Delayed Gratification Made Easy

It’s almost over, they are almost all gone—but here is what I waited for all summer. I promise you it’s worth the time. And, here’s the deal. The flavor was so deep, so sweet, that I’ll be buying tomatoes and basil all winter long to make this simple sauce.

Roasted Tomato Pasta Sauce

About 2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
¾ cup of olive oil
1 large clove of garlic minced
1 tsp salt
½ tsp fresh ground pepper
¼ cup fresh basil leaves chopped
8 oz linguini or other long pasta

Heat the oven to 250 F. Line a rimmed sheet pan with aluminum foil. Toss together the olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and add the tomatoes. Pour the tomato mixture on to the foil and flip the tomatoes with your fingers until they are all cut side down. Bake in the oven until the skin starts to crinkle and the tomatoes start to turn brown, approximately 1 hour. Scrape roasted tomatoes and oil into a bowl, cover and keep at room temperature. Cook linguini until al dente. Toss with cooked tomatoes and sliced basil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Here’s the recipe I used as a jumping off point to make the sauce.

Roasted Tomato and Arugula Salad

The Glass Half Full

This week, I guess it’s a food blog because the positive side of unemployment is that I got out there all summer and watered and fertilized and now I’m in tomato heaven. I know, by next week it could be tomato hell. In the meantime, try these two recipes:

Tomato Sandwich with Basil Mayo*

1/3 cup fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup purchased mayonnaise
1 clove garlic
1 tsp lemon juice
One tomato sliced warm from the vine
Two slices of rustic wheat bread

Chop garlic in a food processor. Add basil and pulse until finely chopped. Add mayonnaise and lemon juice and pulse to combine. Spread some of the mayo on each slice of whole wheat bread, top one piece of bread with the fresh sliced tomatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, top with remaining piece of bread. Inhale.

* The leftover basil mayo may be used to brighten up any sandwich. We’ve used it on turkey and ham sandwiches, but my favorite, so far, is above.

I'm trying to make do with what we have and other than for milk, cut down on the extraneous trips to the grocery store during the week. So I was working from the cupboard, the refrigerator and thank goodness the backyard here. Last night, we were going out, I needed an easy supper, and Sunday’s lemon roast chicken that we had eaten in some variation three days in a row was not going to cut it. In the old days (aka when I had a job), I would have run out to pick up something quick to eat. As we know though, that’s not a wallet friendly option. This was.

Greek Style Pasta

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic minced
2 Tbsp chopped red onion
1 cup cherry tomatoes sliced into halves or quarters, depending on size
3/4 cup chicken broth
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano (divided)
1/4 cup crumbled Feta Cheese
1/2 cup pitted Kalamata Olives sliced in half
8 oz dried linguine
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (optional)**

Cook linguine in boiling salted water until al dente. While the pasta is cooking, heat the olive oil in a saute pan on medium heat until hot. Add onions and saute for one minute. Add garlic and saute until onions are tender. Add cherry tomatoes and chicken broth and simmer until broth is reduced by about half (about seven minutes). Add red wine vinegar and one tablespoon of the oregano and simmer two more minutes. Add cooked linguine, Feta Cheese, remaining tablespoon of oregano and Kalamata Olives to sauce in the pan and toss until all liquid is absorbed. Sprinkle with pine nuts if using. Season to taste with salt (very little, olives are salty) and pepper and serve immediately.

** Pine nuts are optional because I forgot to add them. If you make this and include them, let me know me know how it tastes. We were fine without.

Soul Food II

I don’t think it’s my intent for Middle Passages to morph into a food blog, but today we need to talk about corn chowder--specifically the one I made for last Wednesday’s dinner over which I am still salivating even though we got two meals out of it.

