Cooking by the Book

If I’ve written a lot about cooking for guests lately, it’s because that’s what I’ve spent a lot of my summer doing!  We’ve been lucky enough to have friends and family visiting on a near-weekly basis, and I always try to have something yummy and homemade ready when they arrive.  We don’t often do full blown dinners – part of the fun of visiting Charleston is, after all, sampling its amazing restaurant scene – but we like to have something on hand.  When Bryce’s brother Daniel and his wife, Aubrey, came to visit, I made a batch of Frank Stitt’s Pecan Sandies.

I’d looked forward to trying this recipe from the day I noticed it in Stitt’s book.  Though his other desserts appear equally or more tempting than the sandies, I loved the idea of making my own slice-and-bake cookies.  Truth be told, rolling, cutting, and baking them yourself is much more fun that just buying a tube of Pillsbury in the supermarket.

The sandies start with oven-toasted pecans, coarsely chopped.

Folded into an intensely buttery batter, the pecans lend it a coarse texture.  So I was surprised, as I scraped the batter from the mixing bowl, by how soft and easy to handle it was.  It felt almost like fluffy nougat, or an unusually dense meringue, as I rolled it into a log.

Once it had chilled for a half hour, the batter was ready for slicing and baking.  I divided slices between two parchment-lined baking sheets, and crossed my fingers while they browned in the oven.

Soon, my not-quite-round sandies were finished and ready to eat!  They were vaguely crisp but also delicate, ready to dissolve as soon as they entered my mouth.  Buttery and studded with plenty of pecan pieces, they tasted much better than their Keebler cousins, too!

I think Pecan Sandies are an ideal cookie to make in advance when you’re preparing to welcome good friends.  Because they’re not too sweet, they work just as well as an afternoon snack as they do a low-key dessert.  They also keep well for a few days, so you won’t be scrambling around the kitchen while your friends are out sight-seeing.  Just be sure not to make them too far in advance – if you do, your supply might run out before your guests even arrive!

We’ve had a lot to celebrate here in Charleston.  New friends, visits from old friends, a scholarship or two, and sightseeing with our families has kept us busy and happy, mindful of the blessing of summer.  Most recently, we celebrated Bryce’s white coat ceremony at MUSC, which took place on Saturday.

Special events like this one usually call for feasting, and Bryce’s ceremony was no exception.  Over the weekend, we had a dinner and dessert downtown, cocktails at too many restaurants to count, sunset seafood  at the Isle of Palms, and an Italian brunch on John’s Island.  For someone who loves food as much as I do, it was a heady, downright dizzying weekend!

After so much extravagant eating, though, Bryce and I sometimes feel the need to do penance by eating simple, healthy meals at home.  When the time for atonement comes, we often turn to the Mayo Clinic Cookbook, a guide to health-conscious cooking designed by the famous medical institute.  It’s recipes include nutritional breakdowns beside their ingredients, which are often fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins.

One of the best summer recipes in their book is for Squash with Leek Vinaigrette.  Sliced and steamed, the squash – and in my case, zucchini – are a perfect foil for a flavorful vinaigrette built around chopped leeks.

Humble as they may be, leeks are one of my favorite foods.  Like larger, milder scallions, they’re fairly inexpensive and easy to use, but they lend lots of fresh flavor to soups, sauces, and even this vinaigrette.  To make it, I softened the leeks in olive oil, then added them to vegetable stock, vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

While the leeks sauteed, I steamed yellow squash and zucchini in a covered pan.  When they were tender but still firm, I tossed them into the vinaigrette and sat down to eat.

These vegetables would make a great side dish to grilled meat or fish, or even grilled portobello mushrooms.  Served atop rice, though, they can be a satisfying meal all on their own.

With recipes as flavorful as this one, even foodie penance doesn’t seem so bad.

When I bought an enormous pork shoulder to make my family barbecue, I found myself with a pound or so to spare.  Fortunately, Gourmet has a recipe for Char Siu, which is essentially Chinese barbecue, on the same page as the guidelines for their North Carolina pork.  Served with Gourmet’s “Bok Choy with Soy Sauce and Butter” and The Splendid Table’s fried rice, the Char Siu made for one of the best meals we’d had in some time.

Char Sui takes awhile to make, but requires very little work.  After I stirred together a mahogany-colored marinade of hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sake, honey, ginger, and garlic, there was no mixing or chopping involved.  Coated with the marinade, the pork can sit in the refrigerator for up to one day.

Once it’s chilled for at least four hours, the pork is ready for the oven.  I roasted it on a rack set above a pan of water, occasionally brushing it with leftover marinade.

