Foodie Faves: Cast-iron Cookware What's cooking? Texas Cornbread

One of my earliest cooking-related memories is of my grandmother frying chicken in her cast-iron skillet. She had no air conditioning in that kitchen for years, just a big ceiling fan, occasionally augmented by a small, rotating table fan when the Texas heat became unbearable, which of course wouldn’t stop her from frying chicken. She’d tuck a handkerchief or tissue into the space between her rolled up sleeve and her arm, and periodically would use that to blot the perspiration from her face and neck.

I don’t know what happened to her skillet. It probably got sold in the estate sale. I had developed a real interest in cooking by the time she died, but even then wasn’t interested in frying chicken, and I couldn’t imagine what else you’d use that skillet for. What a fool I was.

When You Hit a Bump in the Road,Get Out Your Rolling PinWhat's cooking? Key Lime-Berry Napoleon

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across some Key limes in the grocery store, and the evil angel on my shoulder whispered, “Buy these. Make Key lime curd.” I should have known better, but that has never stopped me before, so into my cart they went.

Key limes are smaller and have more seeds than regular (Persian) limes. Also, the flavor is sharper and more bitter. Apparently, they are even yellow when fully ripe, but you and I don’t get to see that color, as the little darlings are picked green for commercial use, and – possibly useful factoid here – citrus fruit doesn’t ripen further after it comes off the tree. It’ll decay, but it won’t get any riper.

In any case, Key lime curd isn’t any harder to make than the Meyer lemon curd I made back in February. The limes are so small, you’ll have to squeeze a ridiculous number of them to get a cup of juice, but TNT now shows re-runs of Castle and Bones in the afternoon, so I tuned in and started squeezing. I used the same recipe and process, adding ¼ cup more sugar to compensate for the tartness of the limes. Same velvety texture, and with a taste much like Key lime pie.

Foodie Faves: Pyrex Custard Cups What's cooking? Creamy Vanilla Custard

When I was a child – long before I became the Kitchen Goddess – two of the few things my mother would allow me to make in the kitchen were Jell-O® and Jell-O Instant Pudding. I thought it was magic: powder plus liquid equals dessert. Frankly, I also thought it was cooking. And I couldn’t imagine eating it out of anything but those Pyrex® 6-ounce glass custard cups.

I don’t think I had any Pyrex cups of my own until I had children, when they were the best things I could find to hold baby food. (The cups, not the children.) Since that time, I’ve discovered how wonderfully useful those little dishes are for a truly vast number of tasks. Storage, baking, microwaving, heating up small servings, but mostly for assembling my mise en place. Chop the parsley and put it into one of the cups. Measure out the curry powder, and put it in a cup. Mince the garlic, and...you get the idea. Then assemble all those little cups next to the skillet, and you won’t find yourself burning the onions as you scream, “OMG – how much garlic?!”

Turtle Tots What's cooking? Smashed Potatoes

What a day we had on Sunday. Easter and the end of March duked it out all day, weather-wise, to give us the full range of lions, lambs, and bunnies. We woke to a cool and lightly overcast morning, followed by gathering clouds and eventual rain, then closing with a crystal blue canopy by late afternoon. I took an early morning walk – or at least early for me, which is around 9:30 – with house guests from New Jersey, who were so thankful to have the warm weather, they didn’t even mind the clouds.

We walked the Hike and Bike Trail at Lady Bird Lake, where it appeared that much of Austin’s population had the same idea as we did. The lake used to be called Town Lake but was renamed for Lady Bird Johnson after her death, in recognition of her leadership in turning the trail from an overgrown and polluted eyesore into a centerpiece for recreational activity.

Foodie Faves: Storage Solutions

A garage is a place for storage. Cars, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles. Also (in my case) rakes, lawn mowers, grass seed spreaders, brooms, saws, and various jars with different sizes of screws. And trash cans, the chair that one day I thought I’d recover, the sewing machine my mother-in-law gave me without knowing how completely inept I am with any needle and thread, and a big box of tiles from when we re-did the bathroom. And so it likely is with you. Just about anything you keep but don’t necessarily want to have on display, you put in the garage.

That’s sort of how my appliance garage works. I have various appliances that I use frequently, but I don’t have the sort of kitchen where I can let these things just sit out all the time on the counter. It’s one of those “open architecture” kitchens that essentially shares its space with the dining room. The  rooms are separate, but not distinct – the architectural equivalent of Siamese twins.

