Fare Exchange: Creamy apple pie, spicy eggs and birthday cakes on menu

Jane Henegar

Good morning readers. We have one fresh request and several leftovers. They are recipes for garden goodness, for greenness, cheesiness and health. The new request is for fried goat cheese and the repeats are for green pea soup, eggplant lasagna, Greek moussaka and baked whole mushrooms.

The Amateur Cook wrote to say, "I dearly love fried goat cheese and will order anytime I see it on a menu. I have tried and failed to recreate this at home. What tips can you give me to make this a success? I cannot make a crust to stick to the cheese. When I turn it over in the pan, the crust stays in the pan, OR, it has dissolved. I like a crunchy crust. When I use bread crumbs (from a can), it does not have that crunch."

BREAKFAST

The mention of chorizo for breakfast brought M. Duncan to her favorite Texas cookbook and this breakfast dish. "Migas" means crumbs.

Huevos Rancheros Migas

2 tablespoons bacon drippings

4 eggs, beaten

teaspoon Tabasco sauce or more to taste

2 tablespoons onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons green pepper, finely chopped

cup sharp cheese, grated

6 to 8 tostadas or similar amount of tortilla chips

Heat bacon drippings. Add eggs, Tabasco sauce, onions and peppers. Cook over medium heat. When the eggs are almost done, reduce heat and add cheese and then crumbled tostadas or chips. Serve immediately.

APPLE-CHEESE PIE

Castello sent several apple recipes that call for Castello cheese. This one has a creamy cheesy take on apple pie, a pie that always goes well with cheese.

Michael Symon's Apple Pie with Havarti Crust

Crust

2 cups flour

2 tablespoons sugar

teaspoon salt

cup unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1 cups shredded Castello Aged Havarti cheese

6 to 8 tablespoons ice water

Filling

8 cups peeled and sliced Granny Smith apple (about 8 apples)

2/3 cup granulated sugar

cup dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

teaspoon fresh nutmeg

teaspoon salt

cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons butter cut into small cubes

1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon heavy cream

1 tablespoons Turbinado sugar

Before you begin, make sure all of the crust ingredients, the bowl and the food processor are as cold as they can be.

In the chilled bowl of the food processor, combine the flour, sugar and salt. Pulse a few times to mix. Add the chilled, cubed butter. Pulse until small crumbs form, then pulse in the shredded Havarti cheese. Begin to add the ice water, 4 tablespoons at first and then 1 tablespoon at a time until a dough mass forms. (You may not need all of the water, just make sure the dough is not sticky.) Turn the dough out and gently bring it in to a ball without overworking it. Cut it in half then flatten each ball in to a disk. Chill the two disks for at least an hour.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, combine the apples, granulated sugar, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Add the cream and toss to coat. Set aside.

After the dough has rested, keep one piece chilled while you roll out the other. Lightly flour a work surface. Roll out one piece into a 13-inch round. Brush off any excess flour. Line a 10-inch pie plate with the pastry round. Roll out the remaining pastry into a 12-inch round.

Transfer the filling to the pastry-lined pie plate and dot with the butter. Trim the edge of the pastry evenly with the edge of the pie plate. Place the second pastry round over the filling, trim any excess, then seal and crimp the edges. Cut small slits in the top and a small X in the middle. Brush with the egg yolk and cream mixture. Sprinkle with the Turbinado sugar.

Place the pie on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and cover the edges with foil (to prevent overbrowning). Return the pie to the oven and bake until the fruit is tender and the filling is bubbly, about 30 minutes more. Cool on a wire rack for at least 1 hour.

- Recipe courtesy of Michael Symon

FIRST BIRTHDAY CAKE

And here is a word about birthday cakes, one in particular.

This week our granddaughter turns one. Someday she will insist on Barbie Princess cakes and colorful icing bearing her colorful name. But for this one, she'll dig into homemade with her dear little hands, hands like her French mama's and her Serbian grandmother's.

I prepare to tie her in with the ages - of course, doing so in the kitchen. Here is the tableau that precedes the birthday cakes: Her Tennessee great-grandmother's crockery mixing bowl, her Texas great-grandmother's diminutive Bundt pan, often used for cakes to be given away, her French godmother's terrine pan.

The eggs arrive, in brown and beige and aqua, from the Parkers' henhouse up the road. Though their hens' roost has a crystal chandelier, a fox has breached the door, so these freshest eggs are few. I take from the freezer the French butter with flecks of salt that Lula's mama favors. Alongside goes the splattered recipe for cream cheese pound cake from the baby's many-great-cousin Amy Sylar, the late postmistress of Ooltewah and a renowned and generous cook.

I slip the cake in the oven, alone in the kitchen yet not alone: the women in this family stand watch together. I am aware of the presence of my kitchen-worthy mother and mother-in-law, both long since gone. Beside them appear Lula's grandmother and namesake who is across the ocean, Lula's mother in Washington so charmingly and helplessly in love with her firstborn. Together we will make this birthday chain a lasting one. We all have a part in the robust cells of this now-toddler's body; known and unknown to her, we have settled in, in her heart.

And when all her birthdays come - and her own children's birthdays, too - we who watched over the first cake will be present with her still.