Scott Hutcheson

Charred Scallions with Romesco

I have to admit that when I saw the price of propane jump up this summer there was a tiny part of me that was glad about it. Not because I wanted propane users to have a difficult time paying their home heating bills but because I saw the price of propane tanks, you know the kind you exchange outside the convenient store, go up, up, and up. I quietly hoped that this might lead some, those who would be in the market for a new grill this spring, to buy a charcoal version. I wanted this only for their own good, so that they could enjoy the smoky goodness of food cooked over real charcoal instead of a gas-fueled flame. 

Sure, gas grills are convenient with their push-button igniters and their hand-dandy dials to adjust the heat; but they’ve striped away all the primal elements embodied in a charcoal grill – striking match against flint, feeding and starving the flame by adjusting the damper, like a backyard version of Aeolus, the Greek God of Wind.  What little hunter-gatherer that is left in me is brought to the fore when grilling on my charcoal grill.

So, as you head to the home improvement stores this spring, take a look at the old-school grills. I make you this guarantee. The extra work it takes to light a match and the additional time required for the coals to get up to temperature will be well worth the time and effort. Over the years, I’ve probably offered up to my readers, 50 different recipes for grilled somethings or another. Every one of them, this one included, tastes better cooked over charcoal.

Whether I’ve convinced you of the virtues of charcoal grill or not, you may want to consider this recipe for charred spring onions once you do fire up your grill. The spring onion, or scallion is one of the earliest edibles that will emerge from the soil in much of the U.S., and even if you want to make these before they appear in your garden or at the farmers market, you can always find them at the grocery store.

Paired with this sauce, made from roasted almonds and red bell peppers, charred scallions and romesco has been a rite of spring in Spain for generations and just maybe it will become a rite of passage in my neck of the woods. The delicate onions cook quickly over the grill so they are a great side dish to throw on just as the main course is finishing up. The outer layers of the onion will char and can be peeled away leaving sweet smoky scallion. The romesco has the consistence of a paste and it can be used as a dip for nearly anything.

This recipe will serve about four and can easily be doubled. You may even want to triple or quadruple the romesco, as it will keep well in the fridge for several days.

Charred Scallions with Romesco

Scallions

• 12 scallions, washed with the tops and bottoms trimmed
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Kosher Salt
• Cracked Black Pepper

Romesco

• 1/2 cup roasted almonds
• 1/2 cup Parmesan, grated
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 12-ounce jar or roasted red pepper, drained and patted dr
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• Kosher salt, to taste
• Cracked black pepper, to taste

In a food processor, combine all the ingredients for the romesco and pulse until a smooth paste forms. Transfer to serving bowl cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. This can be made a day ahead. 

Preheat grill to high heat. Place the scallions on a baking sheet and drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place them on the grill going the opposite direction as the grates to prevent them from falling through. Move them about and turn as needed so that all sides begin to char a bit, not all over, but in spots. Grill for three to five minutes. Remove from the grill and let set for five minutes. When serving, instruct guests that they can remove the charred outer layers if desired. Serve on a platter, along with the romesco.

Adapted from a a column originally published in B Magazine, March 2014

Picking Out a Frame

Woods or metals? Classic or contemporary? Statement-making thick or barely-there minimalist? There are lots of choices when picking out a frame, not to mention choosing a matte and whether you want glare-free or just regular glass. My wife and I face this decision now and again when we decide to frame something important - a new photo of our children or a piece of art we’ve found. Frames matter. There’s another lesson to be learned about framing. It’s a lesson about how conversations get framed, especially conversations about communities.

Perhaps a visit to fictitious Midville can illustrate the point. You can think of Midville as an average community. It could be a town or a neighborhood, and its residents are good folks, folks who care about where they live.

When they gather at the corner coffee shop, the beauty parlor, at their their kid’s soccer games, or even virtually in the online discussion board, midvillebabble.com, they talk about what’s going on in the community. Each of those discussions is framed in a specific way that sets the parameters and points toward a specific direction.

