Comfort Foods and Indulgences

It is the time of year when the spring fiddlehead foragers return to our store to sell us chanterelle mushrooms packed into rounded over Tupperware containers. It is an exceptional year for chanterelle mushrooms because it has rained a lot in Maine this summer and that make them grow large, luscious and most abundant.

We eat mushrooms regularly at our house usually sautéed in a combination of butter and olive oil with a touch of minced garlic at the end but once in a while I make “the dish”. The ultimate chanterelle preparation is combining the mushrooms with lobster meat, cream and cognac. I know what you are thinking; how rich… Yes, but spoon a small portion on a beautiful plate and eat slowly as you ponder how anything could taste this wonderful..

I use 1 pound of chanterelle mushrooms and I pick out the largest ones. Wipe them clean, trim the bottom of the stem off and I like to pull the mushrooms apart by hand keeping the pieces fairly large. The reason I prefer the mushroom pulled into large pieces is because it’s the star of the dish. You’ll see.

Have you ever had bananas in your kitchen that were so black and shriveled, you almost threw them out? It's happened to me so many times. Day after day I I tell myself I will make a batch of banana muffins. And finally, the day arrives when I actually pick up the deflated bunch of almost unrecognizable fruit and head for the door, with intentions of taking them out to the woods for animals to enjoy. But, I just can't do it. So, this week, I squeezed the mushy fruit from its shriveled, dark skin and stirred it into a rich mix of cream cheese, sugar and eggs to make cheesecake.

I must back up a little bit at this point. Years ago, in 2005 actually, I copied a recipe for Hot Buttered Rum Cheesecakes with Rum-Caramel Sauce from that year's December issue of Bon Appetit magazine. I ordered a bunch of tiny (4 1/2-inch) springform pans, ready to make the cheesecakes and give them as gifts. It never happened that year, or any year since that time. But, I still have the recipe. I vaguely remembered the recipe instructions for reducing some dark rum to stir into the cake batter. With the experience of tasting warm, rum-spiked bananas foster still clear in my mind – I made several flaming pans full of the dessert for a recent fundraising event for the Headwaters Science Center in Bemidji – I wondered if I could match the flavors of that dessert in a cheesecake.

Every Sunday I roast a few chicken breasts (bone in, skin on). It’s easy. Having shredded chicken in the kitchen at all times prevents me from randomly eating empty calories during the week. Plus, having pre-cooked, roasted chicken on hand, gives me lots of inspiration for one pot meals.

Generally, I don’t really like leftovers. With that said, I always make enough food for dinner so M can take lunch to work with him the next day and the kids have something healthy to put in their lunch box. Yet, by the time Thursday rolls around, even though I have “planned” a particular meal for that night (yes, I do meal plan every single week), sometimes it is hard to motivate. Whipping up a meal in less than 2o minutes is sometimes much more desirable than what was supposed to be on the table that night and this leftover hash was created on one of those nights.

Left over roasted potatoes, shredded chicken, half of a red pepper, a few leeks, additional random veggies, and some spices, created one of our new favorites; Chicken-Potato Hash. It is equally delish with or without the poached egg. Eli and I prefered it with the egg, where as Isaac cannot sit next to us when eggs are on the menu. Instead, he added a bit of ketchup. This also makes a wonderful and highly requested Sunday morning breakfast. Sausage works just as well and I have been known to a throw in some left over green beans, roasted carrots (or other roots), and a dollop of goat cheese.

When I awoke bleary-eyed at 12:15 am last night, I rolled over to Jeff's side of the bed to discover a still-warm, empty spot. Fearing he was ill, I immediately walked to the bathroom. Empty. I walked into the kitchen and there he was, standing in the darkened room lit only by the bluish glow of the refrigerator light. His cheeks were bulging, and he was holding a big slice of leftover eggplant and caramelized onion pizza.

"Watcha doin'?" I asked.

"Noffin," he said, trying unsuccessfully, to hide the ball of pizza stuffed in his mouth.

"Doesn't look like nothin'," I said, "Looks like pizza."

"You're dreaming. Go back to bed," he said.

If ever there was a pizza worth getting up in the middle of the night, it's this eggplant, caramelized onion and prosciutto pizza with smoked mozzarella.