Can't tear my eyes away...

I've just added a new blog to the "More Good Eats Here" box over on the right-hand side of my blog.  Technically, it's not really good eats, but it is without question my favorite new blog.

Cake Wrecks is a hilarious look at when bad cakes happen to good people.  Moreover, they are not horrible cakes made by well-meaning home bakers; these are professionally made cakes.

Just one more reason I stick to homemade.

Muddle

Here's the third recipe from Annette. This is quite possibly the perfect summer cocktail. It's got mint and citrus, for a nice fresh zing. (If you're a lightweight, like I am, you can substitute extra selzer for the rum for a lovely refreshing non-alcoholic drink.)

Mojitos

Per glass:

3 tablespoons sugar syrup (recipe follows)
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 mint leaves

Stir/muddle well, crushing leaves.

Add:
Crushed ice
1/4 cup light rum
1/3 cup seltzer
1/2 tsp. curaçao (optional)

Mix well.


Sugar syrup:

2 cups water
2 cups sugar

Stir over medium low heat (do not boil!) until sugar dissolves. Cool.

To go with the "old clothes"...

Here's Annette's recipe for Cuban black beans. Hopefully she'll correct me if I've gotten anything wrong; I scrawled the ingredients and directions onto a card as she was cooking. This is my best attempt to decipher my hieroglyphics.

Cuban Black Beans

1-2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1 tablepoon oil
1 small onion, chopped fine
1/3 green pepper, chopped fine
1-2 teaspoons oregano
1 12-ounce can black beans (preferably Goya)
1-2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1-2 plum (Roma) tomatoes, chopped

Cook garlic, onion, bell pepper and oregano in oil over medium heat. Add black beans and vinegar; simmer ten minutes. Add tomatoes, and cook an additional five to seven minutes.

Old clothes and a happy birthday

Last week was the birthday of someone whom I consider to be one of my best friends, even though I haven't seen her in about three years; she moved first to St. Louis, and is now in North Carolina. We don't often get to chat, but she's never far away from me in spirit; I love her dearly.

Annette and I met when we worked together at Shore Country Day School, and took an instant liking to each other. She's delightful, intelligent, spiritual, warm, caring...I could go on and on, but she's probably already embarrassed. One thing that we bonded over was cooking. When we first became friends, I was really starting to flex my wings in the kitchen, and she definitely encouraged me.

We discovered quickly that we are not only compatible out of the kitchen, but in it: we cook extremely well together. Finding someone with whom you can work well in the kitchen is a marvelous, marvelous thing. Annette and her husband were among the guests at the first Thanksgiving dinner we hosted, in 2002; she was the one who introduced me to the gravy recipe I've used ever since.

Annette also broadened my cooking horizons in a cultural sense. Annette is Latina, of Puerto Rican descent, and she introduced me to some wonderful Latino recipes. Her tostones (fried plantains) are unequaled; I've had them elsewhere, and they never compare to hers.

This is one of my favorite Annette meals, Ropa Vieja. Literally, it means Old Clothes, but you won't be chewing on last year's denim. It's named that because you cook the flank steak until - like old clothes - it's falling apart. This is flavorful and delicious. Make some white rice to eat with it, and maybe some Cuban black beans and Mojitos (recipes coming soon, also courtesy of Annette).

Ropa Vieja
(Shredded Flank Steak with Sauce)

1 pound flank steak
1 onion, chopped - about 1 cup
1/2 green bell pepper, cut into strips
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon salt
Sofrito (ingredients listed below)
1 tablespoon dry white wine
1/2 cup beef broth
1/4 cup green peas
1 jar (2 ounces) sliced pimientos and juice


Cooking flank steak:
Place the meat in a pot with water to cover. Add the onion, bell pepper, garlic and salt. Bring to a boil and cook uncovered for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and simmer for two hours or until tender. Strain the cooking liquid and reserve. Shred the steak.