David Cooperrider, a professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve, noted that people and organization move in the direction of their conversations; and the way in which those conversations get framed, help to determine what that direction will be. Cooperrider developed something he called “appreciative inquiry” or AI. He defines AI as “the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them.“

I don’t know what conversations are like in your community but in Midville, they are not always focused on the best of the world around them. It’s not their fault really, most people are programmed to focus on the problems, to diagnose what’s wrong so that it can be fixed. Morning conversations around the corner table in the Midville Café are often about lazy kids, backdoor political deals, and good-paying factory jobs that no longer exist. Conversations about problems.

Cooperrider’s work isn’t based on some Pollyanna, head-in-the-sand notion of ignoring problems. It is based on the science of human and organizational behavior. The idea is that instead of focusing on negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, we can turn our attention toward discovery, dreaming, and designing together. This is especially powerful when it comes to communities. When we come together, whether as an informal group of residents, or at the invitation of some elected official or community group, the way in which the conversation gets framed makes a difference and framing a discussion to facilitate discovery, dreaming, and designing the future usually leads us to a good place.

Let’s take another peek at Midville. Some of the shopkeepers are concerned about teenagers loitering outside their stores, intimidating customers and being an overall nuisance. So, they call a meeting with the mayor and the police department to make sure someone does something about this problem. You can probably anticipate the direction that conversation is likely to take.

Advocates of AI say that a much more positive outcome could result from a conversation that was framed differently, perhaps like this:

Imagine Midville as place where shoppers consistently have a good shopping experience and our young people have a safe place to hang out and socialize. What would that look like?

According to AI when you frame a discussion like that and engage a lot of people in answering it – shopkeepers, customers, youth, along with the police and the mayor’s office, you will get a very different outcome, one that results in creative solutions and new ideas that no single person had before entering the room.

Powerful discussions begin with words like “what if,” “how,” “why” and my favorite, “imagine.” Less powerful discussions usually start with words like “who,” “when,” and “where.” One additional piece of advice when framing discussions for community conversations is to make sure the question being asked is one to which the answer is not already known. If it is, there is no need for any inquiry at all.

When we go to the trouble and expense of framing something for our home it’s usually because the object being frame is important to us, it has value. The same is true for our communities. Most of us value the places where we live. When we have conversations about our communities we should give some thought to picking out the right frame.

This column was originally published in quality newspapers the week of March 17, 2014 

Moneyball Economic Development

This is a longer version of an article written for "Ideas from IEDA" (Indiana Economic Development Association). It was originally published in March 12, 2014

If you know baseball you know this story. Or, if you know great books and good movies, you might know this story as well - how General Manager Billy Beane turned the 2002 Oakland A’s into a winning team despite the smallest total team salary in major league baseball. Conventional wisdom said hotshot pitchers and big hitters were the only ticket to a winning season. Instead, he built a team by finding the right collections of players, overlooked by conventional wisdom. While other GMs were concentrating on batting averages, Beane was looking for on-base percentages. He changed baseball, as a game and a business, and paved the way for stats geeks to become rock stars. Case in point, boy genius Nate Silver went from crunching baseball stats to successfully predicting electoral maps

As an economic developer, if you are not paying attention to data and statistics, being your community’s Billy Beane, you might not be doing your job as well as you could. This is the era of Moneyball Economic Development. There is a variety of great data available to you, many at your fingertips.  If you are not diving into them, you are likely missing opportunities to grow your economy - opportunities that may be right under your nose. 

Economic developers spend a lot of time and resources scouting for the home run hitters - the relocation or expansion that brings dozens, or even hundreds, of jobs with it, or that start up that's in someone's garage right now but has the potential to turn your region into a mini Silicon Valley.

But what about the singles or even the bunts? What about the parts of your economy that always seem to get on base? Do you even know what they are? How can you find those assets and help them move from first to second base and eventually to home plate? Just like Billy Beane, you can use data to find them and add them to your line up.

I sometimes get to teach advanced strategy to economic development professionals and one of the things we do in that course is look at some great data sources that are freely available on the web. These are tools that help us look under the hood of our economy (if you allow me to switch metaphors for a moment).

