Looking back at a year of cooking with the TL
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Looking back at the Times Leader test kitchen columns from 2023, I smiled at some of the newsroom taste-testers’ positive comments, from “This is DEE-licious, it really is,” courtesy of reporter Jen Learn-Andes, to “I loved it” from page designer Lyndsay Bartos to “I wouldn’t change a thing,” courtesy of news editor Roger DuPuis.
But perhaps the greater triumphs were when columnist Bill O’Boyle declared one of my offerings to be “not as bad as I may have anticipated” or reporter Hannah Simerson said, “You’re turning me into an adventurous eater. I used to be afraid to try things but I like everything you bring in.”
Many of the things I made this year were plant-based, from rainbow slaw, sauerkraut salad and rhubarb pudding to cashew lentil loaf, carrots with horseradish, and red beets with hazelnuts and yogurt.
While I made that last dish in February, in honor of heart health month, several other 2023 test kitchen products also coincided with the calendar — among them, New Orleans-style gumbo for Mardi Gras and corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day.
For Halloween there were “Yummy Mummy Heads” that were basically pizza toppings on slices of potatoes, and for Easter there were cakes shaped like a rabbit and a lamb. Reader Barbara Hartnett of Swoyersville offered to loan me the cake forms for that last project, just as reader Joanne Huntington from Berwick suggested I use her recipe for potato stuffing.
Another reader who helped shape what went into the columns this year was the anonymous person who asked me to make red beet soup.
Actually, I made quite a few red beet dishes this year, not just soup in March and beets with hazelnuts and yogurt in February but red beet pasta in November.
My husband and fellow test cook Mark, meanwhile, recently has been baking a flurry of cookies; you’re sure to read about all of them soon. Earlier in the year, he was baking lots of bread — with potato bread, cinnamon bread, Irish brown bread and paska bread all making an appearance in the first few months.
He’s the test cook who makes things I consider really challenging — like that puff pastry stuffed with chocolate in October. As for me, as soon as a recipe calls for separating an egg, I start to feel dismay.
One situation in which I’m not dismayed is when the two of us enjoy a dish a friend or relative made and we almost simultaneously say, “This would be good for the test kitchen.”
We both think it’s delicious; we both want to make it; I seem to always win the little verbal tussle, as I did this year with my sister Elizabeth’s tips for massaged kale salad and with Mark’s sister Deb’s recipes for pulled pork and Tuscan chicken, where I substituted shrimp for chicken.
The one time Mark and I “competed” this year was when we each supplied the newsroom with a plateful of sliced fresh tomatoes — mine topped with onions, parsley and vinegar and his with basil and fresh mozzarella. The taste testers liked both versions, but even I have to admit his were a little more exciting.
I also loved the broccoli salad with avocado dressing that he wrote about in March, and I know he made a lot of people happy with his recipe for peanut butter fudge in April.
Speaking of peanut butter, page designer Ashley Bringmann contributed two food columns this year — one for homemade peanut butter and one for pickles. I anticipate she’ll write additional columns in 2024, and the food won’t necessarily begin with the letter “P.”
Mark and I plan to keep cooking and baking, too, along with collecting those fun comments, even from the taste tester who is most difficult to please — sportswriter John Erzar, for whom a positive comment about a dish could well be “it’s fair.”
During one memorable taste test, I brought in mini cheesecakes topped with cherries and blueberries in anticipation of the Fourth of July. Erz described his sample as “sour” but “acceptable,” and explained why he presents this “tough judge” persona.
Believing other taste testers were too generous with their comments of “yummy,” “cool and refreshing” and “I loved it,” the sportswriter said one of our colleagues even “sounds like he just got out of prison.” So he feels an obligation to balance it out.
At least we have Erz keeping it real.