Jane Alynn

Essays

Fennel and Road Trips

BY JANE ALYNN

Summers, when I walk the trail out to the Cap Sante breakwater in Anacortes, tall stalks with silvery-green fronds heavily perfume the air, making it sweet and licorice-y. Fennel—the merest whiff and I’m back on the Pacific Coast Highway. We’re pulled off at a wayside, lying on the warm sand beside thick patches of wild fennel, lulled by the sway and scent of their feathery plumes. We watch gulls soar and believe summer will go on forever, like the sky, like the highway.

But recapturing childhood memories isn’t the best thing about fennel. And why did I not know this?

A quick search on the internet gave me my first clue. “For years, I avoided the bulbous green and white vegetable labeled sweet anise,” Howard Yoon says on NPR’s Kitchen Window, “because I associated it with black licorice. Who in their right mind would want to taste black licorice at the dinner table?” (Think Licorice Laces and Tire Treads.) Then there’s its name, Foeniculum vulgare. Foeniculum, from the Romans, means “hay”; and we all recognize vulgar. So maybe in my mind this common, gangling perennial in its uncultivated form (sometime called Stinking fennel) was like fodder, deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement. Or maybe this Zelig of vegetables, as Yoon called it, with its bulbous base, resembling a fat or mutated celery, was simply too comic to take seriously.

A recent road trip to Newport, Oregon, turned me around.

After a day on the dock, watching fishing boats unload their daily catches and the nimble-handed fish filleters, decisive as samurai, slicing the carcasses and throwing scraps into water that roiled with sea lions, we realized our stomachs were growling. We headed to the place our friends had recommended—Local Ocean Seafoods, a bright fish market and restaurant across from the dock—and plunged into the menu.

Once I saw fish and chips with fennel slaw I looked no further. Even though the fish and chips were hardly adventurous, the fennel slaw peaked my culinary curiosity.

As soon as our plates arrived, I tasted a forkful of the fennel slaw and was completely unprepared for this seriously wonderful salad. I loved its pleasing, subtle licorice flavor and water chestnut crunch. It was delicate and yet satisfying. Ambrosial comes to mind.

I had to know how to make it. It wasn’t just that it was delicious; it was that if you grew up with coleslaw that was nothing more than soggy cabbage and carrots in a soupy pool of mayonnaise, your first mouth-watering bite of this fennel slaw would show you what slaw really is. It was like the transformation that happens on road trips when you see everything you thought you knew in a different light.

So I asked our server if she would give me the recipe. “No,” she said, “but I’ll tell you what’s in it.” She scribbled six ingredients on her waitress pad, tore off the page, and handed it to me, smiling. And then, as if she had read my mind, my incredulous mind, she added, “That’s it, I promise.”

Back home, I set out to replicate that exceptional slaw. And on the way I got to know this completely unexplored ingredient called fennel.
Well-known to the ancients for its aromatic fruits, succulent and edible shoots, as well as its medicinal properties, fennel was eventually cultivated throughout the Mediterranean and in the United States. Florence fennel, like in my salad, is the variety with a bulb-like base that’s treated as a vegetable. According to Food Lover’s Companion this fennel is amazingly adaptable. “Its bulb (really a swollen stem base), stalks, and fronds are all completely edible, either raw or cooked by various methods—braised, sautéed, or used in soups. The fragrant, graceful greenery can be used as a garnish or snipped like dill and used for a last-minute flavor enhancer.” Fennel is loaded with vitamin A and C and contains a fair amount of calcium, phosphorus and potassium. It’s this fennel you’ll find at your markets in summer.

The roadside variety is fennel that has become naturalized. It has no bulb but can be foraged for pollen, fronds, and seeds (fruits, actually). It’s not a good idea to harvest fennel too close to the road because it’ll be coated with car exhaust, or worse, sprayed with herbicides since common fennel is classified as a noxious weed. Fennel pollen is said to make a delightful spice for meat or vegetables; and its seeds flavor baked goods, salads, or sausage filling, as well as freshen breath and aid in digestion.

I know this is just the beginning of a great adventure with this versatile vegetable. I wonder where the taste of fennel will take me next.

Fennel Slaw, My Version
Yields about 4 servings

Combine:
One good-sized fennel bulb and about the same amount of cabbage—both quartered, cored, and very thinly sliced into roughly the same-sized pieces. Reserve the dill-like tops for later.

Toss with the dressing.