I promise that it’s finished, but if you recall, last Wednesday I celebrated my birthday. The air hung full of grey clouds, heavy and humid and both my husband and my daughter were working. In fact, Tim commutes to a next door state and with all-day meetings scheduled, we could anticipate a late arrival home. Bless my two buddies though, they planned ahead and by Tuesday evening, nine-inch Devil’s Food layers from a mix baked by Tim cooled on the counter; the middle shelf of the fridge hosted chocolate ganache for frosting that Meghann had prepared. No complaints.

In our house we celebrate birthdays with a special dinner—at a restaurant when they occur on weekends, with take-out during the week, or occasionally over a favorite dish prepared by yours truly. Last week, Tim’s schedule combined with our fiscal belt-tightening meant that neither take-out nor go-out appeared on the evening’s menu. As a result, early in the morning, I opened the fridge to determine what simple supper I could create from inexpensive leftovers.

With the cool air blasting, I eyeballed a thawed chicken breast soaking in its own pink juices with a niggling worry. On a fifty-first birthday during which you happen to be in reinvention mode, a refrigerator-clearing supper has potential to trigger a mild depression. In an immediate transition, I contemplating how lovely it would be if we had left-over corn-on-the cob in the fridge that I could turn into a chowder. There could be no birthday gift as sensorial or rewarding as eating my way back to childhood, and corn chowder, that bastion of New England cheap eats, has comforting roots snaking all the way back to the dinner table of my youth. Alas, there was no corn in our fridge. The idea of it however, teased me through most of the morning until the arrival of a special-delivery breakthrough thought: “If I’m making my own birthday dinner, I’m choosing the menu too.”

Off I went to the store. For you gourmets, by all means be purists and use just-picked corn if you need to, but I cheated. After discovering a package of frozen corn in our freezer, it was less expensive to buy additional creamed corn then the number of fresh ears required. Generally when I make corn chowder I wing it. Wednesday’s creation arrived after tweeking this Epicurious suggestion--my edited and calorie-enhanced version resides below. Happily I grew up in the whole milk era, so although arguably richer, my results came pretty darn close to the way Mom used to serve it.

Warning: this is all about starch and fat, dairy and solace--to get a few additional food groups in I suggest you pair it with a salad. It was my birthday though; I served it with Baked Stuffed Clams (see below).


Happy Birthday Corn Chowder

• 1/2 pound (about 8 slices) bacon, coarsely chopped
• 1 6-ounce russet potato, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 3/4 cup chopped celery
• 2 small bay leaves
• 2 cups half and half
• 1 10-ounce package frozen corn kernels
• 2 14 3/4-ounce can creamed corn
• 1 14 3/4-ounce can low-salt chicken broth
• 1/2 cup chopped celery leaves
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Sauté bacon in heavy large pot over medium-high heat until crisp and brown. Using slotted spoon, transfer bacon to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons drippings from pot. Add potato, onion, celery, and bay leaves to pot. Sauté over medium-high heat until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add half and half, frozen corn kernels, creamed corn, and chicken broth and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer chowder until potato is tender, about 15 minutes. Add celery leaves, 1/8 teaspoon cayenne, and bacon. Simmer chowder uncovered until flavors blend, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Clams Casino*
* (My family doesn’t like whole clams, so I buy chopped clams and mix them with the veggies, flavored bread crumbs to taste, and a little olive oil before stuffing the reserved shells.)

Soul Food

In a generation where clichés ruled the dinner table, my mother’s quote of choice, “Waste not, want not,” repeated with insistent regularity over the span of my childhood remained her fundamental proclamation. A conscientious and determined cook, she held a competition with herself to stretch each dinner into as many subsequent meals as gastronomically possible. Each night she reminded us of whatever third world country struggled with crop-shriveling drought at the time, while prompting us to scrape our plates in order to earn admittance into the “Clean Plate Club.”

