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09/03/2020 12:01 AMLast week I made the most delicious dinner I’d ever made.
And it was the easiest.
And it was so satisfying that no dessert—ice cream, cookies, cheesecake, or crème brulee—was necessary.
Here’s the menu: a T-bone steak I’d bought and frozen when they were on sale, three sliced tomatoes, mashed potatoes from 20 tiny ones I’d purchased from Stone Acres in Stonington, and two ears of sweet corn from Whittle’s in Mystic.
The steak was grilled almost black but the middle was blood red, just the way I like it. My next-door neighbor was also grilling at his patio and was concerned, I think, because my grill was smoking.
I took it off the grill and placed it on a plate and let it sit on the dining room table as I sliced and salted the tomatoes, mashed the potatoes with a little milk and butter, and set everything down. Those 10 minutes made all the difference, as they always do, allowing the juices to recede back into the meat.
I hope you are all having amazing and healthy and fresh food this summer. Healthy, you say? A steak? Truth is it is probably the first time I have grilled a steak in six months, so a steak is just an extravagance after lots of chicken, vegetables, seafood, and salad.
I hope you are all getting food as fresh and local as I am and cooking it yourself, knowing exactly what the ingredients are and where they come from.
I bet you are playing with ingredients, too. I received an incredible email from Carol Sepowitz from New London, who used a recipe I’d found for poached cod.
She’d bought the cod from Stonington farm market and used small yellow tomatoes, but didn’t have one of my ingredients.
“I made the cod for dinner,” she wrote, “but had no coconut cream. I [did] have the Nature’s Promise organic frozen coconut fruit bars on the stick from Stop & Shop. When it came time to add the coconut milk, I let the fruit bar melt into the tomatoes and it made a wonderful poaching sauce adding to the spices. The fish was so good!”
Isn’t that amazing? I have always said home cooks may be better than chefs. I like recipes from cookbook authors and restaurant chefs, but kitchen innovators are often people like Carol.
Just because we are eating healthy, here for you is a not-too-sweet cake for dessert (or toasted for breakfast) when you want something you deserve.
Lee White of Old Lyme has been a food editor and restaurant reviewer for more than 25 years. You can email her at leeawhite@aol.com.
Triple-Ginger Pound Cake
Makes 2 loaves
Ingredients:
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups milk (do not use low-fat or nonfat; 2 percent is okay)
½ cup minced crystallized ginger
3 ½ tablespoons grated peeled fresh ginger
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease (or use Pam) two 9 by 5 by 3-inch loaf pans. Sift flour, ground ginger, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in large bowl until fluffy (at least two minutes). Add eggs and yolk one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Mix dry ingredients and milk alternately into batter. Fold in crystallized ginger and grated ginger. Divide batter between prepared loaf pans.
Bake cakes until tester inserted into the middle of the cakes come out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes or a little more. Cut around sides of pan to loosen. Turn cakes onto rack and cool completely. Can be prepared up to 1 month ahead of eating; double wrap cakes in plastic and freeze.