After about an hour, the pork was dark and tender.  While it cooled on a cutting board, I tossed choy sum, a beautiful Asian green that’s very similar to bok choy, in a wok with soy sauce and butter.  It was ready in just a few minutes, and it smelled fantastic!

I wish I had more pictures of the accompanying fried rice, which also came together very quickly, but it was too good to last long.  Studded with green scallions and strands of egg, the rice was stir-fried with an amazing sauce that resembled the Char Siu marinade.  I did manage to snap a picture of Bryce’s plate before he sat down to eat:

Without the saltiness that can sully strip mall Chinese food, the fried rice, pork, and greens tasted wonderful and fresh.  The meal was a great spin on the classic meat-starch-vegetable combination, and I can’t wait to make it again!

Next time, I’ll tell you the sad story of my Chinese dessert.

Whenever my brother comes to dinner, I prepare a list of kitchen standards that I know he loves.  It’s almost a ritual at this point, because the menu almost never changes!  I cook deviled eggs and macaroni and cheese, and then I send Bryce to the grill with a plate of chicken breasts and a big bowl of homemade barbecue sauce (there’s a story behind the recipe, but I’ll save that for another time).  When David arrives, I’m usually working on dessert, which is the only real variable in this otherwise predictable equation.

David’s recent visit to Charleston, though, coincided with that of my parents and younger sister.  While they love barbecue and mac ‘n cheese as much as the next family, I wasn’t sure they’d enjoy a sauce whose distinguishing feature is an entire bottle of Texas Pete.  So I decided to change things up a bit for the occasion by making Gourmet’s recipe for North Carolina-style barbecue.  Cooked indoors on the stove and in the oven, the chopped and sauced pork is a great match for coleslaw on a fluffy bun.

Pork shoulder is an amazingly inexpensive cut of meat, but it needs lots of cooking to ensure its tenderness.  I started its transformation in a pot of simmering water, where the meat absorbed flavor from chopped onions, carrots, celery, garlic, peppercorns, and vinegar.

The nice thing about cooking an entree that requires so much stove time is that it leaves plenty of opportunity to make sides to go with it.  In lieu of the usual baked pasta, I decided to serve a gratin with potatoes and herbed Boursin cheese, a bowlful of coleslaw, and some buttered shoepeg corn.

I used my fancy slicer to cut the potatoes uniformly thick.  Because of its ridged edge, though, it also made them look like uncooked potato chips!  I think Allison was mildly disappointed when she realized they weren’t destined for hot oil.

Following a recipe from the Bon Appetit cookbook, I warmed Boursin cheese with cream to create a sauce for the potatoes.  The Boursin is already flavored with herbs, so I only added salt and pepper to the potatoes for seasoning.

While the potatoes baked, I cut cabbage, green pepper, and onion for the coleslaw.  With a bag of matchstick carrots (there are a few tasks I’m too lazy to tackle!), they were ready to toss with whisked mayonnaise, sour cream, and vinegar.

Soon, I transferred the pork shoulder to a roasting pan, where it cooked with even more vinegar for another hour.  It grew tender and crisp in the oven while I stirred together a tomato-based barbecue sauce on the stove.  With only small quantities of Tabasco and ground cayenne for heat, I knew the sauce would be milder than my fiery standard.

Chopped and reheated with ladles of sauce, the barbecue looked great!  Allison still found the sauce a bit spicy, but overall, it was a big hit.  My favorite part of the meal was the potatoes, because they were creamy, evenly cooked, and ridiculously easy to make.

With a hungry family in my tiny apartment, I decided to forgo the usual plating pictures and just leave you with the finished dishes of barbecue and potato gratin.  We assembled sandwiches packed with coleslaw and meat, then balanced their heat with bites of potatoes and corn.  It was, I think, a great start to our visit.

As much as I enjoy desserts like peach cobbler and strawberry pie , I’m sometimes hesitant to cook the beautiful fruits of summer.  I’d just as soon savor fresh blackberries from a bowl as mound them on a tart crust, and raspberries are lucky to last an hour in my apartment.  When food tastes so good without embellishment, why bother preheating the oven?

One answer: blueberry muffins.

I love blueberry muffins for their unbeatable reward-to-work ratio.  Gourmet’s version is so full of fruit that the muffins leave sticky purple puddles in the pan.  And because they don’t require chopping or vigorous mixing, they’re deceptively easy to throw together.

Sprinkled with a coarse mix of butter, sugar, and flour, the muffins only need 20 minutes to bake.  But if you have a few friends (or one Bryce) on hand, they’ll take even less time to eat!  Ours barely grace the cooling rack before they disappear.