Chocolate fantasy

 

Image from Freepik.

I’m an addict. I admit it. A chocoholic, although not just any chocolate will do. I crave the dark, heavy kind, though some bars with 70 or 80% cacao are too bitter for me.  My late, ex-mother-in-law always used to say to me after a meal, “Judy, dear, a little sweet with my coffee.” Now I’m completely on her team. I want a sweet after lunch and dinner, but it’s almost always has to be chocolate. I buy salted caramels and dark chocolate bonbons with caramel ice cream and truffles and —oh great splurge!—sometimes a mini Dove bar. I crave the mini-chocolate chip cones from Trader Joe’s. My Christmas stocking is always full to the top with chocolate—bars, chocolate oranges, you name it. Santa has gotten the memo about me and chocolate. I am appalled when someone says to me, “I don’t really like chocolate.” It’s un-American.

Imagine my delight when prowling through my old recipes, many inherited from my mom, that I found a recipe for brownie pudding. You may remember it as the recipe that puts dry ingredients on the bottom and liquid on the top, and when it’s baked, they reverse, and it comes out with chocolate cake over a rich and dark and wonderful chocolate sauce. It was one of my favorites growing up, and one of the earliest things I learned to cook. I think you could double this recipe and make it in a 9 x13 pan, but I haven’t tried it recently.

Brownie Pudding

Ingredients

1 cup sugar, divided

½ cup cocoa powder, unsweetened, divided

1 cup all-purpose, unbleached flour

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup mlk

4 Tbsp butter, melted

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup hot coffee or water

Vanilla ice cream

Grease an 8 x 8 baking pan with cooking spray. Pre-heat oven to 350^o

Combine ½ cup sugar and ¼ cup cocoa powder and set aside.

Stir together remaining sugar and cocoa powder, flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix thoroughly, and then make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add butter, egg, vanilla, and milk and stir to mix. Spread the batter in the greased pan. Sprinkle reserved cocoa/sugar mixture evenly over batter. Pour the hot coffee (or water—but coffee gives a much more robust flavor) over batter. Do not stir.

Bake 35-40 minutes. Surface of cake should appear cracked. Let sit and collect itself for 15 minutes. Serve topped with dollop of ice cream.

Toffee bars

Some of my favorite recipes come not from my mom but from a wonderful friend who was maybe a decade younger than mom. Reva Ogilvie, a multi-talented woman and a doctor’s wife, grew up in a small farm community in northeast Missouri and like so many girls from that area, married a student from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, as did I. By the time I knew them, Uncle Charles and Aunt Reva had a guest ranch in East Texas. Somehow, they adopted my children and me, and we spent many happy weekends at the ranch. Aunt Reva’s cooking was a highlight. This recipe has all the elements of chocolate chip cookies but rearranged. Over the years, I’ve served it at many a Christmas party.

Ingredients

½ lb. (two sticks) butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar (it’s not the end of the world if you use dark  brown sugar)

1 egg yolk

2 cups unbleached white flour (like Mom, Aunt Reva avoided artificial ingredients—hence no bleached flour)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Directions

Grease a 9 x 12 cookie sheet with a rim (called a jelly roll pan back in the day)

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolk and mix well. Stir in flour until there are no streaks of dry flour. Add vanilla.

Spread batter in greased pan and bake for 25 minutes at 350^o.

Immediately cover cake with chocolate bits and return to oven for three or four minutes. Remove pan and use table knife to spread melted chocolate evenly over the cake. Sprinkle with nuts while chocolate is still warm, so the pecan pieces will adhere.

Cool completely before cutting. Makes about thirty bars.

More chocolate another time!

