The tangy yellow pie was a triumph, especially the graham-crumb star on top, which they had pictured on page 58. You may want to make up your own design, the book said. Nothing doing. I copied it, certain their six-point star would unlock the door to mouth-watering. Fancy party. I cooked my way through the book step by 1-2-3 step, carefully turning out Tutti-Frutti-Ice Sparkle, Quick Walnut Penuche, Flip-Flop Pancakes and steaming, butter-pat perfect Baked Potatoes.

Baked potatoes had few ingredients – one – but apparently required a recipe. I followed it. Fifteen years and four kitchens passed before I stopped following recipes, before I started jotting yolk-stained notes, before trusting my own hands, before saying why yes, I will make up my own design. Enough experience and the deceptively easy – the omelet, the pie crust, the potato – will come easier. Directives loosen and slide and one day, in your kitchen, you throw in this and take out that, and the recipes serve as inspiration. Your hands trust you.

Still, even the seasoned cook takes steps forward and back. For Summer Fest Potato Week (soon to be Fall Fest),  I thought nothing like baked potatoes, and since no tricks or twists can make them better than they are, I decided to pull my BHG Junior Cook Book and retrace my steps, following the Baked Potatoes recipe exactly as I did in ’75, which is to say, exactly. I found the beloved blue squares basic and soothing, and also found they produced the finest baked potato a beginning cook – or any cook, of any age – can make.

Set oven at 425°. Scrub dirt off potatoes. Stick with a fork to make holes for the hot steam to escape.

Note that the wire brush is not the exact one pictured in the book. Had I the wrong brush in 1975, I might have assumed the potatoes would come out wrong – deflated or something. Guess what? Brush not important.

Put potatoes on oven rack. Bake potatoes 40 to 60 minutes. They will be soft when squeezed with toweling.

And indeed, they are soft when squeezed with paper toweling. I was so enamored with the word. Would you pass me a paper toweling? Mother, I think we are out of toweling.

Cut a cross in the top of each potato with a paring knife. Place a pat of butter or margarine in each opening.

That cross-cutting bit was clear to me but oh dear, butter or margarine. Which one? Also, the BHG illustration (see above, #3) taught me that when dealing with butter, a pat was not just a slice, but a square yellow thickness of your choice.

There we have it. I followed my own junior footsteps and turned out the same excellent, crisp-skin and fluff-center potatoes. I didn’t toy with perfection then and, experience aside, don’t see any reason to now.

Well. You know.

Summer Fest is an annual online celebration of good food and great ideas, featuring food and garden bloggers from around the globe. Every week we share great recipes, stories and tips for marvelous seasonal ingredients. You can participate by visiting the guest blogs to share links or comments – and if you’re particularly inspired, contribute a post of your own. Drop by A Way to Garden for details on how join the party.

THIS WEEK’S LINKS: POTATOES

Alison at Food2: Boil ‘Em, Mash ‘Em, Stick ‘Em in a Stew

Kirsten at FN Dish: Twice-Baked Potatoes

Sara at Cooking Channel: Duck Fat Roasted Potatoes

Healthy Eats: A Day of Potatoes: Spuds for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Caron at San Diego Foodstuff: Hatch Chile Potato Salad

Nicole at Pinch My Salt: Taquitos de Papa, made with leftover mashed potatoes

Caroline at the Wright Recipes: Indian Spiced Potatoes with Chickpeas (Aloo Chole)

Paige at The Sister Project: French Fries to soothe a burnt-out cook’s soul

Margaret at A Way to Garden: Potato Growing, Curing and Storage Tips

Food Network UK: We like spuds

Alana at Eating From the Ground Up: The strange experience of growing potatoes

Cate at Sweetnicks: Bleu Cheese Potato Mashers

Gilded Fork: A roundup of potato recipes

Skills: Sleeping, slobbering, ear-scratching. Being soft.

Likes: Josie, tennis balls, pumpkin biscuits, eating grass, pizza crust, chewing fur off behind, butter within reach.

Dislikes: Josie going to school, lack of pizza crust, humans talking too much, unfriendly cats, butter out of reach.

Loves: Josie

She doesn’t type, read, cook, bake or pay attention longer than five seconds, but Cleo has something to tell you:

Any idea what it is?

