Recipes | The Golden Dish

Chicken By Any Other Name, Spatchcocked Is Often the Best

August 29, 2021 / John Golden / Mains, Recipes

The last time I prepared a spatchcocked chicken was with one already cut up perfectly The chicken was from Commonwealth Farm, in Unity, Maine. They sell their chickens at the Camden Farmer’s Market, which I visited a few weeks ago. It’s a great market, very old-fashioned with a good mix of vendors). Now, don’t confuse Commonwealth Farm chickens with Commonwealth Poultry Farm in Gardiner, whose chickens are widely available in Portland; the latter are not. They are not one and the same. The latter is the son of the owners of Commonwealth Farm. He gets his chickens far and wide and processes them in Maine. They are a good, fine choice. But if you’re after authenticity and local, Commonwealth are raised and butchered at their farm in Unity and they’re wonderful chickens, with the usual provenance, organic and pastured. They have great chicken flavor and very meat breasts and legs.

Sorghum glazed spatchcocked chicken

Blueberry Pie: An Easily Made Version

July 21, 2021 / John Golden / Baking & Desserts, Recipes

I had two storage containers of Maine’s wild blueberries in the refrigerator and it was time to use up some of them. I measured out a pound of blueberries, which is about 3.5 to 4 cups and put them in a mixing bowl with 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons lemon juice and the zest from one lemon. Mix it all around and stir every 30 minutes. The trick is to let this mixture sit for an hour, preferably two if you have the time, for the juices to get released

And then I did something I never do: I used a frozen store bought shell–this from Whole Foods. It’s all butter based and the taste and texture was OK. I did this to avoid the mess of flour on my work surface and I just didn’t have that much time to pull this together.

Blueberry crumb pie in a store bought pastry case

Strawberry Season Is In Full Swing and Pies Galore Await in the Wings

June 22, 2021 / John Golden / Baking & Desserts, Recipes

Strawberries were early this year by about three weeks. And from the gate they were sweet and juicy in tastings that I had in late May. Maxwell’s is the earliest producer in our area and his berries have been wonderful. I’ve been buying them at from Jordan’s Farm who packs the quart containers over the top so you’re getting a big quart box of berries. This year they’re priced at $7.95. Jordan’s own berry season is just beginning and early berries are in the shop now.

Boxes of local berries at Jordan’s Farm

So far I’ve made all kinds of pies and cobblers with the berries. On the main page of the blog put “strawberry pie” in the search box and you’ll get 19 recipes (some repeats) for strawberry desserts. Two of my favorites are uncooked berries folded into a thick strawberry sauce. (see link: https://thegoldendish.com/2019/06/26/two-great-strawberry-pies-timeless-classics-that-deserve-to-be-made-in-summer/#more-4355

Strawberry pie made with Sprite

The New York Times Cooking App Versus Martha Stewart

April 11, 2021 / John Golden / Baking & Desserts

The Times cooking app is ubiquitous. Everywhere you click you can come across recipes from it. I see friends’ postings on Facebook extolling their wonderfulness as easy-peasy splendor. But they’re not all created equal. And I’ve prepared many a NYTimes Cooking recipe that fostered these two reactions: “Not worth the bother,” and “nothing to write home about” –and the sheet pan dinners. Please put a hold on these for a while.

There are a few that have been wonderful, mostly baking recipes, which I favor. My least favorite are the pasta recipes. But I’m not an ardent pasta fan.

On the “like a lot said side” is a butter cookie that must be made with cultured salted butter; they’re terrific. And the best feature is the Saved Recipe section where you can get to them readily by typing in the search bar the recipe name or category. One that I had made long while back was the the famous pound cake from Detroit.

Otis Lee’s Detroit Pound Cake, NYT

Some work out beautifully and others are complete failures. I don’t know what happened to the line editing process at the Times because some recipes are not edited for clarity, as though line or copy editors were let go.

Sliced cheesecake

Summer Pies, Winter Dreams, the Year-Round Pie that’s Seriously Wonderful

January 27, 2021 / John Golden / Baking & Desserts, Recipes

The distinctiveness of this pie is its crust: made from fairly finely crushed saltine crackers (best with the original Keebler Saltines) and moistened with melted butter until it holds together so you can pat it into a pie plate. Chill it a bit and then bake for about 15 minutes until it’s lightly brown.

