A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: From Julia Child to Arkansas

THIS is one of my favorite recipes in the whole world. I first ate it at Dairy Hollow House in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in the 80's.  It's the same country inn I worked for owned by cookbook author Crescent Dragonwagon. This was a fairly common and very beloved appetizer served at the Inn's six course Prix Fixe dinner.  It's called a crepe torte and is designate by how you build it, be it "garden", "Italian", or "Mediterranean" in Crescent's The Dairy Hollow House cookbook, available from DragonZ books. 

Now, I have a bit of a funny story to tell.  I had no idea until Sher of What Did You Eat?  and I were talking about it and she mentioned that it sounded familiar, that this recipe was originally created by Julia Child. With a little research into her Julia cookbooks, Sher found the recipe as Julia created it, after enlisting the help of her assistants, including a young Sara Moulton. The dish was specifically to be vegetarian and Julia was always very generous with giving her assistants credit with its creation. 

Now, how to phrase this correctly?  I'm not saying Crescent didn't give credit where credit was due most times, but I had a good laugh over this one. Not once do I remember it being mentioned the whole time I worked at DHH that this recipe came from Julia Child.  AND, no where in the DHH cookbook is it mentioned that this came from Julia Child, even though the recipe, down to the layers of carrots, mushrooms, and okay, green pea/zucchini instead of Julia's broccoli, are the same.  Unlike Julia, Crescent made hers in a cast iron skillet. That's the one difference I can find. 

It's not a huge thing, but it amuses me. I always thought that Crescent made this up all by her little lonesome.  Hmmm...come to find out the inspiration for this recipe was remarkably well put together...and by someone much more famous than Crescent.  Maybe I should be embarrassed that I don't know every one of Julia's recipes by heart but c'est la vie.  I admit it bothers me a bit that this was not openly acknowledged to be a Julia Child recipe when Julia herself very openly gave credit to her assistants for helping her creat it.  But hey, just one more disappointment in life to find out one of my heroes was made of clay.  The story of my life. :-)

On with the show.

The recipe, whether from Julia or Crescent is fabulous. Fab-oh-lust!  This recipe is sooo good that when I took it into work, one of the gals looked at it and thought it was pretty. Then I told her it was all vegetables and her comment was that she hates most vegetables. Then she tasted it. She loved it.  I happened to have a few extra servings because I'd wanted to share with a couple of foodies at work and she ended up eating one of them. A whole serving. I was so proud of her. That's a big compliment for someone who normally doesn't eat/like many vegetarian or vegetable dishes.  Personally, I think I could eat it every day and never get tired of it, for the taste, the prettiness, and because there are so many fresh vegetables in it that it's got to be good for you, vitamin-wise, even if there is quite a bit of cheese (meaning fat) in it.

I've made this three times in the last week. The first time was basically (as much as I can follow a recipe without my inner Glenna tweaking) Crescent's Italian version. That was wonderful and the version I took to work to share. The second version was an experiment lumping all the veggies and binding cream together inside a top and bottom crust made of egg roll wrappers just to see if it would work. It was okay, but just barely average. I'll never make it that way again. The third time was the winner.  I still used mostly Julia/Crescent's layers and the idea of how the whole thing together, but I left out a good part of the cheese, subbing light tofu, and subbed skim milk for the whole milk or cream of Crescent's version. The results were very good.  The final nutrition counts are a little higher in protein and a lot lower in fat. The protein is important to me, being chronically anemic. I know I've mentioned it before but not being a huge meat eater it's something I constantly must keep on top of so I don't have to go back on the icky iron pills.

Replete with basil, oregano, parsley, and garlic, this is my week's entry in Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen's Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Kate of Thyme for Cooking.  Check in next weekend for her roundup of herbed cooking!

Spiced Fingerling Potatoes with Dipping Sauce

These fingerling potatoes make a great side dish but would also make a tasty appetizer.  Aunt Miranda brought me a bag of "goodies" to play around with for the food blog, including these little beauties, kumquats, a pomegranate, and something that I'm not sure what it is but I'm going to have fun researching it and finding a great recipe to show it off in.  Hmmm... a mystery for later.

For the potatoes I found this terrific recipe in a Williams-Sonoma cookbook given to my for a previous birthday by Sher of What Did You Eat? so it's appropriate that they made their way into my birthday dinner the other night along with steaks.

The mix of spices is unique, so much that I hesitated to add the cloves (cumin, cayenne, paprika, garlic, and cloves) but I'm glad I did.  Roasting the potatoes mellowed out the spices to a simple earthy aroma and taste but still led a bite and almost floral sent and taste to the dipping sauce.  Gene and I both kept dipping into the sauce and saying "It's just so different!"  It's almost addictive in your quest to really tackle and define the taste and keep up with all the notes of flavor.

