MultiGrain Salad with Roasted Mushrooms, Walnuts and Grapes

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by Caroline


The weather’s changed this week. The fog is coming with a little drizzle and the sun is sitting lower in the sky; we don’t have many autumn leaves or crisp days here in Northern California but still, it feels like fall. And so, rummaging around — in the kitchen for ingredients and online for inspiration — I pulled together this hearty autumn salad. Unlike the original, I didn’t use farro nor wild mushrooms, but I’m guessing most everyday pantries don’t stock those either. So here’s my version, which is great on its own, would be lovely on a bed of shredded raw kale or sauteed spinach, or make a nice side dish to your roast. I eyeballed the ingredients, and of course you can adjust the proportions up or down according to your taste, but here are some ballpark measurements to get you started:

2-3 cups cooked wild or brown rice, farro, Trader Joe’s Harvest Grain mix, or some combination thereof
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 lb mushrooms (button, crimini, shitake: whatever you’ve got)
1/4 lb seedless grapes
1/4 t smoked paprika
olive oil, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400.

While the oven is heating, wash the mushrooms and grapes. Halve the grapes (I know, you probably thought you were done slicing grapes when your child outgrew her highchair, but do it for this recipe: more surface area = more deliciously caramelized fruit. Plus, they won’t skate away from your fork when you try to take a bite). Chop or tear the mushrooms into large bites. Toss them onto a large roasting sheet with the grapes and walnuts, give them a good dose of olive oil, and sprinkle with the salt, some freshly ground pepper, and the smoked paprika. Roast, stirring occasionally, until the grapes are shriveled and the mushrooms and walnuts are nicely toasted (15-20 minutes). Toss with the cooked grains, return to the oven for a few minutes to warm it all, and serve.

Horseradish Cheddar Cheese Dip

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by Lisa

Caroline makes a fine garbage salad, and a long time ago, I started making a kind of garbage cheese dip.   Like so much of what goes on around here, there is no single recipe but rather a set of strategies and tips.  This is what you can do if friends stop in unexpectedly. This is another thing you can do if your kids are starving and dinner isn’t ready. This is what you do if you have too many little hunks of cheese lying around in your cheese bin and you don’t know how to use them.  There are two basic ways to go about mixing up a fast, delicious spread that you can use for snack, appetizer, or even a quick lunch.

The first, and my favorite, is Jacques Pepin style, a technique culled from one of his classic cooking shows.  In a Cuisinart blend together:

  • all your leftover little pieces of cheese–especially a little piece of blue cheese. The more eclectic the mix, the better.
  • a splash or so of white wine
  • one garlic clove

Of course, if kids are going to eat this, you will want to make sure the cheese mixing did not require too much wine–or you can substitute or add some mayonnaise as in the version below for a Horseradish Cheddar Cheese Dip:

  • shredded cheddar cheese
  • mayonnaise
  • a teaspoon or two of mustard
  • a tablespoon or so to taste of horseradish

I like keeping things like this around, because anytime you bring out a pre-dinner snack, everyone slows down, gathers together and your weeknight can feel a little bit more like a weekend.

Applesauce Muffins, in the good bowl

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by Caroline

This time of year, with school in full swing and the afterschool events (in this house, piano lessons and soccer practices) getting going, I’m thinking more about good snacks than usual. The boys need something when I pick them up from school, and often eat another small snack after we get home, before dinner.

And so I keep pulling out my favorite mixing bowl, an inheritance from my late mother-in-law. It’s nothing fancy, but there’s something particularly appealing about its low, sloping sides, the solidity of the white ceramic, that sweet scallop detail around the edges. I keep reaching it down from the cupboard and and filling it with muffin batters and wonderballs. This week, when a friend brought me homemade applesauce from her tree, I looked for a new way to bake the applesauce into a good after school snack, and found it in Veganomicon, the cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, the fabulous women behind Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and the new Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar!. Try them; you don’t need to be vegan to like them.

3/4 milk (soy, rice, almond and cow’s milk work equally well)
1 t apple cider vinegar
1 c unsweetened applesauce
3 T vegetable oil or (2 T oil plus 3 T ground flaxseed meal)
1/2 brown sugar
1 1/2 c all purpose or whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 c oat bran
2 t baking powder
1/2 baking soda
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t salt
1/2 c raisins, dried cranberries, or chopped dried apple pieces (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 and line a 12-cup muffin pan with muffin papers.

