As promised

It's dark already?! The day escaped us. And now it's time to finish dinner, give the baby a bath, and settle in for the night. But first, as promised, here's that recipe for Swedish Apple Pie. I've added cranberries, and I think it would be equally nice with pears.

SWEDISH APPLE PIE

I found this recipe in The Apple Lover's Cookbook, a new book from W.W. Norton. They very nicely sent me a copy in the mail and I've been working my way through. I like this recipe because it's an easy alternative to pie—no crust, no fuss—tasty and quick.

3 large apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4-inch slices

1/2 cup cranberries

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon plus 1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons plus 1 cup granulated sugar

10 tablespoons butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pan

1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a pie plate and set it aside.

In a mixing bowl, toss the apple slices with the cinnamon, 1 tablespoon of the flour, and 2 tablespoons of the sugar. Pour the mixture into the bottom of the pie plate and smooth it into an even layer.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a standing mixer and beat until just combined. Use the back of a wooden spoon to spread the batter evenly over the apples and cranberries. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and crackly. Serve warm from the pan.

Along the way

Hi! We've been on the road. I've been wanting to check in, but apparently when you travel with a two month old that is easier said than done. Sally has been very busy meeting friends and relatives in Maine and Wellesley, and we've been very busy showing her off. Here she is at her very first coffee shop stop in Portland:

We've been cooking along the way, and I have a recipe I want to share with you for Swedish Apple Cake, but I'm going to give it a few days. Between the turkey and the pie and the parties, I think we could all use a break. I'll see you Monday, everyone. Happy holidays!

Take note

I have a root vegetable recipe for you today. That seems sort of odd, I realize, given that it's currently 62 degrees outside, but let's keep in mind that it's the weather that isn't seasonal, not the recipe. (Not that I'm complaining! Weather gods take note!)

At any rate, I found the idea for the recipe in this month's Bon Appetit. It was one of those write-ins—someone from South Carolina had eaten at a restaurant in Atlanta and wanted the recipe for a roasted carrot and beet salad. I tucked it aside in my pile of To Make Soon clippings, but when I went to start cooking, I realized the page I ripped out had the ingredients, but not the directions. It didn't look like rocket science—there was a list of dressing like substances, then a pile that sounded more like salad fixings—but when I compared notes later online, it turned out we came to similar places, but via different methods.

I also decided that I wanted it to be more of a salad than just a pile of roasted vegetables, so I saved the beet greens, chopped them up, and added some arugula. I ate it with a piece of pan-seared pollock, and a few slices of grilled bread. And even though the sun was shining and I was wearing a t-shirt and feeling very far away from the root vegetable era, it really hit the spot.

I'm liking this November.

ROASTED BEET AND CARROT SALAD

Here's my version of the Bon Appetit version which in turn was an Empire State South version of a Spotted Pig original! Confusing! But so, so good.

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 cup olive oil plus more for drizzling

salt and pepper to taste

1 pound carrots cut into "carrot stick size" pieces

1/2 pound beets peeled and cut into the same size pieces

1/2 cup lightly packed finely chopped parsley

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves

a handful of washed and torn beet greens

a handful of washed and torn arugula

1/2 cup crumbled feta

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toast the cumin seeds over medium heat in a small dry skillet, stirring often. When they start to get fragrant (3-4 minutes), they're done. Grind them up using a mortar and pestle.

Whisk together the ground cumin seeds, lemon juice, vinegar, Dijon mustard, and 1/2 cup of the olive oil in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

Combine the carrots and beets in a Pyrex dish. Drizzle them with olive oil and roast them in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until just tender. Transfer the roasted root vegetables to a salad bowl and toss them with the reserved dressing, parsley, mint, beet greens, and arugula. Crumble the feta over top and serve at once.

Note: I ate my salad with the vegetables hot, but they could also be roasted ahead of time and served either at room temperature or even straight from the fridge.

The Local Food Report: Nikki McClure

We don't talk enough about books around here. So today, I'd like to make a recommendation. It's a kids book:

It's the first book I bought for the baby, way back in May. It's about a little boy and his mother shopping the farmers' market—based on the experience of author Nikki McClure and her son at their farmers' market in Olympia, Washington. Everyone in the book is real—Nikki gives their real names and describes how their real growing processes work, and in the illustrations, she even shows their real tattoos.