A regional industry cluster analysis, for instance, which often relied on a consultant to complete at a cost in the range from $10,000 - $100,000 in years past, can now be done in about three mouse clicks at virtually no cost. Another tool lets you do the same thing with occupational clusters, learning what skills the people of your region or community specialize in. Yet another tool helps you do a shift-share analysis to identify which sectors in your economy are more resistant to national economic changes than others, recession resistant, in other words.

Here's an example of how moneyball economic development could play out.

Midville had seen brighter days. Its largest employer, ABC Manufacturing, had closed its doors a decade ago and the cascading effects are what you might expect – economic decline, an eroding quality of life. Civic leaders and economic development professionals, in their efforts to develop a new set of strategies for growth, discovered something interesting in the data they were reviewing. Despite having no information technology (IT) FIRMS in Midville, they had about 30 IT WORKERS, embedded in other non-IT firms – like hospitals, the schools, a few small manufacturers that still existed.

Recognizing these workers as potential economic assets, the chamber of commerce launching Tech Tuesdays, inviting these IT pros for a series of brown-bag event. It was not long before new relationships were developed among the attendees and some new business ideas emerged.  The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) was asked to provide some start-up assistance, the community bank got involved, and two of these folks had an idea for a new smart phone app. At first they worked on the new enterprise evenings and weekends, but when their app launch was successful, they quite their day jobs, leasing space on the town square and hiring three locals to assist with programming and marketing. Midville had its first IT firm!

These are the kinds of singles and bunts and even walks that can get an economy moving again; and data, the sorts that exist beyond the demographics and household income stats, can help uncover them, fueling the imaginations of civic leaders and economic developers with ideas for how they could leverage these assets. For many communities, a home run is a long shot and it may never come at all; but a line up that includes these kinds of solid performers, and the policies and resources to support them, can be a winning strategy. 

It's Complicated

Originally published in quality newspapers in March 2014 

A former colleague of mine was attending a faculty function when he struck up a conversation with another professor. My friend had spent his 35-year career doing research and outreach in economic and community development, helping communities, big and small, grow their economy and improve the quality of life. The other professor was an aeronautical engineer. As they shook hands and introduced themselves and their work, the engineer said with a broad smile, “What you do isn’t rocket science, is it?” Just as my friend was about to take offense, the engineer added, “It’s harder than rocket science.”

As strange is it may sound, the engineer was right. The things we try to do as a community – keep our streets safe, make sure our kids have the education they need to be successful, assure that everyone has a clear pathway to the middle class and beyond – are harder than sending a rocket to the moon.

An economist from the 1950s, Kenneth Boulding, came up with something called general systems theory and identified nine different “systems” within which everything happens. Boulding would have classified rocket science as being part of what he calls the “clockwork” system that includes machines, small simple ones as well as complicated ones. In this nine-level hierarchy, this is only number two. Things in this level are relatively predictable, like clockworks.

The sort of things that we try to do as a community fall into Boulding’s level eight – “social organizations.” This is the system in which we humans interact with one another, like the economy, like in community. This is the second most complex system of Boulding’s nine. The ninth is “transcendental” systems, which gets too abstract for me to fully understand. The point is that what when we, as a community, set out to accomplish something together like grow our economy, reduce crime, raise our educational attainment levels, or tackle childhood obesity we face a set of challenges more daunting than building a rocket and sending it to Mars.

Just because its complex and complicated does not, however, mean it is impossible. Many of us have seen or been actively involved in, neighborhood or community-wide efforts to accomplish something, to make a change. Doing so seems to be part of our DNA as human beings and we Americans have a heritage of working together to accomplish social change. French historian Alexis de Tocqueville made this observation when he visited the U.S. in the mid-1800s and many others have noted it as well. We like to ban together to get things done.

Sometimes our efforts are successful. We make that change - we see a struggling school make a turnaround. We see a community become more welcoming to newcomers who are “different” from long-time residents. We see a regional economy thrive again after a devastating blow. We’ve also, unfortunately, experienced times when, despite our best efforts, the challenges remain and worsen.

The good news is that success is possible. The bad news is that there is no secret recipe. It’s complicated. Blame is easy to cast. “If those elected officials had voted this way or that.” “If we had only gotten that big grant.” “If more people had been involved.” It’s also easy to give up or never get involved to begin with, to put our nose to the ground, just take care of our family and ourselves and ignore what’s going on around us.

