The plan was for Juliet, a scary and wicked witch last year, to be Juliet Sparrow, the brave pirate, this year, but, blimey!, we had to scuttle that plan. All the pirate hats were way too big.

Halloween Plan B: Here’s Juliet, the Sweet Sea Dog, rocking a saucy sailor hat that, after a lot of looking, turned up at Petco in a bag with a cat costume. Shhhh…Sea Dog Juliet doesn’t need to know that she is wearing a cat hat! Trust me, there is no need to rock that boat.

In the spirit of Halloween and as a paean to corn (candy or not), here is a great Mexican corn recipe. It is pretty and very flavorful. It is easy, too. You could easily whip this up before the ghouls, goblins and sea dogs show up at your door on Monday night.

Corn, by the way, was domesticated in Mexico 7000 years ago. Columbus brought corn to Europe as part of the historical Columbian exchange that, for example, brought sugar to the Americas and potatoes to Europe. Today, corn is the world’s third largest food crop behind wheat and rice.

This recipe is adapted from one of Melissa Clark’s recipes in the NY Times. A link to the original recipe appears at the bottom of this post. There is even a video with Clark’s recipe that shows you the process.

Ingredients: Grilled Corn with Cheese, Lime and Chile

6 ears fresh corn (shucked)

3 T. mayonnaise

2 limes (zest one of the limes)

1/4 t. ancho chile powder (more as needed–I added a generous pinch of chipotle powder, too)

Fine sea salt

Pepper

1/2 C. cotija cheese (crumbled. You may substitute feta or ricotta salata)

Chopped fresh cilantro and lime wedges for garnish.

Directions: Grill corn, turning occasionally, until corn is done and you have some char on the corn.

Meanwhile, combine mayonnaise, lime zest, chile powder, salt and pepper in a small bowl.

Generously spread mayonnaise mixture on corn. Sprinkle with cotija cheese. Garnish with chopped fresh cilantro. Squeeze lime juice onto corn and enjoy.

Here is the link to the original NY Times recipe:

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018269-grilled-corn-with-cheese-lime-and-chile-elotes

Elaine’s fettuccine alfredo.

If it was good enough for Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, this fettuccine alfredo recipe is worth a try. (Kennedy-Onassis said it was “terrific, ” by the way.)

As recipes go, this is a simple one. Like so many  gourmet dishes, the magic is in the ingredients. A fine quality cheese is essential. The cup and a half of heavy cream doesn’t hurt, either.

So, who was this Elaine after whom the dish was named?

Elaine was the infamous New York restauranteur Elaine Kaufman, proprietress of the eponymous upper east side Manhattan restaurant that attracted the who’s who of the New York celebrity and intellectual scene from 1963 until its closing in 2011 after her death. Her restaurant was so quintessentially New York that Woody Allen filmed a scene from Manhattan in the restaurant. Billy Joel mentioned the restaurant in the lyrics of Big Shot.

Kaufman was designated a living landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy in 2003.

Her eccentricities were legendary. 

After graduating from high school, she dyed her hair green (this was in the 40s!) and refused to seek permanent employment in the limited range of mostly office jobs open to women. (I don’t know for sure, but I suspect dyeing one’s hair green would pretty much foreclose most job interviews in the 1940s.) Eventually, she opened a restaurant in a then-unfashionable section of Manhattan.

Kaufman’s Elaine’s, a saloon and a salon, was less known for the food than it was for the scene–a fact that irritated Kaufman to no end.

Elaine’s was far from a luxe destination. Comedian Alan King described the restaurant as being decorated “like a stolen car.”

Kaufman said of her venture, “I live the party life. Elsa Maxwell used to have to send out invitations. I just open the door.” And flock they did. From Sinatra to Allen. From Mailer to Styron. From Baryshnikov to Ephron. Even Trump. They came. (I bet Elaine didn’t take any ‘tude from Trump! Just sayin…)

Like Seinfeld’s “soup nazi,” you didn’t cross the mercurial Kaufman. She regularly railed at the mediocre reviews her restaurant received for its food. She once punched a belligerent customer in the face. Regularly, she yelled at customers who took her restaurant for granted and didn’t order enough food. She was fiercely protective of her customers, once hurling a garbage can lid at paparazzi photographer Ron Galella.

She had a sense of humor, too. Once when she was asked for directions to Elaine’s restroom, Kaufman, without missing a beat,  told the customer “Take a right at Michael Caine.”

Here is a link to the obituary that the NY Times ran when Kaufman died. It is worth your time to read if only for the Normal Mailer anecdote.

Elaine’s Kaufman’s Obit in NY Times

This recipe was adapted from a recipe that originally was published in the New York Times. The link to the original recipe appears at the end of this post.