Sofrito:
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup green bell pepper, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons vinegar
1/8 teaspoon oregano (dried, not fresh)
1/4 teaspoon salt

Make sofrito:
Sauté the garlic and onion in oil over medium heat until the onion is soft. Stir in the bell pepper, carrot, tomato sauce, water, vinegar, oregano and salt; cook 10 minutes.

Add meat, wine, broth and reserved cooking liquid to sofrito. Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in peas and pimientos (with juice); season to taste.

Weekend project

We've been busy this weekend. Painted the nursery yesterday (well, got the first coat on), and today I'm covering the dining room chairs.

We have a wonderful dining room set. It was in a house that my in-laws bought probably close to 30 years ago. My father-in-law, with my husband's assistance, stripped and refinished the set. When my husband moved into his condo, the set went with him. It's a beautiful round mahogany table, with four leaves to extend it, six chairs, and a matching sideboard.

I bought fabric to recover the chair seats quite a while ago, but it's a project that kept getting pushed to the back burner, in part because it was something I'd never done before; I was a little nervous about it. However, here's the first one. The old fabric is on the left, new fabric on the right:



I'm diggin' it! I think I'll ScotchGuard the seats before I screw them back into the chairs.

Don't rush me

Yesterday, some friends of mine were wishing away the summer.

Now, I'm as big a fan of autumn as just about anyone. It's my favorite time of year; let's face it, I didn't choose to get married in October because it was convenient (far from it, from a teacher's standpoint). However, I'm not yet ready for apples and pumpkins and cranberries.

I now present Exhibit A: Why I'm glad it's still summertime (with 8x10 color glossy photographs, with circles and arrows on the back of each one...oh, wait, sorry...)



We discovered raspberry canes in our yard last summer, after berry season was over, and I was overjoyed. I went out last week to check on them, and they were red! Glory be!

They wouldn't come off of the canes. Now, raspberries, as you know if you've ever picked them, release from the canes very easily when ripe. Wha....

Light dawned on Marblehead, as we say around here. They weren't red raspberries...they were black raspberries, like the ones we used to pick "down back" of my grandparents' house every summer. Wahoo!

My breakfast this morning was that bowlful of black raspberries, still warm from the sun.

Foodies, unite!

You may or may not have noticed, but I have a new place to visit over in the right hand bar.  The Foodie Blogroll is a great community of food bloggers, and I'm pleased to join their ranks.  Please take some time to check out some of their blogs!

A Small-Town Baked Bean Supper

When I was a girl, July 3rd and 4th were spent at my mum's folks' house.  Independence Day was a BIG DEAL on her side of the family, particularly with my Grampa Clyde.  Independence Day was second to no other day in the year, in Grampa's eyes. The two-day celebration of my childhood was something straight out of Smalltown, USA. Come with me down Memory Lane (which is in this case Centre Street), if you will. I promise there's a recipe at the end.

Ham and bean church suppers are a fairly common New England tradition, and back in 1949 the Danvers "Common Supper" (later known as the Highlands' Bean Supper) took it to a whole new level.  WWII was over, and the baby boom was in full swing. Clyde "Boomie" Crofts (my Grampa), Alfred "Firp" Hutchinson (Gramma's first cousin, son of my aforementioned Great-Great-Aunt Margaret) and several others decided that it would be great to have a family-oriented Fourth of July.  The festivities would begin on July 3 with supper on the Common in Danvers Highlands: home-baked beans, ham, cole slaw, homemade cookies and ice cream.  

The first supper attracted about 125 guests.  By the time I was old enough to remember the bean supper, America was celebrating her Bicentennial, and the number of tickets had to be limited to 800, simply due to the size of the Common.  When I was very small, there were rented tables and chairs lined up all over the Common; this gave way a few years later to everyone bringing their own folding chairs and tables, to save on the cost of the tickets.