One dish two ways and a quick hint

Pictue from Freepik

Stuffed mushrooms are a classy appetizer in my mind. Maybe it’s because they take a bit of work—it shows that you didn’t just buy a packaged mix at the grocery for your guests. Maybe it’s because they look pretty. And maybe it’s nostalgia on my part because that’s what my mom fixed on special occasions. Perhaps, though, the best stuffed mushrooms I ever had were served at a small diving resort on Grand Cayman. My son was managing the place and hired a Jamaican cook who made these mushrooms up out of her imagination. Since she was also given to chasing people with a butcher knife, I never did ask for her recipe. Recently though my friend and fellow author Susan Wittig Albert posted her recipe on her Substack column, and I think it’s almost as good as Mom’s.

There used to be lots of theories about cleaning mushrooms. Mom swished them around in salted water to remove loose dirt and then rinsed them. Someone who’d been to culinary school told me that is all wrong because mushrooms already have a lot of liquid and if you submerge them, they just absorb more. Lately I’ve heard that it’s fine to rinse them under running water. I prefer to take a damp paper towel and gently clean them.

Susan also had a cooking hint. One problem with stuffed mushrooms is often that the filling cooks before the mushrooms soften. Since the filling usually has cheese in it, it runs all over while the mushrooms are still raw or almost so. Susan’s advice: stem the mushrooms (save the stems to chop into the stuffing) and turn the caps stem side down in a baking dish. Bake at 350^o for 10-15 minutes. Pour off any liquid that accumulates.

Mom’s filling (with no exact measurements—sorry!):

8 oz. whole mushrooms—I like Baby Bella, but button are fine, stems removed

Grated sharp cheddar cheese, probably about a cup

One or two green onions, finely minced

About a half teaspoon dry mustard

Several shakes of Worcestershire

Mayonnaise to bind, but don’t let it get soupy

Bake at 350^o until cheese melts and is just browned on top. Serve immediately, wth plenty of napkins.

You can also serve Mom’s recipe unbaked as a spread or spread it on toast points and bake until brown and bubbly.

Susan’s recipe (she attributes it to Jane Clark)

For 2 dozen large mushrooms:

½ cup dried breadcrumbs, plus more for topping

½ cup pecorino or parmesan cheese

1/3 cup finely chopped onion (I’d probably use green onions)

Finely chopped mushroom stems

2 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped

1 Tbsp, fresh sage, chopped

2 Tbsp. olive oil

Salt and pepper

Mix ingredients thoroughly and spoon into caps. Bake at 350^o until mushrooms are tender, filling is heated through and topping is golden. About 15-20 minutes.

Susan’s quick tip: Use a packaged, seasoned stuffing mix instead of bread crumbs and herbs. Mix with cheese, onons, and chopped stems. (Probably add the olive oil to bind it all together).

 

Soup for the soul—and the body

 

January marks the beginning of what poets and novelists often call “the bleak midwinter.” It’s a time when we too often regret the excesses of the holiday season. Did you gain pounds? I never pay attention to that, but I know well the feeling of having had too much rich, heavy food (and there’s still eggnog in my fridge, begging to be drunk). I have friends who annually foreswear alcohol and snacks for the month of January, another resolution I ignore, though I know I drank more wine and ate more chocolate in those days in Santa Fe with my family.

And yet, January can be blustery and cold. In Fort Worth, we call that stock show weather, because sure as rain the annual Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show (no, it’s no longer called the Fat Stock Show) brings ice, sleet, and cold temperatures. And the weather is in true form this year—the stock show parade (no motorized vehicles) is Saturday, and the temperature is predicted to plunge to ten degrees by Monday morning.

Clearly, it’s soup weather. What’s your favorite? Split pea? Chicken and noodle? Cheeseburger soup? They all sound a bit heavy to me at this point, but I made a pot of chicken soup this week that was flavorful and warming yet light and low in calories. I don’t remember where I got the recipe nor what it was called, so for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call it chicken/avocado/lime soup. Bonus: it’s easy. Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

1-1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 cup chopped green onions (white and green parts)

2 jalapeños, seeded and chopped (leave the seeds if you want your soup hot—if you know me, you know I omitted the peppers)

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 cans low sodium chicken broth (I made four cups with Better than Bouillon and could have used more)

2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced

½ tsp. ground cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

1/3 cup chopped cilantro

3 Tbsp. fresh lime juice

3 medium avocados

Optional for garnish: corn chips, sour cream, shredded jack cheese

Directions:

Heat one Tbsp. olive oil in your soup pot and sauté green onions and jalapeños until tender, adding minced garlic at the end—do not let the garlic burn. Add chicken broth, tomatoes, cumin, salt and pepper, and chicken. Bring to a boil and quickly reduce heat to simmer (I wasn’t paying attention and let it boil a bit, which toughens the chicken). Put the lid on the pan and cook until chicken is thoroughly done. Stir from time to time.