Dressing:
Whisk together one-quarter cup white vinegar (white balsamic, white wine, or white sherry vinegar) and about a teaspoons of honey (you can also use sugar) until dissolved, then whisk in an equal amount of olive oil. Mix until the oil is blended in. Salt and pepper to taste.

Tips:
1) I prefer to slice fennel and cabbage with a sharp chef’s knife. If you use a food processor, use the slicing blade, not the shredding blade, which grates too finely and leaves it limp and watery.
2) Since cabbage throws off a lot of water, let the fully dressed salad sit overnight in the refrigerator. Just before serving, drain off the liquid. You won’t lose anything in taste. Snip the dill-like tops directly into the dish for a last minute flavor burst, toss, and serve.

Learning to Cook

BY JANE ALYNN

Learning to cook, like so many of life’s great initiations, presents us with a series of tests. In the early sixties, still a teenager, I moved to New York City. First I shared a ninth-floor railroad apartment, essentially a long, narrow hallway, in a Westside tenement building with an ever-changing cast of roommates. At the far end of the front room was an efficiency kitchen. Technically, it fit the definition. This kitchen in miniature had the basics—sink, refrigerator, two-burner stove with a tiny oven, and one wall cabinet the size of a cereal box. Functionally, it was quite the opposite. Inefficient (as well as unsafe), I quickly realized this wasn’t a workable lab. Crammed in behind an eating bar, there was hardly room for one. The oven worked only sporadically, and lighting a burner always caused a certain panic, match-lit and flaring up as it did, we’d stumble over each other in the dim light to find the baking soda. It was dark as the stage pit, and ventilation was an issue. Too much use seemed like a bad idea.

That, and being at the peak of ballet student poverty, meant meals took the form of fast food—quick, easy, and most of all, cheap. If we cooked anything, it was fatty hamburger patties (grease hung in the air for days), ramen noodles, and cheese omelets. Otherwise we ate peanut butter spread between slices of Muenster, sandwich-like, and lots and lots of bad fad foods. Since my roommates showed little interest in food other than the obsessive high-carb, quick-energy remedy to hunger, I kept my culinary curiosity to myself, hungry for the day I would have a kitchen of my own where I could learn to cook, where no one would notice my kitchen cluelessness.

Most kids learn to cook from their mothers. They hang out in the kitchen, watch the artful succession of actions that go into assembling a dish, start to finish, and then begin the messy experiments—tasting, smelling, feeling their way through each vital lesson—the surest way to absorb the secrets and techniques of cooking. But my mother had a very low tolerance for imperfection, and little patience. The kitchen was her place, and though she didn’t banish me, exactly, she made it clear in the way she furrowed her brow and furiously wiped surfaces, almost knocking me over as she went about executing (Did she brandish that knife?) the tasks of cooking, all without saying a word.

Rather than discourage me, I wanted more than ever to learn to cook. I dreamed of performing culinary magic. I wanted to be a wizard in the kitchen.

So when I got the chance to take over a rent-controlled apartment in midtown Manhattan, I jumped on it. It was on East 48th Street, a swanky neighborhood full of great restaurants, delicatessens, and nightclubs. The apartment itself gave me a new lease on my culinary ambitions. It had a real kitchen.

I ran my hand along the countertop, admiring the white steel cabinets, modern and gleaming, like-new relics of the nineteen-fifties. And I stared with awe at the big white four-burner range, double sink, full-size refrigerator. I couldn’t believe my luck. With a kitchen like this, I thought, surely, I would emerge as a new creation with some culinary swank.

Already I was planning my first dinner. The nineteen-sixties encouraged showy, complicated food with a French influence; Julia Child had just taken the world by storm. Everyone, it seemed, was serving boeuf à la bourguignonne, coq au vin, and chicken à la Marengo. I was drawn to elegant, classic dishes, but I had to consider my limitations when faced with complexity. I was still a kitchen initiate.

I settled on chicken Marengo. Some say one major problem in re-creating a classic dish is that there is no indisputable list of ingredients. Other than the obvious chicken, various interpretations for chicken Marengo abound. For me, this was an advantage, not a problem. It cleared the way for creative risk-taking, a sense of discovery.

Only later did I learn the convoluted legend of chicken Marengo. One version (there are many) has Napoléon Bonaparte’s chef concocting it on the spot from the meager results of a forage in the countryside. He had scrounged a chicken (and some eggs), tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs, olive oil, and crayfish, which he cooked up and served to famished Bonaparte after winning the Battle of Marengo. In hindsight, it seems somehow fitting.

