Serving Up More Maryland

During this busiest time of the academic year, we have slowed down for a birthday weekend of blogging, walking, light chores, and of course cooking. The big food day will be today, my attainment day, much of which will be devoted to some very important crepes, but yesterday was also a good one for culinary innovation at Casa Hayes-Boh.

Early in the day, while at Costco we broke one of our cardinal rules, which is to avoid anything to do with crabs unless we are actually in Maryland. We made an exception with the purchase of some prepared crab dip, with which we made a nice little lunch. Pam lightly toasted English muffins, topped each half with some of the dip and a slice of Swiss cheese. She broiled them for a few minutes, and we were slaked until dinner time.

And for dinner, Pam had selected a really remarkable dish. This was definitely a two-person project, because it involves phyllo and neither of us is very deft with that material. While Pam made the layers of layers, I worked on the filling, as described in Dishing Up Maryland. The recipe is one of those whose title lists most of the main ingredients -- "Wild Mushroom Tartlettes with Goat Cheese and Bacon" -- though admittedly the recipe is worth reading for a few other key ingredients that make this a very scrumptious meal: various forms of fruit; marmalade; shallots; thyme; and red wine. A dollop of the soft goat cheese was placed at the bottom of a six-phyllo layered muffin tin, the bacon/mushroom/fruit mixture was placed on top of the cheese and then the tartlettes were baked at 400 in a convection oven for 20 minutes. Definitely not a dish to photograph-suffice it to say that it was quite brown. It was, however, delicious and textured with a wonderful combination of sweet, savory, creamy, and chewy.