Food Historian

Have you ever had Anadama bread? It's a traditional dark yeast bread from New England. Please welcome Hank Shaw as he shares the recipe for this delicious loaf he made for us the other day. ~Elise

My mum was never much of a baker, but she used to tell us about a bread she loved back at home on the North Shore of Massachusetts called, oddly, anadama bread. Apparently the old tale is that Anna was a fisherman’s wife who fed her beau little more than cornmeal porridge sweetened with molasses. One day, so the story goes, the fisherman came home, added some flour and yeast to the mush and tossed it in the oven to make bread – all the while muttering, “Anna, damn her!”

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From the recipe archive, first posted last summer, reposting now because not only is it a terrific casserole, it uses up a lot of zucchini, and if your garden is in any way like mine, you have tons of it right now. ~Elise

In my garden, there lives The Beast, a 5 foot tall zucchini plant that puts out 2 full-sized zucchinis a day. Even with all the great zucchini recipes we have, it's hard for three people to consume 14 zucchini a week. (There's also a pattypan squash plant.) So around this time of year I'm always looking for ways to use up my overflowing vegetable drawer of zucchini. This is an easy-to-make strata-like breakfast casserole with grated zucchini, tomatoes, basil, ricotta, and Parmesan. (The tomatoes and basil are growing like mad now too.) Actually I'm not sure what to call it. Breakfast casserole seems to fit because of the eggs, though we ate this for lunch. You could also call it a strata. It's like a frittata but it's baked, not made on the stovetop (though I'm sure you could make a frittata out of it). The inspiration for it comes from a "cuajado", or a baked frittata popular in Sephardic cooking. This isn't a cuajado, but the flavors are there, and they're terrific together.

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When Garrett McCord told me he had the best mussels recipe in the world I was skeptical, that is until I tried it. Yikes this is good! ~Elise

When I need a good party food or want to impress some friends I usually turn to mussels cooked in coconut milk and curry. It's affordable, easy to prepare, and has a definite wow factor. I mean, who can't resist the look of these obsidian peaks jutting out from a plate from canary-colored broth? These mussels take on the flavors of the broth which is spiked with lemongrass, pungent red chilies, and kaffir lime leaves leaving them with a distinct Thai flavor. The mussels themselves imbue the broth with a slight, ocean brine that cuts through the richness of the coconut milk. This recipe will feed four people happily or make an excellent appetizer for a group. This is a dish best served with beer and crusty bread.

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Have you noticed the beautiful peaches and nectarines in the market lately? I find them so hard to resist, and often buy more than I can eat. Here's a quick and easy salsa, made with fresh peaches, jalapeños, lemon, ginger and mint, that goes beautifully with the grilled meats of summer. Try serving this with grilled pork, chicken, or fish. Perfect. Also makes a great dip for chips.

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Yes my friends, it's time for blackberries. The season is here, the berries are ripe and ready for picking. Blackberries grow wild here along the American River, and pretty much around all of the creeks and streams in California. Heck, they even grow wild in empty lots and neglected back yards in San Francisco. Hank, I, and our friend and fellow food blogger Amber went berry picking at the river this week and brought home a couple pounds of fresh, ripe, juicy berries, perfect for a pie. And a perfect pie it is, or was. It didn't last long. Honestly I think it was one of the best pies I've ever made, and that's saying something, because I like to make pie. The filling held together (instant tapioca is a great thickener), the additions of lemon, cinnamon, and almond extract just intensified and enhanced the blackberry flavor. And the crust? Well, in my opinion, homemade pie is just an excuse to eat homemade butter crust.

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My friend Peg recently gave me some sweet pickled jalapeño chili peppers that she made using my bread and butter pickle recipe and oh my gosh, I couldn't stop eating them. So of course I had to make my own batch the very next day. Ay caramba they are good, and oddly not as spicy as you would expect. Certainly not as hot as my regular jalapeño pickles. Just a little bit hot. Perky hot. And sweet and crunchy the way a bread and butter pickle should be.

