Author: Isabel Montclaire

Last week, I emptied out a storage unit that had hung like an albatross around my neck for several years. I opened up boxes and was surprised to see contents I had long forgotten about. Old things became new again, like presents, as one after the other jumped out of those dormant boxes.

One large box in particular was quite heavy and with all my might, I hoisted it onto a table and opened it. The box contained swing-top-bale jars in a variety of sizes that were filled with food from my previous pantry (a swing-top-bale jar is a jar with a metal clasp and a rubber gasket typically used for canning and they are great for storing dry ingredients too). I opened a few jars expecting dull and stale aromas but was pleasantly greeted with all sorts of concentrated scents. The food was the same as I had left it. The colors were vibrant and none of the food looked unappetizing. Porcini mushroom powder, dark cocoa, smoked paprika, peppermint tea, and black pepper all had strong fragrances and the food still seemed fresh. How would that food taste after all those years?

That night, I took a few jars home to find out if their strong scents indicated fresh flavors. The litmus test would be a jar of black pepper that was at least five or six years old, maybe more. I had ordered it from a store in New York City named Kalustyans, after reading an article in Cook’s Illustrated magazine that said their house blend pepper was the best in the world. I filled my pepper grinder with that old pepper and put some on a fried egg sandwich and much to my surprise, the pepper burst with multiple layers of flavor. I also made a hot cocoa with the dark chocolate powder and it was delicious as if I had bought the chocolate yesterday.

When I opened the jars, I heard a popping sound because the jar was sealed airtight. That explained why the food had lasted so long; food deteriorates quickly when exposed to air. Bale jars are somewhat spendy as far as jars go, but are one-time investments that can last a lifetime. Maybe consider buying a few at a time. The French made La Parfait, Italian Fido, and English Kilner jars the best. They are well designed and easy to open and close. The rubber seals are replaceable; you will know you need new ones when the rubber starts to crack. The seals come in a pack of ten and are inexpensive. You won’t have to ever replace or recycle the jars. Even if they stay in your storage unit for years. Or decades.

I love the color explosion of fall when suddenly poof! the leaves change color almost overnight and then the pumpkins arrive. There they are dotted around town in front of stores, shops, and on doorsteps painted with so many artistic faces. Next comes a pumpkin that roasts in the oven, followed by warm pumpkin bread smeared with butter and eaten with a cup of Earl Grey at teatime. Maybe a surprise visit from a friend will be the perfect accompaniment.

I’ve been making this pumpkin bread recipe for years and love it because in addition to pumpkin, you can switch it up with applesauce, zucchini, bananas, and probably any other pureed fruit or vegetable (though I doubt radishes would work well). Reliable and versatile recipes are worth their weight in gold; they are very much like good friends or a comfortable old sweater with a hole or two in it.

Pumpkin Bread

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
½ to 1 cup sugar depending on how sweet you like it
Spices: ½ tsp each cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger or 1+ tablespoon any other combination of warm spices
2 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla or other flavoring (I like maple, almond, and hazelnut)
1 cup pumpkin or other pureed fruit or vegetable
Chopped nuts, raisins, dates, candied ginger, chocolate chips, etc.

Combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and thoroughly mix them together. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan. You can vary the size of the loaf —just make sure the pan is filled about ⅔ full; you can use muffin tins, too. Bake in a 350⁰ oven for 35-40 minutes or until the bread starts to pull away from the edges of the pan and cracks appear on the surface. Cool in the pan. This bread freezes well, too.

Last week I visited my dear friend Marge and she had baked a butternut squash so we decided to make this pumpkin bread. She has a friend from Nepal who gave her a spice blend of cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and black pepper. I was a bit reluctant to use the spice blend because I wasn’t sure how the pepper would taste, but it turned out to be a splendid addition. We soaked some raisins overnight in rum and toasted some walnuts in a cast iron skillet. The loaf came out of the oven and with great impatience we ate it while it was still steaming.  We were not even polite enough to wait for it to finish cooling! That was at noon and by five it was almost gone. It was undoubtedly the best version of this recipe that I have ever eaten. Try it! You might just like it.

I’m a blue cheese fan and I’ve noticed that people either love it or they hate it; there’s no in-between. Some people abhor the idea of eating moldy cheese – eeeeew!! Yet blue cheese has an extraordinarily pungent, savory, and concentrated flavor. Blue cheese lovers, read on!

