Spaghetti Squash

This is such an interesting vegetable. Its a squash whose flesh pulls away from the skin like strands of thin spaghetti when its cooked. On the outside, it looks like a mild-mannered winter squash. Many  of the common varieties of winter squash we see in the store tend to have somewhat starchy flesh and they become soft when they are cooked. But this yellow wonder transforms into something completely different when its cooked. I've eaten spaghetti squash before and have watched it being prepared, but I have never cooked it myself. My husband has cooked spaghetti squash many times and he likes to serve it like pasta - with tomato sauce and cheese. My Sunday dinner plans featured pork enchiladas and I thought this squash might be lovely either inside or along side. I'm long overdue to try my hand at this unique veggie, so I went for it.

In my research I found all kinds of preparations for this squash from steaming to boiling, but it seems that the most effective and preferred way to cook this thing is to cut it in half and roast it in the oven until it becomes soft. This was also the suggestion I got from my husband and my friend Jenny, who both have way more experience with this product than me. I set my oven to 325, got my biggest, sharpest knife and started sawing at the squash to cut the ends off. It was impossibly hard, but I managed the get the ends off without butchering my own hands. Surprisingly, the knife passed effortlessly right through the center of the squash. On the inside, this squash looked much like every other with large seeds in the center.

I scooped out the seeds to expose the yellowish flesh inside. Jenny suggested a light coating of olive oil and some seasonings that would match well with enchiladas. I opted for salt, pepper, ancho chili powder and a little cumin. The squash gets roasted on a sheet tray cut side down so the inside steams while it roasts. I put some foil on my baking sheet and placed the squash on the foil. I put it in the oven and walked away as it takes anywhere from 45 to 60 minutes to roast. 

Sure enough, an hour later I opened the oven and poked at the squash with my finger. It was soft to the touch and there was a dent in the skin where I'd poked it. I took it out and turned one over. It was piping hot and steaming, but I probed it with a fork just to see how it felt. The flesh came away easily in beautiful pasta-like strands. Perfect. I left the squash to cool while I worked on the rest of my dinner ingredients. The squash was delicious in enchiladas with a little sharp cheddar and salsa verde.

However, this slightly sweet and succulent squash would be excellent with any number of different flavorings. It would be great with just a little butter and salt. I can imagine this squash being great in a curry sauce. It would be delicious with olive oil, garlic, Parmesan cheese and fresh herbs. It would be excellent mixed with mushrooms and breadcrumbs and stuffed inside chicken breasts. I would like to try adding this squash to a vegetable stew or a soup with zucchini and tomatoes. It would make a nice bed for a piece of salmon or arctic char. This squash is neutral enough to blend well with other flavors, but its got enough of its own distinctive flavor to shine through. I'm sold on the spaghetti squash. I'm a fan and I can't wait to play around with it more in the future. 

An Ugly Vegetable

Have you ever seen something in the grocery store and thought "what in the name of Sandra Day O'Connor is that weird looking thing"? If so, you may have uttered similar words at the sight of a celery root. Celery root, also called celeriac, is exactly what it sounds like. It is the root of the celery plant and it has the same texture and flavor as the heart of a head of celery. Its an ugly little bulb, usually about the size of a softball, that is kind of hairy and lumpy on the outside but white and crunchy on the inside. Celery root can be used any number of ways. You can dice it up and roast it in the oven, slice it thinly and fry it like chips or shred it and mix it into coleslaw. Its a really versatile veggie that can be served raw or cooked. If you can get past the appearance, you'll be amazed at how tasty this thing can be.

I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year and have been testing recipes. When I saw celery root in the produce section, I decided to bring it home and add it to mashed potatoes for a little zing. To prepare this thing, I cut the top and bottom off and ran a sharp knife down the sides to expose the white flesh inside. The celery root I bought was rather large and it was really too much for the small amount of mashed potatoes I was making for dinner. I decided to try pickling some of the celery root to see how it turned out.  I cut the bulb in half and set one half aside for the mashed potatoes. I made a quick brine with white vinegar, water, sugar, a little bit of salt and spices like bay leaf, red pepper flake, dill seed, celery seed, a pinch of tumeric and a couple of allspice berries.