Carrianne's Goat Cheese & Caramelized Onion Bruschetta

Are these gorgeous, or what?  My friend, Carrianne, brought these to the last girls' night party. She came in a little later so I didn't get a pic of them with the rest of the food but, hey, at least I remembered to get a photo and asked how she made them. They were delicious.  A huge hit of the party.

Also, notice the fresh parsley on top.  These are a perfect combination of the bite of goat cheese, the sweet from the caramelized onions, and the fresh swipe across the palate of the parsley.  Rounding all of that taste off is the crunchy texture of the toasted baquette with the smoothness of the toppings.  Yum. We were all saying "Thanks, Carrianne!"

I know we take parsley for granted sometimes since, like kale, it's been so overused as a forgettable garnish by the food industry, but parsley is one of my favorite herbs, next to my beloved thyme.  Parsley's versatility is remarkable when you think about it, being able to go from one end of the spectrum as a simple breath freshener to the opposite end and hold its own as chimichurri sauce.

Carrianne's bruschetta is my entry this week in Kalyn's weekly Weekend Herb Blogging tour, hosted this week by Kalyn at Kalyn's Kitchen who has some great photography tips up this week to check out.

WOBAT Round up #3 End of August

This WOBAT round up is going to be short and sweet because it's August and even though I personally didn't go on a long vacation and I don't have children going back to school, everyone else does.  But I'm figuratively there with all of the rest of you folks. Where has this month gone? It has flown by for everyone I've talked to in the last week. I can't believe it's Labor Day Weekend and the kids are back in school.

So the point of all that rambling is that we only have two entries this time for round-up and I just barely got mine done or Sher would have been on her own for MY event. 

When you get a chance, wander over to What Did You Eat for Sher's delicious Potato Chip Crusted Wild Salmon filet, her excuse to buy her once a year allotment of potato chips.  You can almost smell it through the computer screen.  Doesn't that look divine?  Make it, tell the food snob in you that it's Panko and to shut the heck up, and enjoy it.

Here at A Fridge Full of Food, my entry is that good old standby taken right off the back of the Knorr (or Lipton) dehydrated vegetable soup mix box:  Spinach Dip It's a simple throw together dip that's embarassingly easy but I've never had a party where the bowl wasn't empty at the end of the night and, as common as it has become, there's always one person in the crowd who's never heard of it.  (There's also a recipe for Washington Apple Martinis on the same page.)

Girls' Night & WOBAT

Good pic of the food:

Bad Pic of the people:

Jana in front, in the back: Melissa, me, Chris (honorary girl), Kristina, and Mechelle. Gene's taking the picture, our second honorary girl. Chris is Chris of the Sal's Weekend Beefcake Blogging and WOBAT Round-up #1 fame.

Hmmm...not Gene's fault about the pic.  I'd forgotten to take off the "close-up" setting after getting the food pics.

Back to the food.  The brownies are leftover from the Happy Birthday Julia Child event, so now we know they freeze well and come out just as scrumptious as ever. Cheese ball was purchased at the grocery store and was tres nasty.  Never buying that again as a shortcut.  The spinach dip was a hit, is always a hit, and seems to be a staple at my house for parties.  It's my WOBAT entry for end of the month for the maybe three people left who haven't discovered the recipe on the side of the soup mix box.

  Knorr Spring Vegetable Spinach Dip

Zucchini Fritters with Chimichurri Sauce

For all you folks who are currently climbing out from under a pile of zucchini in the garden (like I'm climbing out from a pile of workdays), here's another way to use those little, or big, green beauties up: by tucking it into fritters.  And note for all you South Beacher Dieters out there, because of the high ratio of eggs to flour in this particular fritter recipe, it comes out light and spongy with decent carb numbers.

And, and, and...yet another way to use chimichurri sauce that you've all now got stored in the freezer, right?

I'm thinking about changing the name of this blog to the 101 Uses for Chimichurri Sauce Blog. What are we up to now, about six? I think this is officially the 6th good reason to have chimichurri sauce stockpiled on ice, so to speak.

Some Thoughts on Church Basement Recipes & WOBAT

Life is too short to lock yourself into any one style of anything. I know there's a way of thinking out there that dictates that, in life, you have to dress to fit an image, have a career, spouse, car, home, 2.5 kids, etc., or whatever it takes to fulfill that image people see of themselves.  I understand it but it's not my way of thinking.  I see it much more simply:  live everything, taste everything, be everything, experience everything. Life is too short and too incredible to bypass any thing, any experience, or anyone just because we don't think they fit into a mold we've created of ourselves.

