Holt Cuisine

My earliest memory of butternut squash was when I was in grade school. My family comes from a small town in the southwest corner of Oklahoma called Hollis. I spent time there with my grandmother in the summers.  Back then, no one had ever heard of an HOA, so it was no surprise that her next door neighbor had turned his backyard into a garden and chicken coop. In my big city eyes it was like a tiny farm with huge plants and noisy chickens. I remember watching the chickens and their antics. He would give us corn from his garden in the summers. It was the best.  One summer, Mr. Briscoe grew a new variety of squash, the Butternut squash. He gave grandmother one and told her to cut it in half, remove the seeds and fill the cavity with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. Then bake the halves, cut side up,  until it was tender.  I remember it as being wonderful.  Memory is a funny thing and I wondered how realistic it was that my grandmother a good farm wife who was fami...

I’ve found that there are as many recipes for a regional favorite food as there are cooks who prepare it.  A good example of that in the US is dressing or stuffing that is a traditional dish served with turkey at Thanksgiving. Cooks might disagree on what kind of bread to use or if onions, celery or carrots are needed. Do you use milk? Eggs? How about the giblets from the turkey, or maybe some oysters? Do you stuff this mixture into the bird to cook or cook it in separate pan?  In our house it was always made with cornbread and never stuffed inside of a bird. My mother and grandmother had a traditional argument. Mom would say that grandmother always put sage in her dressing and grandmother would reply, “I never put sage in my dressing!” The recipe for that is here .  I saw a picture of a dish online that looked like one of my favorite Indian dishes, Saag , but it was from the Caribbean. It was called Callaloo.  As I did some research it looked like this was a traditi...

Not long ago I did a sheet pan meal and everything turned out well except for the green beans. So tonight I decided to try again with the green beans.  Tonight’s meal was:  Everything Cod Filets Potatoes Green Beans Zucchini (just in case the green beans were awful again!) I was feeding 4 adults and wanted to have a couple of lunches left over, so I started with 6 fish filets.  As usual I cut the potatoes to similar size pieces and tossed them in oil and salt.  The zucchini I cut in thick strips and tossed in oil and a spicy seasoning blend.  The green beans though I took more time on and I will write the recipe below.  I started the potatoes first and gave them about 20 minutes at 350° before adding the zucchini. At about the 30 minute mark I added the fish and green beans, turned up the temperature to 375°,  and roasted it all for another 30 minutes.  Everything turned out great, including the green beans. Here’s the recipe… Roasted Green Beans ...

I spent the weekend visiting my MIL who is on a low salt diet. She had some requests, things she wanted me to fix for her and I was reminded to keep the salt low. Not no salt, just low salt.  I don’t usually worry about salt when I’m cooking at my house, but I know there are some tricks to help food taste better with less salt.  Since salt is a flavor enhancer, you can up other flavorings. A little extra spice or a squeeze of lemon can enrich the flavor. You can also let the salt in other ingredients such as cheese or olives be all the enhancement you need.  So, I made Tasty Triangles . I only used black olives, no green ones. It doesn’t call for added salt, and with all the cheddar cheese called for that is understandable. She had them for dinner after I left and gave her approval! I also made deviled eggs. In the recipe I explain that I add something sweet, something tart, and something creamy to make deviled eggs. My favorite tart thing to use is dill pickle juice, bu...

This morning we started the day at the Farmer’s Market. It is the middle of winter, so not much in the way of fresh produce there, but one stand had a few things. They had some beautiful brussels sprouts. They were only $5 for a big bag of them.  I also picked up some radish microgreens at one of the booths. These two items rounded out the meal I started and wrote about yesterday. Tonight I unwrapped the chicken and cooked it pretty much the way yesterday's recipe reads. I also took the two potatoes and made some twice baked potatoes. I used the microgreens in the twice baked potatoes along with butter, shredded cheese and salt and pepper to taste. They baked at 350° for 20-30 minutes along with the chicken.  The brussels sprouts, I tossed in canola oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and soy sauce. Then I roasted them at 350° for 20-30 minutes.  Everyone liked everything. The only complaint was that the chicken could have used more salt. And was a little dry. So, I added the i...