I met Nikki this spring, when she was giving a reading at the Falmouth Farmers' Market. I asked her what inspired her to write the book, and she said mostly, she wanted to find out about what was going into the food she was buying each week. That, and she wanted to write a book that would help kids put words grown-ups were tossing around all the time—things like local and organic—into every day, normal kid terms. So she started talking with people like Michael, the apple vendor, and Steve, who sells smoked salmon, and asking them about the work they did. She learned some pretty cool stuff.

I don't want to give too much away, because it really is a good read, but I did want to show you some of the illustrations.

Nikki is actually best known for her artwork. She makes her illustrations using an X-acto knife—all those black segments up there are a single piece of paper. If she makes a mistake, she has to either work it into the picture, or start all over. Then later, she scans it and fills in some bits with color on the computer.

She says she likes to use color sparingly, so that when you see it, you know it's important.

If you have a chance, pick up a copy of the book, or head to the library and check it out. It's a kid book, but it's also the kind of book you can learn a lot from as an adult.

Quick!

If you hurry, you might get one last eggplant at the farmers' markets. If you're really lucky, you might even get a looker like this:

If you do, I've got a recipe for you. It's an Asian inspired eggplant and beef stir-fry from this month's issue of Bon Appetit, and it is GOOD. I've taken to making dinner in the mornings, while Sally sleeps—she seems happiest riding around on my chest while I'm doing the laundry or taking a walk or cooking—so we've been looking for recipes that we can do ahead. Dinner time apparently is prime time for fussing and nursing, and so we mince our garlic and mint and whisk together our soy sauce and nuoc nam in the a.m.

Beyond the eggplant, all you need is some local pastured steak, a few handfuls of mint from the garden, and some Asian basics that you probably already have tucked away in the cupboard. Oh! and an appetite. Good luck with the eggplant.

EGGPLANT AND BEEF STIR-FRY

Alex sells pastured Northeast Family Farms beef at his market in Truro. A wide variety of cuts will work—anything from top sirloin to skirt steak to to flank steak to beef eye round.

4 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 one-inch piece ginger, peeled and minced

1 tablespoon fish sauce (we use nuoc nam)

juice of 1/2 lime

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon granulated sugar

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound eggplant, cut into bite size pieces

1/2 pound steak

rice noodles

Whisk together the mint, soy sauce, ginger, nuoc nam, lime juice, garlic, and sugar in a large bowl. Set aside.

Warm the oil up in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and sauté the eggplant until golden brown. Transfer the eggplant to the bowl with the dressing, keeping the pan warm. Now sear the steak in the same pan and add this to the eggplant mixture. Toss well.

Finally, cook the rice noodles and drain. Let each person serve themselves a bowl of noodles topped with the eggplant and steak mixture and some of the sauce.

A do over

Did you carve a pumpkin? We meant to, but the Rouge Vif d'Etampes we bought at the farmers' market over a month ago is still sitting on the stoop. Amazingly, it's also still perfectly firm. So now that Halloween has come and gone and Sally has taken her costume off, I think we'll eat it instead.

I'm thinking I'll cut it into slices, roast it, puree it, and then make another batch of pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I made some the other day, but I gave most of them away, so I think we'll have a do over. I first discovered pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies at my friend Abbie's house sometime in junior high, and I've been a big fan ever since. They're much more moist than plain old chocolate chip cookies, with full cookie flavor but a texture that's almost like a cross between cookies and gingerbread. Last year I discovered that oats make an excellent addition, and I've been making the recipe below ever since.

Happy pumpkin season, everyone.

OATMEAL-PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE-CHIP COOKIES

This recipe is adapted slightly from Abbie's original. Any variety of winter squash or pumpkin puree will work fine; I often use butternut. Be sure to use dark chocolate chips—the cookies are sweet enough as is.

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 and 1/3 cups old-fashioned oats

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

2 sticks butter, softened

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup pureed pumpkin or squash

1 large egg

1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups dark chocolate chips

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.

In another mixing bowl, cream the butter with the sugars and honey until light and fluffy. Add the pumpkin, egg, and vanilla, and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and the chocolate chips and stir until just combined; do not over mix. Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Scoop the dough using two spoons into balls; drop the balls onto two un-greased cookie sheets. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until just barely cooked through. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Yields 24 cookies.

For Nancy

First, because I can't resist, a Sally photo. I promise we'll get back to fruits and vegetables soon.

