Grits, Fried Green Tomatoes and Bacon: The Perfect Meal

Grits, fried green tomatoes and bacon were the first combination that came to mind when I started work on this installment of our Cook The Book project.

We are covering cereals from Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book. There are six of us participating in the project: Rachel of Ode to Goodness, Sammy of Rêve du Jour, Emily of The Bon Appetit Diaries, Aimee of Homemade Trade and Claudie of The Bohemian Kitchen.

I've never made either of these dishes before. Both turned out to be very easy and very satisfying. I was surprised at how much I loved the grits. They are a cross between traditional polenta and a warm grain cereal, like cream of rice or farina. Those were two of my favorite warm cereals growing up, so it makes perfect sense that the grits made me so happy. It's such a filling dish that I think I can get six to eight servings out of each batch.

The recipe said you could serve the grits as a sweet dish with milk and sugar. Savory breakfast is more my taste, so I tried the grits two ways: one just with butter and one with black truffle oil and bacon.

The black truffle oil was my favorite, but way too rich to eat very much of it. The fried green tomatoes were nice and crispy, as an alternate cornmeal texture against the smooth silkiness of the grits. I have plans to make a ton of this, and will likely experiment with some other combinations.

Good Grits

adapted from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, copyright 1987, Alfred A Knopf

Ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• Salt to taste
• 1/2 cup grits (I used Bob's Red Mill Organic Corn Grits Polenta)
• 1 tablespoon butter OR
• 1/2 tablespoon black truffle oil

Method:

1. Bring the water to a boil and add salt. slowly stir in the grits, and stir for a few seconds more.
2. Turn the heat to medium-low (closer to low than medium on my stove) and cover the pan.
3. Cook, stirring once or twice for five minutes (I left it for up to 10 minutes).
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter or the black truffle oil.
5. Serve hot.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Ingredients:

• 4 small hard green tomatoes cut into slices
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (you may want to add more at the end depending on taste)
• 1 to 2 eggs, whisked until yolks are incorporated with the whites, in a shallow dish
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup cornmeal, on a small plate
• Tobasco or Chalula sauce for serving.

Method:

1. Heat a skillet over high heat.
2. Place the tomato slices in the egg wash, turning to coat them completely.
3. Transfer the egg-coated tomato slices to the cornmeal and coat them completely in corn meal.
4. Add the olive oil to the hot pan, swirling it around to cover the entire surface of the pan.
5. Place the tomato slices in the hot oil and cook for four minutes, or until the coating on that side has browned well.
6. Turn the slices over and cook for an additional four minutes on the second side.
7. Remove the slices to a paper towel lined plate, sprinkle with salt and serve.

Mother's and Daughters: Thoughts for Mother's Day

   Mother's Day is just around the corner. It's one of my favorite days. My daughter always makes me feel very special and does a great job celebrating me.

On the holiday, Isabella has made me a nice breakfast on her own for the past four years. She's an inspiring daughter, and at thirteen is more than capable of making breakfast,. I loved it when a few years back she asked me to close my eyes, come into the kitchen, and turn the oven on for her. Or when she was five and made me a grilled cheese sandwich in the microwave, because she was not old enough to use the oven. I cherish her Mother's Day breakfasts and can't wait to see what she has on offer this year.

The extra-special part for me is that this is our day together to just be mother and daughter. I am a single parent, so whenever Isabella is at my house, it is just the two of us. But Mother's Day is a day when we put aside all our day-to-day madness, bickering and chores and enjoy each other.

I always knew I'd have at least one child.  I love kids and babies. They make me feel happy and secure and I know how to communicate with them on their own level. Kids and babies are just small people, and I tend to treat them as equals to adults. They are smart, funny, insightful and loving. This is why I became a mother.

And I'm very glad I did. I love being a mother enjoying my child and treating  her with  patience and understanding, regaling her with silliness and offering unbridled love. As Isabella gets older, I have to adjust the way I use these traits, but they are all still necessary. Patience is way at the top of the list these days, so is silliness (however, not in front of her friends, thank you very much). I find that with every passing year, we come to an understanding of how we relate and move into these new roles, sometimes with ease, sometimes not.

Gran Fran (my very own mother) and I are not always on the same page, but we talk or IM almost every day. We collaborate on food projects and discuss ideas for upcoming work that we're doing. There is bickering and eye rolling a-plenty, but I will say that we are as bonded as ever. Though we live on opposite coasts, we are incredibly close.

