kitchen adventures
It’s full-on summer here, which means it’s (usually) hot and humid. Terribly, awfully, stickily humid. Even with modern air conditioning, for which I’m grateful, hot days mean cold suppers. Shrimp and avocado salad is a blessing on a sticky hot day: it’s cool and delicious, and also quick and easy to
It was Auguste Escoffier who devised the now-famous dessert, Pêche Melba, in the early 1900s. It consisted of fresh peeled peaches, slightly sugared, with raspberry purée, served over vanilla ice cream in a swan carved of ice. The dish has become a classic, though usually the icy swan bowl is
Rhubarb is a treat of the early spring, and my CSA was generous with it this year. While it’s long gone from the farm-stand, I kept a bit in my refrigerator, and produced amazingly good and easy rhubarb tarts. You will need baked tart shells. You could make your own,
Beginning with the first week of June, we pick up a weekly box of vegetables (and sometimes fruits) at our local farmers market. We’ve joined the CSA program from VanHoutte Farms in Armada, MI – a family farm located only 30 miles from our house. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture:
Sometimes you need to work a bit of household magic: make a meal appear out of nowhere, fast. This quick and splendid spaghetti with clam sauce for 2 is a perfect example. Keep spaghetti and a can of clams in your pantry, and if you also have garlic, a lemon, a bit of
My idea of a perfect summer meal is a great salad and home-baked bread. But who wants to turn on the oven on the hottest days of the year? Relief is at hand! Use what you might think of as cold weather equipment: bake in your slow cooker (crock pot).
Small-batch strawberry jam goes together so quickly! Start with the berries: rinse them well, hull them, and cut them into quarters. Put them in a heavy-bottomed pot. (I used my favorite 4 qt pot, which was perfect for the task.) Add the sugar and lemon juice, then stir well, cover with a clean tea towel, and
There’s something about baking for the holidays that’s relaxing and exciting at the same time. It’s a great pleasure to bake in anticipation of sharing good things with friends and family. Brownies with Jammy Bits are a very special brownie at my house. They are intensely chocolatey, moist and chewy, and
Gingerbread hedgehog cookies are undeniably cute, and they’re a favorite in my family.  They’re a simple spicy gingerbread cut-out, decorated with icing and sprinkles. They ship well and taste great, and will last quite a long time in an airtight tin. This is a basic gingerbread cut-out cookie, good to
If you cook for vegetarians, you will need vegetable stock on hand: so many dishes are improved by substituting stock for water. It’s hard to find the good stuff at the grocery store, so make your own at home. Let’s talk about pressure canning vegetable stock. Late summer or early autumn are
This is an unusual cake: it’s baked with the frosting right in the pan! Chocolate upside-down cake is not only odd, it’s delicious, and has become a family favorite. Equipment is important here. I use a contour pan, which is rounded at the bottom edge. That pan makes the cake easy to
I’ve been meaning to write about making ratatouille for a few weeks now. I don’t mean the beautiful baked version from the cartoon movie – wonderful though that is, it’s not the one I make every year, late in tomato season, when all the ingredients are ready fresh from the
I’m Maurita Plouff, and I write about cooking and preserving the local harvest in Southeast Michigan. Any recipe you find here is something I have cooked myself, and enjoyed, and think you might like too. I invite you to try the recipes, and leave comments.