Remove chicken from pot and let cool. Keep soup warm on a low setting. When chicken is cool enough to handle, use two forks to shred it and then return it to the soup. Heat to serving temperature. When removed from burner, add cilantro and lime juice. Add avocadoes and any other garnish to individual servings.

This is a lot like tortilla soup but easier to make. And it’s delicious.

Easy stuffed mushrooms

 

As some of you may remember, I am working, now and then, on a cookbook based on the theory that the food of the Fifties has an ongoing effect on the way we cook and eat today. It’s easy to scoff at the idea of food of the Fifties—all those jellied salads and prepared foods. Yet there were dishes that many of us treasure to this day—meatloaf, salmon croquettes, tuna casserole, chicken Divan, steak Diane, deviled eggs, green salads—the list is long but maybe someday you’ll read the book. I think it’s going to be titled Mom and Me in the Kitchen, because it’s turning out to be a tribute to my mom who was a great cook, not a chef but just a darn good cook.

Perhaps all this is on my mind this morning because I’m still getting back to reality after a wonderful Christmas with seventeen of my family. The girls have taken over the kitchen, and as I watched them cook, I realized that they were doing things the way my mom taught me and I, in turn, taught them. They stuffed a turkey with onion and celery and made dressing on the side (okay, it was cornbread whereas Mom’s and mine were always white bread—I guess we have to give in to Texas on some things). They made classic green bean casserole and apple pie. And best of all, they used Mom’s recipe for yeast-rising dinner rolls (the altitude in Santa Fe did them in a bit, but they were still good). One of the delights of Christmas Day was watching my oldest son and his daughter roll out the dough, watch it rise and shape the rolls.

One of Mom’s signature dishes was stuffed mushrooms. Far as I know, she invented the cheese mixture she used for stuffing them. So imagine my surprise this week when I was reading Ruth Reichl’s Substack column and found something she calls Poor Man’s Tarte Flambée. Reichl as you know is the chef/editor/author/restaurant critic who critiqued restaurants for the New York Times and led Gourmet Magazine until its demise. She is one of the premier figures on today’s American food scene. Her recipe calls for grated sharp white cheddar, diced raw bacon, onion and horseradish, salt and pepper. This mixture is spread on toast and broiled. I laughed aloud: it was so close to Mom’s stuffed mushrooms, which she was making long before Reichl picked up a measuring spoon.

Here’s what she did for mushrooms (sorry, but there are no precise measurements):

Mom’s stuffed mushrooms

Large mushrooms, de-stemmed and wiped clean—I figure about three per person

Grated sharp cheddar, probably about a cup

Green onion, sliced thin, both white and green parts; if it’s a big one, cut down the middle, before slicing

A couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce

Dry mustard—careful, this is potent stuff and too much can ruin a dish. I’d guess use a half teaspoon.

Just enough mayonnaise to bind.

If you are stuffing mushrooms, fill each cap with the mixture and place on a rimmed baking sheet. The cheese will inevitably run over so it’s best to use parchment paper if you can. Bake in a slow oven, maybe 300 or 325—you want the mushrooms to soften before the cheese gets too brown. Serve warm.

This is also good spread on toast and broiled; for a side dish, top it with lightly cooked fresh asparagus.

Need a quick appetizer for an unexpected guest? Just whip up a batch of this and serve it with crackers.

And raise a toast to my mom—a cook who was ahead of her times. You might also toast Reichl because she’s pretty inspirational in the kitchen.