One morning a few days ago, the outside thermometer outside was -6 and the bedroom was 47 degrees Fahrenheit (I don’t heat the bedroom because I like the electric blanket on my bed atop my featherbed and over the goose down comforter to keep me warm).
Yesterday it was 57 degrees Fahrenheit and pouring.
This morning, outside, it was 6 above. At 10:45, it measured 10, a veritable heat wave.
I just bought my third SoftShine Throw (the cat Junie took the first one, Elderlee the second) to keep myself warm in the den.
But I am happiest in the kitchen, where my metabolism is in overdrive. Last week I made chicken soup, onion soup, chicken salad from the chicken soup and some extra for pad Thai. I took an unbaked meatloaf from the freezer, thawed it and roasted it for sandwiches (made in my Joseph’s Flat Bread).
When my newest Fine Cooking arrived, I devoured it (figuratively, of course). Tony Rosenfeld, who writes great food articles for that magazine (headquartered in Newtown, Connecticut), wrote about chili. I love chili, although I’m more interested in chili whose main ingredient is not chili powder.
His recipes showed me how to use seven different meats, 18 flavor accents (and he says to use at least two and up to six), deglazing and stewing liquids, eight different beans and lots of vegetables and garnishes. I made one with meat, yellow peppers, cayenne, canned tomatoes, black beans, cannellinis, summer-frozen sweet corn and a squish of lime. It was better than great.
With it, of course, came Caribbean cornbread, from a recipe given to me by Karen Goodspeed some years ago.
Caribbean cornbread
Caribbean Cornbread
Yield: 8 to 12 people
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cups cornmeal
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (one-half pound) unsalted butter at room temperature
¾ (three-quarters) cup sugar
4 eggs
1 ½ (one and one-half) cups cream-style corn
½ (one-half) cup crushed pineapple, drained and squeezed a little
1 cup shredded jack or mild cheddar cheese
Butter and flour a 8- or 9-inch Pyrex dish.
Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt and set aside.
In a mixer, cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Add corn, pineapple and cheese and mix to blend. On low speed, add dry ingredients and mix until blended well.
Bake until tester is clean, about 1 ¼ (one and one-quarter) hours and golden on top. Do not underbake.
About the author: Lee White (left) is a resident of Old Lyme in a section of town where she and her house are the oldest members. She has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant. She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day.
About the author: Nicole Prévost Logan divides her time between Essex and Paris, spending summers in the former and winters in the latter. She will write a regular column for us from her Paris home where her topics will include politics, economy, social unrest — mostly in France — but also in other European countries. She also will cover a variety of art exhibits and the performing arts in Europe. Logan is the author of ‘Forever on the Road: A Franco-American Family’s Thirty Years in the Foreign Service,’ an autobiography of her life as the wife of an overseas diplomat, who lived in 10 foreign countries on three continents. Her experiences during her foreign service life included being in Lebanon when civil war erupted, excavating a medieval city in Moscow and spending a week under house arrest in Guinea.