My friend Joanne recently gave me her recipe for blue cheese salad dressing and it’s the best I have ever eaten and so simple to make. The dressing gets better with age and it lasts for a couple of weeks in the fridge. I like to use it on a classic “wedge” salad, the kind served at high-end steak houses: a wedge of iceberg lettuce, crumbled bacon, and blue cheese dressing. Simple! Over the years fancy baby green lettuces have appeared on the market and iceberg lettuce has taken somewhat of a back seat, considered to be pedestrian and boring among the sea of these fancier “party greens”. Yet iceberg is succulent, sweet, crisp, and crunchy and it has little crevices that coddle the dressing. It’s a lovely supporting actor that makes other flavors “pop” beautifully. I also use blue cheese dressing on a salad of romaine with baby shrimp, tomatoes, hardboiled eggs, and cucumbers. I’ve even used it on a baked potato – yum!!!

This dressing can be made in any amount; it’s the proportions that matter. I usually use a cup of each ingredient and two cloves of garlic and the juice of one whole lemon.

Blue Cheese Dressing

⅓ sour cream
⅓ mayonnaise
⅓ blue cheese
Minced garlic
Lemon juice

Crumble the blue cheese (if it isn’t already) and vigorously mix the ingredients together with a fork. Make it at least one day before you plan to use it and store it in glass jar. Blue cheese freezes quite well and in fact, I’ve noticed that after it has been frozen it lasts much longer in the fridge. I like the widely available Danish blue cheese for use in recipes because it is relatively inexpensive, crumbly, available, and the flavor is wildly complex and robust.

A blue cheese from Oregon won international recognition several years ago. The Rogue River Creamery’s “Rogue River Blue” was given the World Champion award at the World Cheese Awards in 2019. This was the first time ever a cheese from the United States took top prize in this contest and it competed against a record-breaking 3804 cheeses from 42 countries.

A judge commented “the flavor is exceptional, exhibiting blackberry, vanilla, hazelnut, chocolate, and bacon flavors”. Wow! Now I am absolutely curious! This cheese is available on their website. I’m gonna’ put it on my wish list for Santa. I hope that Santa likes blue cheese too and knows how to shop on the internet.

Last week I wrote about the conundrum I was in while shopping on the internet for a mandolin — a tool that makes easy work of slicing fruits and vegetables. Trying to find a mandolin that was a cut above the rest (did you spot the pun?) was not an easy task because there were soooo many choices. I finally ordered one that was 20 dollars,  easy to use, and made by the Japanese company Kyocera who specializes in razor sharp ceramic blades (caution — consider using cut-resistant gloves).

When the package arrived, I was filled with glee like I was a little kid who expected a toy to be in the box. That got me thinking; as adults we do not use the word play very often. Why not? We get serious and focused and busy and think of tasks like slicing vegetables as work. Well, to heck with that attitude.I wadded up the idea of “adults can’t play” and flung it over my shoulder and with sheer delight, opened the box to have fun with my new toy.

There it was and I was so excited, I dashed into the kitchen and looked in the fridge for vegetables to cut up. I found mushrooms, cucumbers, and potatoes. I started with the mushrooms but they crumbled into little pieces and my spirit sank in disappointment. I tried a cucumber but the slices were so thin I could fold them in half. This was not overly helpful since I don’t use vegetables sliced paper thin in my everyday cooking. I fiddled around with the thickness setting and then tried a potato. Now I was getting somewhere. The slices were about ⅛ inch thick and I cut up the potatoes lickety split. Then I remembered the reason I wanted to buy a mandolin in the first place – to make caramelized onions.  Later that afternoon I went to the store to buy sweet onions grown by a local farmer.

When I returned, I heated up my electric skillet, melted some butter, adjusted the setting on the mandolin to “thickest” and cut the onions with great speed. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to use the mandolin and the uniformity of the slices was truly something to behold. Curious to know how long it took me to peel and slice one onion, I set the timer on my phone and sliced away. I did this on several onions and the average time was 50 seconds. I made a batch of caramelized onions in less than 30 minutes from start to finish. The $20 was well spent.

 “It’s fun to have fun but you have to know how.” — from the Cat in the Hat~!

