While I was careening through boggy farm fields in Southwest Missouri (in the intrepid John Deere Gator, no less!) this past weekend, my daughter and her friend Jenn were on their own road trip exploring some of the rural mountain communities of north Georgia. They called me on Sunday morning, excited to report about an event they chanced upon in the twee town Dahlonega: a Pie Tasting.

Now, this was not your ordinary country pie tasting, but Dahlonega is no ordinary country place. Set in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, it was the site of our first gold rush. (That’s where “There’s gold in them thar hills!” originated..and you can still pan for it, for a price.) Today its rustic setting is the hub of several wineries, and boasts a creative spirit: with performing and visual arts, festivals, and recreational activities.

And, if the Pie Tasting is any indication, there is also some very good food.

Designed as a fundraiser for their local Literacy Council, this Pie Tasting featured 75 varieties of both sweet and savory concoctions. With names to set you salivating: Strawberry-Rhubarb with Brown Sugar Crumble. Rustic Spinach-Feta-Red Pepper Phyllo Tart. Upside-Down Key Lime Pie. Roasted Herbed Vegetables in Puff Pastry. Mile High Chocolate Meringue Pie.

The girls set their cell on speakerphone so that we could have a conference on the tasting.

“They charged $10.00, which entitled you to 5 different slices,” Madeleine said. “I figured, there’s no way we could possibly eat that. But we were wrong.”

“Soooooo very wrong,” said Jenn.

The girls’ favorite pie, hands-down, was the Vidalia Onion with a Cornbread crust.

“We had to have a second slice. It was Crazy Good.”

I’ve made onion tarts, traditional French model, with a basic pate-brisée crust, never with cornmeal. I had never considered that as a possibility. With Vidalias now readily available, this decidedly southern twist was worth replicating.

“The crust was really more like cornbread,” Madeleine explained. “And the filling had kernels of corn in it.”

“And, it was a little custardy,” Jenn continued.

“Quiche-like?” I asked.

“Yes, but, packed with vidalias!” Madeleine said.

“So sweet!” Jenn said.

“Mmmmm. I think I’ve got the picture,” I said.

Vidalia Onion Pie with Cornbread Crust

The Crust
½ cup Cornmeal ( I used white cornmeal, but either work)
½ cup All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
½ teaspoon Salt
1 egg
2 Tablespoons Butter
4 Tablespoons Ice-Cold Water

1 9”pie pan, coated with baking spray

Sift dry ingredients together and place in food processor fitted with pastry cutter blade. Add egg, butter, and pulse until mixed. Add water, a tablespoon at a time. This will form a sticky mass of dough.
Press into the prepared pie pan. If the dough is too sticky, add a little cornmeal.

Vidalia Onions are naturally sweet, but lightly caramelizing makes them outstanding.

The Filling

3 medium Vidalia Onions, sliced
1 Tablespoon Butter
½ cup kernel Sweet Corn (can be fresh or frozen)
1 cup shredded White Cheddar Cheese
2 eggs
1 cup Half-and-Half
½ teaspoon Salt
¼ teaspoon Black Pepper
4 sprigs Fresh Thyme

Heat a large skillet, then melt butter. Add onions and toss until lightly coated. On medium heat, sauté the onions for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until caramelized. Remove from heat.

In a bowl, beat the eggs and half-and-half together well—no traces of yolk.

Layer the bottom the pie with about half of the shredded cheese. Sprinkle with corn kernels, then add the onions. Pour the egg custard mixture over this. Top with remaining cheddar, the leaves from the sprigs of thyme, and a few grindings of black pepper.

Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 40 minutes—top will feel set and be nicely browned.

Serves 4-6

I confess. This recovering caterer fell off the No Catering wagon.

Singlehandedly, I cooked a dinner for 80 this weekend. I know; what was I thinking?

But it was the kind of food that I love to make: Lasagna Bianca, layered with roasted vegetables, cheeses, and a rich, sundried-tomato-laced bechamel; hand-picked garden lettuces with sugar snaps, goat cheese, dried cherries and toasted almonds; blanched chilled asparagus drenched in a true green goddess dressing…

And, it was for good reason: a rehearsal dinner for a friend’s son and bride-to-be.

I had fun. The event was a success, the food well-loved, and I still got the chops.

The down side is that catering gets in the way of food blogging: When I’m in the midst of cranking out a big “blog-worthy” meal, I cannot stop to stage and photograph the beautiful dishes.
Or have a bite.

And, the day following such a culinary marathon, my kitchen and I are more than a little ravaged.
Basically, I’m. Cooked. Out.

So, what’s all that got to do with this posting’s lead photo?

Well, it’s to let you know that on the spring days when you feel “cooked-out,” and don’t want to go out, We’ve Got Options. There are simple, lively tastes you can make in minutes, without cooking a thing—as long as you don’t call putting bread in the toaster Cooking.

