by Caroline
The last time I saw my friend Yuka, Ben was just a few months old. He’d been crying all day when she arrived, stopped for the length of her visit, and then started back up again when she left. Frankly, it made me feel like crying, too.
After the earthquake and tsunami last spring, I checked in with all my people in Japan and quickly, happily heard back that everyone was ok — except for Yuka. As a reporter for Reuters, she travels a lot, and we’ll go ages without contact, but still, it weighed on me, and I was hugely relieved when she emailed that she’d be in town this week. I wanted to make something special for dinner, but with a day full of back-to-school activities, I didn’t have a ton of time.
Enter my daily Food52 email with this peach tart recipe from Amanda Hesser. She had me at “To make it all you need is a knife, a bowl, and some kind of pan.” A tart without finicky requirements? Yes, please. This recipe is easier than pie: it’s as easy as cake. Get a bowl, gather ingredients, stir, slice, bake. It was ready to go into the oven before the oven was hot enough to bake it. And any recipe that makes it easy for the kids to help is a winner in my book, too:
Whenever members of my family get together, we eat, and if we’re going to be visiting each other for a few days, we count up the meals in advance and start planning what we’ll cook and eat together (we have already, despite having more important things to do, begun emailing a little bit about Thanksgiving).
My Dad doesn’t do too much cooking, but when we gather at my parents’ home, he plays an important role in our food conversation by telling us what’s coming from the garden or what he’s got stocked in the freezer, also letting us know when some food is producing at oppressive levels (at the moment, ripening peaches cover every flat surface in the kitchen, the wood stove, and one spare bed) or whether we need to clear out last year’s frozen whatever-vegetable to make room for this year’s crop. It’s kind of like walking into an episode of Iron Chef, the one-ingredient cooking challenge, except I get lots of ingredients, and no stop clock. It’s great.
At my parents’ last week, one of the products to use was rhubarb, and my Mom had already emailed me a recipe from the New York Times in anticipation of my visit. I am a big fan of upside-down cakes, as you might have noticed; I’ve posted recipes for ones with cherries and pears (with a terrible picture), though I think my favorite is still this apricot upside-down cake, which I picture here. They are usually pretty easy, always moist, and have that great caramelized sugar-crust edge. I have to admit, this one is a bit fussier than what I would make just for my own family, but for my Mom — who taught me how to bake — anything. And besides, it’s completely delicious.
2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature, more to grease pans
1 1/2 pounds rhubarb, rinsed and sliced into 1/2-inch cubes (about 4 cups)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 cups cake flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
Zest of 1 lemon, grated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons lemon juice.
1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper. Butter the paper and sides of the pan. Wrap two layers of foil under the pan, and place it on a buttered baking sheet.
2. In a medium bowl, mix rhubarb, cornstarch and 1/2 cup granulated sugar.
3. Mix the brown sugar and 1/2 stick butter in a pan over medium heat. Whisk until smooth and bubbling, about 2 minutes. Sift together the cake flour, baking powder and salt.
4. Whip 2 sticks butter in a mixer with a paddle attachment for 2 minutes. With your fingers, blend the remaining 1 cup sugar with lemon zest until the mixture is uniform in color. Cream together with the butter at medium-high speed until it is light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, stopping to scrape down the bowl halfway through. Add the vanilla and mix well. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the sour cream, then the lemon juice. (It’s O.K. if the mixture looks curdled.) With the mixer set to low speed, add the flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time, until well combined. Scrape down the mixer bowl in between the additions.
5. Pour the brown-sugar mixture into the cake pan, then spoon in the rhubarb and its juices. Spoon in the batter so it covers all of the rhubarb. Smooth out the top.
6. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until the top of the cake is firm to touch and a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out without any large, moist crumbs.
7. Place the pan on a wire rack, and cool for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the cake, place a plate on top of the pan and turn it upside-down. Release the cake from the pan while still warm or else it will stick.
Yield: 8 servings.
A year or so ago, we had a funny dinner table conversation about our “nemesis foods:” the things we really, really don’t like to eat but occasionally must to be polite. Ben’s is chili; Eli’s is sauteed spinach; mine is sweet potato casserole (the kind with marshmallows on top [shudder]). Tony’s is something I don’t eat at all anymore but when I was a kid, it was my absolute happy comfort food, and my mom made it almost every week.
This week, visiting my parents, I offered to stock their freezer with meals for when they don’t have the energy to cook. My mom and I talked about a couple different options — enchiladas, soups, lasagne, curries — and decided on a corn chowder, a vegetable and tofu curry (using many of my dad’s garden vegetables), and, as a cold weather comfort food, Tony’s nemesis food: tuna noodle casserole.
Now it’s my sister who makes it for her family most often, and her essay for The Dish shares a funny story about my nephew’s love for this dish, plus her recipe, which I offer you here, following this picture of the tuna noodle casserole assembly line. My husband kept his distance.
Libby’s Tuna Casserole
My kids would eat this every night if I would make it. Especially Nick.