My hope for this column is that it will bring you some new ideas. Ideas, hopefully, that will resonate with those of you who are passionate about making your community a better place and maybe with those of you whose passion may currently be at a low simmer, challenging you to get involved again.

This column, won’t, however, bring you cookie-cutter approaches. What works in one community might not work in another. That’s a big reason this stuff is so complex. What I hope these stories will do is ignite your own imagination as you take a little of what you learn from here, add it to what you’ve learned elsewhere, stir in a heaping spoonful of your own experiences and intuition, and hopefully you might create your own recipe that will be just right for the street where you live.

Fruit Salad with Honey, Lime, and Mint

Here is one of my favorite recipes for fruit salad. If you've not yet set your Memorial Day menu, consider adding this delicious dish.

Fruit Salad with Honey, Lime, and Mint

• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
• 1 large cantaloupe, halved, seeded, and cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 quart of strawberries, hulled, halved
• 1 1/2 cups red seedless grapes
• 1 cup blueberries

In a small bowl, whisk the lime juice and honey together and add the mint. Allow this to sit for about 15 minutes. Add all the fruit to a bowl and stir in the lime, honey, mint mixture and stir through the fruit. This can be made and refrigerated a few hours a head. This will serve about eight and it can easily be doubled, tripled, etc. to feed a larger group.

Note: Just about any fruit could work well in this recipe. Build this recipe around what is seasonal and available locally and then add other fruits you enjoy.

The Remarkable History of the Key Lime Pie

Originally published in quality newspapers the week of May 23, 2011

It was sometime around the turn of the century. Not the one marked by the worry of the Y2K bug but the one before that. A fisherman got a sweet tooth and used what he had on hand to whip up a tasty dessert. Sponge fishing was a booming new business in South Florida but the margins were slim so the rations were meager on his boat – some sugar, eggs, canned milk, soda crackers, some nuts, and citrus fruit.

There, under the stars, this fisherman made the very first Key Lime Pie.

Word spread quickly among the fisherman and the cool tart pie became a staple on those fishing trips. One of these men, maybe even the one who made that inaugural pie, shared the recipe with some woman folk, one in particular.

We don’t know much about “Aunt Sally,” not even a last name. We do know, however, that she had a job as the household cook for Florida’s very first self-made millionaire - William Curry, aka Rich Bill. Mr. Curry came to Florida as a penniless Bahamian immigrant and made his fortune in the ship salvage business. Mr. Curry also had a sweet tooth.

Aunt Sally’s Key Lime pies became a staple at the Curry mansion and were often on the menu when William would entertain great men of state and industry. The rest, as they say, is culinary history.

Part of this story is history but much is conjecture about the origins of this dessert but its popularity for over a century is fact indeed. There are variations on this pie – graham cracker crust, traditional crust; Key limes only or run-of-the-mill limes. Most South Floridians are firm in their insistence of using only Key limes. Type of crust seems to be less important.

Here is a recipe using a saltine cracker crust and pecans, which is probably pretty close to what that first fisherman might have made. Key limes are hard to find in most parts of the country but you can usually find it bottled and it works very well in this recipe.

The string of people and events that make up the history of Key lime pie is fascinating indeed so when making this pie for family and friends you can tell them the story of sponges and fisherman, of Aunt Sally and Mr. Curry, and enjoy a delicious taste of history.

Key Lime Pie

Saltine Crust

• 3 egg whites (reserve yolks)
• 1 cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 14 saltines, finely crushed
• ½ cup pecans, finely crushed

Preheat oven to 325'F. Butter a 9" pie plate. In a medium-size bowl beat the egg whites, slowly adding sugar. Continue beating stiff. Add the baking powder, saltines, and pecans, mixing to combine. Pour into pie plate and use a spatula to spread. Bake for 30 minutes and let cool on a wire rack.