I remember helping to sell tickets with Gramma and Great-Aunt Sarah up at First Church on sunny weekends in June.  In the week preceding the supper, I'd sometimes help to roll and tie plastic silverware in napkins, and I think one year I helped to pre-butter the dinner rolls.  The coleslaw was mixed by someone on the Supper Committee, in a huge rubbish barrel that was reserved especially for the purpose.  The prescribed way to stir up such a huge amount of slaw was to scrub up and just plunge an arm in as far as possible.

On the afternoon of July 3, I could walk up and down Centre Street, and the aroma of baked beans fairly wafted down the street, emanating from nearly every kitchen on the block including my Gramma Bonnie's, not to mention a slew of my extended family's, as well: Great-Aunt Harriet's, first cousins-twice-removed Edie's (Firp's wife) and Ruth's, and Great-Great-Aunt Margaret's, not to mention everyone I knew from First Church. 

Everyone had a different bean preference - kidney, pea, or yellow-eye - but the basic recipe was the same: molasses, onion, salt, pepper and salt pork were the basics. Many of the cooks had a "secret ingredient," but there was one thing that anyone from a different part of the country would notice right away: traditionally, there's no barbecue sauce or tomato in New England baked beans. They're quite sweet.

By about 5:00, cars were parked up and down Centre Street and around the corners at Hobart Street and Prince Place. Our family was one of the lucky ones. I would leave 74 Centre Street with my parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, and the whole clan would walk the approximately 400 feet upstreet to the Common, to our reserved seats at the long tables, or to our lawn chairs that were already under one of the huge shady trees near the edge of the Common, thanks to my uncles schlepping them to the Common earlier in the day.

People would start lining up well before the supper officially began, which was always at 6:00 sharp with an invocation by the pastor of either First Church or St. Richard's. Then we'd all shuffle along in line for our ham, beans, coleslaw, dinner roll and beverage. (Those of us who had seen or knew about the coleslaw arm-plunge-and-mix often politely declined it.) You could request what type of beans you'd like, but there was no guarantee you'd get some of your own. This could be bad, if someone had a secret ingredient you weren't fond of, or it could be a wonderful surprise, like the year I got baked beans with pineapple in them. My grandparents scoffed at them, but they were delicious.

Supper was accompanied by a local band, playing patriotic songs and "old favorites." They'd always strike up a "children's march" shortly after dinner, and led the kids in Pied-Piper fashion all over the Common, keeping them busy and out of their elders' hair for a few minutes. Then we'd all get our dessert, which was Hoodsies (half chocolate, half vanilla ice cream cups) or ice cream sandwiches. As the air cooled and shadows lengthened, we'd slowly make our way home to get ready for more fun on the fourth: The Danvers Highlands Horribles Parade (which, my friends, is worthy of a post in and of itself) and a big family picnic.

I've come to learn in the few days since I originally posted that my grandmother's recipe for baked beans is from Durgin Park in Boston; it was the same one her mother and Aunt Margaret used. Gramma's directions on her recipe card are sketchy, at best, so I've done my best to flesh them out. Our family was firmly in the pea bean/navy bean camp, but I'm sure this would work equally well with kidney beans.

Baked Beans

2 pounds pea or navy beans
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 pound salt pork, scored
1 small onion, chopped
2/3 cup molasses
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons dry mustard
4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Check the beans for any stones or dirt and discard. Put the beans in a large bowl; cover with cold water by about 3 inches. Cover, and set aside in refrigerator to soak overnight, 6-8 hours.

Parboil beans in a large saucepan with baking soda: bring to a boil over high heat, reduce the heat so the beans simmer and cook for 30 minutes or until tender. Drain.

Preheat the oven to 300˚F.

Put the beans in a 3.5 - 4 quart ceramic bean pot or covered casserole with the salt pork and the onion. In a medium bowl combine the molasses, mustard, salt and pepper with 2 cups of water, and pour over the beans. If the beans are not covered by the liquid, add more. Cover the pot, and bake for 5-7 hours. Check the beans periodically to make sure they are covered with liquid and if needed add more water to cover.

Serve with ham, hot dogs, or whatever floats your boat...even some cole slaw, as long as you know who mixed it.