And on the business side of things, a recipe! For Nancy, from the archives, here goes:

COCONUT CURRIED KOHLRABI AND SWISS CHARD

You can find kohlrabi at most farmers' markets. When selecting kohlrabi, keep in mind that the purple stems are sweeter and a bit more mild spice-wise than the green versions. Look for small, tender pieces, as the bigger they get the woodier they tend to be inside.

1 tablespoon butter

2 large cloves garlic, minced

6 scallions, chopped fine

1 tennis ball-size kohlrabi, peeled and diced

8-10 cups Swiss chard, chopped and packed

1/2 can coconut milk plus 1/4 cup water

1 tablespoon red curry paste

1 and 1/2 tablespoons peanut butter

salt

Get out a big, heavy-bottomed soup pot and put it over medium heat. Melt the butter, and throw in the scallions and the garlic. Stir briskly so that the garlic doesn't burn, cooking for only a minute.

Now add the kohlrabi and sauté a bit more before adding the Swiss chard. Once the greens are in the pot, put the lid tightly on top and let them steam down for about five minutes, stirring everything from time to time.

Remove the lid and add the coconut milk and the red curry paste. Turn up the heat to medium-high and keep stirring until the paste dissolves in the milk. When the liquid starts to boil throw in the peanut butter and stir until this dissolves too.

Turn the heat down to a simmer, season the pot with salt, and let the flavors cook together for a minute or two. Serve the vegetables and broth in a wide, shallow bowl over a scoop of brown rice. Sriracha hot sauce or another hot chili sauce makes a nice topping.

Sally & I

Hi, friends.

Sorry to have been gone so long, but Sally and I have had a lot of catching up to do. It's very different for both of us with her here, on the outside, but it's also pretty great. My parents left Tuesday, which was both nice and scary, and the three of us are slowly settling into a routine. Mostly this involves nursing and reading and trying to sleep and doing laundry and walking, and while that might not sound like a lot, it keeps us very busy.

We've also managed to start cooking again—nothing very complicated—a salad for lunch, a pot of ham and beans for supper. But mostly, we've been relying on the kitchens of family and friends. Luckily we have good friends, friends who bring things like Torta di Mele, a moist, crackly apple cake that reminds me of my host mother in Spain. Lourdes made the best apple cake—it was moist and custardy and sweet, and I've tried but never been able to recreate it. Until Teresa brought one over, complete with a print out of the recipe. It's nearly gone now, so I don't have a proper picture for you, but believe me this is a cake you want to make. It is simple and elegant and in a very homey way quite pretty, and perfect this time of year.

We'll see you soon, friends, and until then, I hope we all find time to bake.

TORTA DI MELE

In English, this apparently is called "Apple Cake with a Crackly Meringue." Whatever you want to call it, it comes from both Italy and Spain, and this version in particular comes from Lynn Rosetto Kasper's The Italian Country Table. Teresa's baked up beautifully—crackly and wispy on top and moist in the center.

2 cups plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 and 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

a pinch of salt

1 and 1/2 sticks cold butter, cut into small pieces

3/4 cup milk

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

shredded zest of 1 large lemon

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 large (about 1 pound) apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1 large egg white

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9-inch spring form pan.

In a large bowl, work together the 2 cups of flour, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar, the salt, and the butter with your fingers until crumbly. Take 1 cup of this mixture and press it over the bottom of the pan and about 1/2 inch up the sides to make a crust.

Make a well in the remaining crumb mixture. Add the milk, eggs, vanilla, lemon zest, remaining flour, and baking powder. Blend these liquid ingredients in the well as best you can without mixing in the crumbs. Then stir in the crumbs until well blended but still a little lumpy. Fold in the apples and scrape the batter into the pan over the crust.

Beat the egg white until foamy in a small bowl. Beat in the remaining sugar until the mixture forms peaks. Spread this over the batter.

Bake for an hour to 75 minutes or until the top is golden brown and a straw comes out clean. Cool and serve at room temperature. Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream make a nice accompaniment, but the cake is so moist that they aren't essential.

The Local Food Report: black walnuts

There are some tastes you never forget. The flavor of wild American black walnuts is one of them.

I first tried black walnuts this fall, when my forager friend, Richard Bailey, gave me a sack of them. I'd been hearing about them for years: from my grandmother, who grew up with them, and from my mother, describing the black walnut cake she used to make with them. They both got a sort of dreamy, far away look when they talked about the nuts---the kind of look people get when they talk about tastes and memories that belong to another time, another place. When I finally bit into a slice of my grandmother's black walnut cake for the first time a few weeks ago, I understood: black walnuts are all wild, all American, all history.