Filling

• 3 egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons lime zest
• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 2/3 cup freshly squeezed or bottled Key lime juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In an electric mixer with the wire whisk attachment, beat the egg yolks and lime zest on high for about five minutes or until fluffy. Gradually add the condensed milk and continue to beat three to four minutes until the mixture is thickened. Raise the mixer and add the lime juice slowly folding the mixture with a rubber spatula just until the juice is incorporated add the lime juice. Pour the filling into the crust. Bake ten minutes, or until the filling has just set. Cool on a wire rack, then refrigerate. Freeze for 15 to 20 minutes before serving.

Topping

• 1 cup heavy or whipping cream chilled
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

Whip the cream and the confectioners' sugar until nearly stiff. Cut the pie into wedges and serve very cold, topping each wedge with a large dollop of whipped cream.

Pop's Tarts

Originally published in quality newspapers the week of April 24, 2011

When they were younger, my kids used to beg for Pop Tarts. If our grocery cart got within two isles of the breakfast foods section their pupils would dilate, their arms would reach out, and they would begin their attempts at parental manipulation. It’s funny how I had to remind them several times a day to say “please” and “thank you” yet when lobbying for something they really wanted, they quickly transform into little masters of manners.

When “please” didn’t work, they resorted to the movie-tie in tactic, trying to convince me that pastries with a Disney Pixar character on the box were somehow even more delicious than the run-of-the-mill tart. Sometimes I gave in, most of the time I didn’t.

I can’t blame them. I love them too. Pop Tarts and I grew up together, both born in 1964. I spent many a Saturday morning watching cartoons while washing down two pastries with a cold glass of milk. My children and I are certainly not alone in our love of Pop Tarts. Over 2.7 million Facebook users are fans of the tasty squares.

My wife and I make it a parenting priority to help our kids make good food choices. We aren’t militant about it but we try to be sure most meals feature lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, and plenty of fruits and vegetables. Like most busy families, however, occasional carry-out pizzas, drive-through burgers, and Pop Tarts are seemingly unavoidable.

Every now and then, I attempt to make healthier, homemade versions of convenience-food favorites, like Pop Tarts. Making these foods at home allows me to control the ingredients that go into them and provides enough of a novelty factor, that they are almost always a hit with my boys. From a calorie perspective, my tarts are no better, I’m sure, than the grocery store version; but I feel better about using real sugar, real butter, and whole-wheat flour. There’s nothing in them that my kids can’t pronounce.

If you’ve got Pop Tart lovers in your house and an hour or so to spare, you might want to give this recipe a try and if there are kids around let them lend a hand.

Pop’s Tarts

Pastry:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 3 tablespoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup spreadable fruit (I used strawberry)
• 1 egg yolk, beaten with two tablespoons milk

 Frosting:

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons milk

Optional:

• Sprinkles

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor combine the butter and sugar then add the eggs, one at a time. Sift together flours and baking powder and add to the butter and sugar, pulsing until a soft dough ball forms. Chill for one hour. Turn the dough onto a large floured surface and roll to the thickness of a pie crust, about an eighth of an inch.

Use a knife to cut out rectangles that are about 6” x 5”, roughly the size of two Pop Tarts side by side. Spread about a tablespoon of fruit over 1/2 of each rectangle, staying way from the edges. Fold dough over the preserves, push down at the edges, and trim up the edges with your knife. Place tarts on a greased cookie sheet and brush w/the egg yolk milk mixture. Bake for about 25 minutes or until just beginning to brown.

Combine the powdered sugar and milk to make a thin frosting, Use a pastry brush to apply to each pastry. While the frosting is wet, you may also want to top with sprinkles. This will make about 16 tarts. Wrap in foil and store in refrigerator for up to a week or in the freezer for up to four months. When ready to eat, toast like you would the store-bought kind. Frozen tarts may need a little extra time.

Roasted Vegetable Frittata

Originally published in quality newspapers the week of April 17, 2011

If you have not yet finalized your Easter menu, consider adding this simple yet elegant Roasted Vegetable Frittata to your plans. This frittata is great for breakfast, brunch, or lunch.

Eggs, as a symbol of new life, are part of the Easter tradition in many countries. In Sweden, for instance, the tradition is to eat hardboiled eggs the evening before Easter. Other countries, like Greece and Portugal, make braided Easter bread with hardboiled eggs, shell and all, placed within the braids. In Italy, the frittata is often on the Easter menu.

