This year during the holidays, my neighbor and I were musing about what vegetable side dishes we were going to serve for our respective holiday dinners.  We laughed as we kept veering off the subject to talk about desserts, or breads, or appetizers, or stuffings, or potatoes, and had to keep reminding ourselves that the topic at hand was VEGETABLE side dishes—why were we having trouble staying on topic?  And I realized that as much as I love vegetables, I didn’t have nearly as many winter vegetable options in my repertoire as I would like.  So now that the holidays have come and gone, one of my resolutions is to remedy this situation and find all sorts of great things to do with vegetables—especially for holidays and other festive occasions.

This recipe is one of my first great finds.  It is adapted from a recipe I found in a back issue of Gourmet magazine.  The bulk of the preparation time is in the thawing of the spinach and the slicing of the squash—those two things are easy, but take a little time—after that, this is a cinch to make.  It is also a really good dish to make ahead of time.  If you do this, just put foil or plastic wrap over the parchment paper and put the whole thing in the refrigerator.  When you are ready to bake, take the casserole out of the refrigerator in time to let it return to room temperature before baking, take the foil or wrap off, and proceed to the baking step.

The result of your efforts will be a rich-tasting, creamy, bubbly treat that everyone (including some kids who don’t yet love spinach…) will love and think you are a genius for making.  Just don’t bring it to my house next year for the holidays—it will already be on the table.

Butternut Squash and Creamed Spinach Casserole

Makes 8 to 10 servings

Preparation Time:  1 hour
Cook Time:  45 minutes
Total Time:  1 hour, 45 minutes

Ingredients:

4 10-ounce packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed, and thoroughly squeezed to     remove as much moisture as possible
4 tablespoons butter, divided
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 ½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 ½ cups heavy cream
1 large butternut squash, peeled, quartered, seeded and then very thinly sliced either in     the food processor or using a mandoline
1 ½ cups grated Parmesan cheese

Preparation:

Thoroughly squeeze the thawed spinach to remove all extra moisture and place in a mixing bowl.

Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a small saucepan and sauté the onion and the garlic until they are softened and transclucent.  Add the onion mixture, the salt, pepper, nutmeg and heavy cream to the spinach and stir to combine.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and butter a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.

Place a layer of squash, a layer of the spinach mixture and a sprinkling of Parmesan in the dish.  Repeat the layering 3 or 4 times until you run out of ingredients—but end with squash as the top layer.  Spread the remaining Parmesan cheese on top of the squash and then dot the top of the casserole with thin slivers of the remaining butter.  Cover the top of the casserole with parchment paper (parchment won’t lift the ingredients off, the way foil will—if you have to use foil, be sure it doesn’t stick to the top layer).  Bake the casserole for 30 minutes and then remove the parchment.  Cook for another 15 minutes until the top is nicely browned.

Sometimes, you just want a steak, particularly if you are a boy.  So on days when I am feeling particularly accommodating and ask my kids what they feel like having for dinner—I’m prepared to hear their answer—which half the time will be “steak.”

One day, wanting to cook a little, instead of just having my husband (and Sauce & Sensibility photographer extraordinaire!) do the honors on the grill…I decided to try something different.  It came from a recipe card in my mother’s old recipe box (in which I have found a lot of treasure…).  It smelled wonderful while cooking, and tasted even better.  My sons loved the salty, tangy, fresh taste of it, even though it looked a bit “green” for their still-developing culinary eyes.  Serve this over your favorite grilled or pan-fried steak.  I did it here with sliced New York strip—patted dry, lightly coated with coarsely ground black pepper and simply grilled.  If you go the pan route, use the same pan that you fry the steak in and the sauce will be enhanced by the pan juices.

Herb Sauce for Steak

Preparation Time:  5 minutes
Cook Time:  10 minutes
Total Time:  15 minutes

Ingredients:

¼ cup dry white wine
¼ cup beef broth
2 tablespoons minced shallots
4 anchovy fillets, chopped
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons fresh green herbs, chopped (just parsley is fine or any mixture that you like will work—of parsley, thyme, chervil, chives or anything else that you have)

Preparation:

Pour the wine into a small saucepan.  Add the broth, shallots, and anchovies, bring the mixture to a boil and then simmer until the mixture reduces to a few syrupy spoonfuls. Remove from heat.  Whisk in the butter 1 tablespoon at a time.  Stir in the chopped herbs, taste to correct the seasoning with salt or pepper, and serve immediately with sliced steak.

