Posts Tagged ‘Pat Leuchtman’

Pat’s Prize-Winning Maple Walnut Wafers

Friday, March 30th, 2012

Maple month is almost over—and I have one more maple recipe to share. It comes from Pat Leuchtman of Heath, Massachusetts, a gardener and gourmet cook extraordinaire who blogs at Commonweeder. I’m proud to say that she’s a friend of mine.

Pat won a prize for her maple-walnut wafers at the 2010 Heath Fair. I love this fair, which takes place the third weekend in August each year.

It’s just big enough to offer lots of activities for fairgoers. The fair features music, sales stalls, fair food (once a year I HAVE to eat fried dough with maple cream), exhibitions of produce and art, and animals galore.

And it’s just small enough to offer fairgoers a chance to catch up with friends and neighbors.

Pat’s wafers took second place in the maple-confection category. She kindly sent me the recipe. A cross between a cookie and a candy, her sweets resemble pralines but are less overwhelmingly sweet.

Not having any walnuts on hand, I substituted pecans. The wafers disappeared with remarkable speed.

If some of your wafers have trouble coming off the cookie sheet (this happens, particularly if they are a little underdone!), roll them into little balls before putting them on the rack. They are delectable that way, too, even if they are less elegant looking than the wafers.

The Wafers

Ingredients:

3/4 cup chopped walnuts (or pecans!)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) sweet butter
1 cup maple sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon cream

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Over medium-low heat combine all the ingredients in a saucepan. Stir until the butter has melted and your mixture resembles a batter. Remove the pan from the heat.

Line a cookie sheet with a silicone baking mat. Drop one scant teaspoonful of the batter on the sheet at a time, leaving lots of room between dollops. (The cookies will spread!) You will need to make 2 to 3 batches to use up all of your batter.

Bake the cookies until they are bubbly at the center and beginning to brown at the edges. Pat says this can happen in 3 to 4 minutes. My wafers took about 6 minutes, but I would still suggest checking your oven after 3 to 4 minutes.

Let the wafers cool for a few minutes; then gently remove them from the pan and let them cool completely on a rack.

Makes 24 to 30 wafers.

Soup Days: Chipotle Corn Chowder

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

chipotlesoupweb

 

BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE!
 
Frank Loesser’s playful lyric is appropriate to this time of year.  It is indeed chilly—and snowy—and icy—outside. The cold gives us an excuse to linger indoors and enjoy ourselves, however. 

And of course we can cook………

January is National Soup Month for a reason. We have entered the season of simmering pots and warming lunches. I have lots of favorite soups for cold weather. I can eat split pea soup for days on end (a good thing since it’s hard to make only a small pot of it). I save my chicken bones religiously for stock. I turn the dregs of pot roast into vegetable-beef soup. And I’m a sucker for the potential in a can of tomatoes.
 
We can light fires, which always cheer. We can read the occasional novel. We can think about going for long walks in the snow. We can catch up on housework. (We CAN—but I’m not sure I will.)
 

Here is a soup I’ve just started making, and I love it. It was inspired by the Happy Valley Locavore, a blog maintained by Meggin Thwing Eastman of Greenfield, Massachusetts. Meggin writes about her quest to cook with and eat as much locally produced food as she can.

 

The soup on which this one was based (which of course used fresh corn!) solved a long-time dilemma for me. I love to make corn chowder, but I have lots of friends who avoid pork and thus can’t eat the bacon that gives my favorite corn chowder its smoky taste. Meggin’s answer is to use canned chipotles (smoked jalapeño peppers). These give the soup not only smoke but a touch of heat as well.

 

Stay warm and eat hearty!

 

chipotles

 

Chipotle Corn Chowder

 

Ingredients:

 

peanut oil as needed for sautéing

1 onion,  finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 pound new potatoes, cut in small cubes (leave the skins on!)

1 quart vegetable or  chicken stock, plus more stock if needed

2 pounds frozen corn (or the corn from 8 to 10 ears), preferably slightly thawed

2 chipotles in adobo sauce, seeded and finely minced

1 teaspoon salt

freshly ground pepper to taste

cream and milk to taste

chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

 

Instructions:

 

In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil. Add the onion and garlic, and sauté them until they begin to brown. Stir in the potatoes, and cook for a couple of minutes, adding more oil if needed to keep them from sticking to the pot. Pour in 1 quart of stock, and bring the mixture to a boil.

 

Add the corn and chipotles to the pot, return the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer the mixture covered until the corn and tomatoes are soft and the soup tastes good. This takes about half an hour on my stove. Add a bit more stock if the soup looks as though it is drying out.

Let the soup cool for a few minutes; then carefully blend it using a blender, immersion blender, or food processor. Return the soup to the pot, and add a little cream. Stir in milk until the chowder looks and tastes right to you. Heat the milky mixture just to the boiling point, and serve. Garnish with chopped cilantro if desired. Serves 8 to 10.

Lorelei Lee likes to nap on soup days (and on non-soup days, too!).

Lorelei Lee likes to nap on soup days (and on non-soup days, too!).