easy recipes — Blog — Claiborne Williams Mildé

If you’re waiting for spring in New York City, the month of March can feel like four years. To get through these chilly days, I’ve been distracting myself with wholesome winter videos of Montrealers’ antics in a recent snow dump, huskies refusing to come in from the cold, and old Warren Miller ski movies (absolute best voiceovers! Tonic for the soul! Second only to those of Sir David Attenborough). We will be choosing more snow for our spring break, so I think for now it’s best to just embrace it.

Hints of spring: bright green shoots of tarragon and chives are emerging in our planter beds, reminding me of how resilient nature is and hinting toward a new season of produce and cooking. The sound of birdsong, even in this urban landscape, changes right about now and soon we’ll be hearing the squawking of red-winged blackbirds out back.

Some things that are getting me through:

Reasons to Be Cheerful is an independent publication and newsletter founded by musician David Byrne. I recently subscribed to this “weekly dose of dopamine for your inbox” as an antidote to the daily media avalanche, and I now receive positive news of the environmental, scientific, and human variety.

In that vein, I also joined Front Porch Forum, a Vermont-only social network promoting “radical neighborliness” (it’s old school and kind of the anti-X). We’ve been spending more and more time in the Green Mountain state and I want to know more about what’s going on in the community.

I’ve been fascinated by studies suggesting a beneficial link between hot chili peppers, microbiome diversity, and even ADHD mitigation. Maybe my craving for ultra spicy foods isn’t just thrill seeking, after all? Yay for science and research! And Ben for sharing this tidbit!

On the subject of food facts, did you know there’s a Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) in Brooklyn? It’s in DUMBO, above Time Out Market, and the current exhibit explores flavor. I’ve been volunteering as a docent at this small but mighty museum and love their message that food is culture and connects us all. The team behind MOFAD is pretty great, too.

If you’re in the Charlottesville, Virginia area, check out my sister Cassie’s art exhibit, “Liminal,” at Second Street Gallery, near the Downtown Mall. Her art is gorgeous and this excellent gallery always has something fresh on offer.

The Philadelphia Flower Show is on at this writing, now through March 9. If you go there, immerse yourself in all things botanical, and say hi to my friend Kamila, who will be selling her beautiful art prints in maker’s booth M33 (if you’re nowhere near there you can still order her products online).

Citrus always comes to the rescue this time of year, and I recently worked up this recipe inspired by a dessert I had at our local F&F Restaurant and Bar. It’s uncomplicated, bright and cheerful—all things we need right now. I love the play of tart citrus fruits against rich, lightly sweetened mascarpone. If you forgo the garnish there are just three ingredients. You can also check it out on my web site, along with other recipes I update seasonally.

Recipe for pistachio-orange shortbread is on my site

Citrus & Mascarpone

Serves 4

Ingredients:

6 citrus fruits, preferably a mix, for example: 1 large grapefruit, 3 oranges such as Cara Cara, plus 2 of “something else”, like blood orange and/or Meyer lemon.
1 cup (8 oz.) mascarpone
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Optional: bittersweet chocolate or fresh mint leaves for garnish

Instructions:

Stir the mascarpone and sugar together well, and set aside at room temperature. The mascarpone should loosen up as it becomes less cold.
Section (suprême) each fruit: cut off the ends just until the fruit beneath is visible, then stand fruit on end and cut along the curve of the fruit, removing the rind and white pith entirely but leaving as much of the fruit possible. Repeat until you have removed all the rinds completely. Next, using a sharp knife, cut along the membranes that divide each section, toward the center of the fruit, until you have skin-free segments. (Though this takes a bit of work, it’s worth it since you’ll have more tender, flavor-intensive slices of fruit). Here’s a video.
Arrange the citrus segments on plates topped with some of the mascarpone. Serve as-is or garnish with finely grated, bittersweet chocolate or a scattering of fresh mint leaves. I like to serve this with a cookie, such as pistaschio-orange shortbread.

Lastly, if you are wondering how to help the must vulnerable members of your community right now, consider supporting your local mutual aid network, which you can locate using this resource. For local Brooklyn folks I absolutely love The Service Collective, which offers tons of kid-friendly volunteer opportunities, so the whole family can help out. Thank you, Marji, for setting up a recent fun project through TSC, assembling toiletry kits with our middle schoolers.

