Apple Cornbread Mushroom Stuffing with Bacon

This year I attended a potluck Thanksgiving. When asked what I wanted to bring, I knew it had to have apples in it. The friends with whom I was staying during my transition back to Berkeley, have a very abundant apple tree in their back yard. We had pots full of recently picked apples. I decided to make an apple cornbread dressing. with ingredients like grains, nuts, meat, vegetables, fruit and herbs, stuffing can be a whole meal by itself.

I went to the internet to get a general idea of ingredients, proportions and steps in stuffing recipes. I noticed a quite a few called for eggs. I guess they help hold the ingredients all together like a soufflé, but that wasn’t the consistency I was looking for.

I decided to use boxed cornbread to cut down on time and because I’ve never been that happy with my homemade cornbread as it always tends to be too dry and somewhat flavorless. I’ve always liked Jiffy box cornbread for the end product and its simplicity, but when I looked at the ingredients this time, I was discouraged. Lots of chemical ingredients I couldn’t pronounce (breaking 2 of Michael Pollen’s food rules) and it has lard in it. I wonder how many vegetarians know that. I was making a portion of the batch for vegetarians so that wouldn’t work out. I decided to give Trader Joe’s cornbread mix a try – it still had unrecognizable ingredients, but not as many, and it is vegetarian. However it turned out way too moist and sweet for a savory, stuffing dish. I ended up drying out the cubes in the oven. Next time I will make my own, dry cornbread!

Cornbread tends to be pretty crumbly, so in order to have some shape in the dish, I included French bread that I got from nearby Acme bakery.

For more inspiration I went to one of the local produce markets, Monterey Market. After being in Philadelphia for four years, I was blown away at how much locally grown produce is available this time of year and how cheap it was. 3 bunches of celery for $1 and organic, spinach for $.69/lb! I like how the market labels every product with its origin, including the state. I was lured by all the varieties of mushrooms and decided to include wild chantrelles from Oregon in my dish.

Here’s a recipe based on what I made (not totally exact as I didn’t take measurements). It serves about 12 – 16 as a side dish

1 box of baked cornbread for an 8x8 pan – cut into cubes and dried out

1 baguette – cut into cubes and dried out.

1.5 onions diced

3 –4 stalks of celery diced

olive oil or butter (or both)

1/2 lb to 3/4 bacon – chopped

1 lb of mushrooms, roughly chopped

white wine to taste

3 to 4 apples – peeled, cored and chopped

1/2 c toasted, slivered almonds

vegetable broth (about 2 cups, but use your discretion, depending on how moist you want your stuffing)

chopped herbs – sage, thyme, parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Fry the bacon until cooked. Drain on paper towels and save some of the lard for use later. In a separate pan, sauté the onions in some butter or olive oil until soft, add the celery and apples until soft. Then add the mushrooms, which cook quickly, some white wine floor flavoring, the sage and thyme, and more butter or oil if needed. Cook down until the mushrooms are starting to get soft and tender. In a big pot, put in some of the lard (optional for more flavor) and heat until liquefied. Then add the rest of the cooked ingredients and bacon. Stir in all the bread cubes and mix. Add vegetable broth to moisten the mixture – should be moist but not liquidy. Then add the toasted almonds and chopped parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a glass or ceramic baking dish and bake until crispy – about 30 minutes.

The bacon and lard can be omitted if you want to make a vegetarian option.

The next morning we scrambled some of the leftover stuffing into eggs for breakfast. I guess that’s like adding the eggs I saw in some of the recipes online that I initially was dubious about!

Turkey Drive

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Robert’s men’s group, EBNOM, (The East Bay Nation of Men) held their annual turkey drive at the Neighborhood House of North Richmond. For 20 years they have been organizing this volunteer effort where they raise money and labor to provide Thanksgiving dinners for families in need. The locations of the drive vary with last two being held at the senior center. For as little as $15 they are able to provide dinner for a family of four. This is due in large part to the connections to food vendors that several of the organizers have. Given the current economic climate, this year I have been looking more actively for ways to help out my community, so I eagerly agreed to donate money and time.

