Persistence of Memory Cornbread Edition

This is a quick post because I'm pretty busy today which is why I made cornbread. I love me some good carbs, but if they aren't complex they just don't stick to your ribs and won't even take you halfway through a busy morning.


So this cornbread is not for the faint of heart, nor for those who think that yellow cake-like substance made with a little highly-refined cornmeal and a lot of self-rising white flour qualifies as cornbread. This cornbread will stand up to the hottest chili or stand alone as a satisfying meal, slathered in butter and honey.

This is not the cornbread my mother made in my childhood, but like my mother I made major tweaks to a basic recipe and turned a good dish into something both tastier and healthier. Packed with nutrients, this bread has a very low glycemic index. It is moist with great crumb texture.

Carmen's Cornbread

Preheat oven to 400. Put a cast-iron skillet on low heat on stovetop.


1 1/2 cups whole grain cornmeal, medium grind
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
1 Tbl chia seeds
1 Tbl flax meal

1 egg
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 1/4 cups milk (I use coconut beverage)
1/4 cup oil


Mix dry ingredients together. Mix egg into pumpkin puree (to ensure even egg distribution in batter), then stir all wet ingredients into dry. Mix until well-incorporated. Distribute a little oil or butter into preheated skillet, then pour batter in.

Bake for 30 minutes, test for doneness with toothpick. Set skillet on a rack to cool. This bread needs to rest for at least an hour or two before slicing into wedges. It tastes best after a few hours, or the next day.

Let them eat cake

Last night was girl's movie night--Moonlight, which had recently won Best Picture. I promised Tatum and Wendy dessert that we could eat sitting on the sofa. My mouth was in the mood for apple cake, but it was too sticky. We needed something light and special we could hold in our hands. While you might normally associate French desserts with little tarts, fussy bonbons, and so forth, my favorite French sweet is Yogurt Cake.

Lemon Rosemary Yogurt Cake

¾ cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 Tbls lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
2 tsp vanilla
½ cup vanilla yogurt
3 eggs, room temperature
1 ½ cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 Tbls fresh rosemary, finely chopped

Glaze (optional)

1 cup powdered sugar
3 - 4 Tbls fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray loaf pan or two small cake rounds with cooking spray. (1 large cake round will probably work, but the center might be a little moist.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add lemon juice, zest, and vanilla. Add yogurt, and add eggs one at a time. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, add rosemary, and add to bowl. Mix for an additional minute, scraping the bowl, until everything is smooth and combined. Pour into pan(s).

Bake for 45 - 50 minutes for loaf pan. 20 - 30 minutes for smaller pans. Test with toothpick. Cook in pan for 10 minutes. Take cake out of pan and cool completely on a rack.

If glazing, whisk powdered sugar and lemon juice. Drizzle over cake, let glaze completely set.

Cake tastes best after a few hours or the next day.

The Persistence of Memory

If you share my addiction to Chopped you know the judges loooove the Evocation of Childhood and gush over any competitor’s mention of grandmothers, memories, moms, yah yah yah. Oh, gawd. Alright already. And then I’m trying to decide what to bake for my father-in-law’s 87th birthday and the only thing that really feels right is Fresh Apple Cake. It is my mother’s go-to dessert, so easy to make, yet special enough that I and my siblings often requested it to celebrate our own birthdays.

Just dipping a finger into the batter today planted me right in the middle of my mother’s kitchen, and the aroma wafting through the oven’s vents flooded my soul with the warmth of childhood, all the yah yah yah from those chefy judges suddenly a cliche no longer.

My mother took this recipe from An Apple a Day: Vegetarian Cookery by Doctors’ Wives, a cookbook whose subtitle promises little in the way of imagination or variety, and although it has its share of gluten-steak recipes there is in fact a wide range of great dishes; it is also the origin for my love of Lebanese food.

As usual this is not the exact recipe from said cookbook. My mother always tweaks, and always for the better. Since I didn’t make today’s cake for a family of six or a church potluck, I halved the recipe, used two 6” cake pans, and it baked just as well.

Fresh Apple Cake

Oven 350. Oil and flour a 9x12 pan.

4 cups peeled diced apples (my mom always just shreds hers. The texture is a little smoother when shredded; both are very good. If you dice, make sure to cut very small pieces, less than ¼”)

2 cups sugar (feel free to cut this down: I use 1½ cups and like the sweetness level much better)
2 eggs
½ cup oil (I often use 1/3 cup)
1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp cinnamon
Dash nutmeg
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)

Blend oil, sugar, eggs. Add vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients and add along with apples. Mix quickly and thoroughly. Fold in nuts. Pour into prepared pan. Bake about 40 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.

Tomorrow night we’ll eat Joe’s cake with vanilla ice cream. I think this cake is most perfect with lightly sweetened cream, whipped soft so that it relaxes just a bit atop your slice.

