Ode to Small-Town Charm

What’s cooking? Sea Scallops with Creamed Corn and Tomatoes

The migration south for my hubby and me is once again over. But before we left the Northeast, I spent some time running last minute errands. For me, the best place for that is not our current neighborhood in Jersey City, or even the neighborhoods of Austin. No, the place I prefer is the town we lived in while raising children. My younger son often jokes that I’m the only person he knows who’s crazy enough to drive 30 minutes just to shop for groceries; and as I headed there last week, I thought maybe he’s right.

Afterward, I considered what I had accomplished: hair appointment, manicure, pick up a shirt I’d ordered, shop for toiletries, visit a jeweler, and buy coffee – all at different stores. Six separate establishments within a tight grid of 11 blocks. It wasn’t until I looked at the receipt from the public parking lot where I stashed my car that I realized I’d completed this list of errands – on foot – in  a span of 2 hours and 14 minutes. I’m sure I could have made it all happen in either Jersey City or Austin, but not on foot, and not in that time frame. And the fee for that 2¼ hours? Three dollars. Now I expect those lots are subsidized by the city, but really...

The experience reminded me how much I enjoyed life in a small town. I didn’t think so when we moved there 30+ years ago. I’d been a New York City girl for 10 years, and the idea of living where the population was less than 25,000 and the sidewalks rolled up after 10 p.m. struck me as insanity. But my husband assured me that he didn’t want to raise children in New York City, so that was that. Then we found Summit.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Winterbottom Team, Local Realtor

Originally incorporated as Summit Township by an act of the New Jersey Legislature in 1869, Summit was reincorporated as a city in 1899. It likely got its name from its location on the easternmost edge of the Watchung Mountains, about 20 miles from Manhattan. Back in the 19th century, it was a favorite destination of wealthy of New York City residents fleeing the summer heat. Today, it’s still a popular suburb among financial industry workers and other commuters to Manhattan.

Photo credit: Daniel Case at the English language Wikipedia

It’s a quirk of many New Jersey suburbs that they are divided from each other in fairly random fashion. Depending on how the lines were drawn, you might live in a different town than your neighbors across the street. Suburban sprawl has already taken its toll: Summit’s 6 square miles are tightly constrained by the cluster of other towns on all sides, a vise that tends to push real estate values to impressive heights.

Photo credit: Daniel Case at the English language Wikipedia

But the town’s charm is in its embrace of those confines. The downtown shopping area covers at best 16-17 square blocks, and – by law – there’s no drive-through fast food and no buildings more than three stories high. Most are one or two. It’s hard to spend any time walking around without seeing someone you know, even if you moved away eight years ago. And a few of the merchants still know my name.

 

Of course, my favorite part of the town remains its farmers’ market. As I said so long on Sunday to friends at the organic farm stand, I loaded up on Tuscan kale, golden beets, and cherry tomatoes. Another stand had corn and zucchini. At the fish monger, I picked up a last pound of sea scallops, then I went home and cooked this most wonderful dish that takes advantage of the season’s best. If you can’t get fresh corn, use frozen, but you must try this dish.

Melissa Clark posted a similar dish in The New York Times not long ago, using shrimp. You, too, could use shrimp. But when you have the freshest sea scallops this side of the Mississippi, that’s what you cook. The zucchini was my own addition, too, and I was so glad. It’s got a very neutral flavor and keeps the corn sauce from being quite so thick and ... well, corny. Any other summer squash would do as well. And I love the salty tang of the feta cheese.

Sea scallops are rich, so 1¼ pounds of scallops is really all you need to feed four people, and the corn-zucchini-feta sauce is filling. I served this once with a salad and sliced peaches (though any fresh fruit would do), and once with a sauté of green beans instead of the salad. The dish makes a beautiful presentation, and it’s easy to make the sauces ahead of time and heat them up while you’re cooking the scallops. So it’s a great dish to serve guests.

Kitchen Goddess note on zucchini: For this dish, look for squash that’s small and firm and heavy feeling. The skin should be smooth and shiny, with no blemishes. If large zucchini is what you have, cut them in half and scoop out the seeds before dicing them. Smaller squash won’t have all those seeds, and what they have will be small and tender.