Some of my earliest and happiest memories take place on the Piankatank River in Virginia. It’s a lesser-known estuary of the Chesapeake Bay and my grandparents had a home there, perched on a bluff, salt grayed and modern for the time when it was built. My Mom’s father, Poppy, traveled the world for the tobacco giant he worked for (back when cigs were health food), but he loved nothing more than getting up before dawn and going fishing with the local watermen. I remember it, because I slept in my grandparents’ room on a cot sometimes when the house was packed, and the shock of an alarm clock ringing out in the dark was real.

Scattered through these memories like punctuation are cast iron skillets, because that was where the bacon crisped in the morning and the fish fried at the end of the day. Sometimes they were fish Poppy brought home in a cooler, sometimes dinner was a small spot or perch I reeled out of the water myself, proudly, after sweaty hours swinging my legs off the side of the dock with no see’ums stealth bombing my sunburnt shoulders. After I lovingly swaddled my catch in a dish towel (my Nana tolerated this ritual and always managed to coax the fish away from me) Poppy would clean it on the long dock, tossing the guts into the water and then hosing away the scales. Before dinner he would go out to the garage, where an entire wall by the tool bench was hung with iron skillets of various sizes; there, he would select the appropriate one and then stride into the kitchen twirling that skillet in his hand like a boss.

I still relish the sound and smell of butter foaming and popping in an iron skillet, because butter foams and pops in an iron skillet in a very distinctive way, if you listen—more vigorously, more decisively. And when freshly caught fish, dredged lightly in cornmeal, is laid into foaming butter in an iron skillet it crisps in a way it can’t crisp in any other kind of pan. That’s not a scientifically proven statement but I stand by it.

During college, I pilfered a 9-inch cast iron skillet from my parents’ garage while I was home on a break. It seemed abandoned, so I claimed it. It already had a perfect, smooth black season to it and quickly became my favorite pan, following me to New York City and remaining my preferred vessel for making frittatas, skillet cornbread, and our current weeknight hack, an absurdly lazy version of Deb Perelman’s pizza beans.

That little skillet was joined by a larger, hefty 12-inch beast, which I bought in my 20’s while working as a professional cook. I seasoned it myself—a process that took a little patience but not as much as you might think—and it went from gunmetal gray to deep black and only improved with time. Sometimes I would even lug it along with me on jobs if I wasn’t sure about the client’s cookware situation; it felt like a security blanket. In the present day, it is my preferred place to sear steaks and make a big batch of bacon, or crisp brussels sprouts. All the meals we’ve cooked in those skillets have somehow left their imprints which will enhance now and future meals.

Saveur, in their most recent Top 100 issue, listed “The Great American Cast Iron Revival” as #24—but cast iron never actually went away. It was just joined, over the decades, by countless other products and their marketing clamor. I cook with many types of pans and love them all for different reasons. Copper I admire for its quick heating and conductivity—and if I’m honest, its prettiness. Stainless steel is plain but dependable, and I cherish my All-Clad collection, amassed mostly as wedding gifts. I have a small stable of Le Creuset pots, their colorful enamels somewhat dulled with the patina of cooking. Nothing is better for a languid braise. Nonstick pans? I mostly avoid them except for making omelets. But my cast iron skillets are the real workhorses, the Budweiser Clydesdales of the bunch: kind of clunky but handsome, solid, and all-American.

There are several reasons, nostalgia aside, why cast iron so good. Number one is browning and crisping power: steaks and fish and chicken skins get a really terrific sear in a cast iron skillet, and I would swear that they also pick up some undefinable boost in flavor. The thicker material of cast iron pans takes a little bit longer to heat up (unlike copper), but the heat inhabits the pan for longer, making them practical (and charming) for stove-to-table. Also: it sounds nerdy, but I find that the Lodge skillets I own (which may actually qualify as antiques by now) have a really ideal bottom-to-side ratio, which means they have enough depth for making fried chicken or cornbread but aren’t so high-sided that food begins to steam in their depths. The pan’s material can actually give your food an extra dose of iron, too, especially when the food cooked within it has some measure of acidity. And then there’s the surface. Once you get the pan seasoned and start using it regularly, its cooking surface is smooth and darn near non-stick. More on that below.