We arrived before 8am in the morning and I was tasked with coordinating the effort to divide the fresh produce equally for 500 families. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many potatoes and yams in one place! There were 25 boxes of sweet potatoes and 70 – 50lb bags of potatoes! I was glad to see that they were giving away some fresh produce rather than all boxed and canned goods. There was also some fresh broccoli and onions, just not enough for all 500 bags. It definitely seemed like a daunting task – to evenly divide so much food – but we were armed with a room full of willing participants and quickly got an informal assembly line going.

Often around this time of year, the discussion about the difference between sweet potatoes and yams comes up – as it did for us. Varying explanations are offered, with most thinking the color is what differentiates them. However, according to the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission what we call yams, orange sweet potatoes, are actually just a different variety of sweet potato. Apparently there are several hundred types of sweet potatoes! Technically, a true yam is rough and scaly and typically imported from the Carribean. We started using the term yam in order to differentiate the orange ones grown in the south.*

In the large hall there were cans of cranberries, corn and green beans, boxes of stuffing of stuffing, and bags of fresh Acme bread. The turkeys were a little late in arriving because one of the men had truck troubles - he eventually found another working truck. It was quite impressive seeing the full truck back in with the delivery of 500 turkeys. Before giving out the meals around 10am, the volunteers and staff gathered in one large circle to give thanks; for the donations, for the organizing help and for all the good things and people in our lives.

It was a very orderly affair – the people in line were patient and the volunteers organized. As not all of the families spoke English, interpreters were available to help out. Lots of enthusiastic kids were both picking up meals and helping give out the items. People signed up in advance for a free meal; however there was still enough for others who hadn’t pre-registered after those with tickets picked up their meals. We were done just before noon. Seeing all the happy faces and meeting so many enthusiastic people made me feel like I was gaining more than I was giving. I definitely plan to participate next year.

* This discussion is reminiscent of how we came to call bison “buffalo” since they looked liked similar creatures to the ones the settlers had in Europe – but once it was discovered that they are very different and new term, bison, was needed – but by then the word buffalo stuck and we still use the term interchangeably in North America.

Fried Green Tomatoes

No produce item says summer to me more than tomatoes. The other day I was picking some in my friend, Sam’s, backyard garden where I noticed an abundance of green tomatoes. I collected a dozen or so of the unripened tomatoes to take home with me to make fried green tomatoes. They are so quick and simple to make with many variations on how to make them. I personally really like using corn meal that I mix with a variety of seasonings, usually including something spicy, like cayenne. This time I used garlic powder, hot paprika (great for adding color as you can be generous with the portion without burning your mouth off), and a mixed seasoning that Sam got my in New Orleans called “Slap Ya Mama”. It’s a mix of cayenne, salt and black pepper. I sliced the tomatoes, dredged them in a beaten egg, and then the corn meal with the spices. They were fried in a thin coating of peanut oil. Alternatively you can bake them to make it less caloric, but I have always preferred them fried. You could also use olive oil, but I like how you can cook at a higher heat with the peanut oil. It lets you flash fry them so they brown without becoming too soft. They only take a minute or two each side to get browned and crispy.

I served them with some local goat cheese with herbs spread across the top. The creaminess of the goat cheese is offset nicely by the heat and tanginess of tomatoes. Their sourness reminds me of tomatillos. Sam tells me that they don’t hold their shape when fried, but I am tempted to still try and create a Mexican twist on the southern fried green tomato. My meal also included diced watermelon with mint and a cold beer from the Philadelphia Brewing Company while the next day I had the fried tomatoes with some watermelon gazpacho. "Tomatoes Two Ways" – a popular trend on Top Chef – serving one item multiple ways. Both meals were refreshing and simple – particularly good for the extra hot summer we have been experiencing.