Sea Scallops with Creamed Corn and Tomatoes

Inspired by Melissa Clark in The New York Times.

Serves 4.

Ingredients
1¼ pounds large sea scallops (12-16 per pound, or 4-5 per person)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups diced zucchini (½-inch dice)

KG’s latest discovery: an easier way to cut corn off cobs. Upend a small bowl
 inside a larger bowl and slice down the side of the cob. The small bowl
provides a stand for the cob and the larger bowl catches the corn.

3 tablespoons heavy cream
2½ cups corn kernels (from 3 ears)
½ cup crumbled feta cheese
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 small white onions or ½ large, cut in ½-inch dice
2 cups cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 cloves garlic, minced
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper (or a dash of cayenne pepper)
Chiffonade of basil leaves for garnish






Directions
Pat the scallops dry with a paper towel, and lay them out on a plate or paper towels, and sprinkle them with salt and pepper.

First make the corn/zucchini/feta sauce. In a large skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter and add the zucchini. Sauté over medium/medium-low heat for 3 minutes. Add 1 more tablespoon of butter and when it has melted, add the cream. Reduce the heat to medium-low, stir in the corn and cook, covered, for 10-12 minutes or until the corn is very soft. Stir occasionally. If the mixture appears to get dry, add a tablespoon or two of water.

Transfer the corn/zucchini mixture to a blender and add the feta, plus1 teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper. Blend until you get a thick purée. Set aside the mixture and keep it warm until you’re ready to serve.

Next, make the tomato sauce. Wipe out the skillet you used with the corn/zucchini, and put in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. At a medium setting, heat the oil and add the onion. Sauté the onion until pale gold and soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes and the garlic, plus a large pinch of salt. Cook the tomatoes – again adding a tablespoon or two of water if needed – over medium heat for about 8 minutes, until the tomatoes break down into a sauce. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce, the lemon juice, and the Aleppo pepper/cayenne. Set aside the sauce and keep it warm until you’re ready to serve.

Lastly, cook the scallops. Wipe out the skillet again (or use a different one!) and melt in it the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil. Raise the heat to medium-high. When the surface of the oils shimmers, place the scallops in the oil and DO NOT TOUCH THEM for 3 minutes. (This will allow the natural sugars of the scallops to caramelize.) Using a spatula, turn the scallops over and cook – again without disturbing them – for another minute, then remove the skillet from the heat.

To plate the dish, spoon enough corn/zucchini purée into a wide, shallow soup bowl to cover the bottom. Place the scallops on the purée and spoon the tomato sauce on top. Garnish with ribboned basil leaves.

Enjoy the fall!

Bright Ideas What’s cooking? Creamy Corn Pasta with Basil and Mint

As much as I honor the brave men and women who’ve given their lives for our country, Memorial Day inevitably reminds me of the end of the school year. At least, that’s when it ended when I was in school. We had no spring break, so no need to extend the year to recoup those days.

By the time I got through college, I figured I was done with school. (I wasn’t, but I thought I was.) Then I started work. On Wall Street. In research. I knew nothing, about corporate America or the securities business. Which worried me. Then I realized that, in research, what you do is learn. And in the process of learning about the stock market and the economy and financial instruments, I also learned how much I enjoy learning.

This awareness would come as a surprise to most of my college professors. But I was young when they knew me, and my frontal cortex – that place where judgment and higher level thinking take place – was still in the framing stage.

I still enjoy learning, and in that regard, I’ve recently become addicted to podcasts, downloadable audio files that you can play on your phone or tablet or computer. They don’t provide in-depth knowledge on any topic, but I’m not looking for any advanced degrees, so the “interesting tidbits” approach works fine for me. I subscribe to the ones I like best, so the updates come to me wirelessly and automatically, and I listen to them on my car stereo system through a Bluetooth connection with my phone. Twenty-first century magic. How cool is that?