Oatmeal Lace Cookies & Home, by Sara Reddy Coyne

I’ve been thinking a lot about Home lately. Not the home I have today, but the Home of my childhood; the one of family Sunday brunches with dad making epic omelets, mom scraping burnt toast into the sink, and me and my sister sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice and sharing the comics section of the newspaper, spread out giggling on the floor. The Home where all those Thanksgivings and Christmases took place, where summers stretched out far beyond the horizon, and winters were made warm with hot cocoa by the fire, or all of us gathered around a bowl of popcorn to watch a movie on VHS.

I’ve been thinking of this Home, and the sad truth is, the more I think about it, the less certain I am that Home ever existed.

Years of hard-earned cynicism have me doubting my own memories. Maybe I’ve simply watched It’s a Wonderful Life too many times, or have been too affected by my beloved Little Women (the mom of my childhood Home certainly does resemble Marmee in a her warm, wise ways).

We all know our memories are selective. But is Nostalgia cunning enough to completely rewrite our history?

I certainly hope not. Because I’m awfully fond of my memories — real or not.

As children, it doesn’t take much to be happy. We weren’t looking to be impressed, weren’t always expecting something better or newer or next. We could spend hours stalking bugs in the tall grass, happy for mom to deliver us an orange juice popsicle in the back yard, the syrup melting down our arms. It didn’t matter that mom made the popsicles from concentrate, or that there was only ever one flavor. They were simple, delicious, and reliable. Kind of like home.

So when I find myself craving Home, nothing, NOTHING says Home to me like simple, perfect oatmeal cookies.

My mom didn’t rely much on cookbooks. In fact, from what I can remember, we only had one in the kitchen: The Settlement Cook Book, which was first published in 1901, and guarantees the recipes are “The way to a man’s heart.”

This is a no-fuss cookbook: no pictures, little instruction, simple recipes. It’s packed full of good all-American home cooking: dumplings, butter cakes, baked biscuit desserts, pot roasts and stews. But what interested me most, back then and still now, are the cookies. Oatmeal Lace Cookies.

There are only five ingredients, and all you need is one bowl and a spoon to mix them with. Everything you need to make them you’ll likely already have on hand. These are the ultimate late-night, missing-home, looking-for-comfort nostalgic cookies: they’re chewy and crunchy and taste almost more like candy than cookie.

I absolutely adore the understated sparseness of the recipe itself, so I am leaving the language intact for your enjoyment. However, I’ve added a few notes at the bottom to help you along.

When you smell these cookies, and you dip their thin, lacey frames into your glass of milk, I promise your adulthood skepticism will melt away as the brown sugar and butter melts on your tongue. And with a single bite, you will be Home again.

Oatmeal Lace Cookies (from The Settlement Cook Book)

1/2 cup melted butter
2 ½ cups rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg, beaten

Melt butter, add to dry ingredients. Add egg, mix well. Drop from spoon 1 inch apart on greased cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes at 350. Let stand 1 minute, remove from pan.

*Writer’s notes: I recommend adding 1/8 – 1/4 teaspoon salt. Also, keep each cookie just under 1 tablespoon, as they spread quite dramatically during cooking, and become very thin (and lace-like). Allow the edges to grow deep golden brown before removing from oven. And finally, I found I needed to let them rest for 2-3 minutes before they were stiff enough to remove from the cookie sheet. Best served with a glass of cold milk, and some warm nostalgia.

Making Bierochs, by April Phillips

I’ve been eating bierochs since I was a little kid. They were part of our school lunch program. Bierochs are a German-Russian food brought over by the Mennonites. A large group of Mennonites settled the plains of Kansas and many of their foods have lingered and rooted into the culture of Kansas. When I made these in Missouri nobody knew what the heck they were. Now that we’re back in Kansas, I say I’m making bierochs, and people ask me if I eat them with mustard, or plain?

I don’t ever remember having a side dish with bierochs. It doesn’t matter, because the bierochs steal the show, but I’ll put a salad or soup with them to round out the meal. Eating a bieroch reminds me of my childhood – the harvest festival that my small town hosted on the brick-paved Maine Street (really is Maine, not Main) every fall would host various booths, and somebody was always selling homemade bierochs.  They were a trigger that harvest was done and fall had begun.

