My Favorite Culinary Christmas Tradition

The Simpson Family Christmas Eve Paella

Not a real Paella in the strict sense of the traditional recipe. Once upon a time it was a traditional recipe but over the 40 years since I’ve first prepared it I’ve adjusted the recipe to fit the tastes of my family and the friends who have attended my family’s Christmas Eve celebration.

This is not a recipe of exact proportion this a more of how you feel, how many folks are coming over kind of recipe. Experiment with adding seafood and other vegetable your family may like. This is also a great dish to usher in the new year.

Ingredients

1/4 cup of butter

2 large green bell pepper sliced 

Two or three bunches of green onions sliced

6 large skinless, boneless chicken breast boiled, then sliced small 

4 cups of chicken broth

2lbs or more of polish or smoke sausage sliced

1 lb or more of ham sliced into strips

 3 cups (16 oz) rice

32 oz uncooked shrimp, peeled and deveined ( more if you like more sea food)

2 large green bell pepper, diced.

Preparation

Heat the butter in a pan and saute green pepper and onions until tender remove and set aside.

Cook sausage until done pour off excess oil and set aside in large mixing bowl.

Cook ham until done and mix with sausage.

Sautee shimp until done (do not overcook) retain the juice.

Boil rice in chicken broth until done pour off excess broth.

In a large pan add rice, shrimp, sausage, ham bell peppers, onions and mix together well. Season to taste with salt at this point.

May the joy of the season be with you all year.  

Book Launch

THE OFFICIAL ACT OF GRACE NOVEL CAKE. A GIFT FROM MY SISTER, DELPHIA.

I can't believe I haven't posted anything since February. Well at least it's not because I didn't have anything to report. All I can say is birthing a book is hard and like any newborn entity there is even more work after it's born.

It has been a wild ride getting the book out into the various distribution streams of Indie bookstores, and the online outlets of Amazon and Barnes and Noble. All kinds of glitches and minor problems popped up, nothing that couldn't be resolved, but the kinds of things that left me and my publisher saying," Damn how did that happen?"

But it's hasn't been all work and no wonder. To the day I die I will remember my Act of Grace book party as one of the highlights of my life. On a semi warm April Friday night, I had the official christening of my novel. It was an amazing launch party, better than anything I had daydreamed about when I was writing the novel.


I spent most of last week cooking because I wanted the food to reflect the food in the novel and the only way to do that was to prepare it myself. So the menu included, pound cakes (two different kinds), peach cobbler (huge) , two flour less chocolate cakes, chocolate covered oreos, spicy gingerbread cookies shaped like rabbits, lemon tarts and other treats.


Over one hundred people showed up, so many there was standing room only. My younger brother introduced me which was special. I thanked everyone, then I gave what I hoped would be the first of many readings. After questions I signed books and chatted with my readers. Yes I am living the dream of every author and I feel truly blessed.

You Can Get Through Anything If Magic Made It

I love cooking and this passion for all things culinary reveals itself in my writing. My novel Act of Grace is full of food, particularly pastries and cakes. On the page there are descriptions of tarts, pies and a cornucopia of cakes. Each bake good has its own meaning in the story, if only to convey to the reader the idea that there can be sweetness, joy and hope even in the darkest time of our lives.

One of my favorite cakes to bake and eat is the pound cake. Now, many folks consider the pound cake to be an ordinary kind of bake good. The kind of cake you bake if you don’t have a lot of time or fancy ingredients, Glance at any number of recipes and all you will see as a list of ingredients is a pound each (more or less ) of flour, sugar, butter and eggs. However sometimes simple foods are the most beautiful kinds of foods because they provides the foundation for innovation.

Pound cake batter can be the perfect blank canvas upon which an imaginative cook can demonstrate their culinary expertise. A well made pound cake can be stunning and in my novel, the protagonist Grace gets to describe such a cake. Grace's pound cake (made by a gifted aunt) is beautiful; however, it's not just a simple cake because she will come to realize that it symbolizes the beginning of her heroine’s journey.

Below is my favorite pound cake recipe. Please don't feel that you have to leave your pound cake this naked, take the time to make a nice glaze or make/ buy some good ice cream, melt some chocolate or cut up some ripe fruit to go with it.




Pound Cake

Ingredients

· 1-1/2 cups butter
· 6 eggs
· 1 8-ounce carton dairy sour cream
· 3 cups all-purpose flour
· 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
· 3 cups sugar
· 1 teaspoon vanilla



Directions

Pre-heat oven to 320 degrees

1. Allow butter, eggs, and sour cream to stand at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Make sure the butter is soft. Meanwhile, grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan. Set aside.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine flour and baking soda; set aside.

3. In a large mixer bowl, beat butter with a stand mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Gradually( and I do mean gradually) add sugar, beating about 10 minutes or until very light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

4. Add vanilla. Add flour mixture and sour cream alternately to egg mixture, beating on low to medium speed after each addition until just combined. Spread batter in the prepared pan.

5. Bake in a 325 degree F oven for 1-1/2 hours or until a wooden toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in a pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Remove from pan, and cool thoroughly on a wire rack. If you like, garnish

Enjoy!!!.

Good Luck New Years Pie

I’m a great admirer of George Washington Carver and his work to feed and uplift the poor of his time. He was one of the original ecologist and recycler. He loved to breed plants and this painting reveals him in the midst of cross-pollinating a variety of amaryllis named after him.