Gluten-free quichelettes

I like having gluten-free options for family and friends, but a lot of recipes try too hard to recreate all aspects of a non-GF dish. I like things that are more naturally-occurring GF--something everyone at the table would choose to eat, not just those who have no other choice.

When I saw a box of gluten-free stuffing mix at Trader Joe's, it just struck me that those crunchy croutons would make a great base for quichelettes, and happily I turned out to be right. The croutons themselves were so tasty I kept snacking on them as I was preparing the dish, which was itself inspired by a recipe I'd seen on Pinterest, sponsored by Bisquick.

The final product is a little handful of quiche with a creamy eggy filling soaking down the vegetables into the crouton base layer that stays just the right amount of crunchy.

So, here's the process:

Sautee whatever vegetables you want to use. In my fridge I found onion, roasted pasilla chile, and purple kale. Next time I'll probably opt for green onion and red bell pepper, and definitely chop everything into more consistently-sized pieces as this first attempt is a bit ragged with the pieces of kale and cheese sticking here and there.

Spray muffin tins and put in a base layer of croutons.

Then spoon in a small amount of the sauteed vegetables. Top with shredded cheese--I used a combo of cheddar and a four-Italian-cheese medley.

For 14 quichelettes I whipped 4 eggs with one cup heavy cream until frothy, added salt, pepper, and thyme, then poured a little into each muffin cup, distributing as evenly as I could.

After about 10-12 minutes in a 425 oven, the tops were puffy and nothing jiggled, so out they came. Next time I'll include a little less vegetable filling, keeping the same amount of cheese and egg. I might crush the croutons a little so they make a little more consistent base layer. However, now I know I have an excellent base recipe that is super-easy to make and can handle all sorts of variations. This could be made with regular croutons of course, but the flavor and extra crunchiness of the gluten-free ones are definitely my first choice for this recipe.

Hungry for hearty

This is a super-quick post about a mash-up I just did of two favorites: potato leek soup and butternut squash. A pile of beautiful leeks at the market called for that wonderful classic, but I needed something with more oomph for this busy day. And, as you all know, I adore butternut squash. I knew throwing it all together wouldn't be a failure, but happily it turned into possibly my favorite soup yet.

So here are the details:

All these amounts are suggestions--vary according to supplies and taste

2 fat russet potatoes, skins scrubbed, chopped into 1" chunks
1-2 carrots, chopped
1-2 stalks celery, chopped
Big hunk of butternut squash, peeled, chopped into 1" chunks (probably about 8 oz)
2-3 leeks, cleaned, chopped (stick with mostly the white part unless you're going for extra vitamins--the green takes extra long to cook)
1/2 pasilla chile, chopped
1 tsp salt
4 oz butter

Throw all this into a big pot, cook and stir until butter is melted and coats all the vegetables.

Add 1 qt no-salt-added vegetable stock plus 1 cup water. Bring to a boil and cook 30+ minutes until everything is tender and stock is reduced below vegetable level.

Remove from heat, add about 2 cups milk or coconut milk or whatever creamy liquid you like. Puree with immersion blender until smooth(ish).

This will keep several days in the fridge (if it doesn't all get eaten straight from the pot).

Butternutty Autumn

If you've read a few of my blog posts you know how I love butternut squash. After a ramble in the hills this afternoon, we were hungry for something quick, especially since a baseball playoff game was about to start. A quick look through the fridge yielded a carton of fresh butternut squash triangnoli, kale, zucchini, and a hunk of butternut squash, part of which had already gone into last weekend's bean stew. Is it piling on to make a sauce with the same squash that's inside the pasta? Not when it's my favorite!

I diced the butternut into small cubes for a quick saute.

Next came onion and a single clove of garlic--the sweetness of the squash-filled pasta needs to take precedence. I let that get pretty brown before adding the diced zucchini.



I dropped the kale into the pasta water before it fully boiled, to take out any bitterness.

After a couple of minutes I drained and chopped it, then added to the other vegetables along with butter and a handful of chopped pecans and turned the heat down low.

The fresh triangnoli takes about 4-5 minutes to fully cook. I added goat milk yogurt to the vegetables for a little simmer, and then the pasta. It didn't end up wanting any salt.

This was a simple but super-delicious meal. With so few ingredients it doesn't necessarily merit it's own blog post, but this is more about finding what's in the fridge and figuring out how to pull it together quickly. Most pasta sauces have so much crap in them--sugar, sodium, generic flavors. This sauce hits several positive notes--fresh nutritious ingredients with flavors that enhance the fresh pasta rather than overwhelm it. The goat milk yogurt adds a lightly savory undertone--if you want a really creamy sauce just add more of it.