The recipe I created for that dinner remains in my cookbook, handwritten in my youthful cursive script, on wide-lined notebook paper, yellowed with time and spattered with what looks like tomato sauce. Clearly improvised, it reads: Mix and coat chicken with packaged spaghetti mix and Pepperidge Stuffing (this refers to Pepperidge Farm Herb Seasoned Stuffing Mix). Brown and add (amounts are undefined) fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, parsley, thyme, olives, onions (after which appears a question mark). Add 1 cup dry white wine. Simmer covered 2 hours. At last minute splash with wine. These days I dredge the chicken in flour before browning in olive oil, and instead of packaged herb and spice mixes I use fresh, organic (when available) ingredients, but I have not rewritten it to be more specific.

I believe, like Mark Bittman, author of Kitchen Express, that “to try to force cooks to follow recipes demanding precision robs them of the ability to improvise, to relax, to substitute, to use their own judgment.” Ultimately, then a dish can become whatever you want it to be.

I remember looking around the table at the contented faces of my first guests to whom I had served that chicken Marengo, elated in the ceremonial moment, knowing I had entered the world of cooking.

A is for Apple

BY JANE ALYNN

The orchard was my magical kingdom. A once upon a time in a land not so far away kind of place, where old knuckled trees whispered secrets to us kids who entered there. We couldn’t wait to run down the grassy corridors and disappear in the dark tunnels of arching branches. Losing ourselves for long hours among the colossal trees, we’d sit at their feet and read the sky or climb up and lie in the crook of a limb, as if it were a hammock, and start, “I’m thinking of an animal…” for the other to guess which orchard creature it was. Hide and seek was a favorite game, too. The prizes were always sweet, juicy apples. As we spit out the seeds, we’d imagine ourselves a couple of Johnny Appleseeds whose dream it was for the land to produce so many apples that no one would ever go hungry. When the hot day’s wind left us dusty and in need of cooling off, we’d race to the edge of the orchard where an irrigation ditch flowed fast and clear, its grass-lined banks slicked our impulse to jump in. It was a jungle, lush paradise, our Eden. We reveled in this domain of fantasy and memory, myth and history.

My grandparent’s orchard was located a little more than a mile south of Tieton, Washington. Tieton is a tiny town perched on the western edge of the Yakima valley. They had thirteen acres of fruit—apples mostly, but some pears and cherries.

Every season there had its enchantment. But I loved our visits in the late fall most. With the apple harvest well underway, those quiet, indolent days were replaced by the buzz of activity. Trains of wooden lug boxes clattered throughout the orchard. Pickers stood on rickety fourteen-foot wooden ladders, which were heavy and awkward, trying to grasp the fruit just beyond their reach. They’d fill bags that hung like cocoons on limbs, and pass them down to the ground crew who’d ease them into large bins. It was long days’ labor to harvest those crunchy, sweet, juicy apples for a market that was snapping them up.

But these days this edible gem is hardly the apple of our national eye. When I read that Americans eat only about eighteen pounds of fresh apples annually, compared to Europeans who eat about forty-six pounds of this naturally sweet, yet virtually fat-free and very low in calorie food, I wondered, How can this be? Wouldn’t you think our instinctive sweet tooth would crave a candy that’s good for us and that cleans our teeth, too?

Granted, I’m biased. But the health benefits of apples are abundant. Among them, they contain pectin, a soluble fiber that encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract, helps reduce LDL (”bad”) cholesterol, and lowers blood sugar, a good food for heart health and diabetes management. Apples contain flavonoids, antioxidants believed to improve immune function and prevent heart disease and some cancers. They are full of calcium and vitamins A, B2, and C; they give the gums a healthy massage and whiten teeth.

I returned to Tieton recently, with apples on my mind. The fruit-laden trees, like buxom sirens, had me pulling to the side of the road to partake of their sweetness. The apples are crisp and sweet as ever. But the orchards are different. The huge standards have been replaced by dwarf rootstock that are trellised like grapes and cultivated for increased production. Organics are coming on strong. On the other hand—I get a twinge of melancholy at this—there are few small family farms left.

Standing where my grandparent’s orchard used to be, Clinton Dean, who now owns the property, talked about economic reality. “Back then a farmer could make a good living on thirteen acres.” He looked at me, as if to consider my reaction. “It’s this or that,” he said, pointing to the immense corporate orchards that flanked his place. I thought of Lowell Lancaster, a small orchard owner who was reported in the New York Times to have said, ”If we could get every American to eat an apple a day from early harvest in August to Christmas, then every farmer could get by just fine.”