Here’s my list:

■ This American Life – Journalistic non-fiction stories, ranging from thought-provoking to humorous
■ Freakonomics Radio – Discussion of socioeconomic issues for a general audience
■ Serious Eats – Conversations on food and life with food world professionals
■ The Sporkful – Passionate discussions about ridiculous food minutiae
■ Radiolab – Broad-based documentaries weaving stories and science and philosophy
■ Science Friday – News and stories about science
■ TED Radio Hour – New ways to think, based on talks from the world-renowned TED stage
■ The Splendid Table – James Beard Award- winning program on culinary culture and lifestyle
■ From Scratch – Interviews about the entrepreneurial life with pioneers in business and the arts
■ Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! – Humorous panel game show based on current events

So, foodwise, what have I learned? Now, if your eyes are glazing over and you’re wondering if I’m ever going to get to a recipe, the answer is yes. So you can skip down to it now, or maybe you’d like to learn something, too, today...

1. Would you even guess that canned tomatoes are better for us than fresh, locally harvested heirloom varieties? (Amazing, yes? The Kitchen Goddess is having a bit of trouble with this one. She believes the science, but still plans to marinate herself in fresh NJ tomatoes this summer.) Lycopene, the heart-healthy, cancer-fighting nutrient that gives tomatoes (and watermelon and bell peppers) their red color – needs to be heated for best absorption by our bodies. With that in mind, investigative journalist/health writer Jo Robinson says the best product in the grocery store – for lycopene – is tomato paste.

2. Also from Robinson, some vegetables lose their nutrients faster than others. She calls them the “Eat Me First” foods – on the assumption that you shop only once a week and purchase your supply of veggies in one shopping trip. (Ha! The KG has been trying – without success – to do that for ... a lot of years.) So here they are: artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, kale, leeks, lettuce, and spinach. For the most nutrients, you want to eat those foods in the first two days after purchase. For broccoli and kale, in particular, less cooking is best. Robinson says the optimum way to cook vegetables for nutrition is microwave steaming, as short a time as possible. Cooked carrots on the other hand, give you twice as much beta-carotene as raw ones.

[Here’s a tiny Kitchen Goddess recommendation: When you buy broccoli, cook only the flowering head. Use a peeler to remove the tough outer skin from the thick stems (which are almost sweet), and cut them into batons to use for dipping into your favorite crudité dressing. Like this...]

3. Acidic foods – wine/beer, vinegar, and lemon juice, in particular – are a great way to balance the richness or saltiness of a dish. So if you have a soup or sauce that’s too rich, it’s not a surprise that adding a squeeze of lemon or a teaspoon of vinegar or wine will help. But what if a soup is too salty? Same advice: add some lemon or vinegar. Rebalancing the tastes will enhance all the flavors in the dish.

4. You like scrambled eggs for breakfast? You’ll have the lightest, fluffiest eggs if you add salt to the eggs, then let them sit 15 minutes before cooking them. The KG scoffed at this one until she tried it. Yessirree. Try it yourself.

















5. If you’re into making pasta, try making it with egg yolks only – no whites – for a more tender pasta. That’s a recommendation of pasta wizard Missy Roberts, the chef/owner of Lilia in Brooklyn. But even if you’re cooking the dried stuff, she says:
(a) Salt the water. About 2 teaspoons of salt per quart of water (it should taste like the ocean) is the most important factor in cooking the pasta. No oil in the water. If you’re concerned about the pasta sticking together, just stir it frequently.
(b) Be sure to add some of the pasta water to the sauce; pasta water contains starch that helps bind the sauce to the pasta.
(c) Finish cooking the pasta in the sauce – i.e., give the pasta dough an opportunity to absorb the sauce in its final minutes of cooking.
(d) Finally, in serving pasta, add only as much sauce to the bowl as can be handled by the pasta – it should never be swimming in sauce.

* * *

Sooooo.... speaking of pasta. Here’s a perfect dinner for one of those nights when you really aren’t up for much effort. Which describes – even for the Kitchen Goddess – a lot of nights.

