Brown Butter Roasted Potatoes

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Another recipe from the Wall Street Journal – I have made this dish so many times and it’s always amazing. It’s great for supper or brunch.

2 lbs. small potatoes, scrubbed well, but not peeled
3 Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
4 eggs, rinsed well before adding to pot
6 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp lemon juice
4 green onions, thinly sliced

Heat oven to 450.

Boil potatoes and eggs in salted water for 15 minutes. Remove and halve potatoes. Lay on a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, flip the potatoes and bake another 10 minutes.

Peel eggs and quarter them.

Heat butter for 5 minutes over medium heat in a pan large enough to hold everything, until it just starts to brown. Add lemon juice and stir. Then add potatoes, eggs and green onions and toss everything together.

Check seasoning and serve.

Roasted Eggplant with Tahini Sauce

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From the Wall Street Journal – though simplified. Eggplant and tahini are so good together! The original recipe called for fresh herbs on top, but we like it just like this.

6 small eggplants, halved, skin and stem intact
olive oil
kosher salt

Put eggplants on a baking pan, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast at 425 for 20 minutes.

1/4 cup tahini paste
2 Tbsp lemon juice
sprinkle of garlic powder
1/2 to 1 tsp salt
1/4 cup water

Mix all together and drizzle over eggplant just before serving. Trader Joe’s also sells a Tahini sauce which you can substitute for the tahini paste and water. Just use 1/2 cup of the sauce instead.

You can use larger eggplants – just cut them in slices about 1″ thick.

Emergency Niobrara Salad Dressing

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When you’re staying in a cabin and miles from any grocery store, sometimes you have to get creative! Since we often stay a week or more, I bring a pretty good selection of things from home. One time though, I had everything for salad but no dressing. So I grabbed the buttermilk and mayo from the fridge and the garlic bread seasoning mix from Costco and voila – a terrific, creamy salad dressing! You could probably use any seasoning mix you have on hand – steak seasoning mix would probably be great, too.

1/4 cup buttermilk
1/8 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 tsp Johnny’s garlic-bread seasoning mix

Blend and enjoy.

Great Warm Caprese Salad

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This may have come from the Wall Street Journal, or maybe Ina Garten – can’t really remember. It’s perfect for when tomatoes are abundant, but even winter grocery store tomatoes taste great.

12 plum tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 Tbsp cider vinegar
sprinkling of garlic powder
2 tsp sugar
salt and pepper
8 oz. sliced mozzarella cheese
12 basil leaves, julienned (Stack all the leaves on top of one another, roll them up and cut little thin slices. They’ll form little strips of basil. Thanks, Ina!)

Set oven to 425.

Lay tomatoes cut side up in a baking dish. Blend olive oil, vinegar, garlic powder and sugar and drizzle over the tomatoes. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.

Bake for 25 – 30 minutes. Remove from oven, and put Mozarella cheese on top. Put back in the oven for 2 minutes to soften the cheese. Remove again, then sprinkle basil over everything. Drizzle one more time with olive oil and give it one last go with the salt and pepper. Serve warm.

So good.

Green Beans with Walnuts and Gorgonzola

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I made this recipe up one day when faced with an overly ambitious purchase of green beans. In hunting through the fridge, I found Gorgonzola cheese and thought, why not? It’s pretty tasty.

1 lb. green beans, washed and trimmed
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted in the oven or in a pan for 5-7 minutes
1/4 cup Gorgonzola cheese
2 Tbsp vinaigrette
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp black pepper

In a medium pot, bring half a pot of water to the boil. Drop green beans in and boil for just a few minutes. Drain water, and add walnuts, cheese, vinaigrette,salt and pepper. Toss to coat and slightly melt the cheese. Check seasonings and serve.

Molasses Taffy

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When I was in second or third grade we made Molasses Taffy at school and I remember being enthralled with the way the color lightened into a golden brown as we pulled it. I never saw a recipe or made it again until a couple of years ago, when I saw it in a cookbook in Florida. It is an unusual taffy, flavored with molasses.