Tastes that are fresh, yet soothing. Comfort with a bite. Call them tartines or bruschettas or fancy open-faced sandwiches, when made with fresh-from-the-garden ingredients and served with a glass of sparkling water or chilled white, they will delight and restore. I made two styles for Bill and myself that are so easy, they really aren’t recipes, just combinations of good things.

The first one is my take on a French/Southwest Missouri favorite with the radish. I include Southwest Missouri, because that’s where Bill grew up, and he recalls radish-butter-salt sandwiches, made by his mom, with abiding fondness. Unlike the French model–No baguettes in Nevada, MO–his salted white radishes were placed between two buttered slices of American white bread.

I opt for the French manner: open faced, crusty, but with a couple of deviations. I toast the bread, like ciabatta, slap on some unsalted butter, top with sliced radish, a few curls of green onions, then a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Both early spring crops, radishes and spring onions pair rather nicely.

Now, the important part: Wait. Just a moment or two. You’ll see beads of water form as the salt “sweats” the radishes. This brings out the radishness, making for a juicier crunch.

Thanks to my friend Marilyn, who grew these radishes in her suburban farmette.

A Perfect Radish-Scallion-Butter Toast
Slice of a favorite Sturdy, Crusty Bread, wheat or white
Unsalted Butter ( not too soft, since it’s going on toast!)
Radishes (try the French Breakfast variety–long, scarlet with white base)
Scallions
Coarse Sea Salt

These are all the ingredients required. No quantities, no measurements, for none are really needed: Maybe there’s the equivalent of one radish and a quarter of a scallion on a toast.
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My second treat uses ripe local strawberries: I must indulge in them while they are here!
Again, I toast the bread, and slather it with soft goat cheese. Then I stagger sliced strawberries and arugula leaves across the top. That little sour arugula twang is so good with the berry-sweet.

Be judicious with the balsamic vinegar–just droplets over the berries; a little balsamic goes a long way. With a few grindings of black pepper, this tartine is ready to enjoy.

A Peppery Strawberry-Arugula-Chevre Tartine
Slice of a Favorite Crusty White Bread, like Ciabatta
Soft Chevre
Ripe Strawberries
Arugula
Balsamic Vinegar
Cracked Black Pepper

Starring Strawberries from John Drury, Chevre from Bonnie Blue Farm, Arugula from the Nancy&Bill Belmont Farmette!

As for that No Catering Wagon, I’m ready to clamber back on…
And, surely, I will make the Lasagna Bianca for us
at some point anon,
and the Green Goddess–
I promise!

It was the desire for more color that took an already delicious pasta dish to a higher level.

Unexpected!

I was to prepare a large batch of linguine tossed with sauteed Swiss chard, pine nuts, golden raisins, and red pepper flakes, always a favorite for its healthy dose of green things in pasta, with a little sweet-and-heat.
It was one of several dishes I cooked recently for a local dinner held at Kipp Crusa and Tallahassee May’s farm.

Tally either grew or gathered all the lush produce for the meal. When she delivered the locally grown goodies to my home, she brought in a sack bulging with chard: long white stems with large dark green leaves that resembled ceremonial fans for an Egyptian deity. Fabulous.

And yet, she lamented the lack of Rainbow Chard, a variety loved for its brilliant, almost iridescent yellow, pink, and purple stems. “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought you some beets.”

Mind? No, never would I mind such a thing.

The beet greens and chard cooked beautifully together, the beet’s magenta stem and veined leaves providing a lively color burst. And, a little more. In contrast to the supple chard, the beets added an assertive, earthy bite to this rustic dish.

Pasta-wise, I have typically made this with whole wheat linguine. For Tally’s dinner, I chose to continue the mix-up by using whole wheat, regular, and spinach linguine—a blend sometimes referred to as “Straw and Hay.”

This is a discovery worth repeating—-and sharing.

Today, I’ve got small quantities of Swiss chard and Red Russian Kale harvested from my urban farmette, plus a few spring onions grown tall and fat from all our rain. I’ll toss in the leaves from a beet bunch in my fridge–in short order, this festive straw and hay will be ready to enjoy for dinner! The remaining beets will turn up in the next day or two in a salad or side dish.

Color begins releasing when you saute the stems with spring onions.

The greens like to swim in the stock.