If you are not familiar with frittata, it is similar to an omelet or crustless quiche and like these other dishes, can have a wide variety of fillings. This is a two-step recipe, and the vegetables can be roasted up to two days before you plan to make the frittata. At our house, we like roasted vegetables so much I’ll sometimes roast a large quantity using some in a frittata, and eating the rest as a side dish next night or even use them as a pizza topping. Roasted vegetables are versatile and simple to prepare. Roasting caramelizes the sugars in vegetables and results in an amazing sweet-savory taste combination. Those listed in this recipe are some of my favorites and these quantities will be just about right for the frittata.

Roasted Vegetables

• 4 medium-sized new potatoes
• 4 carrots or one and a half cups of baby carrots
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 20 (approx.) asparagus spears

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. To prepare the vegetables, rinse the potatoes, peppers, asparagus, and carrots (if using whole carrots). There is no need to peel the potatoes, but remove any areas where the potatoes might have started to sprout. Peel the outer skin of the onion. Next, cut all the vegetables into bite-size chunks and place them in a large bowl. Drizzle the cut-up vegetables with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Using your hands, toss the vegetables until evenly coated with the oil, salt, and pepper.

Transfer the vegetables to a large cookie sheet, making sure that they are evenly distributed. Place the cookie sheet in the oven for approximately 45 minutes. At about the halfway point, use a spatula to move the vegetables around and turn them over. Continue roasting until they begin to brown evenly. Less dense vegetables, like the asparagus, may cook more quickly so remove them when they are done and let the other vegetables continue to cook. The roasted vegetables can be used immediately or stored refrigerated in an airtight container for up to two days.

Roasted Vegetable Frittata

• Roasted Vegetables
• 6 eggs
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive Oil
• 1/4 Cup Parmesan cheese

Set the oven broiler on high and also heat to medium an oven-proof skillet (I use a well-seasoned cast iron skillet) on the stove top.

Crack the six eggs into a bowl, add salt and pepper to taste, and beat the eggs with a fork. Add to the skillet enough olive oil to cover the bottom and tilt the skillet so that the oil coats the sides. Next, add the roasted vegetables to the skillet. If the vegetables were prepared beforehand, allow them to warm up in the skillet then add the beaten eggs.

Shake the pan a bit to be sure the eggs settle all the way through to the bottom. Allow this to cook on the stovetop undisturbed until the eggs begin to set, about 5-7 minutes. Add the Parmesan cheese and transfer the skillet to the oven for 2 to 3 minutes until the eggs are completely set. Remove from the oven and use a spatula to loosen the sides. The frittata can be cut like a pie into six servings.

Looking Ahead to Easter (and recipes for a full Easter menu)

Originally published in quality newspapers the week of April 10, 2011

From a food-point-of-view, Easter is one of the big three events in the triple crown of holidays. There others being, of course, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving menus, it seems, have much consistency from family to family. Most have turkey, some sort of stuffing or dressing, and a favorite version of sweet potatoes. Christmas food traditions vary some but usually feature some of the same hearty cooler-weather fare as Thanksgiving.

Easter, as a celebration of spring and new life, calls for some lighter flavors. Growing up, the Easter Ham was the ever-present entree at our Easter table and it’s most often what I now prepare for my family.

Our menu this year will include Fruit Salad, Deviled Eggs, Chantilly Potatoes, Peas with Mint, and a Lemonade Pie for dessert. As you look ahead to Easter, maybe you are looking for some new ideas, Hopefully you can find some here.

Regardless of what’s on your table next weekend or if you even observe Easter, I hope you can enjoy and celebrate the onset of spring with friends and family and that some of these recipes will fit with your plans.

Orange Glaze for Easter Ham

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 8 1/2 ounces orange marmalade
• 1/2 cup whole gain mustard Dijon mustard
• 1 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1 orange, juiced and zested

In a small saucepan, melt the butter over moderate heat. Stir in the other ingredients and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Pour over ham and bake for the last hour of the ham's total baking time.