In your favorite bowl, whisk together the milk and vinegar; let it sit a minute to curdle. Add the applesauce, oil and brown sugar and whisk well to combine.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, then fold into the applesauce mixture. Stir just until combined. Fold in the dried fruit, if using. Scoop batter into muffin cups and bake 25-30 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Puffy Corn Omelete

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by Lisa

A few weeks ago, Ella bit into her corn on the cob, and before she had even set it back down on her plate declared, “I love summer.”

Like most, we love corn here and eat it as often as we can while it’s in season. Purist that I am, we usually don’t do anything more than a quick boil or grill and  then serve it with butter.   But  a few years ago this recipe was published in our my & Caroline’s Gourmet and it was an immediate hit with everyone.  This dish involves your good friend, the egg, butter, corn, and chives. It turns out a light, puffed, sweet and tender omelete,  loaded with fresh corn.  It works as a main course, which is how we usually eat it, a side dish, or even an elegant first course. It’s great right out of the over or at room temperature (potluck or lunch party anyone?).  I’ve served it many times to guests, who rave.  The kids could east the whole thing themselves. And while we’re still in corn season out here, I think you could easily substitute a few cups of frozen corn if the crop near you has already waned. It’s a good way to keep a burst of summer on your plate.


Puffy Corn Omelete

The original recipe is here. I modify the process slightly so it uses fewer bowls and a pie plate instead of a skillet, which I’ve found makes clean up a little easier. Also, you can skimp on the butter, but it definitely is better if you don’t.

  • 3 ears of corn, husked
  • 4 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 4 large eggs, separated
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh chives
  1. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat convection oven to 350°F.
  2. Add corn to a 4-quart pot of boiling water , then remove from heat and let stand, covered, 10 minutes. Drain and, when cool enough to handle, cut kernels from cobs with a sharp knife into a bowl, then scrape cobs over bowl to extract “milk.” Scrape into a large bowl.
  3. Melt butter in a 10-inch ovenproof pie plate  (I use a glass one, set right in the microwave) and remove skillet from heat, then transfer 3 tablespoons melted butter to bowl with corn (leaving remaining butter in skillet to cool).  Toss corn to coat and stir in 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper.
  4. When the corn is cool, whisk in the egg yolks with remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper in a large bowl until combined.
  5. Beat whites with a pinch of salt in another bowl using an electric mixer at medium speed until they just hold stiff peaks. Fold one third of whites into yolks to lighten, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly. Gently fold in corn mixture.
  6. Spoon mixture into pie plate and bake until pale golden and set, 10 to 12 minutes. The omelete will puff nicely as cooks.  Loosen omelet with a heatproof rubber spatula and slide onto a plate, or cut and serve directly from the pie plate. Serve sprinkled with chives.



Breakfast in Bed

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by Caroline

This is not about the kids bringing me breakfast in bed — that’s a story for another day — but about the kids getting their own breakfast, independently, while I remain in bed. It hasn’t always been easy to stay put while the boys crash around downstairs, but you can’t learn to eat, to make good choices about the food you put in your body, without some independent moments, so I’m doing all I can to foster those moments.

It turns out to have as much to do with the kitchen lay-out as the food we keep there. They’ve been able to reach the snack foods (in low pantry shelves) and fill their own water cups (my younger son still needs to pull a stool up to the sink) for some time now, but we didn’t quite have it all set up for them to get their own breakfasts until this fall.

It meant finally moving most of the plastic dishes and cups out of the low kitchen drawers and replacing them with proper dishware. My kids are eight and five and, perhaps more to the point, they’re careful; using the “real” dishes is a point of pride with them. On the other hand, we’ve had these dishes over ten years and they didn’t cost much then, so if an accident happens, the only problem is the mess.

We moved proper glasses (mostly cheapies from Ikea) into a drawer, too:

The next step was getting all the cereal into easy open (and close) containers. The homemade granola lives in a container the kids can scoop from; the rest of the cereal goes into these tubs, which are somehow so much easier to pour from than boxes (and you can buy cereal in bulk to save money and decant into them):

Sometimes breakfast includes frozen berries — reachable in the low freezer — and sometimes a sprinkle of dried cranberries from the basket next to the cereal. Ben went through a brief phase, years ago, when breakfast was graham crackers and sun dried tomatoes; both kids’ choices are a bit more traditional these days.

The last step was the milk, because pulling a stool to the fridge and hauling the milk down (and back up) was just not going to work:

And so I went shopping for one small jug…

…which now happens to live next to the chocolate syrup: a quiet challenge? Perhaps, though it’s unintentional. More importantly, it’s a choice, which they are learning to make every morning.

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