Greens, Straw and Hay
3-4 T. Olive Oil
3 Spring Onions, chopped-use both white and green parts
1 bunch Swiss Chard, Beet Greens, Red Russian Kale (any or all in combination)
cleaned, dried, destemmed:chop stems like celery and set aside; coarsely chop leaves
You’ll have 2 heaping cups of chopped leaves.
1 t. Sea Salt
1/4 t. Red Pepper Flakes
1 cup Vegetable Stock
1/4 cup Golden Raisins
1/4 cup Pine Nuts

Pasta Assortment: use about 2 oz. of each (6 oz. total)
Linguine, Spinach Fettuccine, Whole Wheat Capellini

Heat a large skillet, add olive oil. Sauté spring onions and the chopped stems from your selection of greens on medium heat for 5-7 minutes. Sprinkle with sea salt and red pepper flakes. Stir in coarsely chopped leaf greens and sauté for another 2 minutes. Pour in vegetable stock and stir well. Leaves will collapse. Add golden raisins and toasted pine nuts. Toss throughout the mixture. Set aside.

Bring a 4-5 qt. pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook your sturdier pasta first: follow package directions. Whole wheat linguine takes 10 minutes, regular takes 7-8. Do a little math, and figure the timing so that you can add the second pasta after 2 minutes so that all is done at the same time. Drain, and reserve 1 cup liquid.

Gently toss pastas with sauteed greens, insuring a good distribution of all the elements throughout. If the mixture doesn’t seem wet enough, add a little of the reserved pasta water.

You may want to grate a little parmegiano-regianno over the top, if you like. It is delicious, of course. But there’s enough good flavors–and textures—in this dish that you may not want to.

Serves 2 as main dishes or 4 as first course.

A tangle of flavor and color…

One of my daughter’s favorite books growing up was Bunnicula, the tale of a vampire rabbit who sucked the juices out of vegetables, leaving behind ghostly versions of carrots, beets, celery, and such.

I was reminded of that hilarious story recently when we had a strawberry tasting at our farmer’s market. We offered market goers samples of commercially grown California berries and ones that were organically grown by Delvin Farms here in College Grove, Tennessee. As I was helping to quarter the strawberries into bite size pieces, I couldn’t help but marvel at the difference. Our local berries were small to medium sized, juicy, and red all the way through. The commercial counterparts from California were larger, firmer, with somewhat hollowed interiors drained of all color.

The mark of the vampire rabbit!

“These,” I told my fellow strawberry tasting volunteer, “are Bunnicula Strawberries!”

The Delvins little heart shaped strawberries were easy winners in the tasting. Poor Bunniculas!
Based on just the visual, some people opted not to try the Californias. Others noted, with surprise, that they were sweeter than the locals, but definitely not Strawberrier.

When you buy local berries, it’s best to eat them or cook with them within days; they are perfectly ripe when picked. And that time is now! For a few short weeks, they will be available.
I treat strawberries the same as tomatoes—no refrigeration. (unless absolutely necessary!) It would be a shame to let them go to waste because they languished on the counter a day or two too long.

But with so many delicious possibilities—in fruit salads, green salads; paired with goat cheese and almonds; pureed into coulis, layered into shortcakes, pudding cakes, or just eaten plain–pure delight–
that’s not likely to happen. (This means more strawberry recipes are to come…)

Here’s one of my favorite Strawberriest treats: this features a double whammy of strawberry—-
sliced strawberry bread slathered with strawberry cream cheese!

Very Strawberry Finger Sandwiches
Strawberry Bread spread with Strawberry Cream Cheese

Strawberry Bread (makes 1 loaf)
1 pint Strawberries, cleaned, hulled, stems removed, sliced and chopped
¼ cup Brown Sugar
2 teaspoon Lemon Zest
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
½ cup sugar
½ cup vanilla yogurt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven at 325 degrees. Coat loaf pan with baking spray.
In a bowl, mix strawberries, brown sugar, and zest together. Set aside.
In another bowl, sift flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda together.
In a mixer fitted with a paddle, cream the butter and sugar together. Add yogurt. Scrape bowl sides and beat in eggs. Fold in strawberry mixture. Then add dry ingredients. Mix until well blended. Pour into loaf pan and bake in the middle of the oven for 70 minutes. Allow to cool before removing from pan.

Strawberry Cream Cheese
In a mixing bowl, beat together:
1 lb. softened cream cheese
1 ½ cups chopped fresh ripe strawberries
1 teaspoon lemon or orange zest
2 Tablespoons sugar (optional)

Slice strawberry bread into thin slices, 12-14 slices per loaf.
Spread half the slices with strawberry cream cheese and top with remaining slices.
Cut into rectangles or triangles. Makes about 2 dozen.

Rosemary roasted Baby New Potatoes stuffed with Sour Cream and Chives

I once had a catering client whose party manifesto maintained that all hors d’oeuvres should be no larger than the size of a quarter.

Now, for the most part, I adhere to her doctrine. An appetizer or canapé should be simple and manageable, the sort of thing that you can pick up with one hand and pop into your mouth with aplomb while standing, beverage in the other hand. Never missing a beat in a conversation.