Watermelon Gazpacho

Gazpacho is one of those dishes that I haven’t quite acquired the taste for but believe I should as it typically uses such fresh, healthy ingredients. So occasionally I try it to see if my palette has changed. Recently my mother and I ate at Silk City Diner which I heard about from a friend in California! She saw it featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network. As it was a hot day and we were sitting outside on the festive patio, I was inspired to try their watermelon gazpacho. Yum! What I don’t normally enjoy about traditional gazpacho is the acidity and the feeling that I am eating watered down tomato sauce. The sweetness from the melon balanced out any acidity. The soup was thick and smooth with chunks of crab meat providing some additional texture and brininess. The following weekend at the farmer’s market, they were carrying striking, yellow and orange striped heirloom tomatoes and seedless watermelon, so I decided to attempt to make the soup for myself and friends coming to dinner that night. Also available that day were cucumbers and red peppers – some of the other typical gazpacho ingredients.

A quick internet search produced a myriad of recipes. How do I chose???? I started with an image search since I knew what I wanted it to look like. Finally I started with a recipe from chef Tyler Florence, in part because he called for some heat using chiles. I made some changes in the herbs and base ingredients, like using mint as the herb and lime in place of vinegar since I thought it would go well with the sweetness of the melon. Here’s my revised version.

1 large heriloom tomato, diced and seeded (most recipes suggest seeding, not sure it’s necessary).

1/2 jalepeno

1/2 red pepper, diced

2 cups of diced watermelon

juice from 1/2 a lime

1/4 olive oil

2 tablespoons minced red onion

1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced

2 tablespoons chopped mint

salt and peper to taste

1/4 crumbled feta

In a food processer, puree all ingredients together except 1/2 the watermelon, 1/2 the mint and the feta. After pureeing add in remaining watermelon cubes and serve topped with the rest of the mint and crumbled feta. This recipe comes out thick and creamy because the oil acts like an emulsifier. The watermelon cubes add texture while the saltiness from the cheese plays well against the sweet melon.

My dinner guests were Michael and his friend, Javier, who was visiting from Barcelona. I was a little nervous serving a variation on gazpacho to a Spaniard, but the recipe was a hit with both. Javier had never had a watermelon gazpacho before and Michael declared it was the best gazpacho he’s ever tried. Perhaps next time I will attempt to make a traditional gazpacho – you never know what you might like, especially when using the freshest ingredients.

Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream and the Ingenious Cherry Pitter

Last month, the cherries were alluring and abundant at the farmer’s market. While I like eating them fresh, the heat wave this summer and a childhood memory inspired the idea of making cherry vanilla ice cream, a favorite flavor of my mother’s. Preferring the “weird” choices, like rum raison, pralines and cream and cherry vanilla, worked in her favor with young kids. There was always ice cream left for her to eat. Maybe now that I am adult, I could appreciate the subtlety of cherry vanilla ice cream. Besides, I was planning a summer solstice locavore party and it seemed like an appropriate menu item since most of the ingredients could be sourced locally.

The first challenge was finding an ice cream maker. Growing up, I remember the crank kind in the big wood barrel that you would fill with salt and ice. It took a long time and was a lot of work, but my siblings and I never seemed to mind with the reward of fresh ice cream at the end. We usually made ice cream using the fruit that we picked that day. I was looking for the less labor-intensive machine – the electric style one. Back in Berkeley, I borrowed one from a friend on several occasions. It was fraught with its own inconsistencies, ie my friend told me that I have to run it inside the freezer to keep the filling cold enough, but it made better ice cream than any store bought I’d eaten. My mother indicated that she had one, but she’d never used it. I brought it home only to find out that the machine wouldn’t turn on, so that went to the appliance recycling yard. My mother bought a replacement, this time a 2 quart capacity Cuisinart machine that was on sale at William Sonoma. I made sure, first thing this time, that the machine worked. I didn’t want to end up with a bunch of ingredients and no working machine on the day of the party.