People know Carver as the Peanut Man but he also did considerable work with sweet potatoes and black eye peas. Below is recipe for a sweet black eye pea pie I concocted based on his original recipe. ( I have a recipe for a savory pea pie which I will post later.) I once made about fifty of these for an event at a botanical gardens just so the audience could taste a bit of history. I was dog tiered after the event but the letters I received from the public and especially school children was well worth it.

George Washington Carver's Black-eyed Pea Pie

Black eye peas make a wonderful pie but in order for it to be an attractive pie you will have to spend time rubbing off as many of the black spotted skins as possible.( Skinning peas is a time consuming processes and if you don’t care that the filling of the pie will have a dull gray color than use the cooked peas whole). Skinning the pea can be done with dry peas; as you let them soak you start rubbing them to release the hulls and then when you rinse the peas the hulls will float up and off with running water. You will have to do this several times. Once the peas are clean, cook them as you would other beans according to the directions on the back of the bag until soft.

(Please note you get essentially the same kind of pie with it's higher fiber content and an attractive color by using navy beans. Cook the dry Navy bean according to directions on the bag until done . )

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

2 Cups of Cooked Peas (Processes peas or beans in a food processors until smooth)
1 Stick Butter ( room temperature or melted)
4 Eggs
14 oz of Evaporated Milk
2 Tablespoons of Flour
2 Cups of Sugar
2 Tablespoons Vanilla
1 teaspoon Nutmeg
1 teaspoon Cinnamon

In mixing bowl add beans, butter, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and flour mix about 2-3 minuets . Add sugar and vanilla mix well. Pour into pie shells bake about one hour or until golden brown . Makes about 2 to 3 bean pies

An important tip: 5 minute after removing pies from oven cover them with good plastic wrap that clings I found that saran wrap is best although I’m sure there may be others that work just as well. This covering helps the filling of the pies to set up .

Enjoy!!!!!!!

Fig Fool

I am a fool for figs. I wait all summer until the stores have them and then I gorge. This year I just couldn’t bring myself to stretch my budget to pay for a pound of the luscious fruit. I was going to do without. But yesterday my best writing buddy bought me a quart. I was so happy I almost cried. In my novel Act of Grace, figs, with little nuggets of goat cheese perched in their moist beaks, appears in one of the pivotal scenes. It is one of my favorite parts of the book:

Dinner arrived at the table like floats in a culinary Mardi Gras parade. First to arrive was a salad of field greens whose creased and feathery leaves had been laid out as a nest for slivers of sugar encrusted almonds and small green figs whose soft beaky mouths had been propped open to hold smooth pebbles of a soft cheese. The salad was a bright introduction to a steaming mound of Jambalaya that was a treasure trove of pearly rice strewn with gems of moist chicken, thick smoky lips of ham and shrimp the size of a big baby’s fists.

From Act of Grace~

In honor of my friend I give you a recipe for Fresh Figs With Goat Cheese and Peppered Honey from Bon Appetit Magazine

Ingredients

1/4 cup honey

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

12 fresh figs

1/4 cup soft fresh goat cheese

Preparation

Combine honey and pepper in small pitcher; stir to blend. Starting at stem end, cut each fig into quarters, stopping 1/2 inch from bottom to leave base intact. Gently press figs open. Spoon 1 teaspoon cheese into center of each. Arrange figs on platter; drizzle with peppered honey.

Of course this is just as good with out the honey, but the honey accents the flavors of the figs and the cheese. I also have served this with a really nice wine.

THE ROAD TO PUBLICATION IS PAVED WITH CREAM CHEESE.

My agent Anita Diggs has posted on her blog the steps on the road to publication

Here is her description of the first step.


After the agent sends a contract for representation, it will take anywhere from one week to a full year to get a firm offer from a publishing house. It is a tension filled period for both agent and writer.


I’m on the first step, which may explain why I’m in the kitchen cooking for my writers groups. When I’m nervous I cook or I quilt. I should be working on the next novel but that’s another story.

One of my favorite things to bake is cheese cake. There is nothing more soothing than watching a pound or so of cream cheese smack and swirl around a mixing bowl. A favorite of my writing groups is my Cheesecake with Chocolate Glaze.

Next week we’ll talk about how to make my mother’s Peach Cobbler and the strangest and sweetest conversation I ever had with a man about how to cook something his deceased mother use to make for him.


Cheesecake with Chocolate Glaze

Makes 1 nine-inch cake

(Make sure all ingredients are at room temp)


7 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 -1/2cups graham-cracker crumbs

1-1/4 cups sugar

2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup sour cream

Pinch of salt

6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

4 tablespoons heavy cream


1. Heat oven to 350°. In a small saucepan, melt 5 tablespoons butter. In a medium bowl, combine graham-cracker crumbs and 1/4 cup sugar. Stir in melted butter until crumbs are moist. Pour mixture into a 9-inch springform pan; press firmly, forming a 1/2-inch crust up sides of pan. Bake until set, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack.


2. Reduce temperature to 275°. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat cream cheese until smooth. Slowly add remaining cup sugar. Beat until well combined, about 3 minutes.


3. Drizzle in eggs, one at a time, stopping occasionally to scrape down bowl. Beat in sour cream and salt. Pour batter into crust.


4. Bake cheesecake until sides have set but center appears soft, about 1 hour 45 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack to cool. Run a paring knife around the outside of crust, loosening it from pan. When cool, cover tightly with plastic; let set at least 4 hours or overnight.


5. To serve, place chocolate, remaining 2 tablespoons butter, and cream in the top of a double boiler or a heat-proof bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water. Stir occasionally until melted. Remove from heat; let cool slightly. Pour chocolate glaze over cheesecake; spread into a circle, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Chill just until chocolate has set, about 10 minutes.