I put the brine on the stove over medium heat and brought it up to a boil. I sliced the celery root thinly along with a clove of garlic and a small chunk of onion. When the brine was boiling, I put the sliced vegetables in and let them boil in the brine for about 5 minutes, then moved the pot off the heat and let it cool before pouring everything into a container and putting it in the fridge.

I cubed the other half of the celery root and added it to a bowl with two peeled and cubed Russet potatoes. Here is a great technique for making perfectly fluffy mashed potatoes. I noticed that when I boil potatoes, my mashed potatoes seem kind of soggy. Instead of boiling them, cube the potatoes and put them in a glass bowl. Add a small splash of water in the bottom of the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and microwave it on high until the potatoes are tender. It only takes a tiny bit of water to steam the potatoes, which keeps them fluffy. The smaller you cut the potatoes, the more quickly they cook. I put my cubed celery root and potatoes in the microwave and in 10 minutes they were soft.

When they were cooked, I drained off the water, added a couple tablespoons of butter and whipped it all up with my trusty hand mixer. The mashed potatoes were delicious served with roasted chicken and steamed green beans. They has that unique vegetal flavor but the texture was fluffy. It was a nice alternative to plain old mashed potatoes. A little while later, I tasted the pickled celery root and it was also quite tasty. Because this vegetable is kind of spongy, it soaked up the brine really nicely. And since I had boiled it briefly in the brine, it got a little softer and picked up the spices. It will make a lovely addition to a pickle tray for Thanksgiving. So the next time you see some weird, ugly vegetable in the store, buy it and try it. It might just surprise you.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

For the past couple of months, I've had sticky toffee pudding on my mind. I've only had this dessert once before. I found a pre-made pan of sticky toffee pudding in Whole Foods and I bought it on a whim. Even though I knew it was probably a poor substitute for the real thing, I thought it was delicious.

This sweet treat is a modern English recipe, thus the use of the word "pudding", which our neighbors over the big pond use to describe a number of different styles of dessert.  It involves a moist and fluffy cake, traditionally steamed, bathed in a buttery toffee sauce and served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. The secret ingredient, the thing that gives the cake its sticky texture and fruity richness, is chopped dates. 

I was watching Kevin Dundon's show on PBS and he prepared this dessert. I became somewhat obsessed. My mind would wander and I would find myself thinking sticky toffee pudding.  Just the words "sticky toffee pudding" evoke images in my mind of this unique dessert.  I'd been reading recipes and reviews and finally had a free weekend to experiment. 

I poked through a number of different recipes and settled on one that yielded the smallest quantity, just in case my first attempt was a failure. All the recipes I'd seen called for the large and meaty medjool variety of dates, which I found at my favorite gourmet store. Since this recipe uses a lot of butter, I chose high quality Plugra Europpean style butter. 

THE CAKE:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup pitted, chopped dates

1 cup boiling water

1/4 cup unsalted butter at room temp, very soft

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

THE TOFFEE SAUCE:

1 stick butter

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

The recipe starts with the cake. I set the oven to 350 and greased a 10 inch square baking pan. I chopped up the dates, placed them in a bowl and poured the boiling water over them. Following the recipe, I added the baking soda to the dates and set them aside to soften. This step helps to activate the baking soda, which makes the cake rise in the oven. Next I sifted together the flour, cinnamon and baking powder and set it aside. In the bowl of the mixer, I creamed the butter and sugar together until they were fluffy and well mixed. Then I added the egg and vanilla and mixed it until well blended. Then it was time for the dates. 

Some recipes suggested adding the dates in pieces, which would result in sticky little chunks in the finished cake. Kevin Dundon pureed the dates and blended the puree into the batter, resulting in a dark and dense cake. My approach was to blend the dates but to leave them still just a bit chunky. I added the blended dates to the batter and mixed well.  Finally, I added the dry ingredients and mixed them in by hand to avoid over-mixing.The batter was speckled with date pieces and it had a golden color. I poured the batter into the greased pan and put it in the oven. The recipe called for a 35 minute bake time, but my cake was done in about 25 minutes. The cake is done when the top is slightly springy, it starts to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. 