Last week, I wrote about caramelized onions and how nice it is to have that delectable treat on hand. Why had I not made them in a couple of years? Then I pondered. An onion can be difficult to cut uniformly, so it becomes a cumbersome task. I remembered a gadget I once had called a mandolin. Its sole purpose is to uniformly cut fruits and vegetables with a sharp blade attached to a platform. Even a person with excellent knife skills cannot do what a mandolin does; it can cut almost any vegetable or fruit paper thin. It also waffle cuts and juliennes.

Once upon a time I had a mandolin. It was stainless steel, clunky, and bulky with multiple parts that I found very confusing. Try as I might, I never could get the hang of using it and eventually passed it on. There were a few times where I did have the patience and the result was awesome: vegetables cut with precision and accuracy which elevated my creations to an art form. Curious, I wanted to know if the mandolin had evolved over the years.

When I googled “best vegetable slicer mandolin” I was dismayed to find myself lost in a sea of reviews. Consumer Reports wrote that there were over 100 models currently available. I read reviews from Bon Appetit, Food Network, Good Housekeeping, New York Times, Serious Eats, All Recipes, and a few others. There was even a site that reviewed the reviews. Really? Add to that all the reviews written by professional chefs. To further muddle matters, some models were touted by one site as being the best and then the same model was dissed by another. Each site had a different favorite. Will the real mandolin please stand up?  I read so many reviews and articles about mandolins that I started to lose interest and think that a sharp knife would work just fine. The price range was from $20 to $200 but more money didn’t correlate to a better product. Down the rabbit hole I went and after over two hours of perusing, a clear winner did not appear. I was mentally exhausted from sorting this out. I’ve heard of a phenomena called “decision fatigue” and yes, it’s a definitely a “thing” in our modern society. There were so many versions and options that no matter which choice I made, it seemed it would not be the right one. After reading the many reviews, there wasn’t a mandolin that was a cut above the rest.

I finally decided on one that was twenty dollars, easy to store, and razor sharp. Stay tuned next week; I will reveal who the winner is!

Recently I was shopping at the Mercantile in Fossil and in the produce aisle was a cook’s bounty; a basket heaped with attractive sweet onions. A hand-written sign said “organic locally grown”. Wow! These onions had varying sizes, shapes, and colors and were more interesting to me than the “regular” yellow onions sitting on a nearby shelf. Those onions had been graded for size and appearance and had an orderly look, but were uninspiring. The organic onions stood out, as if they had vibrant personalities and even notoriety. They seemed to say “Look at me, I’m sooooo special”. Lured in, I bought five pounds and started my walk home.

As I walked, I remembered my caramelized onion recipe and wondered why I had not made it in quite some time. This condiment gives food remarkable zing. A boring baked potato, scrambled egg, burrito, or sandwich suddenly becomes a delicious special occasion treat, as if the fare was made by a five star chef who just happened to drop by. They are ridiculously easy to make, too. 

A caramelized onion differs from a sautéed onion because caramelized onions cook very, very slowly, and deep, rich, sweet flavor develops as the natural sugar in them reduces down. The result is an intense, savory condiment that keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge. You will love having these on hand to transform your meals into gourmet treats. You can make these with any amount of sweet or yellow onions. I like to cook six or seven at a time. There really isn’t a recipe – just a list of ingredients and a cooking procedure. And don’t let the simplicity fool you; simplicity is enormously powerful.

Caramelized Onions

Medium or large onions
Butter or butter and extra virgin olive oil; one generous teaspoon per onion
Salt (I like to use sea salt or kosher)

Slice the onions about ¼ inch thick. Heat the butter/oil in a skillet until bubbling; add the onions, sprinkle the salt, and stir to coat. Cook for thirty minutes to an hour on low heat. When they start sticking to the pan, let them brown a little and then stir. The trick is to leave them alone enough to brown. If you stir them too often they won’t brown and not often enough, they will burn. Add more oil/butter if the onions seem on the verge of burning. At the end, you can add some balsamic vinegar; I like to add thyme as well. 

Yesterday I bought some more of those onions. They not only taste fabulous, they sparkle. Food has not only taste, but “feel” too. I can definitely feel that vibe, as if they absorbed the tender care of the farmer. Caramelized onions make anything taste better!

