How Sweet It Is: Apple Butter

OK Autumn, I resisted, but you got me; I am beguiled. You've become a sweet taste in my mouth, now. You wooed me with golden light, blazing trees, and crunchy carpets of leaves, and closed it with apple butter: Honeycrisps cooked for hours and hours with cider and cinnamon, transformed into a spoonful of heaven on earth.

Apple Butter
(A grateful nod to Martha Stewart)

2 tablespoons coconut oil (or unsalted butter)
7 medium apples, peeled, cored, and quartered
2 1/2 cups apple cider
small pinch salt
2 tablespoons ume vinegar (or lemon juice, but ume vinegar is divine!)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 250.

Melt coconut oil in a dutch oven or big pot, add apples and stir over medium heat for five minutes.

Add cider and salt, bring to a boil, simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Allow mixture to cool a little. Add ume vinegar or lemon juice and cinnamon. Blend using handheld blender or regular blender.

Spread into a large baking dish and bake 4 hours.

Turn oven off (don't open the door) and let apple butter sit overnight, or at least a few hours. The alchemy will happen; it will darken and thicken and become concentrated and sweet. Wait for it.

Keeps in a sealed container in the fridge for several days, but it will not last that long so don't worry about it.

Apple butter is amazing with biscuits. I was too slow to take a "before" picture.

It's Over: Summer's End Succotash

Today is the first full day of autumn and the first day of classes at the esteemed institution where I'm lucky enough to work. I usually welcome this back-to-school season and leap right into jacket weather, a box of new pencils in my pocket. But some years I feel autumn for what it really is; a wrackful effing siege. Goodbye sun, farewell beach, hello darkness my old friend.

But this is a blog about food, not death, and now is a spectacular time of year for food, I'll give you that. I'll give you this too: a recipe perfectly suited for saying goodbye to summer, whether it was the best one of your life or the hardest one of your life, or a particularly exquisite combination of the two.

Summer's End Succotash
Serves 8

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, minced very finely
1 clove garlic, minced
1 or more jalapeño (or other) pepper, minced
1 sweet pepper, chopped
1 cup okra, chopped
1 cup green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 pound summer squash, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons fresh sage, minced
4 ears of corn, kernels cut from cobs


Heat oil and cook onion with a tiny pinch of salt over medium-low heat for at least ten minutes.

Add all the rest of the ingredients except corn, bring to a boil, reduce to simmer covered for ten minutes.

Add corn, stir well, cook ten minutes more, covered and undisturbed.

Serve immediately. Garnish with more sage if you want. Maybe the fall will be okay after all.

Summer Fruit Crisp: When the Living is Lazy

When the berries are perfect but you're too lazy to make pie, make berry crisp.

When you're too lazy to write a real blog post, post an easy recipe for berry crisp that you've tested a  bunch of times and always turns out crazy good.

Berry Crisp (Vegan)
Serves 6-8

Topping:
1 cup oats, divided
1/3 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar or coconut sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted

Filling:
8 cups berries
3/4 cup sugar (haven't tried coconut sugar in the filling - would that work?)
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
Grated zest of 1 lemon
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
Big pinch salt

Preheat oven to 375.

Prepare topping: Combine 3/4 cup of oats, flour, sugar, salt, and coconut oil in a medium bowl and stir with a fork to combine. Use your fingers to work in remaining 1/4 cup oats.

Prepare filling: Mix everything together and spread in a baking dish.

Scatter topping over fruit mixture and bake until topping is brown, at least 60 minutes. Maybe 70.

Cool one hour before serving.

The Pie Who Loved Me: Perfect Blueberry Pie

Sorry about the title of this post. But I have had two intense emotional experiences with this particular blueberry pie and therefore feel entitled to my goofy, grammatically nonsensical pun, okay?

The first was at its place of origin, The Grit in Athens, Georgia. I was on tour, feeling homesick and fragile, and a slice of this pie moved me to tears. I don't know if it was the crying or the eating that helped, all I know is I cleaned my plate and was happier, and since then I have attributed therapeutic powers to The Grit's blueberry pie. I acquired the recipe years ago, but haven't turned to it until this summer, on a tough weekend when I felt too down to do much of anything. Once again, the pie did not disappoint.

I guess that any absorbing activity, anything that takes your focus out of your bad brain, can assuage a bout of the blues. The specific advantages of making perfect blueberry pie are: 1) there is a fair amount of booze involved, and 2) the activity concludes with YOU EATING PIE. Which in itself makes everything at least a little bit better.

Perfect Blueberry Pie

Adapted from a recipe in The Grit Restaurant Cookbook  

Pie Crust for double-crust pie (we use the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for vodka piecrust and it turns out great every time)

2 tablespoons cornstarch

Juice and zest of 1 medium lemon

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons brandy

4 -1/2 cups fresh blueberries

¾ cup sugar

2 tablespoons butter, chopped into small pieces

1 heaping tablespoon sour cream

1 tablespoon flour

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 450. Line a deep pie pan with ½ of pie crust.

Combine cornstarch, lemon juice, lemon zest, vanilla, and brandy and mix well. Add blueberries, sugar, butter, sour cream, flour and cinnamon and gently stir until combined. Pour into pie crust and cover with top crust.

Place pie on a large cookie sheet (Very important! This is a very juicy pie that will explode all over your oven!).

