By: Karen English, Photographs by: Rob Fiocca
Food Stylist:Claudia Bianchi, Prop Stylist: Catherine Macfadyen Food Lovers' Favorites It's a request every cook loves:
“Would you give me your recipe?”
And because good cooks are
typically generous, they’re happy
to oblige. If you’ve found that sharing
favorite recipes is a great way to
build your repertoire of delicious
dishes, “Food Lovers’ Favorites”
will become one of the first sections
you turn to in fresh.
This new department is dedicated
to all those generous good cooks
who are Hannaford shoppers and
associates. “Food Lovers’ Favorites”
is a place where readers can share
recipes, insights about food, and the
fun of being creative in the kitchen.
We hope you’ll want to
contribute your own favorite
recipes. It’s easy - just email
freshmagazine@hannaford.com.
For this issue, Barney Knox and
Lisa Wolff, two members of the
Hannaford family who clearly love
cooking and eating, offer some of
their summer favorites.
Barney Knox:
Sharing Wonderful Food
Like many good cooks, Barney eagerly
anticipates that first bite of one of his
creations. “The most important thing about
cooking to me is the immediate gratification,” he explains. “You can taste for
yourself, or see it in the eyes of your guests
when they taste the food you’ve prepared,
and you know almost immediately that
you’ve done a good job.”
Barney is especially attuned to the finer
points of flavor. As Tasting Supervisor at the
Forest Avenue store in Portland, Maine, he
oversees cooking demonstrations and tries
to sample each product.
While most of Barney’s cooking revolves
around the everyday fare he plans for
himself and his partner, David, he looks
forward to the change of pace that arises
from preparing more elaborate meals for
dinner parties and family gatherings. “I
prefer cooking for special occasions
because it’s not what I ordinarily do,” he
says. “It gives me the opportunity to try
special dishes.”
Guests often benefit from Barney’s
culinary experiments, which can take him
far afield. “I’ve always been fascinated with
foods from other parts of the world,” he
says. “I’m especially fond of the curries
of India.”
To learn about ingredients like curries
and unfamiliar methods for preparing
foods, Barney turns to cookbooks.
“Don’t just read recipes,” he
advises. “Read the descriptions
of techniques and read about the
ingredients.”
Barney says studying cookbooks
is also a great way to build your
familiarity with cooking vocabulary.
“I often liken cooking to mathematics,
in that the skills you learn
build on each other,” he says.
“Once you’ve mastered a specific
technique, you can apply that to
almost anything. If you can sauté a
pork chop correctly, you can sauté
a veal chop.”
With his willingness to learn
new skills - and build on them by
experimenting - Barney finds he
can consistently turn out memorable
meals. And he says anyone can
do the same if they just take the
time to improve. “As you gain more
skills,” he predicts, “your confidence in using those skills with
different foods will increase.”
Here are some of Barney’s favorite recipes
for a meal that’s as at home on a casual
patio table as it is dressed up in the dining
room.
A crisp, also called a crumble, is a simpler version of a pie. There’s no crust - the fruit is placed directly in the baking dish and topped with crumbled, sweetened dough that crisps at the top as it bakes. Cobblers, slumps, and shortcakes are all based on a biscuit or scone-style dough, which can be made with milk, buttermilk, or cream, along with butter or margarine that’s cut into the fl our. The “short” in shortcakes refers to this shortening, a generic term for the fat used to make the biscuit-like dough. The way the dough interacts with the fruit differentiates these desserts.
In a cobbler, spoonfuls of dough are plopped on top of the fruit, so the finished product looks a bit like cobblestones. A pandowdy is similar, except midway through baking, the dough is pressed down into the pan to break up the fruit.
A slump, or grunt, is made on the stove top. The fruit is cooked and simmered, then dollops of dough are dropped into the bubbling fruit like dumplings, making grunt-like noises as they cook. Because they’re partially steamed and boiled, slumps have a somewhat denser texture than shortcakes, where the same dough is baked in an oven, then split open and topped with fruit.
Light and airy, fools have been enjoyed in kitchens with English roots for more than 500 years. Made by pairing equal parts of puréed, stewed fruit and whipped cream, this decidedly unfoolish dessert is truly heavenly - like fluffy, fruity ice cream.
