Is there such a thing as being “good” at social media? If so, I’m the opposite. Yet, in spite of my minimal activity on Facebook and Twitter, etc., I sometimes get to experience the benefits of social media first-hand. It happened just recently when Karen Deyle Miller, new to Vermont, contacted me about joining DCCC. She is a facebook friend with Crescent Dragonwagon, a friend of mine who had “liked” my posting about the club’s wok portrait session. And now Karen is a member. Nice, huh?

Not missing a beat, Karen has jumped right into Jerusalem, our current pick. She quickly discovered that some of the key spices and spice blends used in the book are sold at (more…)

A couple of weeks ago I offered you a cocktail while waiting for dinner. Well, here it is, though not from Thai Food, the current DCCC pick, but from Bean by Bean, the latest cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon. If that name sounds familiar, and who can forget a name like that?, it’s because she’s the author of another cookbook that was the DCCC pick last Spring. Crescent’s lovely publicist at Workman Publishing, Rebecca Carlysle, my review of that cookbook (click here to read it) and so she decided to send me a copy of Bean by Bean to review, and she has graciously allowed me to include a recipe from the book. Since I know you’re waiting for a Thai meal, and not just Thai-inspired drinking chocolate and cocktails, I picked Crescent’s recipe for green curry with tofu. Read on to get my impression of Crescent’s newest cookbook and for her extra-green curry recipe, shown in the photo above.

BEAN BY BEAN
A COOKBOOK
More than 175 Recipes for Fresh Beans, Dried Beans, Cool Beans, Hot Beans, Savory Beans, even Sweet Beans!
By Crescent Dragonwagon
Workman Publishing
370 pp.

Bean by Bean, an essential guide to preparing and enjoying one of the world’s oldest forms of sustenance, is the latest cookbook from Crescent Dragonwagon, who cultivates beans and readers-turned-happy-cooks-and-satisfied-eaters with equal facility.

If I were a bean, I would feel lucky to be planted in Crescent’s garden, and perhaps even luckier when, at just the right moment, I was picked and taken into her kitchen to be handled with care, appreciation, and love and ultimately transformed into an appetizing and sustaining meal—after all, legumes have (more…)

Earlier this month, over Labor Day weekend, I took a rewarding and inspiring writing workshop lead by Crescent Dragonwagon, a warm and nuanced, broadly talented, and gifted writer who has been thinking about, writing about, and teaching about the process of writing for a lifetime.

The workshop, called “Fearless Writing,” takes a holistic view: There is the thing of writing—involving objective realities such as craft, process, and habit—and there is the life of the writer, or simply life, often unpredictable, (more…)

DAIRY HOLLOW HOUSE SOUP & BREAD
A Country Inn Cookbook
By Crescent Dragonwagon
Workman Publishing
406 pp. (out of print)

I don’t know Crescent Dragonwagon personally, but after reading her Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread cookbook from start to finish, and making several successful recipes from it, I feel as if I’ve gotten to know something of her—enough to bet that generosity is one of her best-loved traits. In our author-reader/cook-to-cook relationship, I feel doted on. All of my questions about technique have been anticipated, my curiosity about an ingredient or genesis of a recipe satisfied, my experience of the foods enriched by Crescent Dragonwagon’s high-quality prose and selection of quotes from poets, cooks, and artists, and, most importantly, the recipes deliver on her promises.

At the Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club potluck, we (more…)

Red Beans and Rice from Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread

Typically, prior to the potluck for each DCCC cookbook, I post a set of questions to stimulate discussion and to make sure we don’t forget to cover some of the most basic discussion topics at our meeting—such as, “Which recipes does everyone like best?” and “Will members likely cook from this book again?”, and so on. Except this time I forgot. Argh. Summer fun and weeding tasks got the best of me. I’ve decided to post them anyway in the off chance that one day someone may like to discuss this very same book and find this list of questions useful. These questions are meant to be used by anyone or any club that has been reading and making recipes from Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread.