They don't grow on the Cape, not naturally. Their range extends from Western Massachusetts and Vermont out to southern Ontario, down to central Texas, and then east into Georgia and up the coast. But an Austrian couple in Wellfleet planted a tree half a century ago, and each fall, it produces.

The tree itself looks sort of like a locust---compound pinnate leaves and scratchy bark---but it's actually in the hickory family. The nuts are housed in a fleshy husk that's green straight off the tree, then slowly fades to black. They're famously hard to open: Richard Bailey uses a knife and a bench vice, but others have used hammers, rocks, the tires of their cars. Once you get through the husk, you find a hard shell, same as an English Walnut, so you still have to crack that. Finally, you get to the nutmeats, about a cup for every two pounds un-shelled.

It's a lot of work, but when you taste that flavor, you know it was worth it. The recipe my grandmother handed down to me is called Maryland Black Walnut Cake, and it comes from the Shields Chesapeake Bay Cookbook, circa 1990. She used to have an older recipe, the one my great-grandmother made, but that one's gone and this one is close, she says. It calls for all the usuals: flour, butter, sugar, eggs, a little bit of vanilla and baking powder and milk and salt. But then you add the black walnuts---1 and 1/2 cups of pure ground musk, and it changes the whole game. The flavor is something like really good banana bread soaked in port and black currant cordial with a little bit of smoke mixed in. It's good straight out of the oven but it gets better over the course of a few days---more moist, more pungent, somehow more rare.

I can't hand you a slice through the screen, but I can give you the next best thing: everything you need to bake your own cake, grow your own trees. You can buy black walnuts online, over here, and this company sells the trees online. And thanks to my grandmother, here's that cake recipe.

MARYLAND BLACK WALNUT CAKE

My grandmother talks about a recipe Gransie (her grandmother) used to make, but we can't find that anywhere. Instead, she sent me this recipe card from her files, with a note at the bottom that says "Shields Chesapeake Bay Cookbook, 1990."

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter

1 and 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 eggs, separated

3/4 cup milk

1 and 1/2 cup ground black walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube or Bundt cake pan.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg yolks and beat well. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the creamed butter mixture, mixing well after each addition.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they're stiff but not dry and gently fold them into the batter along with the ground black walnuts until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes, or until a piece of straw comes out clean. Turn the cake onto a rack to cool, then dust with confectioners' sugar before serving.

The Local Food Report: plum nutty

Today, I'd like to let my grandmother do the storytelling. A while back, when she moved into an assisted living apartment, she stopped cooking. She's always been one hell of a cook---things like oven-fried chicken, stuffed potatoes, and tenderloin wrapped in bacon so rich it makes you melt---and recently, when she realized how interested I was, she gave me her old book of recipes. I wanted to know the stories behind the pages of measurements and ingredients, so one weekend, my mom and I flew down to her place in Richmond. I brought my recording gear, and we talked about food, and family, and recipes. One night, I asked her about something called plum nutty. Here's the story, in her words:

"Plum nutty? Oh, that's very special. That's a recipe that came from my gynecologist in Sandusky, Ohio. And he had been a flight surgeon during World War Two, stationed in the Pacific. And after he came back to the States he happened to be a member of our church, and every Christmas, he gave me plum nutty.

He would never tell me how to make it but he would give it to me. And plum nutty was made with plums---was a preserve---made with plums and nutmeats and it was very good as preserves but it was even better to put on top of vanilla ice cream.

So. I kiddingly knew he'd never give me the recipe but I just deviled him for it all the time and he also took care of me physically and I had several miscarriages after my son was born. And then came the day when I was pregnant again and it looked like this one was gonna stick with me.

And after Liz was born, he came to the house one day with two jars of plum nutty, and the recipe. So that's how I got the recipe for plum nutty."

Every time I listen to my grandmother tell the story, I tear up a little bit. When I think of her and the eight years she spent waiting for that recipe and waiting for my mom, I know that gift from her doctor must have felt like gold. My mom still has the original piece of paper, in Dean Sheldon's handwriting. She scanned it into the computer the other day, so that I could put it up here, for you. I hope you'll make it---plums, right now, are in season---and I hope that when you do, you'll know it's something special.