I really like small bites of things.  Some of my favorite meals have been at restaurants where I’ve shared several hors d’oeuvres with my family or a friend or two or three—and it is fun to have a few bites of several things rather than a whole plate of one thing.  So sometimes at home, I’ll make small bites of things to serve my family or guests before a light dinner.

This recipe is a good one.  The cups are crispy and the salad is just-right spicy and the cilantro tastes fresh and the whole thing is one big bite (or two small ones) of crunch and good flavor.  If you don’t have the time to make the wonton cups (or just don’t want to), you could serve this shrimp salad any number of ways…in phyllo dough cups from the freezer section, on toasted bread rounds or on your favorite cracker.  But they do look pretty this way, and the salted cups are tasty.

Shrimp Salad in Wonton Cups

Makes 24

Preparation Time for Cups:  15 minutes
Preparation Time for Salad:  15 minutes
Total Time:  30 minutes

Ingredients for the cups:

24 wonton wrappers, each cut to about 4-inch squares
Cooking spray
Vegetable Oil (about 2 teaspoons)
Kosher salt

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Spray two mini-muffin tins (12-count each) with cooking spray.  Lightly brush one side of each wrapper with oil and then press them into the muffin tins (oiled side up).  Lightly sprinkle with kosher salt and bake for 10 minutes or until they are a rich, golden color.  They need to be nicely browned so that they stay crisp—too lightly and they will get soggy.  Remove them carefully from the tin and cool them on paper towels.  Once they are completely cooled, you can store them in an airtight container until you’re ready to serve.

Ingredients for the salad:

1/3 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro, plus leaves for garnish
1-½ tablespoons of fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon mango chutney (I used Major Grey’s)
1 teaspoon Thai green curry paste*
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, cooked and coarsely chopped

Stir together the mayonnaise, fresh cilantro, lime juice, chutney, and green curry paste and blend well.  Fold in the shrimp and salt and pepper to taste.  (If you’re making this ahead of time, you can refrigerate the salad for up to a day.)  When you’re ready to serve, spoon the shrimp salad into the wonton cups and garnish with a fresh cilantro leaf.

*Note:  If your market doesn’t have green curry paste, you can substitute a fine chop of one green onion, ½ clove garlic… and if you like it spicy—1 teaspoon or two of finely chopped jalapeno pepper)

One day a couple of years ago, I was in my car with my kids, and we were listening to NPR.  A piece came on about this recipe called Smith Island Ten Layer Cake.  The story was about this tiny island in the Chesapeake (Maryland’s last inhabited island, reachable only by boat) with only a couple of hundred residents.  They were very proud of the fact that there was a bill in the state legislature to name the Smith Island Cake the official dessert of Maryland.  Since their local economy had traditionally been based on crab harvesting, and that industry was suffering, the hope was that being the home of the state cake would give a boost to their economy…from tourism and…baking?

Anyway, it was a fun piece to listen to, and my kids were enamored with the idea of a ten-layer cake!  “Let’s make it Mom!”  “Um…. okay….”

So I Googled and found a recipe, went to Target and bought 10 cake pans because—this isn’t some cake that you make a couple of big layers and slice them—oh no, this is 10 individual layers.

After getting over the shock of actually owning 10 cake pans now…we set out to make the cake—which is really pretty straightforward except the very cute instruction to listen for the batter to stop sizzling and that’s how you’ll know each layer is done.  I tried this, and I guess it worked, but I felt a little silly sticking my ear into the oven to hear the sizzle (which I had to do because it is a very soft sizzle).  So I think that following the directions on timing and looking to see if it looks done (I also used the spring back test and pressed gently on the layers and when they spring back…they’re done) works just as well.

The surprising thing about this cake is that because the layers are thin, the whole cake assembled isn’t towering—it’s between three and four inches tall.  But it is festive, and if you like a good sweet, fudge-y icing, you will like this cake.