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Oh the joys of summer! On the top of the list is fresh, ripe tomatoes, garden cucumbers, and basil that the more you cut, the more it grows. (Ever notice that basil is like a hydra? Cut one stem and two grow in its place.) And the tomatoes. Beefsteak tomatoes, early girls, heirlooms, plum tomatoes, not to mention the little ones like sun golds. Anyway, the heat has come, the garden has finally started to act like summer, and this classic Tuscan bread salad is a perfect thing to make with the bounty. According to Hank who made this salad for us the other day, panzanella at its core is really a way to use up crusty bread that has gotten hard and to celebrate perfect summer tomatoes. It is a cooling summertime salad that relies on the bread as the “filler” to soak up the juices of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, as well as the olive oil you pour over everything.

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My young friend Audrey and I have many things in common. We both like to dress up with pretty aprons. We are both excruciatingly accurate with water guns in a swimming pool. We would both rather read a book than do anything too physically strenuous (water fights excepted). And we both have a serious love for rich chocolate desserts and pretty much any homemade ice cream. So when Audrey (age almost 15) suggested that we make chocolate ice cream, I was all over it. The credit for this recipe goes to Audrey, who has been making it for her family with great results. My own meager contributions were to include some salt and instant coffee (both intensify the chocolate taste), and vanilla to help deepen the overall flavor of the ice cream. The ice cream is rich, creamy, smooth, and super chocolate-y.

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Why is it that so much great food comes out of Louisiana? Case in point, this "dirty" rice. It's a Cajun classic, and so good that the first time you eat it you'll wonder where it's been all your life. It's basically a rice pilaf that is called "dirty" because it's cooked with minced chicken livers or gizzards, which infuse it with crispy, tasty browned bits. If you aren't a liver lover, don't worry, the rice doesn't taste like liver, the addition just deepens the overall flavor of the rice, and the bits are so small you can't really distinguish them.

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You know the cool thing about tarragon? You only have to plant it once. (Assuming you don't pull it up thinking it's a weed when it surprises you by coming up the second year. Yes, that would be me.) I planted a young tarragon plant in a corner of our garden several years ago, and although it dies back every winter, each spring it reemerges even more robust than the year before. Tarragon is a lovely herb to pair with chicken or fish, and is terrific in omelettes. It also tastes great with hard boiled eggs, either deviled or in an egg salad such as this one. My nephew Austin took one bite of this the other day and wide-eyed exclaimed "Wow, what is in this?!" as he gobbled it up. The tarragon, along with similarly flavored fennel, adds an unexpected punch to an otherwise rather basic egg salad.

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Sing along! ♪ Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam ♫ ... and the deer and the antelope play; where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the sky is not cloudy all day. ♫

Yes we do break into song occasionally around here. It's good for you and it warms the soul. What better song to sing than Home on the Range when enjoying an all (North) American buffalo burger. And yes, this is more accurately called a bison burger. For the record we are talking about an American buffalo (bison), and not an Asian buffalo. There used to be just a few American buffalo still alive, but now they are no longer endangered, and enterprising ranchers are raising bison as a leaner alternative to beef.

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This smoky barbecue sauce from Hank Shaw is one of the best bbq sauces I have ever tasted. Smoky, spicy, and rich in flavor. Seriously good. ~Elise

Yep, I’m back with another barbecue creation. This time it’s a dark, rich sauce loaded with smoky flavor. I designed this to go with red meat, preferably beef, venison or bison, but I bet it’d work with pork or poultry, too.

The two key ingredients in this sauce are chipotles in adobo and liquid smoke. Liquid smoke, which is essentially distilled smoke collected from moisture added while burning hickory – and it’s hickory smoke I use here -- is available in most supermarkets.

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This smokey barbecue sauce from Hank Shaw is one of the best bbq sauces I have ever tasted. Smokey, spicy, and rich in flavor. Seriously good. ~Elise

Yep, I’m back with another barbecue creation. This time it’s a dark, rich sauce loaded with smoky flavor. I designed this to go with red meat, preferably beef, venison or bison, but I bet it’d work with pork or poultry, too.

The two key ingredients in this sauce are chipotles in adobo and liquid smoke. Liquid smoke, which is essentially distilled smoke collected from moisture added while burning hickory – and it’s hickory smoke I use here -- is available in most supermarkets.

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Have you ever tried smoked mozzarella cheese? It's sort of like a mozzarella version of gouda. I had never encountered it until my father used it in a recipe he got from a local butcher shop. This is the recipe, with lots of changes from the original which called for three times as much cheese. We found with this cheese that, unlike regular mozzarella which is quite mild in flavor, a little smoked mozzarella goes a long way. We've made this several times; it now makes a regular appearance in my parent's home because it's quick, filling, and quite tasty. It also makes terrific leftovers.

