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An apple bakes slowly in a schnitzer atop a wood stove. Photograph by Lisa Bramen.

While visiting an Irish friend in the Kilkenny countryside a few years back, I admired her mother’s charming wood cookstove. It was nearly the size of a twin bed, was always kept burning, and produced daily loaves of delicious brown bread and amazing apple pies. But, until I moved to New York from California, I had no idea that many people in this country still use wood stoves to heat their homes.

I recently bought an old farmhouse in the Adirondack mountains, and I now have my own wood stove. It is considerably smaller than my friend’s mother’s, and is designed primarily for keeping the house warm and cozy, not cooking. But, as I’ve recently discovered, it does have some culinary uses.

One of the best (and most unusual) housewarming presents I received was a pair of apple schnitzers, which are little cast-iron dishes for baking apples atop the wood stove (they can also be used in a regular oven if you don’t have a wood stove). They are round, covered in speckled blue enamel and have a spike in the center, onto which you place a cored apple, with some cinnamon and sugar, or whatever else you like, sprinkled on top or in the cavity where the core was (the spike is small enough that there is still space). The apple cooks from the inside out.

I hadn’t heard of a schnitzer until a few months ago, when, at my other job as an editor of a regional Adirondack magazine, I was helping to edit a cookbook compiled from recipes that have been in the publication in the past 40 years. This being the northern part of New York, a good portion of the recipes were apple-based, and one of them was for an apple schnitzer. According to the person who contributed the recipe many years ago, schnitzers are an old German invention. The origin of the word is a mystery I have yet to solve; my German-English dictionary defines Schnitzer as meaning “carver.” Through an Internet search and my iffy college German I gleaned that schnitzers no longer appear to be in common use in Germany, at least by that name (I found a forum where a woman was looking for suggestions on how to bake an apple on her wood stove, and the replies including using aluminum foil, a Romertopf clay pot and something called an Apfelbratgerät, or, roughly, apple-baking device, which may in fact be a schnitzer but I couldn’t find a picture). However, it does appear that the Amish still use them. Lehman’s, an Ohio retailer that was established in 1955 to serve the local Amish community, sells schnitzers on its Web site.

I tried my schnitzer for the first time last night, using a Macintosh (I think a thinner-skinned variety might work better), some brown sugar and cinnamon. It smelled delicious while it cooked, and, about an hour later, I had a yummy baked apple.

I would love to see what else I can cook on my wood stove. Suggestions, anyone?

Yes, I said “eat” and “Brussels sprouts.” Oh, stop making that face…

Properly prepared, these tiny brassica plants can be a real treat—and they’re nutritionally noble (low-cal and fat-free, yet just a handful will provide all the vitamin C you need for the day, plus several grams of protein and fiber). They may even help prevent cancer!

Forget about frozen, which in my experience are inevitably mushy. Look for fresh, locally grown sprouts—still on the stalk is best—with tightly closed leaves. Wash and trim them only when you’re ready to cook them. That’s cook…NOT OVERCOOK. Got that?

In fact, less cooking could mean less of that sulfurous stink associated with Brussels sprouts. For these and other cruciferous vegetables with high levels of sulfurous compounds, the book “The Science of Good Food” recommends “quick, high-heat cooking methods,” or blanching the veggies in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds before more extended cooking.

Brussels sprouts, courtesy Flickr user Chiot's Run

Here are a few ways to get acquainted with the little green guys:

1) Sweet and sour: Brussels sprouts pair nicely with citrus and other tangy flavors like lemon and vermouth, cranberry and balsamic vinegar, or ginger and orange.

2) Spicy: Vegan for the People uses Moroccan spices to dress up Brussels sprouts. For non-vegetarians, there’s Eating Well’s bacon-horseradish Brussels sprouts, or this Delicious Days recipe that bakes sprouts with pancetta, bread crumbs, and red chili. And while Momofuku chef David Chang’s spicy sprouts recipe looks a bit too complicated for me, I’m intrigued by the inclusion of Rice Krispies!

3) Maple-y. Is there anything maple can’t do? It tastes good on everything from to squash to snow! Try Food and Wine’s maple-roasted Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, the Zesty Cook’s figged and maple Brussels sprouts, or Mollie Katzen’s braised Brussels sprouts in maple-mustard glaze. I also love these shredded Brussels sprouts with apples and a touch of maple.

4) Creamy. Okay, it’s not very healthy, but I trust food writer Molly Wizenberg’s (a.k.a. Orangette) taste, and she calls this recipe for sprouts braised in heavy cream “the best thing since Brussels sprouts.”  You’ll find more sprouts and cream in her recipe for fettuccine with pine nuts.