Now I have to make them every year. My husband and children start requesting them as soon as the colors on the trees start to change, and we reach into the back of the closet for our sweatshirts. Summer is still in full swing, but I’m starting to grow weary of the heat and the constant watering of the garden.  I’m ready for the crisp air of fall, and the smell of fresh bread and beef coming out of my kitchen.

I know you’re going to ask me for a recipe. But I don’t follow a recipe, I just make them – follow along, and you can make them too. Get a big bag or can of sauerkraut.  Rinse and drain, then set aside. Chop up a head of green cabbage…chop….chop….chop…

Combine the cabbage and sauerkraut in a large pot, add a bit of water, and put it on the stove to soften the cabbage.  See all the liquid in the cabbage afters it’s cooked down? We need to drain that off before we mix it with the beef.

You’ll need meat for bierochs – this year I used our pork sausage and some ground beef. I make a lot of bierochs, so I used about 2 lbs of beef and 2 lbs of pork sausage. Brown it, drain it, set aside.

Chop a large yellow onion, saute in oil until tender and starting to caramelize…I like to taste the sweetness of the onions. Mix the onions with the meat.

Combine the cabbage and beef in a large pot and start to season. You can do just about anything you please – I like to add ground mustard, salt, pepper, cumin and garlic powder. Season to your liking, is what I say. In years past, I’ve added a packet of soup mix. You can add cheese, too. Ooh, I love Swiss cheese in a bieroch. This year I left out the cheese, because I have more people in the house that don’t like cheese….but next year, I’m adding cheese.

You can stop here, like I did, and store the mixture in the fridge to work on the dough the next day….or you can start the dough right now. Find a simple wheat or white bread/roll recipe – this year I made whole wheat dough and white dough. If I don’t feel like making the dough, then I buy frozen Rhodes rolls and use them the same way. Here’s the wheat dough after it has risen and is ready to shape.

I quartered the dough, then shaped the sections into logs. Cut the logs into smaller, 1 1/2 inch sections. Then cut those in half. Now the dough is the size I need. I’m thinking that buying the darn Rhodes rolls would be so much easier. But then what would I blog about?

Flatten the dough pieces, then stretch the dough – it needs to be big enough for a big scoop of meat and cabbage, but don’t break it.  I use a large scoop, it’s probably 1/4 cup or maybe 2 tablespoon. Are you following me so far? This is how I cook people. It’s learn it, then do it. Put one scoop of cabbage/meat mixture onto the flattened dough.

Now draw up the edges.  Start pinching together the dough until the entire mixture is completely encased in dough. Put it on a greased baking sheet and proceed to make 4,598 more. Making bierochs is a commitment. You can’t walk away. You have to be there, scooping, pinching, patting, stretching, scooping, pinching, patting, stretching. ARE YOU CHEF ENOUGH FOR IT!

Bake those babies for 12-15 minutes in a 350 degree oven and watch your family love you, and then watch as they hate you because you are going to make them eat bierochs at every meal. For the next eight weeks.

Mmmmm. So good.

When I Became A Cook, by Paige Orloff

For at least the last twenty years, maybe longer, I’ve considered myself a passionate cook. It’s not a hobby, exactly, or an interest, though it is also both of those things, mostly, it’s just what I do. Mind you, I’m a writer and a mother and a wife and a (well-intentioned if inconsistent) friend and a volunteer and a (bad) gardener and I live on a farm with chickens and horses and….you get the idea. My life is full. But the place it most often feels full, and fulfilling, is the kitchen, and much of my passion for cooking is rooted in my relationship with my mom, whose cooking was always the best of any mom I knew.

My mother lives with me now, and she revealed to a friend visiting earlier this summer that one of the reasons she learned to cook (when she was a 19 year old bride living with my dad in Boulder, Colorado) was for the attention it gained her, from my dad and his crew of friends. I suppose that motivation has been mine, too: in college, I remember cooking a meal for a guy on whom I had an absurd, and unrequited, crush. My attempt at seduction failed utterly (though I did end up dating his roommate), but the coq au vin, made for the first time, was really, really good. (Is it a coincidence that the object of my crush is now a successful restauranteur? Hmmm.)

