Interview with Linda Bladholm

October 8th

Saturday I was interviewed at the Gourmet Diner, (if you've never been, do yourself a favor and GO! SOON! More on the diner in another blog) located in North Miami by Linda Bladholm. Linda is a una bella intervistatrice! a food maven, author or several cook books on Asian, Indian and Caribbean food, and a journalist for the food column, A Fork on the Road, for the Miami Herald.

For those of you who have been telling me for years, you’ll be happy to know, folks, that she also encouraged me to give more measurements for ingredients! Oy vey! This is like saying I have to study trigonometry and calculus when I can barely spell them. AND she suggested I should write a cook book. Boy, does this ever resonate, or what?

Here below is one of Linda’s lovely recipes that I think will pair nicely with my Colors of the Fall Soup recipe of yesterday. Even the name for Sweet Potato Muffins sounds puffy and delectable. So below please find the recipe, which I find amazing--can you guess why? Because it has all the measurements for the ingredients. There should be a writing prize for someone who can do this. I’m not kidding.

So here's a public thank you to Linda for her spontaneity, and for making the interview quite painless, in fact downright fun!!! Her proposed ideas of how I can go about writing a cookbook were intriguing, piquing my interest, my noggin bursting with new flavor combinations and concoctions! You'll see the result of this soon on future blogs. However, she made a strong argument for the fact that I should buy these books before I do, and you'll see why by the titles listed below.

The Recipe Writers Handbook Revised and Updated by Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and Jane L. Baker

Recipes into Type: A Handbook for Cookbook Writers and Editors by Joan Whitman and Dolores Simon

The Chef's Companion: A Concise Dictionary of Culinary Terms (Culinary Arts)
by Elizabeth Riley




From Linda Bladholm's Fork on the Road
QUICK BREAD
SWEET POTATO MUFFINS
Serve as dessert with vanilla or pistachio ice cream, if you wish.
• 1 ¼ cups sugar
• 1 ¼ cups cooked, skinned and mashed sweet potatoes
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• ½ cup chopped raisins
• ¼ cup chopped walnuts or pecans
• 2 tablespoons sugar mixed with ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
Place paper liners in 24 muffin cups. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Beat sugar, sweet potatoes and butter until smooth. Add the eggs and blend well.
Sift the flour with the baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Add dry ingredients to the sweet potato mixture alternately with the milk, stirring just to blend. Avoid over-mixing. Fold in the raisins and nuts.
Spoon batter into prepared pans and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, until the muffins test done. Makes 24 muffins.
Source: Adapted from The Best of Bon Appetit (Knapp, 1979).
Per muffin: 155 calories (32 percent from fat), 5.5 g fat (3 g saturated, 1.5 g monounsaturated), 30 mg cholesterol, 2 g protein, 25 g carbohydrates, 1 g fiber, 153 mg sodium.

For Linda Bladholms’s books go here:
http://amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-4037308-7205702?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=linda+bladholm