You’ll be happy to know that effective October 1, 2008, the Smith Island Cake did become the State Dessert of Maryland (Chapters 164 & 165, Acts of 2008; Code State Government Article, sec. 13-320).

Smith Island 10-Layer Cake

Ingredients for Frosting
2 sticks butter
2-12 oz. cans evaporated milk
8 heaping Tablespoons unsweetened Cocoa
2 lbs. confectioners Sugar

Preparation:
Melt butter. Stir in evaporated milk (off heat).
Whisk in Cocoa until smooth, return to heat and cook for approximately 10 minutes. DO NOT BOIL or Scorch.
Remove from heat and whisk in confectioners sugar slowly.
Cook slowly until thickened and will stick to back of a spoon or to the whisk (It will form a ribbon when you drizzle a spoonful onto mixture while cooking).

Approx time: 45 minutes.

Ingredients for Cake
2 cups sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into chunks
5 – eggs
3 – cups flour
¼ – teaspoon salt
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
1 cup evaporated milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
½ cup water

Preparation:

Cream together the sugar and butter. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix the flour mixture into the egg mixture one cup at a time. With mixer running, slowly pour in the evaporated milk, then the vanilla and water. Mix just until uniform. Put three serving spoonfuls of batter in each of ten 9-inch lightly greased pans, using the back of the spoon to spread evenly. Bake three layers at a time on the middle rack of the oven at 350 degrees for 8 minutes.

Start making the icing when the first layer goes in the oven. Let the layers cool a couple of minutes in the pans. Put the cake together as the layers are finished. Run a spatula around the edge of the pan and ease the layer out of the pan. Don’t worry if it tears; no one will notice when the cake is finished. Use two or three serving spoonfuls of icing between each layer. Cover the top and sides of the cake with the rest of the icing. Push icing that runs onto the plate back onto the cake.

To ice the cake:

Take one slightly cooled layer and spread with cooled frosting. Add crushed candy randomly on layer. (Reese cups, snickers, Milky Ways, or whatever your favorite is—this step is optional, the cake is just as good with no candy added)
Add next layers, frosting, candy (if using), and repeat process till the 10th layer.
Do not add candy to final layer.
Finish frosting the cake and sides. You may have to wait to ice top and sides until the icing cools.

Enjoy!
From Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook

Here is a great little something to make and keep in a tin for serving with a glass of wine in the evening or a pomegranate juice and tonic in the afternoon.  A few pointers:  do use the parchment paper so that your pans don’t get messed up…do get the dough as thin as possible – this will give you a nice cracker consistency.  Feel free to change up the flavors…the cheddar could become freshly grated Parmesan cheese…the salt could be changed to cumin…and a dash of cayenne could be added if you like spice.  This is a good one to experiment with, and the results are a crunchy, cheesy, happy bite.

Sunflower Cheddar Crisps
Makes:  About 48 crisps, but this will depend on how you cut your dough

Preparation Time:  10 minutes
Cook Time:  30 minutes
Cool Time:  20 minutes
Total Time:  1 hour

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups raw, shelled sunflower seeds
1 ½ cups grated Cheddar cheese
½ teaspoon salt, and more for sprinkling
¼ cup water

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a food processor with the metal blade, process the sunflower seeds until they are finely ground.  Add the Cheddar cheese and the salt and pulse until the mixture is blended.  Add the water and pulse until the mixture comes together as dough.

Line a backing sheet with parchment paper.  Turn the dough onto the paper and spread it out, patting it thinly over the whole pan, almost to the edges, as thin and as even as you can.  (I took another piece of parchment and laid it over the dough and used a juice glass as a roller to help me flatten it…)  Take a knife or a pizza cutter and score the dough into cracker shapes – squares, diamonds, triangles, whatever you like.

Bake for 30 minutes.  Remove from the oven and invert onto a large cutting board so that you can remove the parchment from the bottom.  Break the crisps along the scored lines and let cool.  Store them in an airtight container.