5) Nearly Naked: This is my personal favorite; simply cut the sprouts in half and cook them in a skillet (lid on and low heat at first, to steam them into tenderness; then lid off with higher heat to brown the bottoms) in a bit of olive oil or butter. Add salt and pepper, and perhaps a sprinkle of Parmesan. Yum.

Homemade mozzarella, courtesy of Flickr user RBerteig

I learned something potentially dangerous this weekend: cheese, especially fresh (not aged) cheese, is surprisingly quick and easy to make.

A group of people in my area who are concerned about the environment has been hosting a series of “lost arts” workshops on topics like making sauerkraut and baking bread. This weekend’s cheese-and-yogurt-making workshop was the first I attended. In less than two hours, the women demonstrating the techniques produced a ball of fresh mozzarella, a batch of ricotta, and the first stage of what, after 8 hours of sitting, would turn into yogurt.

Making yogurt is probably the simplest of the three. All it requires is some milk, a covered container, a microwave or stove and an oven with a pilot light or oven light. Oh, yeah, and some yogurt. Like money, it takes yogurt to make yogurt. A teaspoon of plain yogurt, store-bought or homemade, contains enough active cultures to start the process (if you use store-bought, though, make sure the container indicates that it has active cultures).

But first you need to bring the milk just to the boiling point, either in a microwave or on a stove. The woman conducting this portion of the workshop told us that milk of any fat content (including skim) will make yogurt, but the less fat it has the tangier it will be. Once the milk begins to boil, you take it off the heat and allow it to cool to about the temperature you would want a baby’s bottle, approximately 110 degrees. You stir in a teaspoon of yogurt per quart of milk, then place the mixture in a covered container and put it in a cool oven with the light on, so that it is away from drafts and remains at a consistent, slightly warm temperature. In about 7 or 8 hours, you’ll have a batch of plain yogurt. If you save a teaspoonful and repeat the process every day or so, you’ll have a lot fewer little plastic containers to contend with. Of course, you can also buy a yogurt maker but, after seeing how simple it is to make without one, it doesn’t seem necessary.

Nearly as simple, and a lot quicker, is making mozzarella. The whole process, from heating the milk to forming the cheese into a ball, takes about a half an hour. It requires no special equipment and only a couple of ingredients you probably don’t have in the pantry, like citric acid and rennet. In Italy, where mozzarella originated, it is usually made from buffalo milk. Most Americans don’t have access to buffalo milk, though, so cow’s milk can be substituted (however, it must not be ultra-pasteurized, because that process changes the protein and won’t lead to the desired result). The liquid mixture (milk plus 2–3 other ingredients) is heated on the stove, where it separates into custardy curds and liquid whey, or casein and albuminous protein, respectively. The curds are then kneaded together and formed into a ball. The result is like the fresh mozzarella you can buy in a store—it doesn’t melt like the aged mozzarella used on pizzas, but it would be perfect sliced with good tomatoes and basil, drizzled with olive oil.

The whey, a yellowish liquid, can be eaten while sitting on a tuffet, or reserved to make ricotta—the only time-consuming part of which is allowing the cheese to drain in a cheesecloth for several hours. We skipped this step in the workshop, and the result was still delicious, although slightly chewy compared to the creamy texture of store-bought ricotta. I don’t know if this was because of the ingredients we used or some other variable—some experimentation is probably in order, which I just might do if I’m feeling ambitious (and bored) this winter.

The site www.cheesemaking.com has complete instructions, with photos, for making mozzarella, ricotta, yogurt and aged cheeses.

Last weekend, I picked up some beautiful carrots—the kind that Bugs Bunny would drool over; classic orange cones topped with plumes of greenery—at an organic farmstand. From childhood experience, I already knew that the sweet crunch of garden-grown carrots tastes far better than those mass-produced “baby” carrots, so I lopped off their tops and prepared to munch. But my hand hesitated as it hovered over the garbage can, holding the greens; they looked like perky parsley. Couldn’t I eat them, too?

Fresh carrots, courtesy Flickr user brianna.lehman

After a bit of online research, I concluded that, like most of the world’s brilliant ideas, someone else had thought of this first.

The blog White on Rice recently featured a salad of radish, carrot, and/or beet tops with vermouth vinaigrette.

Edible Vancouver has recipes for carrot green and parsley pesto and queso fundido, a spicy melted cheese dip that incorporates carrot greens.

A site called the “Carrot Museum” offers several more recipes, calling carrot tops “edible and highly nutritive, rich in proteins, minerals and vitamins.”