I often try to pinpoint the place in my story when “cook” started to describe me: in graduate school when I threw huge “orphans” dinners ever Thanksgiving? In college, when I baked fresh bread for the half dozen or so guys who shared an off-campus apartment building with me and my roommates? In high school, when I baked care packages of Christmas cookies for classmates who’d returned to their far-flung homes (I went to boarding school) for the holiday? None of those feel right. There’s no B.C., “before cook”, in my timeline, though there are plenty of other stark divides.

When I was four, my mother had a stroke. We were sitting at dinner, the three of us, eating chicken curry. I loved curry nights, because of the delicious, mellow stew and fluffy (never sticky) rice, but also because of the condiments my mother always served alongside: peanuts, shredded coconut, chopped tomato, chopped apple. These were always presented in a tiered Japanese porcelain box, with square compartments stacked one on top of the other, decorated with gold leaf and painted flowers. It was a wedding gift to my parents from my father’s older brother. The whole preparation now feels a little hokey, a very 1970s American interpretation of Indian, but even a fancy foodie would find it delicious. One night over curry, my mother collapsed into her plate, and for years thereafter, my world was much changed.

By the time I was six, Mama was home, but not yet healed. Bedridden much of the time, it was hard for her to care for me and my dad. She did everything she could: I have vivid memories of sitting at her bedside in the morning before school while she brushed my long hair. My other most vivid memory from that hazy time is the afternoon she taught me, step by step, as I ran back and forth between her bedside and her pride-and-joy kitchen (way ahead of its time in 1972, with a restaurant stove and stainless steel countertops) how to roast a chicken.

I’ve never really asked her why she did this. Did she just really crave chicken for dinner? Did she think it would help me to have some control in an out-of-control time if I could put dinner on our table? Maybe both. While the exact recipe from that afternoon is lost (at least to me–she may well remember!), the feeling of pride I felt is still vivid. Maybe that’s why I still relish serving this absolute simplest meal to family and friends, no matter the occasion or time of year. I’ve tried many different versions, tinkering with recipes, rubs and seasonings along the way, but this is my tried and true method. It won’t fail you, and it will comfort you. If it could help heal a scared six year old and a 36 year old stroke victim, roast chicken can do anything.

——————

Roast Chicken

Serves 4

This method is adapted from Julia Child. I find it easiest to do this in my well-seasoned cast iron skillet (I like having the handle to grab when taking the pan in and out of the oven) but you could certainly use a roasting pan. If you don’t have fresh herbs on hand, the chicken will be perfectly good with just the lemon, or even just a bit of salt and pepper. If you are lucky enough to find a local, small farm chicken – try it. The flavor really is different, and better.

1 chicken, around 4 lbs. (If possible, allow the chicken to air dry in the refrigerator for several hours before roasting: just unwrap it, pat it dry, and place it in the skillet or roasting pan, and shove into the fridge. Drying out the skin makes it crisper when cooked.)

coarse salt (I prefer Maldon)
freshly ground black pepper
1 cup chopped mixed herbs–I usually use a handful of Italian parsley, a few springs each of thyme and rosemary, and perhaps a bit of tarragon
2 lemons
2 T extra virgin olive oil plus extra for oiling the pan
4 cloves garlic, chopped

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Rub your pan with a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil. Sprinkle the dried chicken with about 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper, inside the cavity and all over the outside.

Grate the zest off the lemons. Combine zest, chopped herbs, garlic and olive and olive oil in a small bowl. Add another pinch each of salt and pepper, and stir to combine. Stuff some of this mixture (about a tablespoon per side) under the skin of the breast. Smear the rest all over the inside and outside of the chicken. Stuff the zested lemons inside the chicken’s cavity.

Place the chicken on its side in the pan. (This can be a balancing challenge; just do your and the chicken’s best.) Roast for 25 minutes on that side, then remove from oven, and place the other side up. Return to oven for another 25 minutes.

Turn the chicken breast up (lying on its back) and roast for another 25 minutes. Finally, turn the chicken breast down, and roast for the last 25 minutes.

Remove from oven and serve hot or cold. The juice of the roasted lemons is delicious squeezed over the sliced meat.