The Alaskans Are Coming! What's cooking? Texas Breakfast Pizza

There’s something about the pending arrival of houseguests that stimulates in me the strangest behavior. In advance of friends who arrived yesterday, one item on the list – that I made in all seriousness – was “Organize recipes.” Really. I mean, isn’t that what you always notice?

In any case, it turns out I didn’t have time for that particular task because I keep my recipe files in the pantry, where as I glanced around at the shelves, I spotted a jar of Vidalia onion dip with an expiration date from the year after Joe Gutenberg rolled out his first printing press. Before I knew it, some deep-seated need to clean out the shelves had taken over – what my husband refers to as a Random Strike – and I spent the next couple of hours examining every can or jar or box in the place for those items that now threaten the health or safety of anyone I might be feeding. Not that there was much chance of those items making it to my table – if they’ve been part of the larder landscape for that long, I must already have a subconscious block against them.

Big Mess, Little Mess – Both Great Soups What's cooking? Cold Spring Pea Soup

A note to readers: At the outset, I want to say that this post does not include the recipe for “my” famous gumbo, because in fact what I make is not “my” gumbo, but the gumbo of a brilliant cook who goes by the name of Crescent Dragonwagon. Her magnificent recipe, if you are so inclined, is on pages 237-240 of The Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook. But if you keep reading this post, you'll find a much easier recipe, this one for Cold Pea Soup.

I made gumbo yesterday. Or rather, I made gumbo yesterday afternoon and so far into the evening that it poked a hole in today. Good thing I’m a nightowl.

Some people, learning how long it takes to make, would tell me I’m crazy. And they might be right. At least a couple of times during the process, I had to stop and do some stretching exercises just to keep my shoulders from seizing up.

Foodie Faves: My Mandoline What's cooking? Balsamic Brussels Sprouts with Spicy Pecans

My food processor is a miracle worker at chopping a big pile of onions or grinding basil and pignoli nuts together for pesto. My blender produces the most velvety textures when puréeing vichyssoise or the strawberries for a sorbet. And when I want butternut squash in a half-inch dice for risotto or garlic in a fine mince, I’m even plenty handy with just my chef’s knives.

But none of those tools will give me the wafer-thin rounds of radish for a salad, or perfectly even slices – only ⅛ inch thick – of pear for a tart. Or those exquisitely cut carrots in a matchstick julienne. And while the food processor will slice Brussels sprouts for a sauté, the results are wildly erratic and are often accompanied by a bu-ta-bu-ta-bu-ta-bu-ta noise as the ends get stuck in that space between the lid and the slicing wheel.

Old Friends, New Friends What's cooking? Lentil Soup with Roasted Garlic and Bacon

I spent the day yesterday at a workshop for bloggers. For a person born before... to be kind, let’s say 1960 – and I will not be mentioning here how much before 1960 – there’s nothing like a bracing encounter with the world of technology to make you feel old and slow. Vimeos, hangouts on YouTube, search engine optimization, analytics, keywords,... You can feel out of touch in less time than it takes to say, “Tweet this.”

When I started this blog, it was not much more than a way to keep myself in the wordsmithing game. Leaving New Jersey, I’d left behind a writing group that had been as closely knit as any I’d ever heard of. I didn’t expect to be able to duplicate that experience in any way. And I haven’t. But it turns out that if you leave the door open for new experiences, life can surprise you.

Bloggers – at least food bloggers, and maybe it’s just the ones here in Austin – are a remarkably welcoming group. The ones at yesterday’s workshop and those I’ve met in other venues here have been happy to share what they know about the technology, about food styling, about photography – even to show me how to use Twitter, which still strikes me as being a tiny bit insane.

Foodie Faves: Kitchen Wear

You know, everyone says you should always wear an apron in the kitchen. They’re probably right, but here’s the thing: I don’t like aprons. They make me feel restricted, confined, and overdressed. Like I’m trying to be my mother, which I assure you I am not. And I don’t even think she wore aprons. (OMG, does this mean I am trying to be like my mother? Let’s not go there.)

I do, however, have the occasional need to row against the tide. As a woman who came of age when Gloria and Betty were rewriting the text of women’s lives, I've spent a good part of my adult life in a series of small rebellions. I was the first woman to wear long pants to work at the Wall Street firm I joined out of college. Amazing, yes? Who do you think had made that rule? A bunch of old white guys. Fortunately, I worked for a younger white guy who agreed with me on the ridiculousness of that particular decree.