That tapped me like an incantation.

Sausage-Apple-Sauerkraut Skillet Dinner Serves 4

I’ve made this recipe often over the years, especially when the weather turns crisp. Of unknown origin (it’s scrawled on a ragged scrap of paper in my recipe collection), I’ve updated it for quality and health.

In a large skillet, brown sausages on medium-high with a little olive oil or butter. Add a few teaspoons of water and cover to steam cook, about fifteen minutes. Remove from the pan. In the same pan, sauté a small thinly sliced onion and one chopped tart organic apple, about five minutes. Add a cup and a half of really good drained sauerkraut. Place the sausages on top of the sauerkraut. Mix a tablespoon of water, a tablespoon of cider vinegar, and a teaspoon of caraway seed and pour over all. Cover and cook until heated through, about six minutes. Add quarters of another apple and sprinkle with chopped parsley; cover and cook about two minutes more.

Remember, apples make healthy snacks for kids’ school lunches and give Halloween treats a healthy twist.

Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hills

BY JANE ALYNN

I’m a maniac for mushrooms. My favorite? Chanterelles. The minute I heard you could pluck these gold nuggets of autumn in the Chuckanut Mountains, little more than than a stone’s throw from my front door, I geared up for the rush.

Chanterelles have been savored since ancient times and are prized still by the world’s top chefs. They’re a delicacy only the forest can create (no one has found a way to cultivate them), so they’re worth every penny you’ll pay at your natural food store or farmers market. Yet they’re abundant and free for the taking in forests the world over.

For novice mushroom hunters like myself, however, experts recommend a course in identification. Edible varieties often have highly poisonous look-alikes. There’s a reason John Farley, in the London Art of Cooking (1784), called mushrooms “treacherous gratifications.” Heeding the precaution, I got myself a companion field guide and tagged my mushroom-savvy husband.

Once I learned that chanterelles are among the easiest to identify, and in the Northwest at least, they have no deadly imitators, I set my sights (and taste buds) on eating well, locally.

The usual end-of-summer melancholy turned into a vein of eagerness. And like all avid mushroomers, we rooted for rain. Rain would bring the first flush of the golden fruits and keep them flourishing until the first frost.

The weekend of our mushroom hunting junket had been particularly wet, though the sun was shining when we set out. We drove along a gravel road at the edge of the woods, scanning the forest for the kind of environment in which these succulent treasures grow. Chanterelles wallow in the sweet-smelling forest duff under second-growth Douglas firs and western hemlocks, in the presence of salal, a smattering of sword fern, and moss. They always grow around the base of living trees as each benefits the other. Where the road traversed the north slope, a location we’d heard they like, we parked the car and started walking.

There was no clear trail to lead us. We tromped across oceans of leaf litter, soggy islands of moss, eyes sweeping the ground like searchlights, looking for a flash of yellow against the dark forest soil. After several hours of hiking up steep hills, climbing over piles of brush and fallen trees, finding nothing, we were about to give up. All of a sudden, I saw gold. Like hidden pictures, virtually invisible at first, you see one, and then they’re everywhere you look!

The chanterelle is distinctive and beautiful. It looks like a small gold button when young, and as it matures it’s shaped like a funnel or trumpet, its cup-like form, which gives the chanterelle its name, catching raindrops. Wavy-edged and graceful, its color may range from egg yolk yellow to Creamsicle orange. Curved gill-like ridges run down onto the stem; its flesh is the color of vanilla ice cream. A noticeable fruity aroma quickens salivation.

We dropped to our knees. With a gentle pull and twist at the base, the recommended method for a sustainable harvest, the chanterelle came loose. By leaving the “dirty foot” in the soil, the underground mycelial network from which the next crop of mushrooms will grow stays intact. Prospectors with muddy knees and our own dirty feet and fingers who’d struck it rich, we picked the golden gems for hours.

Our baskets were full that day. And the feast we had was head-bowing delicious, the golden gems a precious discovery.

Sauteed Chanterelles

I love chanterelles simply sautéed. Tender but not crumbly, they hold up well in cooking, and with just a drop of oil they’ll “dry sauté” themselves in their own copious moisture. Sautéed chanterelles may be finished with cream for an easy but elegant sauce. Or add a little sherry and let the liquid reduce until it’s glossy.