I found this recipe last summer in the height of corn season, but I didn’t get around to it until just recently. I’d seen corn on the cob in my grocery store, but it was surely not from any place local. So you want to keep this dish in mind when the fresh stuff actually makes an appearance in July. But for now – when you really want to feel like summer – most of this corn is going to get pulverized, so who really cares if you use fresh or frozen?

Orecchiette on left, farfalle on right.

You’ll be amazed to find no milk or cream in the dish, but the heart of the sauce is nothing more than corn and scallions cooked to complete tenderness, then buzzed smooth in a blender. Layer on the toasty flavors of brown butter and caramelized corn, then tang it up with basil and mint and lemon. Toss in some salty,umami-filled Parmigiano-Reggiano, and you will not be able to stop eating it. The New York Times’s Melissa Clark, who originated the recipe, uses orecchiette (the little ear-shaped pasta), but the Kitchen Goddess prefers farfalle (bow-tie pasta). Use whatever you like, but choose a shape that’s got plenty of surface to hang onto that sauce.

And if you needed an added incentive, I should tell you that it cooks in 30 minutes. That doesn’t count the time it takes you to get your s*** together – assembling the ingredients and that little bit of chopping. But not a lot of time, really.

Creamy Corn Pasta with Basil and Mint

Adapted from Melissa Clark in The New York Times.

Serves 4.

Ingredients

I augmented my scallion greens with fresh chives.

Kosher salt
12 ounces dry pasta (orecchiette or farfalle or your choice)
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 bunch scallions (about 8), trimmed and thinly sliced (separate the white parts from the green)
2 cups corn kernels (frozen or from two large ears)
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for serving
3-4 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
⅓ cup combination basil and mint, torn or in a chiffonade*, plus extra for garnish
½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper, or ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes, to taste
Juice and zest of one lemon

*[Kitchen Goddess note: Chiffonade is a slicing technique for fresh herbs: stack the leaves 8-10 at a time, then roll the stack up like a cigar, and slice them thinly. It produces a lovely, fluffy pile of thin ribbons. If you need photos, go here.]










Directions
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and stir in salt (2 teaspoons per quart of water). Add the pasta and cook until it is 1-2 minutes away from being al dente. Reserve 2 cups of the pasta water, and drain the pasta.

While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a large skillet and add the scallion whites with a pinch of salt. Saute the scallions for 3-4 minutes, stirring, until soft, then add ½ cup of the pasta water and all but ¼ cup of the corn. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook 5 minutes, until the corn is tender.

Transfer the mixture to a blender, along with another ½ cup of pasta water and purée 1-2 minutes on high, until the mixture is smooth. If it seems too thick to pour easily, add more pasta water. Add ¼ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper, and blend briefly to combine.

In the same skillet you used to simmer the corn, melt the butter over medium heat and add the reserved ¼ cup of corn. Cook, stirring, until the corn is tender, which will take about 2 minutes. You want the butter and the corn both to brown, but be aware that the corn will pop some as it caramelizes, so use a long wooden spoon to stir the corn, and stand back from the skillet.

When the corn and butter have browned slightly, reduce the heat and add in the puréed corn sauce. Stir to combine and cook on low heat until the mixture is evenly heated.

Add in the pasta and raise the heat to medium. Add more pasta water if the mixture seems too thick, and cook another minute. Add the scallion greens (about ¼ cup – and you can augment with fresh chives if your scallion greens aren’t up to par), the Parmesan, the basil/mint, the Aleppo pepper (or chili flakes), and ¼ teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

Stir to combine well and sprinkle over the lemon juice. Stir again – lightly – and adjust seasoning to taste. Serve immediately, garnishing with extra herbs, scallions, and the lemon zest. If you have a good olive oil handy, you can drizzle a little over the top.

We Are Nothing if Not Trendy What’s cooking? Tex-Mex Meat Loaf

The Wednesday Food section of The New York Times this week asserts that “Mexican cuisine has made the leap to the global stage of fine dining.... In places like Barcelona, London and Melbourne, as well as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, food lovers are seeing the cuisine of Mexico in a bright new light.”