Kale and butternut squash are both sturdy enough to last a while in the fridge, so it's not a bad idea to keep them on hand. Kale pumps up the nutrition level with mild pleasant bitterness that, when unwanted, is more easily negated than with spinach. Butternut squash can take the place of potatoes in a breakfast hash, making a meal that will take you through the busiest Sunday morning chores. I buy a big one and keep hacking off sections of the long neck. It's easy to peel with a vegetable peeler.

I eat butternut squash year-round, but here in the fall season, everything seems to taste better with a little butternut.

Oh, Lovely Lilting Lemony Limoncello!

My dear friend Jennie just returned from Italy, bringing with her a bottle of the limoncello she and her husband learned to love (when she and I traveled there together 30 years ago, the most we drank was a little rotgut wine made by one of the architecture students we partied with on New Year’s Eve. It was not good).

I knew just what she meant when she rhapsodized about this delightful liqueur. Years ago the LA Times ran an article about proper Italian limoncello, taught to the writer by a very traditional little old lady in Italy. I made a couple of batches which lasted a long time (mostly because even though a little goes a long way, I was rather parsimonious with gifting it). Then I got lazy and bought a bottle--that one lasted even longer because it just wasn’t the same pure, perfumed elixir the Italians intended it to be. Now I realize it’s time to return to Italy via some proper limoncello--although as you can see, if I start now it’ll be late summer before I can treat myself to an icy little aperitif on the patio.

If you want to know why it’s worth the trouble (mostly, the patience!), here's that little old Italian lady's recipe. It's so simple I never forgot it. I've seen many recipes, but never another one that gave people credit for wanting a glass of limoncello so perfect they were willing to wait twice Noah's flood for it.

16 lemons (preferably from someone’s tree—no wax or stickers or anything)
2 x 750 ml alcohol (preferably grain alcohol; I used Stoli 80 proof as recommended by the writer)
3 ½ cups white sugar

Note: People who steep their own liqueurs say it’s a good idea to filter the alcohol 3-4 times before steeping something in it. You can do this with a water filter like Brita. This step isn’t necessary, but the purer the alcohol, the purer the finished taste. For this recipe filter just one bottle of alcohol to start with (you won’t be using the second one right away).

Scrub the lemons very well with very warm, lightly soapy water and a vegetable brush or plastic scrubber (scrub even more if you purchased them from a store; even more if they aren’t organic). Rinse well and dry.

Using a very sharp paring knife or microplane, remove ONLY THE ZEST from the lemons, leaving a little yellow behind on the rind to make sure. A fine microplane makes this easier; a sharp paring knife takes longer but produces wider pieces of zest which will be easier to deal with later on. You decide. Just make sure NO PITH comes along with the zest.

Put lemon peel and alcohol in a very clean jar (at least 1 gallon) and screw the lid on tight. If necessary, stretch plastic wrap over the opening before screwing on the lid. Put the jar in a cool dry dark place and let it steep for 40 days (more if you are super-patient). For the first couple of weeks, swirl the jar around every few days. Then just let it sit.

Forty or more days later, it’s time to make the simple syrup. Bring 5 cups of filtered water to a boil, stir in the 3 ½ cups of sugar, boil for 5 minutes, turn off heat and let cool.

Run your second bottle of alcohol 3-4 times through the Brita pitcher (again, not necessary but highly recommended).

While that’s filtering, it's time to remove the lemon peel from the alcohol it’s been steeping in. Place a fine metal strainer (such as a permanent coffee filter) inside a funnel and pour the alcohol/lemon peel mixture through to a very clean jar or pitcher. Discard the peel. Place a couple of paper coffee filters into the metal one, and pour the alcohol through a couple more times. Discard the paper filters and pour the alcohol through just the permanent filter one last time. Four filtrations are necessary if you used a microplane to zest the lemons; you can get away with just a couple if you used larger parings of peel. However, the better filtered the alcohol is, the purer everything tastes. Just don’t overdo it and aerate the alcohol too much.

This steeped alcohol and your second bottle of freshly filtered alcohol go back in the gallon jar along with the sugar syrup. Screw the lid back on tight and leave it untouched in that cool dry dark place for at least another 40 days. The longer it sits the smoother it will taste.

Eventually it’s time to bottle and bestow your heavenly limoncello on family and friends (really--don’t just hog it for yourself. You can always makes more. Start another batch now!). Make sure your jars or bottles are super-clean and have tight lids. For myself, I liked the down-to-earth feel of a pint canning jar. Like upscale moonshine! For the (too few) gifts I used clamp-top bottles from World Market. Running the jars or bottles through an extra-heated dishwasher cycle is plenty; some folks sterilize by baking clean jars in the oven for an hour at 350.

If you’re doing this for Christmas presents, the middle of the summer is not too early to start. Limoncello mellows as it sits, and will taste even better a year later. This is a drink that rewards a leisurely approach to life, in so many ways!