I have watched more than my share of food tv. Alton Brown has been one of our favorites for years, and watching his re-runs sometimes reminds me where I got some of my kitchen habits.  But we also like the competition shows like Top Chef and Chopped. They are fun to watch but I have said many times over the years - what chef presented with a grocery store of beautiful ingredients can’t make tasty food??? Let’s see them start with the contents of the average vegetable drawer and freezer at the end of the week. What can you do with that?? Anyway, I decided to take that challenge while visiting my daughter. We badly needed to make a grocery run, so the veg drawer was almost empty. I found the following: 3-4 gnarly carrots The last couple stalks of celery A hunk of an onion The tail end of a bag of spinach And a couple of two week old potatoes. In the freezer I found a package of fairly freezer burned chicken breasts.  The find for the day was the end of a package of fresh rosemar...

Dita asked me for a recipe for mulled wine, and I promised her that I’d do my best.  Unfortunately, for me, mulled wine is less of a recipe and more of a vibe.  So, instead of writing a recipe for you, I’m going to used mulled wine as my primary example in a blog post about vibe cooking. Mulled wine is a winter delight, but can be enjoyed at any time of the year.  Most of the same considerations go into making sangria, which is served cold in the summer.  It’s like coffee- a delicacy served either hot or iced, and for aficionados, the weather barely registers as to how they take it. The first thing you should know about vibe cooking is that as long as you’re vibing, everything is fine!  If you wanted pizza and the best way for you to get pizza is to call up your nearest chain and order it, I will never judge you.  If you decide to be cool and clever and make a homemade pizza out of canned crust and jarred sauce, your vibe is right on.  If you rise your...

After yesterday’s discussion of sheet pan meals, this happened today! One of my daughter’s friends gave her a set of silicone baking dishes. We looked them over and had no idea what they were for. So I headed to the internet and using Google Lens discovered them on Amazon. They are for doing sheet pan meals‼ They corral the food into portions that don’t get juices or flavorings on each other.  I decided to try them out tonight.  For the adults, I had taken chicken breasts and marinated them, then sliced them. For the Pescetarian (me) I had a fish filet and for the 5 year old, dino nuggets. We also had some leftover mac and cheese.  I felt like all the meats were going to need about the same cooking – 20-30 minutes at 350°. But the mac and cheese was going to need more. My solution there was to put the silicone pan of mac and cheese into the microwave for 3 minutes, until it was warm through. That gave it a head start and I sprinkled it with extra cheese. You can never had...

I didn’t intend to be trendy. I really just wanted to do fewer dishes. It seemed reasonable to cook an entire meal on one sheet pan. Who knew that sheet pan meals were going to become the new trend? If you look around on the Internet, you’ll see all kinds of sheet pan meal recipes. People are putting all their vegetables and potatoes and meats on one pan and cooking them together. Then, one pan to wash!! In fact, if you walk down the freezer aisle at the grocery store you can find a line from Birds Eye. They come in a bag and are called Sheet Pan or Oven Bake meals.  But the concept is pretty simple, and is easily tailored to what’s in your fridge for supper. I have done this with many kinds of meats and veggies. The trick is to think about how long you would usually roast each component then do a little math. The longest cooked item goes in first. When the remaining time is how long you want to cook the next thing, add that. Continue in this way until everything is in. I season ea...

I read an article about all the uses for pasta water. Some were pretty good ideas and if convenient I might give them a try. But some were silliness! Pasta water is that cloudy starch laden liquid left after cooking pasta. I used to drain my pasta in a colander and the water went down the drain. But, now I tend to remove the pasta with tongs or a spider leaving a pot of starchy water.  Pasta water would be a great for soaking dried beans. It’s already hot and probably in a nice big pot. I’m always in favor of things that reduce the number of dishes to to be washed.  On the other hand, I’m not likely to try a Pasta Water Martini! There are lots of suggestions to use the pasta water to substitute for the water in breads or soups. I can see that, if I was making an appropriate recipe soon. I can’t see canning or freezing pasta water for future use.  I’m highly unlikely to buy a Pasta Water candle  ($70 from D.S. & Durga), but I might use my leftover water to wa...

There are two types of people in the world. Recipe followers and recipe disregard-ers. Not that they never read recipes they just read and disregard at will.   In case you haven’t figured it out yet from my other writings, I fall firmly in the second category. I love recipe ideas and starting points for meals, but I am entirely likely to end up with something that only vaguely resembles the actual recipe I started with.  Here are some rules for dis-regarding recipes: 1.       Cooking is an art, baking is a science. If you are baking, follow the recipe… mostly. You can tweak the flavorings a bit or look for a direct substitute for something you don’t have on hand. An example of this is when we use Craisins in place of raisins because we like them better in Russian Rocks or the sugar/water substitute in Pecan Pie.  2.       When cooking, always be aware of your end game. Think where you are aiming with your flavor profiles. ...