Recently, I found in the pantry a glass jar of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil that had an expiration date of March 2015. Were they still fit to eat? Curious, I mustered up some courage and opened the jar. They looked and smelled fine, so I tasted them. Surprise! They were savory and delicious, to the point where I wondered if they got better with age, like fine cabernet wine. I used them in a salad made of fusilli pasta, capers, green olives, roasted red peppers, Italian parsley, hemp seeds, and a red-wine vinaigrette. The salad was unbelievably delicious.

That same day, I read a startling statistic: that every day, America throws away enough food to fill the Rose Bowl stadium. Yes, that Rose Bowl — the 90,000 seat football stadium in Pasadena, California. That’s every day, not every week. Uggh! I wondered how much of that food waste was caused by expired food that was still good enough to eat.

I began to research the expiration dates that manufacturers use: use by, best before, best if used by, expires on, sell by, display until. What a muddled matter! I wondered about the criteria that experts use to determine the shelf life of food. Is it when the food loses its flavor intensity or appealing texture and appearance? Loses nutrients? What? Home cooks may assume that suddenly when the clock strikes twelve, the food goes over the edge, and then into the garbage it goes.

During my research, I came across a phrase I had not heard before — organoleptic testing: the sensory assessment of flavor, odor, appearance, and mouthfeel of a food product. Or, simplified: trust your senses to tell you if a food is safe to eat. I call this “tuning into sense-able shelf life”. Our senses are very acute and reliable. After all, they don’t want us to die from food poisoning! By learning to trust our senses, we can discern subtle changes in the appearance, smell, flavor, and texture of food. They will tell us if a food is stale or rancid and might be unsafe or even poisonous. The other day, I opened a bag of sliced almonds that had not expired yet. They looked and smelled slightly off as if they were on the verge of “going bad”. But my senses said NO— do not eat! When in doubt, throw it out. So into the garbage they went and I substituted pecans in my recipe.

The pantry still has some expired food in it, but I won’t throw the food out until I’ve tested it using the organoleptic way. Then, a little less unnecessary food waste will exist in the world; one person can make a difference and that person is me! And that person can be you, too.

A while back, I went to Germany. One evening, a friend invited me to dinner at her home. She served me a fabulously tasty soup and a week later, I was still thinking about it— it was that good. The soup was made of perfectly cooked carrots, peas, and egg noodles in a clear soup base. Simple! During our next visit, I asked if she could share the recipe. “It’s not a recipe,” she said. It’s just Maggi’s Klare Brühe — German for “clear broth” (I later learned Nestle owns the company). I asked to see the container of Klare Brühe and before I left for the states, I went to the grocery store and bought a few jars.

When I add Klare Brühe to my soups, stews, and sauces, they bloom; I get a big roasty, toasty, meaty, and savory flavor. The flavor comes on gradually and lingers. Klare Brühe is a powerful seasoning, potent and full of energy. This magic soup powder mysteriously intensifies the food without calling attention to itself. I can cook black beans, for example, in this soup base and they go from being ho-hum to stellar.

Eventually I ran out and much to my dismay, I could not find Klare Brühe anywhere, not even on the internet nor at the German grocery stores. Darn. A good friend had a son who was traveling to Germany on a student program and I asked him to bring some back for me. Eventually that supply ran out too.

Why not try to copy it? Good idea! I asked a friend of a friend who was fluent in German to translate the list of ingredients on the jar. But my several attempts to replicate the powder produced a “NQR” result, the acronym for “Not Quite Right”. Then recently, it occurred to me to look Klare Brühe up again on the internet and . . . drum roll . . . it was there! I ordered some. My being instantly filled with thousands of bubbles of happiness. I felt the excitement of reconnecting with a long lost friend who I wondered if I would ever see again.

Now the red and yellow jar sits in my herb and spice cabinet waiting to transform that next dish. Klare Brühe has magic powers and moves whatever it touches with grace —“potion magique” (other vegetable soup bases are just not the same). Recently, I went on a long road trip with my beau, taking Klare Brühe with me. We stopped at a roadside produce stand and I made the best vegetable soup ever for dinner that night. Klare Bruhe: simple, sophisticated, delightful, and just in time for the fall vegetable harvest. Available on Amazon.

Recently I had the funniest dream. I received a formal, engraved invitation to attend Thanksgiving dinner with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Wow! I arrived at the palace wearing long white leather gloves and a full length, scarlet red velvet gown. A long table set with white linen, china, crystal, silver, candelabras, and flowers awaited me. I sat down and on my gold-rimmed plate was —a big mound of spaghetti!! What? No pheasant under glass? Yes! Spaghetti can be fit for a queen or a king, if it’s out-of-this-world delicious.