Ingredients:
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk (skim is fine)
1 tsp mustard, optional
1 lb. pasta; shells or fusili seem to work best
1-2 cans tuna, packed in water (or, I suppose, oil, but I never buy that kind. Actually I buy the kind that has no salt added, too.)
1-2 cups frozen tiny baby peas. Or not so tiny ones, if you don’t mind them. They seem kind of icky to me, but I like the little tiny ones. You don’t need to thaw these.
2-3 cups shredded cheese of your choice. I usually use 2 cups of colby-jack and a cup or so of parmesan or romano, but it depends what I have in the house. Something that melts well is what you’re going for, and since you’re probably feeding kids, don’t bother with really good cheese. I buy bags of shredded stuff and throw them in the freezer, then pull out whatever I have and use it. “Italian” blends work fine, as do “Mexican.” Real cheese that you shred yourself is probably better.
breadcrumbs, optional
OK. So you have your ingredients. Turn your oven on to 350 or so (400 if you’re in a hurry) and make sure you have a casserole dish that holds a pound of cooked pasta.
Put up a pan of water for the pasta. While you wait for it to boil, melt the butter in a medium sauce pan. Medium heat. When the butter’s melted (don’t let it burn!), whisk in the flour. When it collects into a sort of pasty mess at the bottom of your pan, add the milk and whisk madly to break up the clumps. (If you heated the milk beforehand this might go more smoothly, but if you just keep whisking it will work with cold milk out of the fridge.)
Keep whisking while you heat the milk to just below boiling. Turn the heat down a bit if you need to. The sauce will thicken up quite a bit. Whisk the mustard, if you’re using it, in as it thickens. (I find it makes a big difference.)
If you already knew how to make a bechamel (aka white sauce, aka cream sauce) you could have skipped those last two paragraphs.
When the sauce has thickened take it off the heat. When the pasta water boils, duh, add the pasta and boil it until tender but not mushy. Drain the pasta and run cold water over it to stop it cooking.
Dump the pasta back in the pasta pan. Pour the sauce over it and mix it together. Then add the tuna (breaking it up in the can a bit before you dump it in) and the peas. Mix it all together so that the tuna and peas are evenly distributed.
Put half the pasta/sauce/tuna/peas mixture in the bottom of the casserole. Scatter half the cheese over it. Then the rest of the pasta, and the rest of the cheese. If you like, blanket the top with bread crumbs. Crushed up Ritz crackers or potato chips would be decadent and tasty. Pop the whole thing in the oven and bake until the top is golden and crusty. This will take 15-20 minutes at 400, up to half an hour at lower heat. Since everything was already cooked before it went in, all you really need to do is melt the cheese and brown the top, but if you have to go take a shower or something and need it to be in the oven longer, you might cover the casserole when you put it in, then take the top off and blast the heat up to 425 or so for the last few minutes.
When my husband and I decided to get married, I told him I could imagine making a life in his native San Francisco as long as we spent one week every summer somewhere I wouldn’t need to wear a scarf.
That means, happily, an August week in Northwest Connecticut, visiting my parents, and that also, very happily, means corn. Usually, we’re eating my Dad’s corn, but this year the crop failed so we’re getting it from local farm stands. My Dad likes the one the First Selectman sets up at the end of his driveway (presumably because he can get caught up on local political talk); my Mom (and I) like the bigger one that also offers fresh, homemade mozzarella. Either way, with this much corn around, you are bound to have leftovers, and this recipe is my new favorite way to use them. Don’t be put off (as I nearly was) by the somewhat fussy step of blending and straining some of the corn with milk: it makes a difference.
You can eat these the way my kids do, drenched in maple syrup (and when the syrup’s homemade, I won’t stop them), but you can also eat them savory, as I’ve pictured, with guacamole and fresh tomatoes. It’s summer on a plate.
I have shelves full of cookbooks, but can always make room for more, especially when it’s one as gorgeous and delicious as the latest cookbook from Heidi Swanson, Super Natural Every Day, which Tony gave me for my birthday. Here’s my version of my current favorite recipe from the book, which looks a bit like hummus but tastes, because of the mustard and dill, like a vegetarian tuna salad. Her recipe uses the spread as a sandwich filling, but I just eat it spread on crackers or flatbread.
1 can (15 oz) chickpeas
1/4 cup minced red onion
1 celery rib, minced
1 tbsp chopped fresh dill
salt to taste
1/2 cup yogurt
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Juice of half a lemon, or more to taste, plus a bit of grated zest
Pulse two-thirds of the chickpeas in a food processor until coarsely ground. (They’ll look like wet breadcrumbs.) Add them to a medium bowl with the whole chickpeas, then stir in the onion, celery, dill, and some salt.
Whisk the yogurt, mustard and lemon until well combined and add enough to the chickpeas to moisten. Add more according to your taste (I like this spread rather moist, but if you’re making sandwiches you might want to keep it drier.) Serve in lavash flatbread or pita wraps with salad greens, or simply scooped from a bowl with pita triangles or chips.
