if you’re a celery fan)
1 can mushrooms, optional
1 can cream of celery soup
1 soup can of milk
onion powder (about 1/4 teaspoon, or more to taste)
salt and pepper to taste
several slices American cheese

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cook and drain the noodles according to package directions. While they are cooking, drain the tuna and canned mushrooms (if using) and chop the celery. In a 3-quart casserole, combine the drained tuna, drained mushrooms, and celery, making sure to break up the big chunks of tuna. Add the noodles and mix well. Add the cream of celery soup and milk. Mix very well. Sprinkle with onion powder. Taste for seasoning and add more onion powder and/or salt and pepper until it is pleasing. Top the casserole with cheese. Bake, covered, for about 45 minutes. If you like the cheese a little brown, remove the cover near the end. Serves 6 to 8.

Note: My mother always puts butter and salt and pepper on the noodles before she puts them in the casserole, but in a nod to my cholesterol level I don’t. I also use one-percent milk, and we don’t notice the difference. Of course, I do put cheese on top, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

Tinky Goes Yankee

I don’t usually put posts on my blog that merely link to other web sites, but today I’m making an exception. The new issue of Yankee magazine is now OUT—and it features an article on me, Tinky Weisblat. I’m the star of the March/April “Best Cook in Town” feature by veteran Yankee writer Edie Clark.

Edie called last fall just before the semi-final rounds of my annual Pudding Hollow Pudding Contest. She needed to interview someone THAT WEEK and hoped it could be I, preparing an original pudding recipe. I was a little taken aback since I had to test seven other puddings for the semi-finals, but I love being famous. So of course I said yes and scrambled together a recipe for something called Cozy Apple Pudding.

We had a lovely visit despite the chaos. One of Edie’s greatest assets as a reporter is that she seems like an old friend the minute she walks in the door. She worked and chatted with my mother and me as we cooked and even sat through a rehearsal of my signature song for the Pudding Contest, “Find Me a Man I Can Cook For” by my neighbor Alice Parker. Of course, Alice joined us for pudding.

I encourage you to run right out and buy an issue of Yankee. In it you’ll find Edie’s interview with me; my apple pudding recipe (made with apples plucked from the tree in my front yard!); and the recipe for one of my favorite entries in the Pudding Contest, Greek Eggplant Pudding by Nancy Argeris.

If you must read the article right away, you may look at it online, but I think I look a little thinner in the print version so naturally I want to steer you toward it!

Besides, it’s a great magazine with terrific taste in cooks…….