The options for cast iron cookware are varied these days, and most companies now offer pre-seasoned pots and pans. Lodge, the company that’s been at it since 1896, still makes the old-fashioned footed camp stove that allows you to cook directly over a fire—plus more streamlined configurations for the modern stovetop. Some other, newer, brands include F. Smithey Ironware Co., and Butter Pat, out of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Try your luck at a local thrift store or antiques store, too—you may strike black gold.

What is seasoning? Simply: seasoning is the process of coating the metal with a protective seal made of hardened oils. Bare cast iron has a natural topography of microscopic gullies and hillocks, and you want to fill all of that in and create a smooth plain so food can release during cooking. For the initial seasoning (which you may never need to do thanks to pre-seasoned products on the market today), cookware must be coated with oil and baked in the oven for an hour or so; Lodge has a nifty guide to this. The best oils, according to food scientist Harold McGee, are soy oil and corn oil because they are conducive to “polymerizing”. I use grapeseed oil for maintenance, since it also fits the bill, and is also a neutral oil that withstands high heat. You should never use oil with a low smoke point, such as extra virgin olive oil. Oils high in saturated fat, such as animal fats and coconut oil, are also not so great for seasoning or maintenance (but are totally fine for cooking).

Maintaining your cast iron automatically becomes easier the more frequently you use your cookware. This is because it won’t sit there and become rusty from neglect, and also because you are adding to its seasoning layer by cooking. Do not be afraid to wash it, either. My basic rule of thumb is to use the gentlest degree of cleaning needed but exert a little more force as the cleanup requires. Sometimes you can get away with simply wiping out the pan. Most often, I use gentle dish liquid like Seventh Generation (which I use at all times anyway) and a soft, natural-bristled brush rather than metal scouring pads. If you get stuck-on food particles in the pan, rubbing in some kosher salt is also a safe way to remove the gunk, but you can also use a metal scrubber if the job calls for it. Beware of leaving your pan soaking in the sink—the resulting rust rings are not fun. After cooking and cleaning, I heat up my pan on the stove and then rub a thin layer of oil (usually grapeseed but the others mentioned above work) on the surface and allow it to cool before putting it away. You can get away with not doing this every time, but definitely do it if you’ve cooked something acidic or have put your pan through a vigorous scrubbing.

What should you cook with your cast iron? Anything! Some people say to avoid cooking acidic foods in there, but it’s ok once you have built up a good surface—just make sure you rub some oil onto the clean, warm pan after cooking, say, tomatoes or lemony chicken in it. Also, a tip if you’re using the skillet in the oven: invest in a silicone handle cover. I can’t tell you how many times I have grabbed a searing hot handle with my bare hands without thinking beforehand—ouch!

Here are some cast iron recipe ideas from around the internet:

Edna Lewis skillet cornbread (note: I use my 9-inch skillet with this. The recipe says 10-inch. Either is fine)

Shakshuka

Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza

Breakfast Hash

Extra-Billowy Dutch Baby

Skillet Berry Crisp

Cast-Iron Chocolate Chip Cookie

…And here is our beloved pizza bean recipe—it’s brutally simple, it’s vegetarian, and we usually plunk down the skillet onto the table along with lots of garlic bread, and then just dive in.

Lazy Pizza Beans

Ingredients:

2 cans large white beans (such as cannellini or gigante beans), drained
1 jar Rao’s marinara or tomato basil sauce (other brands work, Rao’s is just our favorite! Not sponsored!)
Pinch of salt
8-oz fresh mozzarella or more as needed, thinly sliced (we use around half of one of those big balls of mozz found everywhere in NYC)
Optional: fresh basil for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Put beans into a 9-inch or 10-inch skillet. Pour in half a bottle of Rao’s sauce and add more as needed—you want the tops of the beans to still be visible. Stir in just a pinch of salt. Put in oven and bake for about 15 minutes, then cover the top with mozzarella and put on the top shelf of the oven and cook until it’s bubbling and the mozzarella has begun to brown. Scatter torn or sliced basil over the top, if using.

Garlic Bread:

People have their opinions, but here’s mine: Melt some butter and crush a bunch of garlic cloves (I use a microplane zester)—around 4 garlic cloves per 4 tablespoons butter. Stir and season with a pinch of salt. Now slice a baguette or long Italian loaf into 4-inch or so segments, then slice these in half lengthwise. Spread the cut sides liberally with garlic butter then toast in the oven while the pizza beans are cooking.