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June 26, 2013

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5A Wednesday, June 26, 2013 – Daily News County Fare & tasty fresh Recipe: Classic Egg Salad By Lisa Yockelson Special to The Washington Post I ate egg salad sandwiches with my Grandma Lilly at various department store tea rooms a mountain of years ago. I love them still, though the kind I build today look a lot less trimmed, pale and polished. They are open-faced, perhaps with a liner of leafy greens and herbs, and topped sometimes with a crackle of nuts or seeds. I'm inclined to bake a quick bread to use as the base for a big, creamy swipe of the savory salad: A slice of soda bread, tender inside and crusty on the edges, is my preferred surface. Choosy about bedding greens as well as bread, I am partial to baby arugula or spinach, radicchio, mizuna or watercress. Egg salad is largely amenable to many flavor boosts, as you can see in the accompanying recipe's variations. But honestly, it's this fairly pure version I share with you that charms me the most. CLASSIC EGG SALAD Makes about 1 3/4 cups (about 5 servings) Make ahead: The egg salad is best served freshly made, but it can be refrigerated up to 1 day in advance. From cookbook author Lisa Yockelson. Ingredients 7 large eggs 1/4 cup regular or low-fat mayonnaise 2 1/4 teaspoons prepared mustard 1/4 teaspoon apple cider vinegar A few shakes (about 1/8 teaspoon total) hot sauce, or to taste (optional) 2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish Freshly ground black pepper Steps Fill a mixing bowl with cold water. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil over mediumhigh heat. Use a slotted spoon to gently lower in the eggs, one at a time; cook for 12 minutes. Immediately remove the saucepan from the heat; use the slotted spoon to transfer the eggs to the bowl of cold water. Place the bowl of eggs in the sink and run cold water into the bowl for 3 minutes. Lift out the eggs with the slotted spoon, pat them dry, then peel them. Cool for 10 minutes. Whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar and hot sauce, if using, in a small nonreactive bowl. Stir in the pickle relish, then season with pepper to taste. Place the eggs in a mixing bowl. Use a potato masher to lightly break them into small chunks. Spoon over and fold through the mayonnaise mixture, including any one of the variation ingredients (see below). Transfer the egg salad to an airtight container. Refrigerate until ready to serve. VARIATIONS: Any one of the following ingredients would be a tasty addition to egg salad: 4 teaspoons snipped fresh dill; 4 teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh parsley; 2/3 cup diced smoked ham; 2/3 cup diced steamed shrimp; 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika (pimenton; whisk it into the mayonnaise mixture); 3 tablespoons diced roasted red pepper. NUTRITION Per serving (using low-fat mayonnaise): 130 calories, 9 g protein, 4 g carbohydrates, 9 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 295 mg cholesterol, 280 mg sodium, 0 g dietary fiber, 2 g sugar Scrappy Vegetable Broth By Joe Yonan The Washington Post Makes about 2 1/2 quarts One of the simplest ways to make vegetable stock is to get in the habit of saving trimmings of vegetables as you cook. Transfer them to quart-size zip-top freezer bags and stash them in the freezer, and when you have two bags stuffed full, you have enough for this stock. Use mild-flavored vegetables, such as the ends and peels of carrots, onions and potatoes; the woody bottoms you snap off asparagus; the stems left behind when you strip off leaves of chard or neutral herbs such as parsley. Don't use anything particularly dirty (such as the hairy roots of onions), and rinse the trimmings before you freeze them to avoid having to worry about grit later. MAKE AHEAD: The stock can be refrigerated for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 3 months. From Washington Post Food editor Joe Yonan, author of the upcoming "Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook" (Ten Speed Press, August 2013). Ingredients 2 quart-size zip-top bags mixed vegetable trimmings (see headnote) 3 quarts water Steps Combine the vegetable trimmings and water in a large stockpot over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat just low enough so the stock is barely bubbling; cook uncovered for 30 minutes, until the trimmings are tender and the stock has taken on a nice flavor and a golden color. Strain and discard the solids, then cool the stock and use or store as needed. NUTRITION Ingredients are too varied for a meaningful analysis. How to make: Peach Cobbler namon 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter 2/3 cup buttermilk 1/2 teaspoon almond extract Vanilla ice cream for serving 1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Put the peaches, the lemon juice, 3 tablespoons of the sugar, the cornstarch, the cinnamon and the nutmeg in a large bowl; toss to combine. Transfer the mixture to a 9-inch square pan and bake for 10 minutes. 