Ingredients: Elaine’s Fettuccine Alfredo.
2 T. sweet butter
1 small clove garlic (finely chopped)
1 1/2 C. heavy cream
1 large egg yolk
1 pound fresh fettuccine
1 C. freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Asiago cheese
Fresh ground pepper to taste
Garnish with minced parsley or basil leaves

Directions:

Melt sweet butter in a large saucepan. Add garlic and sauté until it is fragrant but not brown. Whisk cream and egg yolk in a bowl and pour mixture into butter/garlic mixture. On medium low heat, cook cream mixture until it reduces and thickens a bit. Do not let mixture boil.

Boil fettuccine in a pot of water until it is al dente. Drain.

Pour cooked fettuccine into the cream sauce and stir until the fettuccine is well mixed in the sauce. You can add a bit of pasta cooking water if you need to make the sauce more liquid as you cook it. Add grated cheese and toss to mix.

Garnish with parsley or basil and lots of freshly-ground pepper.

Enjoy.

Here is a link to the original NY Times recipe for Elaine’s Fettuccine Alfredo:

Elaine’s Fettuccine Alfredo from The New York Times

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

                    –Pablo Neruda

I’ve always loved lemon cakes. 

Back in the 1980s, I remember that the Miss Grace Lemon Pound Cake set the standard. Do you remember that cake? It was moist. It was beautiful. It was bold; the tart lemon flavor that infused the cake grabbed you by the lapels.

Recently, in the grip of a moment of nostalgia, I went online to see if Miss Grace cakes are still available. Apparently they are, but, according to Yelp reviews, customers aren’t altogether happy with the current iteration of the cake. And, a Miss Grace lemon cake costs $37.07 on Amazon (with a collectible gift tin!).

So, I set out looking for a cake that could live up to my sweet memories of the cake and one that could stay within my budget.

Here it is. If you like to pucker up with a jolt of lemon flavor, this buttermilk pound cake is for you!

The link to the original recipe appears at the bottom of this post.

Ingredients: Lemon Buttermilk Pound Cake

For the Cake
3 C. all purpose flour (spooned into a measuring cup and leveled-off with a knife, plus more for the pan)
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (softened)
2 1/4 C. granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 C. buttermilk
2 T. grated lemon zest (packed)
2 T. fresh lemon juice

For the Syrup
1/3 C. water
1/3 C. granulated sugar
2 T. fresh lemon juice

For the Glaze
1 C. confectioners’ sugar
2 T. fresh lemon juice
1/2 t. lemon zest (packed)
1 t. unsalted butter (melted)

Directions:

Prepare your oven and your pan. The oven should be preheated to 325 degrees F. Your bundt pan should be sprayed with a generous amount of cooking spray (or buttered) and then should be dusted with flour. My cake was a little cranky about coming out of the pan once it was cooked, so I can’t emphasize enough the importance of properly preparing your pan and being careful when removing the finished cake from the pan.

Place flour, baking soda and salt in a medium-sized bowl and whisk. Set aside.

Cream butter and sugar in an electric mixer at medium speed (using the paddle attachment) until the mixture is light and fluffy. This will take 3-4 minutes. Scrape down the batter from the sides of your mixer bowl and then add the eggs one at a time. Beat the mixture well after each egg addition. Again, scrape down the sides of your mixer bowl.

Combine the buttermilk, lemon zest and lemon juice in another bowl. Set aside.

Turn your mixer on to a low speed and mix one quarter of the four mixture into the butter/sugar mixture. Then, mix in one third of the buttermilk mixture. Repeat until all the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture have been incorporated into the batter. Again, scrape down the sides of the bowl. Using your mixer, give the batter one last fast mix.

Spoon the batter into the prepared bundt pan. Use a spatula to smooth out the top of the batter.

Bake for one hour and five minutes at 325 degrees F. A cake tester should come out clean when the cake is done.

Remove the cake from the stove and cool the cake on a rack on your counter for at least ten minutes. I gave my cake about 20 minutes and loosened the cake from the sides of the pan with a knife. Take your time with this step.

While the cake is cooling, make the syrup by combining the water and sugar in a pan and bringing it to a boil. When the mixture boils, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Invert the cooled cake onto a wire rack, being careful to ease the cake out of the pan. (Keep your counter clean by slipping parchment paper or aluminum foil under the rack to catch the drips of syrup.)  Using a pastry brush, brush the cake with the hot syrup. The brushing should be done slowly so that the syrup has time to be absorbed into the cake before you brush on more syrup. Once all the syrup has been brushed on the cake, let the cake cool for at least one hour.

Finally, once the cake has cooled, make your glaze combining confectioners’ sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and melted butter in a bowl. Stir the glaze until it is smooth. Your glaze should be thick but pourable (the consistency of thick honey). You can add more sugar or lemon juice to achieve the right consistency. Drizzle the glaze over the top of the cake and down the sides of the cake.

Here is the link to the original recipe:

http://www.onceuponachef.com/2015/01/lemon-buttermilk-pound-cake.html