Food is one of those things.  There is everything great and wonderful and inspiring about working an organic home garden, shopping at farmer's markets and co-ops, dining in the finest, most chi-chi restaurants, etc..  Let me repeat that.  There is everything desirable about striving to eat the freshest and most natural of foods, and of being in awe of all that is unique in each other's cultures.  Expanding one's taste repertoire is something we should all be invested in, BUT, along the way to meet the wizard, I caution you not to miss out on pleasures in your own backyard in Kansas.  In food, the backyard Kansas dishes are what I respectfully call Church Basement Recipes. 

Please don't mistake my intentions and tone here in writing.  I don't mean to sound chideful at all, maybe rather re-mindful to myself more than anyone else that some of the best things in life really are simple, uncool, and unpretentious.  Yes, we should go out of our way to cultivate expansive tastes and we should seek the freshest and most unique in food and food culture, but food culture, like the tortes from my old cake decorating days, have many layers and some of them are not the stars of the cake, they're the structure holding it all together.  As I have said at another time and in another place, the A-list anything has my complete and total admiration, but the D-list is no less fascinating to me. 

Church Basement recipes are the D-listers and structure in food life. These are the recipes you see at every potluck, in every family gathering, and on the dinner tables of some of the best amateur cooks I have known.  They're usually simple, prepared from ingredients easy to find in any market, and are as unpretentious and down home as Paula Deen. Quite frankly, that's why I like her and enjoy watching her butter drenched shows.  She so reminds me of my mom and aunts getting together to make a holiday meal.  She's the Church Basement Recipe Poster Girl, and I'm not being sarcastic. I say that with utter adoration for someone who has created a career out of stepping in front of a camera, being authentically herself, and having the guts to say with gusto that pickled okra, smashed white bread, and cream cheese sandwiches are not only tasty, but "worth the weight" tasty.  And it's not even that I don't believe her.  Paula's never led me astray.  It's that I admire her cojones to tell the truth as she sees it and to be her giggly, buttery self all the way.  I honestly don't know that the food snob in me could be that bold but I'm working on it.

Just as an aside, Sandra Lee, does nothing for me. I find her neither charming, nor real, nor...anything. Where Paula knows who she is and calls her food style what it is: down-home and unpretentious, Sandra's gig is big sweet pile of nothing but a good paycheck. Nothing wrong with a good paycheck but her slipshod, slap it together and serve it up on the gauche tablecloth method doesn't work for me.  I personally don't bear her any ill will. I admire anyone who can land a good gig.  But I don't get it. 

That brings me to why I created WOBAT: Weekend Obnoxious But Amazingly Tasty food blogging.  I want to always remember that above and beyond everything else, food is just food and it's fun.  It is art and it is life but it's still just food. Berries off the bush and lettuce picked off the ground are food.  It's the combinations and preparation that bring along the wonder.  Actually, I have to take that last statement back. I've container gardened for a few years and I will say there is infinite wonder and awe in watching a seed sprout and a plant grow that beats any food show or event I've ever attended so what I said before wasn't really accurate.  But you know what I mean. 

After spending my first career planning banquets and always attending to the most impressive, I now like to remind myself once in a while that there's a reason kids play with their food-- Because it's fun.  WOBAT is my way of remembering that little nugget about life.  Food is meant to be joyous.  Joyous as in all definitions from the religiously pure and sublime to the giggling snort of "No way! Ya gotta taste THIS!". 

So in that tradition I give you the second WOBAT: Weekend Obnoxious But Amazingly Tasty food and this time from me it's all about good old Oscar Mayer Braunschweiger.  I found this recipe for "Braunschweiger Pate'" in our local Junior League cookbook. It made me laugh. Pate.  Uh huh.  Technically, pate is simply any spread made from finely chopped or blended and seasoned meat.  So TECHNICALLY this recipe is pate', but let's be real. This is a down-home fun dip.  And it is tasty. I have never served this at any party that I didn't get asked for the recipe and that's even by people who think they hate liver. By the way, the rosemary lavosh is excellent with this.

Follow the jump to get the recipe.

And for anyone interested in joining me in Weekend Obnoxious But Amazingly Tasty blogging, just send your links to me at Marie9949 (at sign) sbcglobal (dot) net by Sunday evening about 6pm central time to be in the round up on Monday.  Anyone who wants to join but doesn't have a blog, just send your recipe (and photos if you have them) to the same email address and I'll post them for you.  Don't forget--this is all about having fun!