Crescent Dragonwagon is chatty, making this book as suited for the kitchen as it is at the bedside reading table. She gives you the reader and cook lots of information about food, life, cooking, and gardening, with much practical guidance. Do you enjoy this amount of text in a cookbook? (more…)

Filé powder. Dark chocolate-brown roux. Cayenne pepper. These are the some of the ingredients that help give gumbo its signature and soul-satisfying flavor. When I discovered that Crescent Dragonwagon devoted an entire chapter in her cookbook Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread to this distinctively, and to Northerners, exotic, American soup, I knew I would want to try my hand at making a pot of gumbo before the club moved on to the next book. Having followed Crescent’s very detailed and clear instructions, I’m convinced that anyone can make a good gumbo. The making of an authentic gumbo is not to be taken lightly; it is very involved, but I assure you it is worth the work.

In the gumbo chapter, called “Gumbo Zeb,” after the version she finally settled on after trying twenty-one different gumbo recipes, Crescent gives a fascinating history of (more…)

When cookbook author Crescent Dragonwagon ran an inn and restaurant in Arkansas, her skillet-sizzled cornbread was a favorite menu item of hers and her customers. Clearly cornbread is important to her. After writing Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook, she went on to write The Cornbread Gospels; she also likes to feed cornbread to her parrots. So I was prepared to take her cornbread making advice seriously, including her rationale for adding some sugar, at least a little, to the batter. Though I grew up mostly in the North, the cornbread I ate was prepared by my Tennessean grandmother, who had migrated north when she was a young woman. Her skillet cornbread was made with 100-percent cornmeal, making it a bit dry and crumbly, and was sugar-free. Grandma emphatically denounced cornbread made with sugar, and, until now, I too had made it without sugar.

Grandma would probably say “hogwash” on hearing (more…)

 
Last week I made the buttermilk biscuits from the current DCCC pick, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon. This recipe was an opportunity to use some King Arthur cake flour I’d been meaning to try (Crescent Dragonwagon recommends using cake or pastry flour, such as While Lily, for ultra tender biscuits), some of my homemade lard, and something else lingering in my fridge: baking powder that had long outlived its expiration date.

Before just chucking it out, I decided to test it using one of the many baking powder tests found online. The tests are all the same: you pour hot water over some baking powder, and if it fizzes and bubbles, it’s good to use. A typical ratio is 1 teaspoon baking powder to ⅓ cup hot water.
(more…)

It’s strawberry season, and flyers for strawberry dinners, held at local churches, can be seen around town. The only thing strawberry at these dinners, however, is the dessert—usually homemade strawberry shortcake. This recipe, from Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread by Crescent Dragonwagon, is meant to be served at the start of the meal, the perfect bookend to all of those sweet strawberry desserts. Crescent Dragonwagon, a great writer (who also teaches food writing, by the way) describes the soup as “. . . a little sweet, a little on the tea-roomish, prissy side—but no less delicious for that.” It’s hard to top that. I would add that how sweet or tart to make it is up to you, and that serving it with the same rosé you used to make it an excellent idea. They go wonderfully well together. For the best tasting soup, and drinking enjoyment, try to find a good quality rosé with a balance of dry and sweeter fruit flavors.

(more…)

This spring was my first real asparagus harvest. Last season, the bed, then just one year old, was an exercise in restraint; there was just a handful of asparagus large enough to be picked. With asparagus, immediate gratification is a bad thing: If you over indulge when the asparagus bed is too young, and the asparagus are too thin, the roots will not have an opportunity to establish themselves, which is necessary for a good strong bed with years of productivity ahead.* Even this year, there were many asparagus that I deemed too thin to pick. Even so, I had enough to grill, blanch and sauté, and try two asparagus recipes from Crescent Dragonwagon’s cookbook, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: Asparagus and White Wine Soup and Composed Salad of Asparagus and Snow Peas, shown below.

The soup, made with few ingredients—basically cream, milk, white wine, and cheddar cheese—and thickened with a roux, is nicely suited to this spring vegetable. (more…)