Historically, the first reference I found to edible carrot greens—excluding recommendations to use them as garnish, rabbit or chicken feed—was a 1917 Washington Post article. In a one-paragraph entry titled “Do Not Waste,” the unnamed author exhorts readers to “Cook carrot tops as greens. Use your own ingenuity to convert every bit of food into a healthful, tasty dish.”

In 1924, they get another mention in the same publication, but this time the motivation is waist management rather than waste management: “Turnip tops, carrot tops, tender leaves of lettuce, radish leaves, the leaves of Swiss chard and even watercress may be prepared in a similar way” to boiled spinach, which “folks like” because “it is good for them, helps to fill ‘em up, and yet is very low in caloric value,” writes the author of an article titled “Control Your Weight Via the Kitchen.”

This 1974 article from Backpacker magazine notes that wild carrots and their greens—the plant more familiarly known as Queen Anne’s Lace—are also edible, although the nicest adjective the author can muster about them is “rough.”

I’m not a scientist, so I don’t know for sure what to make of the claim that carrot tops may contain toxic compounds (although Harold McGee, who writes about the science of food, says he’s not worried). This notion may be rooted in the fact that carrots are in the same family (Apiaceae, also called Umbelliferae) as poison hemlock, but so are innocuous herbs and vegetables like celery, coriander, fennel, dill, parsley, and parsnips. However, I would caution against eating greens from non-organic carrots—since most farmers don’t expect people to eat the tops of carrots, they may apply pesticides there.

I used my bunch of carrots, greens and all (sans stems) to make this hearty Carrot Top and Quinoa Soup, substituting shallots for onion, vegetable for beef bouillon, and adding some chopped rainbow chard. It was delicious, and I’m still feeling fine!

Slice of Cream Pie with Cherry (or ‘Piece of Boston Cream Pie’), 1964; Woodcut, Artist’s Proof; image: 8-3/8 x 8-3/4 in. (21.3 x 22.2 cm); sheet: 13-5/8 x 11 in. (34.6 x 27.9 cm); Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. Paul Beckman, P.1967.08.1; © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena has a small exhibition of works on paper by an artist I like, Wayne Thiebaud, which I visited during my trip to Southern California. (The show ends today.)

I first encountered Thiebaud’s work as an art student in San Francisco in the late 1980s. He is best known for his oil paintings of cakes, pies and other sweets, which share a sugary pastel palette and luscious brush strokes that resemble frosting. On a purely visual level, they are appealing for the same reasons their subject matter is: they look delicious.

But, as the black-and-white prints in the show reveal, there’s more to Thiebaud’s work than eye candy. Look at the woodcut print to the right, ”Slice of Cream Pie with Cherry (or ‘Piece of Boston Cream Pie’),” from 1964. With a few spare shapes, he conveys an instantly recognizable image. And it still looks delicious, because your mind fills in the information it already knows: the silky texture of the cream, the contrasting flavor of the cherry on top. As the exhibition curators wrote, “We cannot separate it from the general notion of the cream pie; looking at the pie, we know exactly what it would taste like, even though we have not sampled the unique slice that sits before us.”

Similarly to the other Pop artists of his time (such as Andy Warhol with his soup cans), with whom he’s often grouped, Thiebaud was exploring iconic cultural (and particularly American) images, as well as “the tension between uniformity and individuality.” The idea of the production line is echoed in his use of printmaking, in which many copies of the same image can be reproduced. Many of his pieces, both paintings and prints, show rows of pastries—sometimes a variety of cakes, sometimes near-identical slices side by side. As the artist said of his work, in 1968, “Why must pie always be cut so precisely? Why not just scoop out a helping with a spoon? … And you can see a pie in Pasadena, or Madison Avenue, in New York, or Madison, Wisconsin, and it’s the same damn pie.”

Thiebaud was born in 1920 and grew up mostly in Southern California. As a young man he worked in a cafe, whose rows of pie slices in the display case he has cited as an influence on his choice of subject matter. In his early career he worked as a cartoonist and designer, and served as an artist in the United States Army during World War II. Although he had his first solo exhibition in Sacramento in 1951, he gained national critical attention with a 1962 show at the Alan Stone Gallery in New York City. In 2001, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of Thiebaud’s work, prompting Michael Kimmelman to write in the New York Times, “If the world were a perfect place, the Wayne Thiebaud retrospective that has just opened at the Whitney Museum would be nailed to the walls for good and we would be free to stop by whenever we needed to remind ourselves what happiness feels like.”