Hah! I say. As a long-time fan of Mexican food, the Kitchen Goddess is way ahead of The New York Times. Now I will not go so far as to put Tex-Mex dishes in the same category as “Mexican cuisine,” but as I have noted before, enchiladas and queso fresco run in my veins. In my high school days, we had less than an hour for lunch, but that didn’t stop us – on an almost daily basis – from sprinting to our cars when the bell rang at the end of 3rd period, hauling ass across town to eat at a tiny restaurant run by a Mexican couple and their extended family and friends, then hauling ass back across town to arrive panting but exhilarated at the beginning of 4th period. Those were the days.

In fact, those days are still available, as that tiny restaurant, Teka Molino, is now in two places in San Antonio, and both are much improved over the original scruffy operation, but with pretty much the exact same food. And, being semi-retired, the Kitchen Goddess no longer has to haul ass anywhere. She has been known to make the 90-mile trek from Austin to San Antonio, for the sole purpose of lunch at Teka.

But Tex-Mex is not the only trend I am shining a light on today. The other star emerging from the food world shadows is... meatloaf. Yes, you heard it right. Meatloaf.

A thoroughly American invention, meatloaf has been around since the late 1800s. It started as a way to make a meal from the scraps left over when industrial meatpacking began. (The Kitchen Goddess gets slightly nauseous thinking about this version.) It gained ground in the Depression, and by the 1950s, the dish had become a June Cleaver staple. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t got a memory of Mom’s or Dad’s meatloaf.

But I hadn’t thought a lot about meatloaf until the other day when I was listening to a podcast interview with Frank Bruni, former restaurant critic and food writer (and now an op-ed columnist) for The NY Times. The podcast was focusing on Bruni in yet another role, as co-author of a new book, A Meatloaf in Every Oven. And as an example of the multicultural flourishes in the book, he brought up their Mexican meatloaf, which featured salsa and chips.

Wait just a damn minute. Meatloaf with salsa and chips? That’s my recipe, concocted for my two sons on a day when I didn’t have tomato sauce or breadcrumbs. The boys liked it so much, it became the only way I made the dish.

For a tiny sanity check, I went to the web, where I discovered that quite a few other people have come up with those tweaks to standard meatloaf. Rats. But the excursion did make me want to revisit that recipe – something I hadn’t made in years. You’ll be happy to know it’s as good as ever. But in my advanced stage of culinary daring, I’ve tweaked it yet again, adding corn and pork and a little more cumin, for a more authentic Tex-Mex flavor.

Kitchen Goddess notes: The KG has been on a podcast binge recently, but it has enlightened her on a couple of topics that apply with this recipe:
(1) When working with hamburger meat, the tenderest burgers result from salting only the outside of the burger. Salting the meat before mixing causes the proteins to break down and reknit, but the KG was never good at either chemistry or knitting, so if you want to know more, click here. I just know it makes the meat tougher and drier. Which is why I recommend salting your meat in loaf form, right before it goes into the oven.
(2) Garlic’s considerable health benefits are only released when it is sliced or mashed, and it takes about 10 minutes for the relevant enzyme to develop. So to get both flavor and health benefits, chop your garlic at least 10 minutes before submitting it to heat. That’s why the ingredient list below starts with minced garlic.

Tex-Mex Meatloaf

Serves 6.

Ingredients
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced (about 1 cup)
1 medium carrot, diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 pound ground beef (I used ground chuck, 20% fat)
½ pound ground pork
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup chunky salsa (I like Pace’s)
1 cup Nacho-flavored Doritos (or any plain corn tortilla chips), crumbled
1 cup frozen corn
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper (or ½ teaspoon crushed chili flakes plus ½ teaspoon sweet paprika)*
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup of your favorite barbecue sauce

Directions
Take the meat out of the refrigerator a good 20 minutes before you begin. (It mixes better at room temperature.) Preheat oven to 400º.


In a large skillet, heat the olive oil on medium heat and add the onion. Sauté the onion for 3-4 minutes, then add the carrot, celery, and garlic, and continue to sauté another 5 minutes. Do not let the garlic burn. Remove the skillet from the heat and let the vegetable mix cool until it’s just warm to the touch.

