Cook by the Book: Between Seasons Luncheon

Welcome back! In my last post I began to share a little about a luncheon my daughter and I prepared for my mom and my mother-in-law for Grandparents Day. Today I’d like to share the recipes. And since we’re between seasons right now I selected recipes that would blend summer and fall! Also, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m challenging myself to use my cookbooks more, so I planned my entire menu from cookbook recipes. It was true lady food!

Between Seasons Menu

Rosy Raspberry Soup

Chicken Salad Croissants, Broccoli Salad, and Cheese Straws

Apple Raspberry Iced Tea

Hummingbird Cake & Coffee

The first cookbook I want to feature is actually not even a true cookbook but a wonderfully inspiring book about feasting and faith around the table with some recipes sprinkled throughout each chapter. Sally Clarkson’s The Lifegiving Table: Nurturing Faith Through Feasting, One Meal at a Time beautifully shares how feasting physically on delicious food with others around our table is also a feast spiritually as we grow in our fellowship and faith. I was once asked to give a talk to some ladies on menu planning and making meals special and I referenced this book quite a bit. It is so lovely!

So, that brings us to our first course, a chilled Rosy Raspberry Soup! This soup is so delicious and refreshing! Oh my, I think I could eat this every day. You might be wondering how this dish could blend summer and fall. It’s easy to see that the chilled raspberry covers summer, but what about fall? Well, it’s with 2 surprising ingredients: cinnamon and cloves! Actually, I was out of cloves, but I’ll definitely try it next time and I did use the cinnamon. I was curious how it would taste with the raspberries and let me just say that it works! In fact, Sally Clarkson serves this soup at Christmas. Wouldn’t that be pretty on the holiday table!

Rosy Raspberry Soup

Ingredients:

3 cups fresh or frozen (unsweetened) raspberries (18-20 oz)

1 cup cranberry-apple or cranberry-raspberry juice

1/2-3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

2 Tbsp. seedless raspberry jam

1-2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 cup vanilla yogurt

Canned (aerosol) whipped cream

fresh mint leaves for garnish

Thaw raspberries is frozen. Place raspberries in a blender and puree. Taste to see if the mixture is the right consistency for you–thick or thin. Add liquid if you want it thinner (see note). Transfer to a large saucepan and add the juice, sugar, spices, and jam. Stir to dissolve the sugar and jam, then taste to make sure the mixture is sweet enough. (It will depend on the raspberries.) If too sour, add a bit more sugar and blend thoroughly. Then cook the mixture over medium heat just until it begins to boil.

Remove pan from heat. Strain the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds and allow to cool. Whisk in the lemon juice and yogurt. Cool in the refrigerator.

To serve, pour into bowls or custard cups. Top each with a squirt of whipped cream (make it a generous squirt, per Alinda!) and some fresh mint if you have it.

Serves 4-6 depending on the size of your bowls.

*Note: this recipe also calls for 1 1/2 cups water plus 1/4 cup sweet wine added into the saucepan mixture, but mine would have been way too thin with the extra liquid so I left that out and it was perfect.

For our main course, we served chicken salad with the unique addition of curry powder and vanilla yogurt to warm it up a tad for fall. Another surprising ingredient is a few squirts of canned whipped cream! I must admit I was a bit skeptical about how the flavors would come together but the sweet and savory combination was really good, and I’ve munched on the leftovers all week. I had my husband taste a first bite after I mixed it, and I got a “Wow, that’s so good!” The recipe is called “Mama’s Chicken Salad” because it was Clarkson’s mother’s recipe. I’m calling it “Curry Chicken Salad”.

Curry Chicken Salad

Ingredients:

About 4 cups cooked chicken (rotisserie works too)

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

2 tsp. sugar

2 tsp. curry powder, or to your liking

1 1/2 tsp. salt (I used less)

pepper to taste

several squirts canned whipped cream

1/2 green onion, thinly sliced

1 1/2 cups grapes (purple or green or both), sliced in half

3/4-1 cup chopped buttered toasted pecans

1/3 cup dried cranberries, optional

Drain and pat chicken so salad is not wet. Shred or cut into small chunks.

Mix together the mayonnaise, yogurt, sugar, curry powder, salt, pepper, and whipped cream. Stir in the chicken, green onion, grapes, buttered pecans, and cranberries, if using (I plan to use the cranberries at Christmas!) Mix thoroughly.

I served the chicken salad on flaky croissants with bibb lettuce and a side of broccoli salad and, of course, cheese straws–a Deep South staple–and a cool glass of apple raspberry tea! (Cheese straw recipe coming soon.)

My daughter loves to bake–I don’t know where she gets that from, ha! –so I had her take care of the dessert. I suggested a hummingbird cake since it’s fruity with a little spicy cinnamon. Ordinarily my girl bakes cookies or brownies so this was her first layered cake. I gave her a lesson in baking and icing a 3-layered cake and she did a wonderful job! A couple of days later she commented on how fun it was to make a layered cake and that she wants to make more!

This recipe is Paula Deen’s from her cookbook The Lady & Sons, Too! My friend Maisha used to bring a delicious hummingbird cake to our small group, and I remembered that she once told me it was Paula Deen’s recipe, so I looked in my PD cookbooks and found it!

Hummingbird Cake

Cake:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

3 eggs, beaten

3/4 cup vegetables oil

1 3/4 cup mashed bananas

One 8-ounce can crushed pineapple, with juice

1 cup chopped pecans

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Frosting:

One 8-ounce cream cheese, room temp.

1/2 cup butter, room temp.

1 pound confectioner’s sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup chopped pecans (I like buttery toasted)

*Note: We like a lot of icing on our cakes, so I told my daughter to double the recipe for some extra. There was some leftover which we saved, and she later used for some pumpkin cupcakes she made for our small group meeting this week.

Cake: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add the eggs and oil and stir just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Do not beat. Stir in the banana, the pineapple and its juice, the pecans, and the vanilla.

Divide the batter among the prepared pans and bake for 23 to 28 minutes (my oven is always faster) or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake layers in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn them out onto a rack to cool completely.

Frosting: In a bowl, blend together the cream cheese and butter. Gradually add the confectioner’s sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla. Stir in the pecans or reserve them to sprinkle on top of the frosted cake. Fill and frost the cake.

This cake was just heavenly with a cup of coffee! We took our dessert to the den to get comfy and were joined by the guys who came in and were ready for something sweet after their downtown burgers.

Ok, friends! This concludes our grandmother’s luncheon details. We had fun and enjoyed honoring these special grandparents who mean so much to us!