While the cake was baking, I turned my attention to the toffee sauce. I had a moment of panic when I started to assemble the ingredients and realized that I'd forgotten to buy heavy cream. I substituted half and half, but I think my sauce would have turned out better if I'd had proper cream. I used the same proportions and put the ingredients into a small saucepan over medium low heat. The recipe instructed to let the sauce simmer until it began to thicken and turn a rich caramel color. Mine cooked for about 10 minutes and it looked good to me when I took it off the heat. By the time my sauce was done, the cake had come out of the oven and I poured a thin layer of the sauce over the top of the cake while it was hot from the oven. I let it cool for about 15 minutes, but by the time the cake had cooled, the sauce had started to seize up in the pot, so I put it back over low heat to remelt it. 

To serve, I poured a little sauce on the plate, placed a square of cake over the sauce and poured more sauce on top. I added a scoop of vanilla gelato to the side. The cake itself was fluffy and ethereal with little sticky pieces of dates studded throughout. The sauce was not exactly as I'd hoped - the consistency was just a little too thick for my taste, but it tasted wonderful, especially with the vanilla ice cream. I definitely have room for improvement, but this was a good first attempt. I have family coming for Thanksgiving this year. Guess what I'll be serving for dessert? 

Jumbo Shrimp

Fresh, local ingredients are the backbone of great cooking. When you buy local, you can be assured your food will be the very freshest it can be, right from its source to your kitchen. For almost thirty years, I lived near the Texas gulf coast and for another six years, I lived in New England just an hour from the Atlantic ocean. The seafood I bought pretty much came right out of the ocean and into my cooler. Close proximity to fresh seafood also has a huge impact on prices. In New England, even the largest lobsters were about $8 a pound, compared to $15 a pound inland,. We may have eaten our own body weight in steamers, which we could find for about $4 a pound. In Texas, its all about the shrimp. The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico yield the largest, most succulent shrimp you can imagine. When I lived in Dallas, I'd visit my father who lives very close to the gulf coast. I'd fill a small cooler with the biggest shrimp I could find, 8-10 count for about $6 per pound. I always had fresh gulf shrimp in my freezer.

On a recent trip to the gulf coast, I had shrimp in the brain. Our vacation included a two-day visit with my sister and 93 year old dad followed by three days in a lovely beach house on the Bolivar Peninsula with my oldest and dearest friends. Before we set out on the hour-long drive from my dad's to the beach, we took a detour to a bait shop where I've been buying shrimp for 25 years. There is no name on the storefront, you just have to know where it is. The family that runs the shop also has a shrimp boat and for $7 a pound head-on, they sell the biggest, freshest and most mind-blowing gulf shrimp that have ever tap-danced across my taste buds. We bought 4 pounds of jumbos, a bag of ice and a pair of cheap sunglasses and hit the road. We stopped for a few grocery items, like lemons, cocktail sauce and margarita ingredients, before meeting up with my friends at our retreat on the beach. Once we got settled in and had a few adult beverages, I put a large pot on the stove to boil. 

There are many different ways to prepare jumbo shrimp. It is absolutely yummy sauteed in garlic butter with a squeeze of lemon and served with crusty bread or over pasta. It is fabulous in a tomato broth or a gumbo served over rice. But what I craved was plain boiled shrimp, the best way to enjoy its pure essential flavor. However you choose to serve your shrimp, the worst thing you can do is overcook it. Overcooked shrimp has a hard and mealy texture that is very off-putting. You know your shrimp is ready as soon as it floats and it needs to be plunged into ice water the minute its done to stop the cooking.  We cleaned the shrimp by removing the heads and rinsing them under cold water.

Normally, I would use those heads to make shrimp stock and put it in the freezer for a future soup or sauce, but that wasn't an option this time. I cut up two lemons and two limes and dropped them in the water, along with a bag of Louisiana seafood boil. When the water just began to simmer, I dropped the shrimp in and got my bowl of ice ready.  It took less than 10 minutes for those big boys to come to the surface of the water. I scooped them out with a slotted spoon and dropped them into the bowl of ice. Just a few hours after the shrimp entered my life, they were being dipped in spicy cocktail sauce and enjoyed by me and my grateful friends. 

We ate about half of them on the first night and put the rest in the fridge. For the next three days, we nibbled on shrimp for lunch and in the afternoon with our adult beverages. We also went to dinner one night at a local seafood restaurant where I ate more shrimp. By the time our vacation was over, I was staring to grow antennae, a tail and tiny flippers on my belly. Now I'm back at home and taking advantage of the local ingredients that are in season here in western Pennsylvania. My next trip to Texas is in just a few months and you can bet that wherever I am dining, there will be shrimp on the table. 

