"BeyondRiceKrispieTreats" news and stories

Ripe summer tomatoes. Photo: The Ewan, Flickr.

In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.

When I was a kid, the end of the summer brought with it a painful, unpleasant tradition. Every August, when the farmers' market was filled with tomatoes, my parents would buy a few bushels, and the whole family would spend a couple of days blanching, peeling and processing the fruits. Every time, the process resulted in clothing and skin that reeked of tomatoes, fingers that stung and a freezer full of watery tomato sauce that we would defrost throughout the year.

As an adult, I have continued the tradition, although I make my sauce in the fall, when cooking pleasantly warms and perfumes the house, rather than turning it into a sweatbox. I also prefer using canned tomatoes, rather than fresh ones: In addition to sparing my fingers from burns, they produce a sauce that is richer, more flavorful and has a better texture than my parents' marinara. On the other hand, I still use my mom's recipe, which she learned from her Italian godmother, although I add a little bit of red wine vinegar, which gives the sauce more depth. Ultimately, it's a spicy, fennel-accented marinara that freezes well, tastes delicious and is inexpensive to make.

Get the recipe for all-purpose marinara after the jump.

Beautiful fresh leeks. Photo by LollyKnit/Flickr

In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.

My father loved to cook, but few of the recipes in his regular repertoire could really be described as "gourmet." The major exception was his vichyssoise, a cold potato-and-leek soup that he would pull out when the weather got hot and he was in the mood for something refreshing.

Of course, "refreshing" is a relative term; after eating a bowl of his rich, cream-laden soup, I would usually feel like I'd covered my lips in a thick layer of grease. While my version could hardly be described as "low fat," it uses a fraction of the heavy cream that his required and is a lot lighter on the palate. Best of all, it really lets the flavor of the leeks and potatoes shine through. Although this requires a lot of advance time, it refrigerates beautifully and makes a great summer soup!

Get the recipe for vichyssoise after the jump!

Photo: jmurawski/Flickr

In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.

In the mid-1970s, when my mother put "Margaret's Hot Crab Dip" in our family cookbook, the recipe seemed exciting and somewhat exotic. After all, the simple combination of crab, scallion and cream cheese was basically a reverse engineering of the kind of appetizers that upscale restaurants were serving in Maryland and Washington, D.C. at the time, and its simple-yet-spicy flavor made it a hit at parties.

However, years later, when a girlfriend took me to meet her family in South Carolina, it took all of about 10 seconds to convert me to the wonders of chilled Carolina crab dip. This was lucky, as it seemed like every restaurant carried the stuff and passed it out with every meal. My girlfriend's mother's recipe changed depending upon the day, the amount of crab on hand, and whether or not I was taking notes. What follows is a pretty close approximation of her concoction.

Get the recipe for South Carolina-style crab dip after the jump.

Photo: Dewet/flickr

In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.

Going through my old family cookbook, I came across my Aunt Renie's recipe for blue cheese meatloaf. Like many of Renie's recipes, this one has a long pedigree and an old school gourmet touch. However, the original had a heavy touch of sage, which made the loaf fairly bland.

Experimenting with various sauces in my kitchen, I found that the meatloaf tasted amazing when served with a hearty dollop of barbecue sauce. My modified version, featured below, integrates the barbecue sauce into the meatloaf, along with a huge amount of blue cheese. This, combined with a shorter cooking time, yields a finished product that narrows the distance between meatloaf and paté. With that in mind, you might consider serving this dish with sliced pickles, mustard or other paté accompaniments!

Get the recipe for barbecue blue cheese meatloaf after the jump!

Hydrox is one of the ingredients. Photo: Chazz Layne/flickr

In this weekly series, home cook Bruce Watson works his way through a decades-old family cookbook, adapting the best recipes exclusively for Slashfood.

When I was a kid, Creme de Menthe was a pretty big deal. A local restaurant used to make parfaits that were loaded with the stuff, and the mix of vanilla ice cream and super-sweet mint liqueur soon entered my pantheon of top childhood delights.

When it came time to update my Aunt Evie's recipe for Grasshopper Cake, I played with the idea of kicking it up a notch, but higher level mint liqueurs and Godiva chocolate liqueur seemed excessive, like putting truffles on a hamburger. In the end, half of the joy of this boozy, sweet concoction lies in the humble nature of its ingredients.

While my family traditionally made this dish in a pie plate, I opted to go for a springform pan. The crust, which I deliberately left uneven, rose and fell to reveal the bright green filling, and the crumbled cookies on top offered a coarse yet tantalizing finish. Needless to say, this one disappeared pretty quickly!

Get the recipe for Grasshopper Cake after the jump.