2. Meanwhile, combine the flour, 6 tablespoons of the sugar, the baking powder, the salt, and the baking soda in a medium bowl. Add the butter and blend with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the buttermilk and almond extract and stir just until combined. 3. Remove the pan from the oven and drop the batter in large, evenly spaced dollops on top of the peaches. Sprinkle the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar over the batter. Continue baking until the topping is golden brown and the peaches are tender, 30 to 35 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. By L.V. Anderson Slate I have recently been alarmed to learn of the indiscriminateness with which the general public uses the term "cobbler." I partially blame Paula Deen, whose ostensible cobbler recipe is the top result when you Google "peach cobbler." Deen's recipe is a buckle in disguise: She calls for spooning cooked peaches on top of a thin cake batter and then baking until the batter rises above the fruit. But Deen is not the only offender: Southern Living, doing its best BuzzFeed impression, offers us "14 Crazy-Good Fruit Cobblers," among which are three pandowdy recipes (fruit topped with pie crust), two crisp recipes (fruit topped with streusel), a variation on Deen's buckle, a fruit bar recipe, and a bloody shortcake recipe. But, you may ask, wouldn't a clafoutis by any other name taste as sweet? (That's fruit baked with a crepe-like batter, for the record.) Why does it matter? It matters because words mean things. I do not want to live in a world where common ignorance relegates crisps — a magnificent and important category of dessert in their own right — to another, completely separate category of dessert. It would be a disgrace if buckles, slumps, pandowdies, and other charmingly named, obscure fruit desserts were lost to history because contemporary Americans can't be bothered to make a distinction between fruit baked with pie crust and fruit steamed with dumplings. There's an astonishing array of different ways to cook fresh fruit, and calling every fruit dessert a "cobbler" obscures the individuality of each of them. It's like calling "Kind of Blue" a Dixieland album because Miles Davis was a jazz musician. So, what, then, is a cobbler? A cobbler is a dessert consisting of sugared (and often spiced) fruit topped with a sweetened biscuit topping and baked until the fruit is tender and the topping is golden. The bottom part of the topping sinks into the fruit and sops up its flavorful juices, acquiring a dumpling-like texture; the top part undergoes the Maillard reaction and gets brown and firm; the middle part arranges itself into a light, spongy crumb. Meanwhile, the rest of the fruit's juices mingle with the sugar and whatever thickener you've added to it (usually cornstarch or flour) to form a hot, sticky syrup that is best appreciated when juxtaposed with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The cobbler is, in short, a tremendous dish. Making the best possible cobbler is mainly a question of selectivity and restraint. By "selectivity," I mean choosing good, ripe fruit — in this case, peaches. Hard, mealy peaches are definitely better in a cobbler than they are raw, but a cobbler made with mediocre fruit will never be great. (You can use frozen fruit, though it departs from the spirit of cobbler, which, like the other desserts mentioned above, is traditionally a way to make a dent in a bumper crop of fresh fruit.) By "restraint," peaches, but it will rise and spread out as it cooks. If you use enough batter to completely cover the fruit, you'll end up with a cobbler that's far too bready, more like an upside-down cake. One final, unusually specific note: In this recipe, a 9-inch square pan means exactly that. If you use an 8-inch square pan, you'll likely end up with peach syrup gushing over the sides and onto the bottom of your oven (unless you put a baking sheet underneath it). Peach Cobbler Yield: 9 to 12 servings Time: About 1 hour 3 pounds fresh peaches, sliced, or 2 pounds frozen sliced peaches Juice of 2 lemons 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1 teaspoon ground cin- I am referring mostly to sugar: The fruit layer should not be a sickeningly sweet concoction indistinguishable from canned peaches; rather, it should be tart and assertive. It needs only a little sugar, and a lot of lemon juice to balance it out. (The filling here is quite a bit more liquid than, say, a fruit pie filling, since you don't need to worry about a bottom crust going soggy.) The biscuit layer is sweeter than normal biscuits, but it should not be as sweet as cake. (This is where the ice cream comes in, if you have a sweet tooth.) Restraint is also required with the quantity of topping (which derives from a batter, like drop biscuits, rather than a dough, like rolled biscuits). 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