Guest Chef! Charles McE. Cooks

Charles, a physicist by day and avid cook by night (a blogger all the time) needed little persuasion to guest chef at the Spouse House. His MO is all-in-one meals, especially "stu" (aka stew). For this venture, he was determined to step it up a notch with a side dish. We brainstormed ideas and came up with a cabbage salad, as I had a great quantity of crispy savoy cabbage from our Featherstone Farm Winter CSA share.

Charles stirs the stew while I mash the potatoes and parsnips, and toss the salad.

This evening, the stew included black pepper bacon, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, green beans and sundry soup making staples (onions, broth, and the like).

Mayan-Inspired Corn Pone

This recipe was inspired by a childhood favorite of mine from Laurel's Kitchen: Tennessee Corn Pone. I wanted to make something that would complement acorn squash with a cranberry stuffing.

Acorn squash and onion from Mhonpaj's Garden CSA.

I also wanted to incorporate the pumpkin puree that was on the Spouse House "Nom Nom Me" list. So I fiddled with the spices, adjusted the cornbread topping, and voila!

Mayan-inspired corn pone. I was overly judicious with the spices - this could have used a lot more oomph in  the flavor department - but it's a gentle introduction to the pumpkin-pinto bean-corn world of Mayan cuisine.

Mayan-Inspired Corn Pone
Serves four hungry adults as a main dish.

4 c pinto beans, cooked
2 c black beans, cooked

2 tsp canola oil
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp allspice
5 cloves, ground
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp salt

2 c cornmeal
2 eggs
2 c milk
1/2 c pumpkin puree
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp allspice

1. Preheat oven to 375. Lightly grease a 9"x13" baking pan.
2. Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet and sauteed onions until soft. Add garlic and saute one minute more.
3. Add the spices; stir well to coat. Cook another minute or so.
4. Add the beans and enough of the cooking water to nearly submerge them. Let heat through and simmer while you prep the topping.
5. Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add the milk and pumpkin puree and whisk thoroughly.
6. Sift the dry ingredients into the wet and fold in with quick, light strokes.
7. Pour the beans into the prepared pan. Pour the cornmeal mixture over it evenly.
8. Bake until golden brown, or a toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Just a heads up - some people strongly prefer / only eat this dish with salsa.

Guest Chef! Kate E. Cooks

Kate is no stranger to homemade dinners, favoring build-your-own themes (crepe bar, anyone?) and trading dinner duties with her sister occasionally. For the Spouse House, however, she had something different in mind.

Slicer tomatoes meet their destiny amid the carnage of floret'd broccoli.

Under her fingers, and with Alec's help, two pizzas rose: fresh tomatoes atop a white bean puree with overtones of smoked gouda and a green mountain of broccoli and arugula capped with feta and mozzarella.

Kate keeps an eye on Alec's work.

Into the oven they went, and out they came again, melted and tantalizing, ready to join my second attempt at enjoying fennel in a salad (read about my first, wildly successful attempt).

Beets work their overpowering magic on fennel, one of my struggle vegetables.

Come back soon, Kate!

Guest Chef! Thomas W.W. Cooks

Thomas came to the Spouse House kitchen with a favorite recipe that he was willing to tweak: broccoli chicken stir fry with a crunchy peanut butter sauce. We tried sauteing the onions first rather than with the broccoli and marinating the chicken for about 20 minutes before cooking it, with good results.

I also taught him how to cook beets (from Mhonpaj's Garden) in the pressure cooker.

Thomas slips the skins off beets.

Perhaps "teach" is a strong word. I am still figuring out beet-size to cooking-time ratio, and it took two tries to get them to an acceptable softness. I improvised a curry dressing to doll them up.

Thomas invited two guests. Danny brought V8 Fusion juices and we tried to guess what was in them.

Henry and Hannah read food labels.

The answer was on the bottles, of course, so we read the ingredient lists simultaneously. Of course.

Guest Chef! Kathy J. Cooks

We lured Kathy J. into our kitchen with promises of fresh, organic produce from Mhonpaj's Garden.

