Caramel Onion Pie

    Last night, five of my young-ish friends invited me to a progressive garden dinner they were hosting in their vintage West Asheville neighborhood. We bicycled to four urban bungalows and enjoyed a course at each with wine and garden tours. All the food was prepared by these professional bakers out of their front yard bungalow gardens ... from homemade hard cider with veggie antipasti to gazpacho with homemade ciabatta, squash risotto, to squashamole and salad. Our final destination was to be a sunset dessert at an old 19th century rambling farmhouse. Too much schmoozing, we arrived at dark. 
     I noticed a big ladder on the porch, leaning on the roof with plates and forks nearby. Holey squash blossoms, I thought, we're having a roof-top dessert. My perky dinner-mates chirped "are you ok to climb on the roof Barbara?" I am, after all, their mothers' age. "Oh, of course, I do this all the time," I say as up and more up we go. I tried hard to walk normal and not skooch on my butt. And then, perched on the roof apex, we ate pie. In the dark. Watching a beautiful lightening storm come our way. Closer and closer.
     The pie was a caramel, chevre and onion with a flax seed and coconut crust. The cheese had red onions in it because somebody gave our young host a quart of homemade chevre mixed with raw red onions. So of course he made a frozen goat cheese and raw red onion caramel pie. Actually delicious, only i had to go to the dentist this morning and my breath stank to high heavens and there I was explaining to him about how I ate a raw red onion dessert pie on the roof with a bunch of young bakers in a lightening storm last night. 
     Remind me never to be an old lady.

Chevre-stuffed Squash Blossoms

If you have a dental appointment tomorrow, you might not want to eat a chevre, raw red onion and caramel pie. So here's a little something quick and easy that includes a bit of creamy goat cheese. 

Pick boy squash blossoms (with stem attached) in the morning. Shake out that bee. Rinse the little critters off and take out the little thingie in the middle if you want. Put in a spoonful of fresh goat cheese  and some chopped herbs from your garden or someone elses. Fold in the edges of the flower and dip in buttermilk and then roll in some good fresh ground local cornmeal , coarse salt and few grindings of pepper. Melt a little butter in a hot iron skillet and panfry until brown and crispy. Serve them to your guests straight out of the skillet. And be sure to eat that little lump between the blossom and the stem; it's sweet!

July Cooking Classes

Hey! The gardens are in full swing with all this wet and warm weather. Perfect for picking, cooking and eating. See you soon I hope!

Garden to Picnic Table                     Wednesday, July 6, 6:00-9:00 $45

Blackberry mint mojitos and crunchy pan-fried squash blossoms stuffed with garlic scape pesto and local chevre will get us up and running. Then we’ll wander into the gardens and pick our dinner fixings. Heirloom fingerling potatoes are so delicious they only need a golden roast along with optional toasty local fennel sausage. Yellow squash strips get a pistachio mint pesto stuffing, skinny green and yellow beans get tossed with sherry vinegar marinated red onions and cucumbers. And for our dessert, a gooey, drop dead gorgeous, easy blackberry chocolate dip-in cake.

Blackberry bittersweet chocolate OH MAMA! Pie

Oh My! Summer Fruit Pie         Sunday, July 10, 1:00-4:00 $40

July is THE best month of the year for fruit pie! We’ll gather round the picnic table for.summer berry Prosecco spritzers and stuffed garden veggie appetizers. Then we’ll make flaky butter crusts to wrap around the fruit filling of your choice. Each participant will make a small pie to take home or share in class. Fillings include blueberry, peach, blackberry, plum and more. While our pies bake, we’ll enjoy a slice of “Oh, Mama” wild blackberry bittersweet chocolate pie and a scoop of homemade creamy vanilla frozen custard.

All proceeds for this class go to the Appalachian Foods Storybank, a new oral history program of slow food Asheville. If you or a family member or friend have tales to tell about old-time mountain farming, cooking, family food traditions that need to be preserved, contact Barbara at the link below. We can help capture stories via written word, photos, and video. Volunteers needed, training provided.


Classes held in East Asheville, 5 miles from downtown. To register, email Barbara 
or call 828 298-2270

Stay tuned for new spring classes!

On Monday, I'll be posting classes for April and May. Stop back by soon and we'll talk about how to prepare those fabulous creasy greens popping up in your yard about now.

Log Cabin Cooking Classes

Aunt Barb's Wednesday Night Supper Club                                  
First-ish Wednesday of the month   6-9pm  $10    

January 12  … Made-From-Scratch Soups & Herbed Flatbreads 

If you're somewhere between 21 and 40 and didn't get to learn to cook from family or friends, then join Auntie Barb and others like you for an informal elbow to elbow lesson in cooking basics. We'll focus on easy to prepare seasonal, healthy dishes that are inexpensive and can serve one as well as a group. Class meets the first Wednesday of each month (or thereabouts.)

Suggestions are welcome.

Two-Layer One-Pot Comfort-food Cottage Pies

Sunday, January 16, 4-7pm   $45

This is some serious man-food that girls like too. These double-decker dishes can be baked in anything from a cast iron dutch oven in the coals of the fireplace to individual ceramic dishes that can be enjoyed now or frozen for quick, wholesome suppers on-the-go. We'll make a chili and heirloom bean pie topped with a rustic cornbread topping, and a veggie as well as a local roasted pork and root veggie pies crowned with a variety of potato treats including crunchy swiss rosti, scalloped layered potatoes and mashed potatoes. These dishes sound heavy, but don't worry, they're not the way we'll make them. Fireside supper includes hot mulled beverage, cottage pies, winter salad and a refreshing cranberry & lemoncello sorbet for dessert.

Blackout! Fireplace, campfire, or cookstove cooking

Wednesday, January 26, 6:00-9:00 pm  $45

You'll wish for the power to go out so you can make all your new favorites in your wood-burning fireplace. Open hearth cooking is makin-do at its best! The only special equipment you need to make this meal is a cast iron dutch oven with feet and a phlanged lid. We'll start the evening off with prosecco and fagioli al fiasco (Tuscan beans that have been cooked in a Chianti bottle by fire's edge) served on grilled bruschetta, then we'll make our meal using a variety of open-hearth cooking techniques. Onions will be thrown on embers to caramelize, butternut squash with maple, spices and butter will be roasted in foil packets, flattened chicken will be grilled on coals in front of the fire, buttermilk biscuits will bake in one dutch oven while an amaretto soaked dried sour cherry and apple pie bakes in another.  A crunchy winter salad and hot cider will complete the feast. 

Classes held in Haw Creek valley just 5 miles east of Asheville
For directions and to register, contact Barbara  barbara.swell@gmail.com