Bake at 450 for ten minutes, then reduce heat to 350. Bake an additional 50-55 minutes until golden and bubbling.

Cool completely at room temperature and then refrigerate until tomorrow, if you can stand to wait. Your patience will be rewarded. 

Alone in the Kitchen with Some Okra: Grits with Spicy Greens Gumbo (Vegan)

Today ends a two-week stretch of much alone time and many quiet meals. My partner has been in Germany, my oldest kid wrapped up in his new adult life, my youngest occupied with a summer internship. Nobody has been saying, "what's for dinner?" Have I missed hearing this question? It's complicated.

Tonight my family will reunite around the dinner table and I am truly looking forward to it. But last night I treated myself to one final solo meal, my dream dinner: grits topped with spicy greens gumbo. Nobody in my family but me could enjoy this dish - Henry hates onions, Jake's not fond of okra, Jonah won't eat grits. But it made me sigh happily and contentedly into my big empty apartment.

The inspiration for this meal came from the tiny handful of gorgeous okra pictured above, all that remained by the time my lazy ass rolled into the Evanston Farmers Market on Saturday morning. I wouldn't have even bothered buying such a small amount if I'd had a group to feed, but it was just enough for me, just enough to elevate an otherwise plain pot of greens into an indulgent and memorable meal.

Grits with Spicy Greens Gumbo
Serves 1. Very generously. You're worth it.

1/2 cup grits
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
1 big bunch of greens (kale or whatever - or use a mixture)
Okra (3 or 4, or more if they're tiny like mine)
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup or so of greens cooking liquid (see below)
1/2 teaspoon salt
Crushed red pepper flakes

Cook grits in 1.5 cups of water with a big pinch of salt.

Heat oil in a very big skillet, add onions with a pinch of salt. When onions sizzle, reduce heat to medium-low and cook for as long as you possibly can until onions are incredibly tender and sweet and golden. 15 minutes, minimum. Don't let them brown.

Meanwhile, put washed, un-chopped greens and okra in a big pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Boil 5 minutes, drain but RESERVE COOKING WATER and set vegetables aside to cool a bit.

Give your onions a stir. Check on your grits. Do whatever you want: drum along to some disco songs really loud, anything, you've got the place to yourself.

Chop greens and okra very fine. Remove stems from greens only if they are big and tough.

How are your onions doing? They should taste amazing. If they don't, cook them a bit more. Don't rush. Don't cheat yourself. When they do taste amazing, add the chopped greens and okra and stir well to combine. Add flour and stir until flour is fully incorporated and smells a little nutty, probably a minute or so. Add greens cooking liquid and increase heat to bring mixture to a simmer. Add salt and crushed red pepper.

Allow gumbo to simmer covered for ten minutes (check and add more greens cooking liquid if you need to) or until greens are very tender and melt in your mouth. Your teeth should meet no resistance here.

Serve on top of grits, garnished with more red pepper flakes.

Everything's Coming Up Lemon Bars

Lemon bars divide people into those who think, 'they're fine, whatever, what's the big deal,' and those who think they're everything in the world. I fall into the latter camp. Big time.

It is surprising then, that I've never perfected a lemon bar recipe, have never had much luck making them myself. And most bakery versions are deeply disappointing. So I don't eat lemon bars very often. But I always want to.

This longing of mine filtered into a weird short story I wrote a few years ago, "And the Lemon Bar Stared Back at Me," whose protagonist is seduced, you might say, by an extremely good lemon bar. When it was published by the lovely online magazine Punchnel's last week (you can read it here), I felt inspired to once and for all make a lemon bar that would satisfy me. I started by gathering together recipes from the most popular and beloved food blogs and websites. I bought a big bag of lemons. A very big bag.

And it didn't go well at all. Four batches in and I did NOT have what I was looking for: too floury, too sugary, oily crust, not enough filling. Ugh. My house smelled great, but it was depressing to throw out all those inferior bars.

Fifth time was the charm. I should have started with Cooks Illustrated; in my experience their recipes are not always exciting, but they are almost always sturdy and reliable, and this lemon bar recipe is completely perfect: worthy of adoration; capable of seduction.

Kale and Pineapple Smoothie

Maybe you've had just a few nips too many lately.

For whatever reason.

Maybe you've been waiting and waiting for news that never will come, or maybe you're pining for some happy day gone by. Maybe you feel like you've been working two jobs (wait, maybe you have been working two jobs) and all-work-no-play is killing your soul. Maybe you wrote the chorus but the verses won't come, maybe your body is exhausted but your brain won't let you sleep, maybe your kid just moved into an apartment and you feel that terrible blend of relieved and shattered.

The reasons don't matter. What matters, for our purposes here, is this: your liver needs some love. It has to filter every drop of that so-called blood of yours.

Try this kale and pineapple smoothie for breakfast. According to my friend who mostly eats raw food and looks annoyingly good, pineapple is full of detoxifying agents that help neutralize toxins in the liver, and leafy greens have lots of chlorophyl which supports the liver and cleans the blood.

By my calculations, one of these smoothies cancels out one of last night's units, so do your own math and figure out how many servings you'll need. Okay I made that up, but I am trying to help.

Kale and Pineapple Smoothie
2 servings

2 cups kale or other greens, or mixture (I like kale, wheatgrass, and a few sprouts)
2 cups chopped fresh pineapple
1 banana
1 cup coconut milk or other milk

Blend. Drink. Repeat.