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Every year about this time we are inundated with fresh apricots from our neighbor's tree. And every year I tell myself I'm going to make a chicken dish with them, but never get around to it. Instead, we'll make apricot jam, apricot cobbler, apricot tart, or just eat them straight. Finally this year, we've experimented with apricot chicken and I'm quite please with the results. The additions of rosemary, Tabasco, and especially cinnamon really brighten up the flavors and make the dish more interesting than you would expect. We served it over rice, but it would be also pretty good with some egg noodles.

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When the summer months come, I find it almost impossibly hard to resist buying fresh blueberries by the double basketful. Thank goodness they're such good brain food! (These days my brain needs all the help it can get.) My twelve year old nephew is in town which is perfect excuse to make shortcake of any variety. Unlike with strawberries, where all you have to do is cut them and sprinkle them with sugar, to get the blueberries juicy enough for shortcake it works well to cook them, just a little, with sugar. This way more juices are released. This recipe makes a lot of blueberry topping. If you find you have leftover, it's great over ice cream, or better yet, pancakes.

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With all the hot weather much of the country has been experiencing, we thought we'd suggest a gazpacho, a chilled soup, one that you can make quickly, with minimal use of the stove. Not all gazpachos are made with tomatoes. White gazpacho is a classic dish from Spain, earlier versions dating back to when the Moors controlled Andalucia. This version is made with bread, blanched almonds, green grapes, cucumbers, olive oil, and garlic. Odd combination you might think, but let me assure you, it truly is delicious. There's no dairy. The soup gets body and protein from the blanched almonds. The bread acts as a thickener. The cucumbers are wonderfully cooling.

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Please welcome Hank Shaw as he shares a favorite black-eyed pea salad. Perfect for hot summer days! ~Elise

I spent much of my life thinking that black-eyed peas were a Southern thing, and then I worked in an Ethiopian restaurant, where the African clientele told me that black-eyed peas actually come from Africa. Years later, I began cooking Greek food – and imagine my surprise to find all sorts of dishes using black-eyed peas! I have no idea how they became so popular in Greece, but there you go.

This is not any sort of traditional Greek recipe, more of a Greek-inspired side dish or light vegetarian supper I’ve done in various forms over the years. I love black-eyed peas because they cook very fast and need no pre-soaking the way a lot of regular beans do.

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Do you remember the first time you had a root beer float? I do. I must have been around 7 years old and we were visiting my grandparents in Phoenix, in the summer. Have you ever been to Arizona in the summer? Must be why I find Sacramento so tolerable. Let's just say it's hot. I still remember all of us greedy kids, still in our swim suits, having been cooling off in the pool all day, lined up in the kitchen, wide eyed as we watched my father scoop ice cream into tall glasses, and then slowly pour root beer over them. The concoction would start to foam up and sometimes spill over (of course we would lick the sides of the glass when that happened). The foam would eventually recede a bit and we would get another dose of root beer to top us off. Then we would poke at the ice cream with our straws until it dislodged from the sides of the glass and floated to the surface. Sometimes he added the scoops of ice cream to our root beers. But usually it was ice cream first, because then you could control the foam up more carefully. If you just add a scoop of ice cream to root beer, better be ready to catch all the foam as it comes erupting over the sides.

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Is it just me, or is beer can chicken a boy thing? Look, I grew up with four younger brothers, and if you told them you were going to insert a half-drunk beer into the butt of a chicken and grill it, I think they would actually get interested in cooking. Joking aside, this is a brilliant way to roast a chicken, on the grill or in the oven. Yes the chicken looks rather ridiculous on its beer can perch, covered with an herb rub and half-ready to salute you. But hear me out. While the chicken is dry roasting on the outside, the inside is being bathed with steamy beer, keeping the chicken meat wonderfully moist. The result is tender, falling-off-the-bone meat, encased in salty, herby, crispy skin. What follows is a basic method for beer can chicken (also known as beer butt chicken for obvious reasons). We're using just some olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme on the chicken, which we believe brings out the best in the chicken's flavor. You can easily experiment with your favorite spice rub, or even use wine or root beer instead of a standard beer.

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