Fare Exchange: Loving lemons, steaming rutabagas and whipping up omelets

Good morning and good ending to 2014. Perhaps the year will end, or 2015 begin, with a simple healthful meal with people or persons you love? The rest of us would welcome your ideas for eating simply and healthfully. Let’s say Just a Dash or just a dish.

Two requests came from Marguerite McCammon, spurred on by the discussion of local Thai and Indian food. The first is for a very good — “in fact the very best” — version of curry. The second one involves a shortcut that needs a little help. McCammon bought Sharwood’s Tikka Masala, two large jars, and seeks readers’ advice on how to doctor it up.

“My husband didn’t like this sauce though he loves Indian food. Here is my question: Has anyone experimented with doctoring a bottled Tikka Masala sauce, or other Indian sauces like this one, to make them taste more homemade?”

This column arrived at the paper’s inbox before Christmas and arrives in your mailbox or on your computer screen after. As always happens, there are some holiday-specific recipes that must go into the file for next year. Who, after all, eats fruitcake in January? It’s a strange compartmentalization, isn’t it? But thank you Linda Leake for sending fruitcake recipes for all December occasions, despite the fact that you are not a fan of this delicacy. Here also from Leake is an any-season dessert that is described as popular at Southern teas and receptions.

Lemon Loves

1 cup plain flour, plus 5 tablespoons

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Icing (recipe below)

For the first layer, mix together 1 cup flour, butter and 2 tablespoons sugar. Press into 9-by-9-inch square pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

For second layer, sift together 1 cup sugar, 5 tablespoons flour and baking powder. Beat eggs with lemon juice and mix with dry ingredients. Mix well and spread over top of crust. Return to oven and bake 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from oven and cool until cold.

Icing

1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1/2 stick butter, softened

2 to 3 teaspoons lemon juice

Grated lemon rind (optional, for garnish)

Blend together sugar, margarine and lemon juice. Spread as icing over top of cold lemon mixture. You may garnish with grated lemon rind before serving.

Cut in 1-inch squares.

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Our prolific friends, Mr. and Mrs. Sunday, stir up an old-fashioned vegetable that is a good way to start the new year. Rutabagas are roots and are covered with wax. Maybe they don’t sound appetizing, but the Sundays suggest you try. The directions below are for a pressure cooker, but should be easily adapted. Mrs. Sunday writes that “the Bi-Lo at the foot of Signal Mountain carries them at 99 cents a pound.” Now there’s a recommendation.

Rutabagas

Rutabagas, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch dice

Butter

Salt

Steam rutabagas in the pressure cooker for 10 minutes, mash and season with butter and salt to taste. They will taste like buttered potatoes.

Note: You may cook rutabagas by any method you would prepare potatoes and get a similar result.

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The casserole that follows is a simple one; the original recipe is credited to Sheppie Dunn of Copperhill, Tenn.

Chilies Rellenos

1 pound cheddar cheese

1 pound Monterrey Jack cheese

1 (7-ounce) can whole green chilies

1 large can evaporated milk

3 beaten eggs

3 tablespoons flour

1 small jar salsa

Split chilies, rinse and drain. Line a small dish with a third of the chilies and cheeses. Repeat twice more ending with cheese.

Mix evaporated milk, beaten eggs and flour. Pour over chilies and cheese. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and pour salsa over the top. Return to the oven and heat through.

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From the grand and the festive meals of November and December, many of us are soon to return to the plain and hearty, the kind of food that warms us against winter’s chill and heals our sniffles and aches.

Cooking for a crowd — or being part of that cooked-for crowd — turns into a season of meals for one, or two, or more, familiar diners. The celebrations morph into nights curled up with a good book, a not-unwelcome change.

If you purchased Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See” before its pre-Christmas sellout, you read about a special meal — an omelet for one. In Doerr’s beautiful prose, one reads phrases like this: “Eggs crack. Butter pops in a hot pan. All of Marie-Laure’s attention is absorbed by the smells blooming around her: eggs, spinach, melting cheese. An omelet arrives. The eggs taste like clouds.”

These lines are reminiscent of an omelet recipe that arrived at the Times many years ago, credited to a Madame Lyon who had a tiny restaurant in Manhattan where she served 500 varieties of omelets. Although Madame Lyon’s following recipe added caviar and croutons, you may add ingredients of your choosing to the inside, or make no additions. An omelet is a recipe for one, therefore suited to each guest for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Madame Lyon’s Omelet

3 eggs

2 teaspoons water

Dash of salt and pepper

2 tablespoons butter

Desired fillings, such as Marie-Laure’s described above (chopped spinach and a favorite cheese)

Combine egg, water, salt and pepper in a bowl and beat lightly with fork. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat. When hot, pour in egg mixture. As soon as omelet starts to set, bring edges gently toward center with fork until no liquid is left. While center of omelet is still moist, place desired filling(s) on omelet. Then take pan in left hand and fork or spatula in right, fold one side of omelet over other and slide on plate.

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From the “Town and Country” cookbook graciously shared by Margaret Collins, here is another simple recipe, for a seafood salad.

Seafood Salad

1/2 cup crabmeat

1 pound shrimp

1 stalk celery, chopped

1/2 cup tartar sauce

Mix well. Keep refrigerated.

Next week there will be an orange juice cake and a coffee flavored with two liqueurs.

I hope you’ll come check them out.