2 cups sugar
1 cup molasses
1/4 cup water
2 tsp vinegar
2 Tbsp butter
1/2 tsp baking soda

Add sugar, molasses and water to a large pot. Bring to a boil and add vinegar. Cook until the mixture reaches 268 degrees. (Hard ball stage.)

Remove from heat, add in baking soda and butter.

Turn out onto a buttered tray and butter hands. Once taffy is cool enough to handle, start pulling and twisting it. It will get a light golden color and get quite soft. Pull it into ropes about 1/2″ thick, and snip 2″ sections. You can wrap them in little rectangles of waxed paper, twisting the ends like a hard candy.

Maple Bourbon Banana Pudding Cake

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I wrote “Good!” on this recipe and it is really a little bit of heaven. The maple syrup, brown sugar and bourbon form a wonderful sort of puddingy glaze on top.

6 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 large ripe bananas
1 egg
1/2 cup milk

Blend all these until very creamy and smooth.

1 cup flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
pinch salt

Blend the dry ingredients in a little bowl and add to the banana mixture. Gently stir until smooth. Pour into a medium-sized baking dish.

1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup hot water
2 Tbsp bourbon
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Heat the syrup, brown sugar, water and bourbon in a microwave safe container for a few minutes until everything is well blended. Be careful opening the microwave as the alcohol from the bourbon can make your eyes water!

Drizzle maple glaze all over the batter. Sprinkle chopped pecans on top. Bake 40 minutes at 375.

Can double this for a larger baking pan.

Louisa’s Wassail

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I have to give thanks to my friend Louisa, who always has a pot of this amazing hot drink simmering on her stove on holidays, especially the Winter Solstice. She shared her recipe and I’ve made this for family get-togethers, Halloween parties, a very chilly block party one year, and of course for Christmas. (Our block party was on such a cold day one year that my neighbor Rachel saved the day by bringing out hot homemade chicken noodle soup in cups on a tray!)

2 bottles dry red wine (Trader Joe’s Three Buck Chuck is fine.)
10 cups fresh apple cider
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp whole cloves
2 tsp whole allspice
2 cinnamon sticks, broken up
2 oranges, sliced thickly and studded around the edge with whole cloves

Add wine, cider and sugar to a large pot or crockpot. Tie the spices in a sachet of cheesecloth, or a coffee filter loosely tied with a rubber band. Add to the pot along with the orange slices.

Bring to a low boil in the pot. Let simmer for 20 minutes and turn heat down. You can remove the spice bundle if you like, but I often just leave it in. Ladle into mugs.

Ina’s Celery, Walnut & Parmesan Salad

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You wouldn’t think that celery could be the star of a dish, but this salad from Ina Garten pairs crisp cool celery with the tartness of lemon, the crunch of toasted walnuts and the salty goodness of Pecorino Romano. (Ina uses Parmesan.) I also make it with apple cider vinegar if I don’t have lemon juice. The dressing is good on lots of fresh vegetables – and I make this salad out of tomatoes and cucumbers when they are abundant.

Mix dressing in a big bowl:

1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp lemon zest 
1/4 cup lemon juice or 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp shallots, minced, or a little bit of garlic, mashed
1 tsp celery seeds
1/2 tsp celery salt
1 1/2 tsp fish sauce (from Asian market)
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder

5 cups chopped celery (Usually one whole stalk of celery.)
big handful of grated Pecorino Romano, grated on the biggest holes in a box grater
2/3 cups toasted walnuts, rough chopped.

Roast walnuts for 10 minutes in a 350 oven, or you can pan roast them for several minutes on medium high heat, shaking them constantly.

Add celery, nuts and parmesan to the dressing and toss well. Delish!

Amazing Green Beans with Walnuts and Dill Seeds

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2 Tbsp butter
1 shallot, diced
1 lb fresh green beans
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup walnuts, rough chopped
2 tsp dill seeds

Melt butter and saute shallot for a few minutes. Add salt, pepper and dill seeds and saute a minute or two more. Turn down heat, add green beans, cover and cook for several minutes, shaking occasionally. Add walnuts, stir and serve.