My husband frequently tells our kids “there’s no such thing as multi-tasking”.  What he means is that while you may well do more than one thing at a time, you are always going to be doing one of those things less well than the other one.  And, after arguing this point back and forth for a few weeks, my kids are starting to concede that Dad is right. (And so am I…) Even when our oldest tries to listen to music and read a book at the same time, he’ll find that sometimes he is listening more to the music and at other times he is reading more intently.  When our youngest tries to do his math homework and talk school with his brother at the same time—there are lots of do-overs.

And when I cook, I’m like everybody else—there are days when I think I have so much to do that I race around the kitchen doing all kinds of things in addition to preparing our dinner.  I might be filling out forms for school, and checking email, and racing back to stir the sautéing onions and answering the phone to get the kids social lives straightened out.  Sometimes, after a session like this—we sit down to dinner and I am disappointed in the result.  Not necessarily bad, but not nearly as good as it is when I really pay attention to what I’m doing.

So if you’re in the mood to pay attention to what you’re doing in the kitchen, here is one of my favorite recipes.  It’s a little bit of trouble to make—and definitely better when made with concentration (and not while multi-tasking).  When I’m careful and I do it right—it is delicious—taking my time with each step and then moving on to the next.  There is nothing difficult about making rouladen—but taking care to pound the meat thinly, evenly placing the filling on the slices, rolling them up carefully and securely, sautéing them patiently until they are nicely browned, all of these little steps add up to a really good dish that makes enough for leftovers which taste just as good or better than the original.  I’m going to try to listen to my own advice here—slow it down a little—enjoy the process and then the result will be well worth the effort.

Beef Rouladen

12 servings

Preparation Time:  1 Hour
Cook Time:  1 hour, 15 minutes
Total Time:  2 hours, 15 minutes

Ingredients:

12 slices of top sirloin, pounded thin so that each slice measures about 4” wide and about     8 to 10 inches long
1 tablespoon (maybe more) dried marjoram
¼ cup Dijon mustard (maybe more depending on how thickly you spread it)
8 slices of bacon, chopped into small dice, divided
3 cups finely chopped onion, divided
½ cup finely chopped parsley
½ cup finely chopped chives
12 small cornichons (or small 1” strips of dill pickle)
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ cups thinly sliced carrots
1 ½ cups of red wine**
1 cup fresh or canned beef broth
1 teaspoon flour blended with 2 teaspoons of water
1 cup heavy cream

Preparation:

Set aside ½ cup of the chopped bacon.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining bacon, 2 cups of the chopped onion, the parsley and the chives.  Set aside.

Spread plastic wrap or wax paper on a work surface and lay out the beef strips.  Sprinkle them lightly with salt and pepper and the dried marjoram.  Spread a very thin layer of mustard on each strip.

Spread the bacon, onion, parsley and chive mixture evenly over each beef strip.  At the bottom of each strip, place a cornichon, or 2 to 3 of the dill pickle slices.  Beginning at the bottom, roll each strip of tightly as you can without squeezing the filling out, and secure them with toothpicks or small skewers.

Heat the 2 tablespoons of butter in a Dutch oven and add the carrots, the remaining 1 cup onion and the remaining ½ cup bacon.  Cook the mixture, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are lightly browned.  Remove the vegetables and the bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add the 4 tablespoons of olive oil to the Dutch oven and when heated, add the beef rolls and cook, turning every few minutes until they are nicely browned (you will probably need to do this in batches so as not to crowd the rolls, and then set them all aside.)

Add the wine and beef broth to the pan, and stir to dissolve the crusty bits that have stuck to the pan.  Stir in the flour and water mixture.  Return the beef rolls to the pan along with any juices that have accumulated on the plate.  Add the vegetable and bacon mixture and cover.   Cook on low heat, turning the rolls occasionally for 1 hour.

Remove the beef rolls from the pan to a plate.  If you have an emulsion blender, use it in the pan to puree the vegetables and the sauce together until smooth.  If not, place the liquid and the vegetables in batches in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth and return the mixture to the Dutch oven.  Stir in the heavy cream and bring the mixture to a boil.  Add the beef rolls, cover and simmer for an additional 15 minutes to heat thoroughly.  Serve with buttered noodles.

Note:  if you’d rather make this without wine, use 2 ¼ cups low sodium beef broth instead.