My friend, Jerry, has a fabulous, easy spaghetti recipe that his mother made when he was growing up and it is out-of-this-world delicious. The recipe has just a few ingredients and takes only about fifteen minutes to prepare. This spaghetti could become one of your favorite “go-to” recipes; the one you make when you want something delicious to eat NOW and don’t want to think about it. How can simple spaghetti be sooooo tasty? The secret is the Golden Mushroom soup. 

E-Z Spaghetti

Half a pound fresh mushrooms, or two 4-ounce cans
Two tablespoons olive oil or butter
One yellow or sweet onion, diced
Two cloves minced garlic (optional)
One pound ground beef (or ½ pound sausage and ½ pound ground beef)
One can Campbell’s Tomato soup
One can Campbell’s Golden Mushroom soup
One tablespoon Italian herbs
½ pound spaghetti noodles
Salt to taste
I use my Dutch oven to cook this dish. Fill a big pot with water, add some salt, cook the noodles until al dente, and drain. Put the noodles back into the pot with some of the spaghetti cooking water (save some of it when you drain the pasta) and add a dab of butter or oil to keep the noodles from sticking together. Keep warm on low heat. If you use fresh mushrooms, slice them and sauté in olive oil or butter and set aside. Cook the meat and onions together until browned then drain the fat. Add the undiluted soup, the mushrooms, and the Italian herbs, and then give it a good stir. Bring it to a boil then simmer until it takes on a glossy appearance. That’s it!

I like to add the noodles to the sauce and combine it all together; the noodles absorb the sauce. If the mixture is too thick, add some beef broth, red wine or the pasta cooking water. Serve with parmesan cheese and top with chopped parsley —if you want to dress it up a bit. The soup must be Golden Mushroom. The more commonly available Cream of Mushroom won’t work in this recipe. You may have to special order the Golden Mushroom soup from your grocer. There you have it —spaghetti fit for a queen or a king!

My first ever trip to Baskin‒Robbins, the 31 flavors ice cream shop, was when I was in fifth grade. I went with my friend Elizabeth. The long glass cases filled with a kaleidoscope of colorful ice creams and pretty cakes caused uncontainable excitement to bubble up in me. My universe suddenly expanded! Jamoca Almond Fudge, Cookies and Cream, Butter Pecan, Nutty Coconut, Peanut Butter Chocolate. Caramel Turtle Truffle! I had to narrow my selection down to only three flavors. I can’t now recall the other two but I do remember one was Pink Bubble Gum and after the ice cream was gone I had a big sticky wad of bubble gum to chew on.

You can easily make your kitchen into your very own Baskin‒Robbins ice cream shop. In my last column, I wrote about my epiphany when I discovered that an ice cream machine was not necessary to make ice cream. Simply make the mixture and pour it into a pretty container a couple of inches deep. Before getting ready to eat, let the ice cream thaw a bit, then it will easily scoop out. So far, my favorite homemade flavors are peppermint (peppermint candy plus peppermint extract), Heath Toffee, and Oreo cookie. The following recipe can be doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled.

Homemade Ice Cream

¾ cups sugar
3 tablespoons flour
¼ tsp salt
3 cups milk
2 beaten eggs
2 cups whipping cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Combine sugar, flour, and salt in a saucepan. Stir in milk. Cook over medium heat until thickened, stirring constantly using a whisk. Let it cool some, then add the eggs and stir very fast because you do not want to have scrambled eggs in your ice cream. Add the cream and vanilla. Remember, if you add candy or cookies that sweetens the ice cream so you may want to add less sugar. Adding an extract can bump up the flavor, so for example, if you make peppermint ice cream, you can add some peppermint extract. Instead of giving you measurements, I suggest that you add a teaspoon or two of the extract and taste the ice cream. Imitation vanilla is surprisingly good and costs a fraction of the real extract. I always add vanilla to the base no matter the flavor I decide on.

I looked up my friend Elizabeth and discovered she has spent her entire adult life working with primates in Africa. If I ever meet up with her again, I’d love to go to Baskin‒Robbins and hear the amazing stories she must have to tell. And enjoy a bubble gum ice cream cone, one scoop. Along with one scoop of the new modern flavor Oreo n’ Cold Brew.