We may not always see eye-to-eye on everything, but Gran Fran does have good advice on many of the stagesIsabella is going through. Having raised five kids, four of them girls, Gran Fran and Joe have seen it all. If Isabella and I start  bickering when we are with Gran Fran, she helps defuse  the situation by gently (which for Gran Fran means yelling instructions at top voice) reminding me that I was no cakewalk at thirteen and to give the kid a break.

From my echo (Isabella) my shadown (Gran Fran and me, here's to Mother's Day and all of the fabulous moms out there. May your kids treat you well more often than not and celebrate you always!

You can find recipes for my first installment of Mother's Day here.

  

Mother's Day: Corn Muffins, Minted Strawberries, Iced Almond Milk Cappuccino

A wonderful Mother's day breakfast created by three generations: me, mymother and my daughter. It's not a complicated meal, but it is delicious and means a lot to me.

My daughter usually makes me corn muffins on the big day. I've always loved them, and she knows it. She generally serves them with a side of strawberries.

When I serve strawberries, I like to soak them in a simple syrup infused with mint. That's my contribution to this meal.

As for my mother, Gran Fran, no matter how long it has been, to me Spring and Summer at her house mean iced blended cappuccino drinks.

Please enjoy this with your family and let Mama put her feet up and relax while you scurry around and meet her every need.

Isabella's Corn Muffins

Ingredients

• 1 stick, 8 tablespoons, unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup almond milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup gluten-free flour (recipe found here or pre-packaged mix found here)
• 1 cup corn meal
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar

Method

1. Heatoven to 400 degrees.
2. Melt butter.
3. Brush some of the melted butter on 12-cup muffin tin.
4. Place tin in oven.
5. Mix together milk, melted butter, and eggs
6. Mix together dry ingredients.
7. Swiftly stir wet ingredients into dry; do not overmix.
8. Carefully, spoon ingredients into hot, buttered  muffin tin
9. In lower third of oven, bake 25 minutes or until golden brown.
10. Remove from tin; wrap in dishtowel in dish or basket if serving immediately.
11. Otherwise place on wire rack, wrap individually in foil, seal in plastic freezer bag. Reheat before serving.

Natasha's Mint Marinated Strawberries

Ingredients:

• 6 mint leaves minced
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 4 large strawberries cut into pieces

Method:

1. Put mint, sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat.
2. Stir constantly until all the sugar has dissolved.
3. Pour the mint simple syrup over the strawberries and let them sit for five minutes.

Gran Fran's Almond Milk Blender Cappuccino

serves 1

you will need a blender (ok, seems obvious, but thought I should mention it)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups hot coffee, if it’s winter; cold if it’s summer
• 1 cup almond milk (Gran Fran uses whole milk)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 6 ice cubes if it’s summer
• Cinnamon, optional

Method:

1. Place all ingredients in blender; adjust amounts to fit capacity of blender.
2. Hold down cap of blender with a dish towel.
3. Turn blender on high.
4. Blend until frothy and creamy.
5. Pour into glasses or cups. Sprinkle with cinnamon if desired.
6. Serve immediately.

Super Bowl, Smuper Bowl...I Love Me Some Wings.

I'm a fan of sports, usually enjoy a good baseball game, and really did enjoy the World Cup while we were in Paris two years ago.

What I realize I love the the most about sporting events (and everything else) are the snacks and foods that go along with these events. My very favorite sports snack is the almighty chicken wing.

I embarked on my research about a week ago. In the past, I had thought you either fried the wings or boiled and then baked the wings. Many recipes online required flouring the wings, which I wasn't going to do due to the gluten-freeness of my diet. I decided to do what cooks used to do in the olden-times: I asked the butcher his advice.

There happens to be a very nice butcher shop in my neighborhood. I saw the wings in the butcher case but they didn't look like the kind I've gotten in restaurants.

So I asked the butcher two things:

1. Are the wings/drumsticks usually split in two before cooking?
2. Don't I need to boil the wings before I bake them?

And the butcher responded:

1. Yes, he said, and I can cut them into two for you.
2. No, don't even think of that! Just bake them in a hot oven and then roll them in the sauce.

After a bit more instruction from my butcher-best-friend, I was ready to tackle the sauce.

I wanted to make something the kids could eat, too, but after some consideration, decided that just this once I'd go for it and make a sauce the adults could love, and the kids could eat theirs plain. I remembered Gran-Fran making some awesome BBQ sauce back in the day, and based on this recollection, I knew I needed ketchup as my base. And something spicy, then something sweet. I added butter, too, which I can't recall if Gran-Fran would be thrilled by this or mortified that I used butter in something involving meat. (I'm sure we'll be getting a comment sometime soon from her weighing in on the matter.)