Kathy likes to talk while she cooks. 

She tied on her apron and jumped right in. Appetizers first: sauteed Parmesan-stuffed Swiss chard packets with a balsamic reduction and kale chips.

Swiss chard wrapped around a hunk of melted Parmesan.

 Then a pause as the polenta was prepared.

Kathy puts the finishing touches on the green beans
while Lani stirs polenta and reads To Kill a Mockingbird.

The main course was worth the wait: creamy polenta with roasted vegetable and mushroom ragout, mixed beans with grilled corn, and a caramelized red onion olive tart with a whole wheat crust.

Looks good, tastes good.

Another pause before dessert: brownies made from scratch by Kjersti with chocolate-chocolate and/or blackberry ice cream.

I asked Kathy if she followed a recipe for the ragout. She said she did, once, but has since reinvented it with every preparation. "I cook more from recipes than some of my friends," she said. "That's how you learn."

It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. 

Wendell Berry 

Nabemono

Winter's chill begs for certain meals to come to the table.

+Caren Grantz Keljik  prepared nabemono, a Japanese winter stew cooked at the table. You can see the portable stove with a ceramic pot, filled to the brim with a lightly flavored stock, slices of daikon and napa cabbage, chunks of tofu, caps of shiitake mushrooms, and lengths of green onion.

After each batch of ingredients cooked, we fished them out of the pot with chopsticks and bathed them in the stock of our individual bowls, flavored with soy sauce, fresh lemon, and green onion.

As the meal progressed, the daikon absorbed more and more flavor, and the "lightly flavored stock" became the most delicious savory broth you could imagine.

We were happy campers.

Die Artischocke

Not too long ago, I sat down to a lovely steamed artichoke with my family. As the resident dietitian-in-training, I faced questions about this edible bud and its distant relation, the Jerusalem artichoke. I gave superficial answers and resolved to dig  deeper later.

"Sunchoke bloom" by renoir_girl

First, the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), aka sunchoke, aka sunroot, aka earth apple.*

The sunchoke is in the same genus as the sunflower, which you could guess by the picture at right. Unlike sunflowers, however, sunchokes have an edible tuber packed with the carbohydrate inulin. Inulin is a fructan (polymer of fructose molecules) that resists digestion. The fructose means it can be a low calorie sweetener and its polymeric nature places it into the fiber family. Another source of inulin is chicory root, which you will find at the top of the ingredients list of Fiber One bars.

Second, the globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus). Did you know it's a thistle?

"Artichoke plant" by Miran Rijavec

Both the sunchoke and artichoke are in the daisy family, (Asteraceae), but that's where the resemblance ends. We eat the scales of the artichoke bud, as well as the "heart," after removing the immature florets in the center (the "choke" or "beard"). Artichokes can be harvested from the spring all the way through mid-autumn. Most of the US's artichokes are grown in California, as they require fairly warm weather (hardiness zone 7 and above, in case you're wondering).

The artichoke's nutritional selling points include vitamin C, magnesium, and folate, as well as a healthy dose of fiber. Ocean Mist would love for you to believe artichokes are an antioxidant powerhouse. I had difficulty deciphering the USDA article they cited, but certainly believe eating an artichoke now and then is a delightful and healthful experience.

* 50 points for anyone who can tell me what a French "earth apple" is.

Meal for Mom

Calendar trumps weather. Once I folded the month of April on itself to reveal May, I traded soups and stews for summer fare. Disregarding the chill and rain of Mother's Day, I prepared one of my favorite warm-weather meals for Caren and Mark: Japanese soba noodles with as many trimmings as I can muster.

Soba noodles surrounded by bok choy and topped with nori strips. Homemade dipping sauce to the right. Zigzagging from right center, tofu with pickled ginger, more nori, pea shoots, green onion, and sardines.

This was my first attempt at plating food for each guest. I drew inspiration from Peter and Joan Martin's Japanese Cooking.

Green onions float in tsukejiru dipping sauce.

What meal says warm weather to you?