The next step was tracking down a cherry pitter. Several years ago, a friend was in Wisconsin on work related trip. She returned to work with several pounds of sour cherries and a story about an awesome cherry pitter she bought. I asked to borrow it for this effort. From past experience, I know that most cherry pitters are challenging to work with; it’s tiring on the hand or the cherries are too big or the pit doesn’t come all the way out. This particular pitter works like a hole punch. It comes with a plunger that is attached to a mason jar lid (you provide your own jar, which keeps down shipping costs). The cherry is placed between the plunger and whole in the lid and then you push down on the plunger and without much effort at all you have a perfectly pitted cherry, often with the stem still intact. Amazing. One could easily pit pounds of cherries without tiring. It’s worth the investment. A similar one can be found at Amazon.

Not having made cherry vanilla ice cream before, I needed to find a recipe. Searching on the internet, I was surprised at how many obviously bad recipes I was finding – why would you make cherry ice cream with maraschino cherries or cherry juice??? I found a simple cherry recipe on at 101 Cookbooks*. It calls for whole milk and heavy cream, but what I liked most was that it uses honey – which meant I could sweeten the ice cream with a local, raw honey. The only ingredient it didn’t include was vanilla, so I found a vanilla ice cream recipe* by Alton Brown that uses whole vanilla bean and substituted this in place of the liquor from the first recipe. My mother swears by making a custard with eggs for ice cream recipes. Neither of these two recipes included eggs and I was trying to keep it simple, so I opted out on the eggs. I did discover that the difference between vanilla ice cream and French vanilla is that the latter uses eggs. I was able to order whole milk and double cream from local farms through Mugshots. Differing cream types (light cream, heavy cream, double cream), identify the amount of fat content. Double cream contains a minimum of 48% milk fat.

While the recipe was really simple, I was met with disaster the first go around. Having worked with finicky ice cream machines before, I was worried about this. The recipe is really simple and requires only that you heat the milk(1 cup), cream(2 cups) and honey (3/8c) until it starts to simmer. Then you add in the pitted and quartered cherries (1 lb) and the vanilla bean(scrapings from one bean and the empty pod), chill the liquid in the fridge for at least a couple of hours and then pour it into the pre-frozen container in the machine. It should only take 20 minutes to turn into a frozen, thickened consistency. Well, it never did thicken and we had cherry milkshakes instead of ice cream. I think most people didn’t mind, but I was disappointed.

Determined to figure out what went wrong, I did some research. A friend thought it might not be a highly rated machine, so I went to the reviews online to find out that it was one of the best. The reviews were helpful though as a few people had a similar experience as I did with others proffering advice. The biggest take away was that I could figure out was that the custard was not chilled enough in advance. Some suggested chilling in the freezer rather than the refrigerator. The one thing I don’t understand about the ice cream maker design is why it has a big opening in the top that is not sealable if it is so important for the liquid to be extremely cold. It just seems like a big hole for the heat to rush into, particularly in the warm months when most ice cream is made and consumed. All machines I saw had this feature, so there must be a reason but I haven’t figured it out.

With the extra remaining ingredients and more fresh cherries, I gave it a second try. This time I put the custard in the freezer for a couple of hours to chill. I also set the cold bowl over the hole to seal it up after pouring in the ingredients. Previously I increased the recipe amount by 1.5 times as I was making some for a large group and the machine claims it would make up to 2 quarts. This time I decided to do the recipe amount of 1 quart. The purpose of the ice cream maker is to whip air into the mixture, so having room for increased volume is important. This is the difference between American ice cream and gelato, which is much denser and requires a different machine. Well these 3 changes did the trick and in less than 20 minutes of machine turning I had perfect cherry vanilla ice cream that I enjoyed with friends. Given this success, I am sure I will be inspired to make more ice cream this summer so I have borrowed my mother’s machine for a little while longer.

*Notes: I made a few changes from the original recipes which are reflected in the ingredients above. One is cooking the vanilla pod along with the scrapings in the liquid for a more intense vanilla flavor. Pull the empty pod out before chilling. Another is increasing the honey quantity by 1.5 times. The honey which is more mellow than regular cane sugar, keeps the dessert from becoming cloyingly sweet, even with this little extra. I also upped the quantity of cherries to one pound.