From the LA Times
My mom has a recipe on Epicurious. At first I found that amusing. Epicurious, after all, is the holy grail of recipe websites, the collected works of some of the best food writers in the country. And, to put it most kindly, my mom was not a gifted cook. At least not by the definition we most usually apply today.
Oh, it's a good recipe. Maybe a great recipe. We printed it in the Los Angeles Times for the first time in 1992 and most recently in 2000, and I still get calls and emails every Thanksgiving asking for Mom Parsons' Cranberries.
It has just the right balance of sweet and tart, with the spice of cloves, cinnamon and allspice coming up from the background. I can — and sometimes do — drink the syrup straight. The texture is like a loose jelly, but the cranberries are cooked briefly, so they still have pop. It's so good that I know my mom couldn't have thought it up herself.
When I say something like that, people sometimes gasp. It sounds cruel, particularly these days when culinary ability is regarded as being next to godliness.
But even if my mom had had the inclination to be a good creative cook, she probably wouldn't have had either the time or the resources. She was too busy raising four kids on my dad's Air Force salary — for most of his career a modest paycheck that still required us to pack up and move almost every year.
Kohlrabi, a vegetable that sounds just as foreign as it is alien to most people, is a subtle-flavored vegetable in the cabbage family. In fact it's German name translates to cabbage (kohl) turnip (rabi). Varieties include purple and pale green. It often gets confused with rutabagas or turnips, but it's actually much more attractive than both. Kohlrabi can be eaten raw (its taste resembles that of radishes) or cooked (where its taste is similar to boiled broccoli stems). This creamy soup is the perfect recipe for kohlrabi, because the vegetable turns sweet and tender.
I love this time of year. Temperatures are falling and the leaves are turning golden and orange. It had been a tough year agriculture wise. As harvest approaches next week, we are looking forward to making wine and enjoying the bounty of the season with so many of you who continue to make it all possible.
Salads don't always have to contain green lettuces, like basic iceberg or bibb, other colors, textures, and flavors can make an interesting combination. I love bitter lettuces, such as purple radicchio and white endive. Add pungent cheese, sweet and juicy pears, and crunchy walnuts to the mix, dress it in a Dijon-maple vinaigrette, and it becomes a festive fall salad that can be enjoyed as an elegant appetizer. Roasting the pears with a drizzle of maple syrup creates another level of flavor and intensifies their sweetness. I use Seckel pears, which are a small and quite firm variety of pear. They work extremely well when cooked and don't lose their texture at all, making them ideal in this salad.
One of my favorite things about Fall is apples…and trips to the apple orchard. This year, without a trip to one of my favorite apple orchards in the Twin Cities area marked on the calendar, I was beginning to think it would be the first time in many, many years that I didn’t get to an apple orchard. The sign along Highway 10 that made me turn my car down a winding country road in search of my favorite fall fruit, turned into a wild goose chase. But then, an angel appeared and offered me all the apples I could possibly want or need.