Field & Kitchen Notes:

• The Puget Sound Mycological Society is a terrific resource for identifying mushrooms and specifying limits for picking in your jurisdiction.
• Brush them off as you pick them. Use baskets, not buckets, so the spores fall out with every shake as you walk along.
• Don’t eat raw chanterelles; they’ll upset your stomach. But their irritating compounds are readily destroyed by cooking.
• Wash chanterelles only if you must, and do it right before cooking. If you find tiny insects dunk the mushrooms in salted water before cooking.
• Chanterelles should be eaten fresh. They keep well in paper bags in the crisper drawer for about a week. Large quantities may be sauteed in butter and frozen for long-term storage. If dried, they lose a lot of their flavor and texture.
• They have a slight spicy edge, a characteristic of wild edibles. When cooked, their pepperiness is moderated and becomes a pleasant undertone to any dish, from an omelet to white fish to a side of wild rice.
• Delicate in flavor, I don’t recommend mixing them with strong flavored foods. However, chanterelles are versatile. Try these fruity, peppery, nutty mushrooms in soups, salads, as an appetizer or entrée.
• Chanterelles are high in vitamins A and D. Chinese folk remedies have for centuries attributed curative powers to the chanterelle, using them particularly for vision and respiratory problems.

Tasting my Heritage: A Midsummer’s Salad

BY JANE ALYNN

Potato salad is a symbol in a bowl. The mere mention of potato salad, like the ring of a bell, conjures images of all those summer picnics, small town potlucks, and backyard barbecues. Nearly everyone remembers eating some variation of this ubiquitous dish. Even so, potato salad still arouses strong passions, not from aphrodisiac qualities (which potatoes once were thought to have) but from partisan passions. Some think British and French recipes, which are served cold, are superior. Others think the Teutonic recipes with their hot vinegar and bacon dressings have no equal. The World’s Best Potato Salad vies with dozens of the same title, each a wink to comfort food, conviviality, and bliss.

Then there’s my husband. “I can’t stand potato salad,” he said, unequivocally. “Ever since childhood I remember there’d be this large, grayish-yellow bowl of mush at every picnic, and I always felt sick when I ate it.” Then, as if thick on his tongue, he added, “And I don’t even like the taste.” To be fair, he’d only eaten the usual bland commercial mayonnaise-slathered salad.

So I considered it a challenge to find a potato salad recipe that he might relish. I looked first to my own heritage. We Finns love our potatoes.

Midsummer in Finland, as in northern Minnesota, where my grandparents settled in a Finnish community after coming to this country, means being outdoors. Having endured the long, dark winter, Finns retreat from their urban homes to their lakeside cottages for weekends and longer holidays. The sauna (it is said a summer cabin without a sauna is like a restaurant that does not serve food) is in constant use. I loved the ritual of the sauna. Steamy and sweaty, we’d jump into a cold Lake Vermilion, and finish with sausage and, when I got older, beer. Then came dinner. A typical meal would consist of grilled salmon with fresh green vegetables, herbs, herring, and potato salad.

The thing about so many Finnish dishes is there are as many versions as there are lakes. So I never found a family recipe. But since my grandmother was a very traditional Finnish woman and a great cook, and since potato salad or perunasalaatti is said to be one of those delicious sidekicks Finns tend to eat with every possible meal, I was certain she had made it often. I also was certain her potato salad would never contain that maligned condiment, commercial mayonnaise.

Invoking her Finnish roots, or tubers, in this case, I created my own version of perunasalaatti, adapting a recipe I found on the Finfood web site. I’ve written this one down in a notebook my children will inherit. And by the way, my husband loved it.

Finnish Potato Salad

Makes 4 servings

For the Potato Salad
8 small Finnish potatoes
1 tart green apple
2 pickled cucumbers
1 red onion
2 tbsp capers

For the Dressing
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup yogurt
1 tbsp sweet/hot mustard or spicy honey mustard
fresh dill for garnish

Use any of the so-called waxy potatoes—red-skinned, fingerlings, yellow finns—as they are less mealy and hold up better when cutting and tossing with dressing. I like them unpeeled. While the skin itself is not nutritious, the layer immediately under it, only millimeters thick, contains most of the potato’s vitamin C and also its flavor. Boil until fork tender.
Cut the potatoes, apple, and pickles into bite-sized chunks; peel and chop fine the onion. Mix together with the capers in a bowl. Mix the dressing ingredients together and combine with the salad while still warm to absorb the favor. Garnish boldly with fresh dill.