When I first posted this pie on Facebook I had lots of comments, one in particular that said “How low can you go.” At first I wasn’t not sure what that meant. But then I took it to mean that it was a fulsome stab at cooking economically, resorting to cracker crumbs for a crust. But this crust makes the pie as does its simple filling that take minutes to make. The result is a pie with a flavor profile of sweet, salt and sour. I loved this pic so much that I made it a second time a few days later. It was in that second version where I made changes. The first time the crust fell apart because I hadn’t crushed the crackers fine enough and I added more melted butter so the crumbs would hold up better. I’ve actually seen some versions where the cracker crust is rolled out like a standard pie dough.

Here the pie is covered with lightly whipped cream; some versions use meringue

Where to Shop Now: Hard to Find Items like Leaf Lard, Veal, Green Peppercorns, Post Grape Nuts Cereal, Bleached Cake Flour and Other Esoterica

January 24, 2021 / John Golden / Baking & Desserts, Discoveries, Recipes

I’ve decided that Shaw’s is my least favorite supermarket of the Big Three (Whole Foods, Hannaford and Market Basket). My reasons were firmly planted after a visit to the Falmouth Route 1 Shaw’s recently where I went to buy two items: Hershey’s cocoa and Karo light syrup. I’ve never done a complete shop at any Shaw’s. Though if you want to finish fast, the Shaw’s at Westgate Shopping Plaza in Portland is the best because hardly anyone is in there. But I was in Falmouth and it was convenient to go there.

Route 1 Shaw’s in Falmouth

Leg of Lamb In Winter: The Perfect Roast

January 3, 2021 / John Golden / Mains, Recipes

I love lamb winter or summer but particularly in the summer when I use a charcoal grill to roast a whole leg on the bone or butterflied. I stud the charcoal base with smoking woods. And I generally make a seasoning paste of parsley, garlic, thyme or rosemary, mustard and olive oil whizzed in the food processor until it’s the texture of a well made pesto. I rub this over the lamb.

Leg of lamb prepared for roasting on a bed of potatoes and a few local carrots

Make Room (on the table) for Sweet Potato Pie

December 6, 2020 / John Golden / Baking & Desserts, Recipes

You rarely see sweet potato pie on desserts menus at New England restaurants or bakeries. That’s because it’s strictly a southern confection that for some reason hasn’t made it up north. Instead there’s plenty of pumpkin pie recipes in our northern New England culinary sphere. It might be time to change that habit. I know I will after making sweet potato pie from a recipe courtesy of Dolester Miles, a James Beard Award pastry chef whose roots are firmly planted in Alabama–namely, at the chef Frank Stitt’s string of restaurants in Birmingham. I made the pie twice not for Thanksgiving but for a weekday dessert in my household. We just loved it.

Sliced pie with whipped cream and grated orange zest

Julia Child’s Honestly Good Tuna Fish Salad Sandwich Revealed

November 2, 2020 / John Golden / Mains, Recipes

Some American sandwiches are innocent delights. Consider the tuna fish salad sandwich–as universal as white bread. But now that the New York Times has lionized the sandwich in its weekly food pages, the Sunday Magazine and the NYTimes Cooking app, I had to try it. Cookbook guru Dorie Greenspan wrote in the Times Magazine a charming article about Julia Child’s devotion to the tuna fish salad sandwich as her favorite lunch dish when working at her home kitchen.. And when Greenspan assisted in Julia’s kitchen years ago, she learned first hand how to make it because she was asked to by Child herself.

Chopped onion, celery, cornichons and capers chopped by my handy Cuisinart manual chopper.

As Easy As Apple Pie–and This One Is Just Perfect!

October 25, 2020 / John Golden / Baking & Desserts, Recipes

The most time-consuming step in making this pie is peeling the apples, coring, pitting and slicing them just right. Otherwise it’s a cinch to make. But its core of goodness is this: It’s baked in a cast-iron skillet. The crust gets beautifully burnished more so than in a traditional pie plate. And the ingredients list is minimal. No spices like cinnamon or nutmeg are used, just the plain goodness of great apples, sugar and a bit of butter–and the secret ingredient, cous cous.

Skillet apple pie with cous cous

Chicken By Any Other Name, Spatchcocked Is Often the Best

Blueberry Pie: An Easily Made Version

Strawberry Season Is In Full Swing and Pies Galore Await in the Wings

The New York Times Cooking App Versus Martha Stewart

Summer Pies, Winter Dreams, the Year-Round Pie that’s Seriously Wonderful

Where to Shop Now: Hard to Find Items like Leaf Lard, Veal, Green Peppercorns, Post Grape Nuts Cereal, Bleached Cake Flour and Other Esoterica

Leg of Lamb In Winter: The Perfect Roast

Make Room (on the table) for Sweet Potato Pie

Julia Child’s Honestly Good Tuna Fish Salad Sandwich Revealed

As Easy As Apple Pie–and This One Is Just Perfect!

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