Chantilly Potatoes

• 8 whole Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 tablespoon fresh chives, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Boil potatoes until tender. Prepare as you would mashed potatoes (I used a ricer) adding butter, 1/2 cup of cream, 2 tablespoon chives, salt, and pepper. Put into an oven proof dish that will still leave you about an inch of room at the top. Whip the remaining 1/2 cup of cream and spread on top of potatoes. Add the grated cheese and place back in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Garnish with the remaining chopped chives.

Peas with Mint

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup finely diced onions
• 1-1/2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
• 16 ounces frozen baby peas
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped

Heat a medium saucepan on the low setting and add the butter. When it has melted add the onions and lemon zest. Turn up the heat a bit and cook gently until the onions are translucent but not browned, about five minutes. Add the peas and sir occasionally until they are heated through (about five minutes) then add the mint.

Lemonade Pie

• 1 prepared graham cracker crust (the kind in the aluminum pan)
• 1 small can frozen lemonade
• 1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk
• Juice of one lemon
• 2 cups of whipped cream
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest

To a large bowl add the lemonade, condensed milk, and lemonade and stir to combine. Fold in the whipped cream and then put into the pie shell. Let chill for several hours or overnight. Before serving garnish with lemon. 

Flirting with Spring (and recipe for BLT Soup)

Originally published in quality newspapers the week of March 27, 2011

There is a fine art to flirting and frankly I was never very good at it. The most effective arrow in my flirting quiver was that of humor. I could almost always make a girl laugh; but hey, so could Rodney Dangerfield.

Author Fran Greene wrote the book on flirting. Actually, she wrote the Bible. In The Flirting Bible she reveals all the flirting secrets: the smile, eye contact, maintaining a proper distance, body language, and the flirtatious touch with tips for both men and women. I could have used this book back in the day.

Springtime, it seems, is a time of year where flirting is at its peak and not just among humans. In my neck of the woods, the earth itself flirts with us during these early days of spring, teasing us a bit with a warm day here and there and giving us just a peek of color.

Warm spring days have me anticipating the bounty that will soon be growing out of our small backyard garden and a day in the 70s last week had be standing in the yard envisioning the tomatoes that will go into the ground in a few weeks. Unable to get tomatoes out of my mind, I settled for the next best thing to garden tomatoes, the canned versions at the grocery store.

One of my favorite ways to eat tomatoes is in a BLT but I will only eat them when tomatoes are in season. The produce-isle versions just don’t match up. Canned tomatoes, on the other hand, usually have great tomato flavor but you can’t exactly use them on a sandwich. I decided on a BLT soup instead, incorporating all the elements of the sandwich.

A conventional BLT is still a few months off but in these early days of spring, this soup fills the void.

 BLT Soup

• 6 strips of bacon
• 2 28-ounce cans of diced tomatoes
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 2 stocks of celery, chopped
• 2 medium carrots, chopped
• 1 quart of canned chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 8 thin slices of a baguette
• Arugula

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and place a wire rack on the lined pan. Lay the slices of bacon on the rack and place in the oven to cook for 20 minutes or until the bacon is crisp. Remove the bacon and the rack. Once cooled, crumble the bacon and set aside. While the bacon is cooking open the two cans of tomatoes and pour of the juice, reserving it for later. Using the same baking pan and parchment used for the bacon, pour off all but about a tablespoon of the bacon fat (you may not have more than a tablespoon). Dump the diced tomatoes onto the parchment-lined sheet and spread out into a single layer. Add salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. Place back into the 375-degree oven to roast for 30 minutes.

While the tomatoes are roasting, heat a Dutch oven to medium-high. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and sauté the chopped onion, carrots, and celery. Add salt and pepper and sauté until beginning to turn golden. Add the chicken stock and reserved tomato juice and bring to a boil then reduce to simmer. Once the tomatoes are done add them to the pot along with the tablespoon of sugar and the basil. Add additional salt and pepper if needed.

Use an emersion blender to puree the soup to a smooth consistency. Switch the oven to broil and place the bread slices on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, and broil until golden. When ready to serve ladle soup into bowls, top with one or two pieces of the toast, a few leaves of arugula, and crumbled bacon. Makes about six servings.