Place the meats into a large mixing bowl, and add the remaining ingredients, except the salt and barbecue sauce. Mixing by hand, knead the mixture until the ingredients are consistently distributed. (The KG, as you know, doesn’t do gooey with her hands; she wears rubber gloves. But she washes them well, as you should do with your hands, before attacking the meatloaf mixture.)

Transfer the mixture to a baking sheet, and shape it into a loaf form about 2 inches high and 6 inches wide. Or whatever size you’d like it to be. To improve the air flow and avoid runoff on the bottom of my oven, I use a cookie sheet that I place on top of a wire rack set in a baking pan. Seems like a lot of trouble, but it’s not, and it works well. Sprinkle the top and sides of the meatloaf with the salt, and pour the barbecue sauce evenly over the top.

Bake at 400º for 50-60 minutes. If you have a meat thermometer, shoot for 160º internal temp. If you err, make it on the slightly underdone side – there’s nothing wrong with meatloaf that’s medium/medium-rare, but well done meatloaf will be dry.

[Kitchen Goddess note on meat thermometers: After years of limping along with my analog cooking thermometer (for candy and oil) and various cheapo styles (that never worked) for meats, the Kitchen Goddess finally bit the bullet and got this fancy-schmancy digital version: the ThermoWorks ChefAlarm ($59). It’s the favorite of America’s Test Kitchen folks, and you know how they torture a product before they commit. This piece of equipment is amazingly easy to operate, with clear and straightforward labeling of the various functions. Smashing reviews on amazon.com, but as far as I can tell, only available through the ThermoWorks company. And no, they did not give the KG a free one – or even a coupon for a few bucks off – though they certainly should now that I think about it...]

*You may wish to amp up the heat with cayenne or chili flakes, or toss in some chili powder. In my house, we are not big on spicy heat.

One final Kitchen Goddess note: One of the great things about meatloaf is its versatility. If you are out of one ingredient, do not despair. Here are a few substitutions the KG has used in a pinch:
● For yellow onion, use white onion, red onion. If you’re low on onion, fill in with shallots or spring onions. Just remember that shallots and spring onions are more tender and need less cooking time, so maybe add them when you add the carrots and celery.
● Instead of celery, try fennel or even bok choy.
● Instead of salsa, throw in a can of diced Rotel tomatoes.

Any Day Is a Party Day What’s cooking? Corn and Black Bean Relish

Ok, so I missed giving you a recipe for SuperBowl snacks. But that won’t be the last time you gather a group of friends together, will it? Even just in February, there’s President’s Day (February 16), Mardi Gras (February 17), Chinese New Year (February 19), and Oscar Night (February 22).

Then we have the lesser lights, the geeks of the holiday list, that you and your friends might just use as an excuse to lighten the mood on one of these grim, wintry days. Like Hoodie-Hoo Day. Seriously, folks. It’s February 20, and the idea is that everyone goes outside at noon, waves their hands in the air and shouts “Hoodie-hoo!” to chase away the winter and encourage spring to show up. It makes as much sense as Groundhog Day, and sounds more fun. Or celebrate Umbrella Day (February 10) or Random Acts of Kindness Day (February 17) or World Thinking Day (February 22), started by the Girl Scouts, of all people.

At least for the purposes of this post, I want to focus on February 24, which is... [drum roll, please]... Tortilla Chip Day. Now, how cool is that? Gather some friends to watch one of the old Oscar winners (Annie Hall, Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sting,...), line up a bunch of dips, and pass the chips around. As a party format, nothing could be easier.

So if you decide to celebrate Tortilla Chip Day – or any of the others, or maybe just TGIF, the Kitchen Goddess has been saving just the recipe for you. She got it from a friend in San Antonio, so it naturally has a bit of a Tex-Mex or Southwest flavor. This “dip” isn’t really a dip – more like a relish – but it goes really well with chips of any kind. And it looks healthy. In fact, it actually is healthy, having no sugar or other sweetener and being very low in fat. And it’s gluten-free for those of you who care. Regardless, it’s delicious. Sweet and crunchy from the corn, tart from the lime juice, and then there’s that smoky flavor you get from black beans.