Ode to Asparagus

BY JANE ALYNN

Ah, Spring! It’s the time of year when my complaining mouth turns upward and my thoughts flit like butterflies on a hundred different things to celebrate. Of the season’s multitude of pleasures, I sing praise to the green spears, for hardly anything is better than asparagus. I mean fresh, locally grown asparagus. It reigns supreme.

This crowned head of the kitchen garden, eminent of the vegetables, queen of any feast, has every reason to be so adored. With little effort or time you can put out the most noble and delectable of dishes, one which the palate appreciates as simply transcendental. Imagine gracing your table with big stalks of verdant sweetness, all full of themselves, loaded with antioxidants, vitamin C and A and other essential nutrients, their flavor and fragrance sublime, flesh most tender, just sizzling to be eaten.

Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) has been prized as a delicacy since ancient times. Native to Eurasia, people speculate that this succulent plant of the lily family grew wild in seaside dunes along the Mediterranean Sea and the British Isles. I read somewhere that it was first domesticated by Macedonians about 200 B.C. and that Roman emperors were so fond of asparagus that they kept a special asparagus fleet for the purpose of fetching it.

Asparagus season is short—only about two months—so keep your eye out for its first appearance in the markets. Buy it as soon as you see it, and cook it as soon as you get home. There’s no time to waste. Shortly after harvesting, its sugar turns to tasteless starch and spears lose their snap, moisture, and sweet flavor.

Luckily, you don’t have to do much to it. Asparagus is exquisite with a light steaming and then served with a little butter or olive oil (or Bragg All Natural Ginger & Sesame Salad Dressing, as I did recently, getting rave reviews) and salt to taste. I love it kept simple.

To lightly steam asparagus, I wash it, snap off the ends, and give it three minutes on a trivet over simmering water in a wok with a lid. It will be tender but still crisp. El dente, just the way I like it. But test with a fine skewer; time depends on freshness, thickness, and personal preference. A timer will prevent overcooking, which turns asparagus into a slimy, limp, stomach-turning green mess like my mother used to make.

Besides steaming, there are many other ways to cook and use asparagus. It’s a versatile go-with-everything vegetable. It can be boiled, roasted, stir-fried, grilled, microwaved, and pickled; stirred into soups and eggs; tossed in salads or made into a salad; baked into tarts, quiches, and casseroles; eaten hot or cold, for breakfast or for dinner. Let your imagination go.

And how best to eat these heavenly spears? With your fingers. Even Debrett’s, the last word on traditional British etiquette, states that asparagus should not be eaten with a knife and fork, but by hand. A humility these visiting royalty deserve.

A Not So Sweet Side Dish

BY JANE ALYNN

It was November when I first met my husband. Because I loved to cook and had always been in charge of the inevitable ritual of preparing and serving Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for my family, the coming holidays promised an opportunity for me to take up my place in the kitchen and trot out my most savory and sensuous dishes.
Instead, his mother, Norene, would have us all at her house for Thanksgiving. In the manner of a matriarch she stood firm on cooking the turkey. His oldest daughter from New York City would arrive with slick gourmet magazines and a genius for cookery from which she conjured unbelievably rich and exquisite dishes. His other daughter would assemble a colossal pile of fresh greens for the salad and make the gravy. I was assigned a sweet potato side dish, not one that I created but one that Norene had made for as long as anyone could remember. My ambitions in the kitchen were foiled.
With an undercurrent of earnest timidity, of hidden jealousy, of well-meant and badly directed eagerness to impress his family, I decided to prove myself in another way. I would give the side dish my best attention, making something they would smile on, something delicious and familiar.
After all the stewings and simmerings of this family blending, the feast was a triumph. Harmonious as a farce double. And to this day, the unsweet side dish, its flavor a preferred alternative to candied yams, claims its place on our table.

Herbed Sweet Potato Bake

Makes 8 servings
(published in the Tacoma News Tribune, December 15, 1982)

2 cups cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
1 8-oz pkg. cream cheese (or substitute 1 cup non-fat yogurt cheese)
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
3/4 cup diced green onions
3/4 tsp basil
3/4 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp grated lemon peel
1/2 tsp salt
14 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat with medium speed potatoes, cheese, milk, eggs, 2/3 cup onions, basil, thyme, lemon peel, salt and pepper until blended. Beat on high until light and fluffy. Spoon into a buttered 8-inch squae baking dish. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining onions.

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