A few weeks back I judged the Strawberry Day recipe contest at the State Farmers Market in Raleigh. The first-place winner was Kristina G. Harris of Raleigh.

Her Strawberry Almond Cream Tart was the unanimous first-place winner. So I thought I'd share the recipe. Harris credits Cooking Light magazine for the recipe. 

I'm going to try to return to sharing a recipe on Fridays called Weekend Warrior. It takes more time than we have on a weeknight but seems a nice indulgence on a weekend. 

Don't forget that one of our new Mouthful bloggers Amber Keister had a post last week about strawberry cupcakes. Click HERE. 

And we have a searchable map of pick-your-own strawberry farms in the Triangle. 

I've never attempted making scones. I think scones intimidated me because I didn't grow up eating them. But many mornings while I was on vacation in Ocracoke this past fall, I ate chocolate chip scones at the Ocracoke Coffee Company shop. I've been eager to try baking them myself and only recently attempted it. I feel like I have found THE recipe that I will go back to again and again in this cookbook: "Baking: 350 recipes and techniques, 1,500 photographs, one baking education" by James Peterson.

These scones are easy to make and left people at the office raving about them. Actually, they are so easy that you could whip them up on a week day morning and not have to wait for a weekend. Enjoy!

Scones

3 cups flour
5 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup cold butter, thinly sliced
1 1/4 cups milk or heavy cream plus more as needed
1 cup dried cranberries, cherries or diced dried apricots, soaked for 30 minutes in just enough hot water to cover, drained

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, surgar, baking powder and salt. Arrange the butter on top so teh slices don't overlap and cut through the mixture with a pastry cutter until the butter is the size of peas. Add the milk and stir the mixture long enough to absorb the milk and any loose flour. If you still see loose flour, add another 2 tablespoons milk. Spriknle the cranberries over the mixture while sthirring so they are evenly distributed in the dough. Stir together the dough with a rubber spatula for about 1 minute. Don't overwork the dough. 

Dump the dough out onto a work surface and use your hands to gather it together in a mound, then flatten it into a disk. At this point, it may be necessary to knead it a little to get it to hold together in a loose shaggy mass. Roll it out into a 3/4-inch thick disk. Cut the disk into 8 wedges and put them in a baking sheet. 

Turn down the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the scones are pale brown. 

Makes 8 servings. 

Each Friday, I offer a recipe to cook on the weekends when we all have more time. Like many folks in January, I've resolved to eat better and lose the weight I've gained in this job. (Or at least, I'd like to blame this job even though I don't get to eat on the company's dime.) So you may see a healthy eating bent in these recipes and the Frugal Feasts for a while until I lose the weight or give up.

I love Indian food but find it too labor-intensive and time consuming. I love the idea of this easier preparation for Indian Butter Chicken from Annette Sym, who I've been told is an Austrlia's healthy eating food celebrity. This recipe comes from her new cookbook, "Symply Too Good to be True: Over 150 Tasty, Low-Fat Healthy Recipes." I would use fresh garlic and ginger in this recipe and prepare it on the weekend to eat for lunch or dinner during the week. Homemade Indian food always tastes better on the second day. 

Cold weather puts me in a heavy food mood. So I pulled a copy of this cookbook off the shelf: "Eat Feed Autumn Winter" by Anne Bramley. N&O staff photographer Juli Leonard had made me set aside this book for visual inspiration for our food photo shoots. But I hadn't actually read the book until now. It is beautiful. Photographer Tina Rupp takes gorgeous photos of food. I also like Bramley's friendly events-themed menus with recipes. If you are looking for dinner party inspiration from Twelth Night to Winter Solstice, this would be a good read.

To sastisfy my current craving, I think I'll turn to this recipe: French Onion Pot Roast.

Each Friday, I offer a recipe for when we all have more time to cook: the weekend. This recipe is perfect for the adventurous baker looking for a new take on pecan pie for Thanksgiving: Pecan Tart from the "Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook" by Chris and Idie Hastings with Katherine Cobbs.

Every Friday, I offer a recipe for the weekend when those of us who love to cook have more time to do so. Today's recipe is Eggplant Casserole, a creole/cajun creation that will convert those who aren't fans of eggplant, like myself. 

Last month, I travelled to New Orleans for the Association of Food Journalists' conference in New Orleans. A group of us went out to dinner at  Mandina's, a classic Creole-Italian restaurant in a bright pink house on Canal Street.

There are all these neighborhood restaurants in New Orleans, where crawfish etouffee and spaghetti and meatballs are on the same menu. It's the result of a large migration of Sicilians to the city. Many of these immigrants started out owning grocery stores/produce stands that would later become these neighborhood joints. 

It is the same story for Mandina's, which has been owned by the same family for four generations. Brett Anderson, the Times-Picayune's restaurant critic, wrote a series of stories called "Mandina's Rising" about the restaurant's recovery post-Katrina. He won a James Beard award for the series.

I'm not a big fan of eggplant. But Judy Walker, the Times-Picayune food editor, ordered the eggplant casserole. When you eat with food writers, everyone tastes everyone else's dishes. And so, the eggplant casserole got passed around the table. I really liked it; likely because the eggplant was barely recognizable in this spicy meat-shrimp-veggie casserole. This dish has been stuck in my head ever since I got back. 

Each Friday, I offer recipes for those of us who love to cook complicated dishes and find we have more time on the weekends for such culinary undertakings.

I tweeted yesterday that Rose Levy Beranbaum's new cookbook, "Rose's Heavenly Cakes," is porn for bakers. (Beranbaum is the author of The Cake Bible.) Every other page offers a photo of delectable, complicated desserts
that any baker would aspire to master. Oddly enough, I find myself drawn to one of the simpler cakes in the book for a caramel cake, named Karmel Cake after one of Beranbaum's close  friends, Elizabeth Karmel. 

Each Friday, I offer a recipe for those of us who love to cook but can't find the time until the weekend. The Momofuku cookbook just came in this week. And yes, I squealed with delight when I saw it. Here is an interesting story about the cookbook. 

I was intrigued by this recipe for fried chicken. The instructions: "Steam the chicken first, just until it's cooked, then use the fryer just to crisp and brown the outside." Now that will spare you one of the worst parts of making fried chicken; standing over the skillet full of grease for a long time. 

Each Friday, I share a recipe for when we have more time to cook: the weekend.

This recipe comes from Amanda Hesser's book, "Cooking for Mr. Latte." Once I read about how her future husband longed for his mother's almond
cake, I had to try to make it. It has now become a regular part of my baking repertoire. My father's greatest compliment came when he tasted this cake: he told me that I had inherited my grandmother's baking ability. The good thing about this cake is that it will keep for at least a week and get better after several days. 

Each Friday, I offer a recipe that takes a bit more time than we usually have during the week. The good thing about this recipe for Sun-dried Tomato Meatloaf is that it makes two meatloafs so you can pull one out for a weekday evening. You just need to keep the ingredients for the sauce on hand.