This is one of those great recipes where you just pile everything into a bowl and stir. It takes almost no time to assemble. The Kitchen Goddess has one friend who often makes a batch of this stuff up and just eats some with a salad for lunch.

Kitchen Goddess notes: (1) The Kitchen Goddess is a big fan of cilantro, so she often doubles the amount she puts into this relish. Cilantro is a critical ingredient in this dish, so if you don’t like cilantro, you should find something else to make. (2) On the other hand, the Kitchen Goddess doesn’t like raw onion, and the amounts in this recipe can easily be reduced to accommodate that preference without damaging the flavor profile. Soaking the chopped raw onion in water for 5 minutes, then draining it before adding it to the relish, will go a long way toward removing its pungency. (3) This recipe is a fabulous way to use field-ripened tomatoes in the summer. In winter, the Kitchen Goddess prefers to use grape tomatoes or the bite-sized sweet tomatoes that many stores now carry.

Lisa’s Corn Relish
  

1 16-ounce package frozen corn, thawed
1 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
½ cup (or more) chopped fresh cilantro (stems and leaves)
¼ cup (or less) thinly sliced spring onion
¼ cup (or less) chopped red onion
½ cup freshly squeezed lime juice
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cumin (or more if you like cumin, which I do)
salt/pepper to taste

1 cup diced fresh tomatoes (in winter, grape tomatoes work nicely here)

Stir together the first nine ingredients (all but the tomatoes) and refrigerate 2-3 hours, to allow the flavors to meld. Just before serving, stir in the tomatoes. Serve with chips.

And Now We Diet... What’s cooking? New Year’s Vegetable Soup

In many ways, I’m really sad to see the holidays go. I love the decorated trees and the twinkly lights, and the stars everywhere and the twinkly lights, and the ornaments and the tinsel and...did I mention the twinkly lights? It’s all so festive. Which is one reason I leave our front door wreath and the twinkly lights up through January. In New Jersey, it was a habit that saved me from a bad case of the winter blues; but even in Texas, where the weather is considerably more tolerable, January is climate-wise a fairly grim month, so I need those twinkly lights.

But I won’t be sorry to see the end to the gifts of cookies and fudge (really excellent fudge, by the way) and the family dinners (though I dearly love my family) – all of which include dessert – and the munchie-laden parties. I’ve felt almost overwhelmed in the challenge to keep from piling on the pounds. This year, I discovered a way to fight that’s not only pain-free but delicious: vegetable soup.

Summer’s Over but Salad Season Is Still Going Strong What’s cooking? Poppy Seed Dressing

It’s been a salad-y week for me. I’m in Texas getting ready to spend 10 days in Italy, so you may not hear from me for a while. And in an effort to shed a few of the pounds that will no doubt reappear over these coming 10 days, I’ve been experimenting with just about every combination of salad ingredients available. But I haven’t lost any weight in the process. It must have been the ice cream I had for dessert.

As the weather gets a bit cooler, there’s a resurgence of lovely types of greens that don’t really like the heat of August. And you can still find wonderful, fresh salad items like tomatoes and figs and blackberries. I read somewhere that a new type of sprout – from sunflower seeds – is the latest rage among professional chefs, so I pounced on that, too, when it showed up at my local Whole Foods.

Gimme a Break – Fast Food for Tax Time What’s cooking? Corn and Tomato Frittata

I’m working on my taxes. Yes, it’s September, but that’s how long it takes me to (a) get my butt in the chair with the necessary papers in hand; and (b) when the butt is in the chair to get the accounting done in lieu of another game of Spider Solitaire. Here’s another thing that happens:

I’m moving through my AmEx statements looking for records of business deductions and charitable donations, when my husband says he wants to use the dryer and can he take my laundry out of it. I want to get the permanent press shirts hung up quickly, so I leave my desk, coffee cup in hand, and go to the laundry room, where I start hanging up shirts and folding clothes. Halfway through, I notice that the coffee cup is empty, so I go to the kitchen to refill.