Fare Exchange: An appley appetizer and bacony cupcakes

Jane Henegar

Your presence is most welcome here at Fare Exchange. As we do a little sweeping up around the Fare Exchange files, here are three lost-and-not-yet-found requests. We need Fettuccine Alfredo, recipes made with avocado and recipes containing fresh ginger.

GRITS AND GREENS

This is a good beginning to any discussion of food, to offer an easy way discovered by a seasoned cook. And so we open the envelope from Jane Guthrie.

"We love to have greens with our grits. Did it the easy way last week, using ham-flavored Better Than Bouillon, and it was just right."

Grits and Greens the Easy Way

1 bag (16 ounces) Southern Greens bite-size cut mixed greens by Herndon Country Farms (available at Walmart)

Your choice of seasoning: either bacon grease or a very small amount of the ham version of Better Than Bouillon

The greens are pretty clean, so rinsing them in the bag with punctures in the bottom is all you need to do.

Cook in microwave in an 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup or something similar. Fill the container, wilt that portion in the microwave and add the rest. There is enough moisture on the greens to wilt with a little juice at the end.

Continue to cook until they are as done as you like them.

Season with a little bacon grease or ham-flavored Better Than Bouillon.

APPLEY APPETIZER

There is a connection with the next correspondents, Mr. and Mrs. Sunday, and Ms. Guthrie's last ingredient. The Sundays spoke last week of umami bombs, which are ingredients that add flavor to dishes like stews. Last week they recommended soy sauce, Vegemite, Marmite, a little fish sauce. Today they added another. "Better Than Bouillon is another fine umami bomb and better than the cubes or the onion soup packages that you have used for years." (When I looked up umami bombs on the internet, I discovered that Parmesan cheese also qualifies.)

The Sundays offered praise for Bela Lisboa, the North Shore restaurant that serves Portuguese and Mediterranean food. They give you a recipe today that is "homage not copying" of a dish on Joe Vagos' Bela Lisboa menu. And here's the French name, but you'll find a simpler title heads the recipe: "Pommes aux Chèvre et Figue à la Bela Lisboa," which translates to Apples with Goat and Fig à la Bela Lisboa.

Sunday at Joe's Appetizer

This dish tastes exotic and difficult but comes together quickly and easily. The fig jam, balsamic vinegar and apple soften the funk of the goat cheese, so even people who think they hate goat cheese like the appetizer. The apple slices provide both structure and texture.

1 to 2 apples (Jazz preferred, Fuji is second choice)

4-ounce log of chèvre

1 teaspoon salt

1 pint cold water

4 to 6 teaspoons fig jam or spread

2 teaspoons dry vermouth

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

Fill the sink (or pot or bowl) with body-temperature water and drop the chèvre log into it (still in its wrapper or in a plastic bag with the air removed). This is to soften it up.

Dissolve the salt in the water, place in a ziptop bag and put the bag in a cup or bowl to prevent spillage. The salt destroys the enzyme that causes browning (you'll rinse it later to get rid of the salt). It works even better than acid without changing the flavor.

Cut the apple into slices between 1/8-inch and 1/4-inch thick, cut the slices in half, and drop the pieces in the saltwater bag. We usually quarter, core and then slice.

Seal the bag (excluding air), and let sit for 10 minutes.

Remove the chèvre from plastic, and mix with fig jam, vermouth and vinegar. Whip until smooth.

Drain and rinse the apple slices, pat dry, and top with the spread. Piping is fancy but unneeded. If piping, watch out for fig chunks (use mechanical whipping, chop by hand or use a big tip).

Notes: Any tart/sweet and crisp apple will be OK. Even crisp pears will work. Number depends on size. Most ingredients keep for weeks in the fridge, so this is good for drop-ins. It comes together in 15 minutes or so but can sit in the fridge (or out if needed) for a couple of hours because of the treatment the apples get to keep from browning.

Makes 4 appetizer servings.

FLAVORFUL CUPCAKES

Here's a recipe from Renee Piercy of The Cocoa Exchange, and if you don't have their baking mix or buttercream frosting, we can assume that one could make bacon chocolate cupcakes with other baking mixes or recipes and other buttercreams or recipes too. There's a lovely combination, though not a predictable one: chocolate with bacon and maple syrup.

Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes

1 cup bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 batch Dove Signature Dark Chocolate Baking Mix, prepared as 36 cupcakes

1 batch Dove Signature Buttercream Frosting

3 tablespoons maple syrup

Stir 3/4 cup crumbled bacon into cupcake batter. Bake according to package directions. Let cool.

Prepare icing according to package directions, and stir in maple syrup.

Frost cupcakes with Maple Buttercream Icing. Sprinkle with remaining crumbled bacon.

JUST A DASH

As promised, here are Mr. and Mrs. Sunday's Tips and Tricks for a beef stew made with wine. Their simple version was printed here last week.

» Umami bombs often have salt in them, so using one to adjust salt makes sense unless you worry about the taste of the bomb starting to dominate. It rarely does, but people do get carried away.

» Don't add wine at the end of your stew; you need time for the raw alcohol taste to evaporate. Brandy is OK at the end, but don't get carried away.

» If you add dried herbs at the end, allow 5 to 10 minutes for hydration. We've switched to bay leaf powder to allow this.

» Beef stew is the kind of recipe prechopped garlic works in, but it does need to cook to lose the raw bite. If you need to adjust garlic at the end, use granulated garlic.

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There is a home where many things are going on: teenagers in and out, readers at their books - and someone always keeping the window-filled spaces bright and shining. Lately, though, the action at the home centers in the kitchen. If you should drop by, you would find not just one but both husband and wife, working together at the counter and following the instructions to make creative new meals almost every night. It's a new season for the pair, and it's a tasty one. What's more, they almost always send visitors away with a serving or two of their latest discovery. Three ingredients to this new recipe: togetherness, creativity and sharing. And everybody wins. Next time I go, I plan to ask for a recipe from them, for all of you. If you have friends like this, or are friends like this, perhaps you'll have such a recipe to share as well.