Among the vegetables that seem to have no season is beets. They are good any time of year.
And among the many beautiful dishes on the Stagecoach Tavern’s farm table menu is a beet salad that’s a little different. No gorgonzola, for starters. Instead, bacon. Slivered and fried celeriac. And a dab of creme fraiche. Simple, beautiful and healthy.
It’s more a series of steps than a recipe , chef Sarah Dibben told me, starting with roasting whole beets. Just place them in a two-inch deep pan; rub them with a little olive oil; salt-and-pepper them; pour in a little water, cover with a lid or foil and roast them at 300 degrees until they are tender. When I tried it, the beets took almost three hours.
Then, pour on a vinaigrette made from one part balsamic vinegar and three parts olive oil, salt and pepper.
Sprinkle on shredded celeriac that has been deep fried. I couldn’t find celeriac, so I fried up shallots instead — anything crispy and flavorful will do it, and top each serving with a little crumbled bacon.
As a final touch, Dibbens dabs a teaspoon of creme fraiche on top.
Dibbens has a very interesting farm table menu that depends almost entirely on meat and produce raised and grown within 15 miles of the Stagecoach Tavern which is on Route 41 in Sheffield,MA.
For reservations, call 413-229-8585. — Marsden Epworth

Saveur magazine (1998) is the source for one of my all-time favorite break-your-diet apple dishes. It’s a traditional dessert from the Brittany coast in France (the region that gave us the wonderful, versatile crepe). It is similar to the apple pancake recipe below, but is less sugar-coated and more like a thick baked custard with fruit.

Apple Far
Serves 8

Preheat oven to 375.

Grease a deep 10- or 12-inch cake pan with two tablespoons of lightly salted butter, and dust it with 3 tablespoons of sugar. Peel and core four large crisp apples (try Mutsus, or “real” golden delicious if you can find them), and slice into thin rounds. Layer 3/4 of the apple slices in the pan and bake until soft, about 30 minutes.

Melt a stick (1/4 pound) of lightly salted butter.

Sift 1 1/2 cups of flour and 6 tablespoons of sugar together into a mixing bowl, making a well in the center. Whisk in two cups of milk and three eggs, beating until the batter is smooth. Stir in melted butter and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Pour batter over cooked apple slices.

Arrange remaining slices on top and sprinkle with 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar (some candied ginger cut into microscopic bits and sprinkled on top is always nice on custardy desserts, too).

Bake until golden and crusty around the edges, about one hour. It will puff up nicely, but will of course fall quickly, so if there’s anyone you want to impress or delight, have them at hand when you open the oven door.

Cut into wedges and serve warm from the pan.

On the health page of the Jan. 11 Lakeville Journal, I promised to post additional apple recipes on Salty Plums. This high-calorie treat doesn’t belong on the health page, and I have to confess that I haven’t tested it yet. But it comes from Joan Nathan’s always dependable (and infinitely interesting) “Jewish Cooking in America” (a book that proves that Gourmet Jewish Food is not an oxymoron). It reminds me of one of the signature dishes of my hometown: Chicago, a city that really understands high-calorie soul food. Try it, and post your own results here!

German Apple Schmarren (Sugar-coated Apple Pancakes)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 large apples
2 tablespoons butter
Confectioners’ sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Preheat the oven to 350.
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the eggs and milk and beat until smooth.
Peel, core and slice the apples in eighths. Gently stir them into the batter. Heat a 10-inch ovenproof skillet on the cooktop. Brush with the butter, then pour in the batter. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the pancake puffs up at the sides and is crisp and brown on top. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice.

Nathan offers a variation on this from Lois Greene of Waterbury. When Lois was a child, her father “combined the eggs and other ingredients in a huge iron frying pan. After a short while, he put the apple slices over the top of the eggs and sprinkled them liberally with sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice. As the eggs cooked, they puffed up around the apples. When he judged the eggs and apples done, he cut the pancake like a cake.”

I usually like to leave the making of banana bread to our publisher/editor in chief, who bakes an excellent loaf. I especially enjoy leaving a bunch of soft brown bananas in the front lobby of our office building; the next morning, as if by magic, a steaming hot loaf wrapped in tin foil appears in its place. It reminds me of the shoemaker and the elves.
Occasionally, a situation arises where I find I must bake the bread myself. This happened recently when I promised to cook a few meals for a friend who was recovering from surgery. I decided to make a few tea loaves and slice them up so she could eat them for breakfast. And, although our publisher would probably have gladly contributed a banana bread, I decided “to do for myself” for a change.
The recipe I found in “The Martha Stewart Cookbook” (oh, get over it, you know you like her) ended up being exceptionally rich, moist and delicious. My friend asked for the recipe, and I figured as long as I was typing it up, I would share it with you, too.

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed very ripe banana
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped pecans and walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a loaf pan (9×5x3-inch). With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, beating well.
Sift the dry ingredients together and combine with the butter mixture. Blend well. Add the bananas, sour cream and vanilla. Stir well. Stir in the nuts and pour into the prepared loaf pan.
Bake one hour, until a cake tester comes out clean. Turn out onto a rack and allow to cool.

So, the holidays are over, and surely most of us have had our fill of all kinds of great foods, highly caloric or just seasonal and really good. But now it’s January, and we all still have to find nourishment. Where to find inspiration?

How about cookbooks? Did anyone else get a cookbook for a gift this season? Maybe it’s just me (like my family thinks I can use some help with cooking, perhaps?), but I often receive a cookbook as a gift at the holidays. This year, my cousin sent me a wonderful cookbook from Gloucester, Mass., where she spends summers (during the school year, she’s a linguistics professor.)

It’s the Fishermen’s Wives Cookbook, which in Gloucester is very meaningful. For anyone who’s visited there (or read [click here] “The Perfect Storm”, or seen the movie), you know this is a real seafaring community with a long history of families waiting for fishermen to return from the sea. The Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association was formed in 1969 and has been very active raising money to help families left behind by those lost at sea, and working to affect legislation that will help conserve New England fishing grounds and heritage. The cookbook is part of their fundraising activity.

The book is a hard cover with full color throughout, so not your usual spiral-bound fundraising variety. The “wives” come from a range of ethnic backgrounds, but the author (Susan Pollack) identifies them as being from “Sicilian-American, Portuguese, Irish and Newfoundland cultural traditions.” While not all the recipes include seafood, many do, and what’s better than eating lighter in January?

Some of the recipes are: Mediterranean Swordfish Steaks, Shrimp Salad or Lobster; Marinated Tuna Steak; Mussels in Marinara Sauce; Calamari Trizzano; Manhattan Clam Chowder; Tuna a la Porticello; Stuffed Fillet of Sole Rolle; Beer Batter Fish G. Lovasco Style; Salmon Pie; Seafood Chowder. Want some seafood yet?

There are also lots of Italian specialties, like ricotta cheesecake (which my cousin’s mother made all the time when we were kids - it’s fantastic, light but smooth and tangy with lemon brightening the flavor), pizzelles, biscotti, breakfast stratta and focaccia.

This is a great cookbook to inspire some January cooking. Has anyone else been inspired, by a holiday gift, to try some new recipes?

For more info on the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives, and their cookbook, go to their (click here) web site.