I’ve had my share of odd inelegant moments around the cocktail buffet table with drippy dips, exploding chili poppers, bruschettas that crumble after the first bite, tomato bits tumbling to the floor. I’ve been caught—an entire jumbo stuffed mushroom stuffed in my mouth—-with party chit-chat queries: “So how do you know Mr. Fill-in-the-Blank?”

But that quarter size is pretty dang petite—I think that you can safely increase to a fifty-cent-piece.

I’m offering you three simple hors dóeuvres—small round bites that include a vegetable, a fruit/nut/cheese, and a chocolate. Pretty and tasty, these will delight your guests and not make a mess–at least not while they are being eaten. Wrapping the gorgonzola cheese mixture around each grape can get a little sticky.

Unless you’re like Jennifer, one of my former employees. She was pale, petite, bony thin, with tiny hands that were perpetually cool. We called her “Bird Arms.” When the rest of us were sweltering in the catering kitchen, our Bird Arms would sit, huddled in a wooly sweater, meticulously wrapping gorgonzola grapes or rolling chocolate truffles with nary a trace on the palms of her hands.

Rosemary roasted Baby New Potatoes stuffed with Sour Cream and Chives
6 lbs. Baby New Potatoes–no larger than a golf ball–smaller is better!
Olive Oil
several sprigs of Fresh Rosemary
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
16 oz. Sour Cream
1 bundle of Fresh Chives
pastry bag fitted with a star tip

Clean and dry the potatoes and lay them out onto a baking sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil, dust with salt, black pepper, and chopped rosemary. Shake the pan and turn the potatoes so that they are completely coated with the herb infused oil. (This can be done the day before roasting.)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place pan of potatoes on the middle oven shelf and roast for about
18-20 minutes. About halfway through the roasting, rotate the pan and give it a shake.
Turn off oven and let the potatoes sit in the oven for 10 minutes before removing.

When the potatoes are warm, but not too hot to handle, you can begin the process of cutting, hollowing and stuffing. I slice the golf ball sized potatoes through the center to create two small halves; I hollow an opening at the top of potatoes that are smaller. Arrange all the halves and hollowed wholes on a plate or platter. Fill the pastry bag with sour cream and pipe plump little stars onto each. Snip fresh chives and sprinkle on top of each. Garnish the tray with additional rosemary, chives, or other greenery. Serve at room temperature.

Cook’s Notes:
The potatoes actually benefit from sitting in the rosemary-olive oil-sea salt up to 24 hours before roasting.

It is not as difficult these days to locate baby new potatoes. Years ago, you might find me in a grocery store sorting through mounds of spuds like a mad woman, counting them out into sacks. Now you can find them sold separately in 2 lb. bags. I recently saw a bounty of them for sale at our farmers market, marked as “creamers.”

Gorgonzola Grapes: get your fruit, cheese, and nut in one bite!

Gorgonzola Grapes
1 lb. gorgonzola cheese
1 lb. cream cheese, softened
1 lb. toasted walnuts, finely chopped
1 large bunch of seedless grapes, picked, rinsed, dried

Cream the two softened cheeses together in a bowl. Chill slightly. Place the finely chopped toasted walnuts into a separate bowl. One by one, coat each grape with the cheese mixture by hand and drop into the bowl of nuts. Roll gently until covered and place on a baking sheetpan lined with parchment or waxed paper. Chill well.

Arrange mounded on a plate and garnish with fresh grapes and ivy.

Makes about 100.

The hint of brandy and strawberry in these Bittersweet Chocolate-Berry Truffles makes them especially compelling.

Bittersweet Chocolate-Berry Truffles
1 cup heavy Cream
4 Tablespoons Butter
8 oz.Semi-sweet Chocolate, chopped
8 oz.Bittersweet Chocolate, chopped
2 teaspoons Vanilla
1 teaspoon Brandy
1 Tablespoon Strawberry Preserves

for coating the truffles:
1 cup toasted chopped Pecans
1/2 cup Cocoa

In a heavy duty saucepan, bring the cream to a simmer. Add the chocolates and stir until melted throughout. Turn down heat. Stir in butter, vanilla, brandy, and strawberry preserves. Stir until all ingredients are well mixed and the chocolate is thick, smooth, and shiny. Pour into a bowl and let cool. Refrigerate until firm, at least 4 hours.

To form the truffles:
Place finely chopped pecans in a flat bowl. Put cocoa into another bowl.
Remove truffle mixture from the refrigerator. Using a melon baller, scoop out rounds of truffles and drop into either bowl of pecans or cocoa. Shake the bowl to dust the exterior of the truffle, then roll gently, quickly by hand into a firm round ball. Chill well. Makes about 36 truffles.

Cook’s Notes
Try a variety of chocolates and fruit or liqueur accents: raspberry preserves, cointreau, chambord.
I had the good fortune to include some 85% bittersweet Italian chocolate. All dark chocolates are on the table! Recently, a Dark Chocolate Dovebar Easter Bunny made its truffle transformation….