Then, I started thinking about a recipe I had seen on the craftzine website that served chicken wings on top of cupcakes. At first I thought it sounded not so good. But then, it got in my head, and I figured that maybe if I were to make a savory cornbread to put under the wings, it would offset the spicy sauce nicely. I used a gluten-free mix, with almond milk and added some chipotle powder, too.

And so, here it is, plain and simple, my first try at at making my very own chicken wings. They are really, really good, and worth the effort.

Chicken Wings with Hot Sauce

Ingredients

For the Chicken Wings

• 2 lbs Chicken Wings, cut into wings and drumsticks
• Olive Oil for roasting

For the Sauce:

• 1/2 cup Hot sauce of your choice
• 1 cup of Ketchup
• 1/2 of a Lemon, jucied
• 3 Tbsps Butter, softened
• 4 cloves Garlic, chopped coarsely
• 1/2 Tsp Sesame Oil
• 1 Tbsp Honey
• Salt and Pepper to Taste

For the Cornbread:

• 1 box Gluten Free Pantry Yankee Cornbread mix (or any kind of cornbread mix you prefer)
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• 1-1/3 cups Almond Milk
• 1 Egg lightly beaten
• 6 Tbsps melted butter

And: 2 stalks of Green Onion, sliced thinly

Roast The Chicken

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• Place the chicken in a roasting pan in one layer.
• Sprinkle with salt and a olive oil.
• Roast for 40 minutes or until the skin is browned.

Make The Sauce

• While the chicken is roasting, put all of the sauce ingredients in a pan and heat over low on the stove.
• You'll know when it's done when it sticks to the back of a wooden spoon and it has thickened.
• Remove the chicken from the oven and take it out of the pan.

Make The Cornbread

• Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
• Add in the eggs, almond milk and butter.
• Mix until all the dry ingredients are fully incorporated.
• Spread the mixture evenly in a baking pan.
• Bake for 20 minutes. (It cooks in a 425 degree oven, just like the chicken.)
• Remove, cool and cut up into serving sized pieces each large enough to hold a wing.

Time To Serve It Up

• Working in small batches, put a wing or two in the sauce, rolling them around to coat them thoroughly.
• Place a wing on top of a piece of the cornbread.
• Spoon a bit of sauce over the top of each wing and add some green onions.

Enjoy!

Lettuce on the Grill??

I guess the idea first came to me when I was at a Korean BBQ restaurant. You grill your own food at your table (the one and only time Joe and Gran Fran joined me for this sort of dinner when we were finished, Joe asked "So, do we have to go in the back now and do the dishes, too.")

If a fire breaks out (as it often does, due to the lovely sugar-laced marinade and fat dripping from the short ribs), they supply you with large romaine lettuce leaves to put the fire out. Never one to waste anything (especially if it's covered in fat, char and delightful marinade), I ate some of the lettuce. It was almost as good as the short ribs.

Fast forward fifteen years (!) and my brother-in-law (FQ) and I were discussing a recipe for grilled radicchio that we saw in Gourmet Magazine (RIP). We tried it once, and then forgot about it.

Speed ahead, once more, to the present (well, July 4th) and I came up with a great idea for our grilled radicchio. I had two ears of corn, some shallots and a couple of other things, so we made a salad. My main man (CM) grilled up the radicchio, and in no time at all, we had a fantastic salad on our hands (er, our plates).

Grilled Radicchio Salad
Ingredients:

• 1 head Radicchio
• 1 large Shallot, minced
• 2 ears Corn
• 1 large Heirloom Tomato, chopped
• 1 bunch Frisee, shredded
• 1/3 cup Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper to Taste

Method:

• Heat BBQ grill until super hot, but not smoking.
• Cut up radicchio into chunks.
• Pour olive oil over radicchio on toss to coat.
• Place radicchio chunks on grill, grill on one side for two minutes, making sure flames don't get too high.
• Turn radicchio over, pouring remaining oil onto it. Cook for two more minutes, or until soft. 
• Remove from heat, and chop into smaller pieces.
• Take corn off the cobs, placing the loose kernels into a large bowl.
• Add tomatoes, shallots and grilled radicchio to bowl. Toss, gently pulling the radicchio leaves apart.
• Sprinkle shredded frisee on top of mix.
• Finish with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.

Enjoy!!