Peach Mango Crumble

I have what you might call a cognitive disconnect between the concepts of grocery shopping and going on vacation. I have this annoying habit of buying perishable fruits and veggies right before we leave on a trip. I lose my mind in the grocery store or hit a local farmers market on my way home and we end up having to frantically cook and eat all this produce in a matter of days. My husband has made me aware of this issue a number of times, but when I see those Chambersburg peaches for $1 a pound, I can't control myself, which brings me to the subject at hand.

I had three big, lovely Pennsylvania peaches ripening on the counter. I also had a mango that was about twenty minutes away from going bad. We were leaving for vacation in less than a week so I needed to dispose of this fruit post haste. Since I've been doing so much baking lately, my pantry is stocked and luckily, we are both big fans of fruit desserts. There are so many wonderful recipes from pies to tarts to ice creams, but I opted for one of the easiest and most scrumptious - the crumble. Now, there always seems to be a bit of confusion about the difference between crumbles, crisps and cobblers. They are all baked fruit desserts, but each has a different topping. The cobbler has a biscuit topping which is usually dropped in small dollops on top of the fruit. When it bakes, the juice from the fruit permeates the bottom of the biscuit and the browned top resembles a cobbled road, thus the name. The crumble has a streussel topping made with flour, butter and sugar that gets very crunchy when it bakes. The topping for the crisp has the same ingredients as the crumble with the addition of oats, which I just happened to not have in my otherwise well stocked pantry. I did, however, have a big bag of walnuts in the freezer, so I decided to add a little extra crunch to my topping.

PEACH MANGO CRUMBLE:

3-5 ripe peaches
1 ripe mango
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
6 tbsp very soft butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, pecans or hazelnuts

The amount of fruit you have will determine the size of your baking dish and that is actually an important part of the preparation. The layer of fruit needs to be deep so it doesn't cook away to nothing before the topping browns. The deeper the dish, the saucier the fruit will become while baking, which is exactly what you want. Choose a baking dish that has high sides, like a gratin dish or small casserole, and one that is small enough to keep your fruit from spreading out into a thin layer. Of course, if you have a lot of fruit, you will need to make more topping to compensate. For 6 to 8 large peaches, try doubling the topping recipe.

Preheat your oven to 350. Split, peel and slice the peaches and mango and toss them with the vanilla and a tablespoon each of four and sugar. Set them aside while you work on your topping. In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon and chopped walnuts. Mix them together briefly with a fork, then add the butter in small pieces. Start working the butter into the dry ingredients to form a loose dough. The texture of your dough is critical to the success of this dessert. If you can squeeze the dough together and it stays together, you've got it right. If your dough is too dry and crumbly, add a tablespoon of water and work it in until you can squeeze the dough and it keeps its shape. Your dough should be in clumps when you put it on top of the fruit, Those clumps will absorb the fruit juice underneath and get all golden brown and crunchy on top. Yum.

Dump your fruit into your baking dish and make sure you have a nice thick and even layer. Then start piling the clumps of dough on top, making sure all the fruit gets covered completely. I like a thick topping, but that is all a matter of personal taste. Some people like just a small bit of crumb topping, some people like as much topping as fruit. Its all up to you.  Once you have all the fruit covered, put the baking dish on a baking sheet covered with foil. This dessert tends to bubble up while baking and the juices will destroy the bottom of your oven if you don't take this step. Bake it for 30-40 minutes until you can see the juices bubbling at the sides of the dish and the top is beautifully browned.

The crumble will be as hot as the surface of the sun when it comes out of the oven and while it will be almost impossible to resist sticking a spoon (or your finger) into this magnificent dessert, it is best served warm, but not scalding hot. You will save yourself from a nasty burn if you let it cool off for half an hour before you eat it. For pure heaven in a bowl, serve this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and make sure you spoon some of that warm fruit juice all over the top. I didn't have ice cream in my freezer, so I served it with a spoonful of plain Greek yogurt, which was also outrageously good.  This might be my favorite summer dessert. Its a great way to use fresh berries, stone fruits or even apples and pears. Try this once and I think you'll want to make again and again.