In our house, the table was a crowded maple drop-leaf with long wooden benches holding three kids on each side, and spindle backed Windsor’s at the head and foot. Wedged in between my brothers and sisters I dug into big-family-on-small-budget food: creamy homemade corn chowders; thick minestrones made from leftover vegetables, the ground up remains of Sunday dinner presented as roast beef hash, and “Chicken a la King” reincarnated from a previous supper of baked breasts. My father, a hardworking breadwinner for his six children, made enough money, but just; and in my mother’s conventional role as homemaker she pinched pennies between paychecks by resurrecting the remnants from prior meals and fashioning them into presentable feasts designed to fill eight hungry mouths.

As with much of the food my mother served, when she did prepare dessert, it evolved as a second generation produced to avoid wasting food; banana bread from over-ripe bananas, apple sauce from the bruised leavings at the bottom of a bushel basket. The smells and tastes of most of these foods still rocket me back to the aromatic environs of my mother’s kitchen. And although I love them all and replicate them in my own home, one dish represents the zenith of comfort food to me, an offering that conveys clear testimony to my mother’s resourcefulness and thrift. A rich, uncomplicated confection that emerges from humble beginnings, to this day, my ultimate indulgence remains bread pudding.

Nowhere was my mother’s dedication to the practice of saving and reusing welcomed more than her habit of hording old scraps of bread. The heals of bread that her picky children refused to eat, broken pieces unfit for sandwiches, bread that for some reason lasted long enough to get stale, all made their way to a plastic bag in the freezer. And once that bag was stuffed full, Mom turned the contents into a blissfully moist, sweetly soothing cinnamon raisin or chocolate bread pudding.

On the days that we came home from school to find a bread pudding cooling in her chipped stoneware casserole, we invented excuses to remain in the kitchen, dancing around her on tiptoes and sneaking quick crumbs from the edge of the dish. The hours until supper stretched forever and once the meal finally arrived, we emptied our plates promptly regardless of what food sat in front of us--a requirement before dessert was permitted.

At last Mom plopped scoops of moist, spongy pudding into bowls. Pouring whole milk around the edges of the custard, we spooned unnecessary sugar on top wallowing in the sublime balance of taste and texture fashioned from unassuming ingredients of milk, sugar, eggs and bread.

When I grew up and moved to my own apartment, boxed macaroni and cheese became the fast meal of choice and bread pudding went out of my life for a time. I was the last child to leave the house and with only two mouths to feed, Mom no longer accumulated enough bread to warrant a pudding. Involved as I was with my own active life, I hardly realized I missed it.

Years later, newly married and in my own home, with from-scratch cooking skills that had improved substantially, I stumbled upon a recipe for chocolate bread pudding in a magazine. Immediately, and with no explanation to my bemused husband, I grabbed my purse, drove to the store and purchased unsweetened chocolate and eggs. Rushing home, I created my first bread pudding. My husband may not have understood the sense of urgency, but he uttered no complaints when he spooned into the final product.

I’ve been making variations of this nostalgic dish for my own family ever since, blueberry, apple, caramel bread puddings, and white chocolate with raspberry sauce. But the dessert I savor most is my edited version of that recipe I first encountered in the late 1980’s; a fusion of ingredients that plunks me right back onto those hard wooden benches, bequeathing a lingering aftertaste of the essence that flavored my life, back in the day when every meal counted.

Chocolate Bread Pudding

2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
1 ½ cups milk (for extra rich, use half and half)
1 cup sugar
4 slices homemade bread
2 eggs
½ cup milk
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons butter

In a double boiler over simmering water, place the chocolate, 1 ½ cups milk (or half and half) and sugar, and stir until the chocolate is melted. Quarter the bread slices and place them on the bottom of a greased baking dish or small casserole in two layers. Beat the eggs until fluffy and add ½ cup milk, salt and vanilla. Add butter to the warm milk and chocolate mixture and let it melt. Then add the milk and egg mixture to the chocolate mixture, stirring constantly, and pour it over the bread in the baking dish. Let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes pushing down the bread to make sure it absorbs the chocolate. Place in 350 preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes.

When I was a child, we served the bread pudding with milk and sugar. These days I find a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream over warmed pudding works just fine.