Mother's Kitchen

Camping cooking techniques

2013-06-15T08:14:00.003-04:00

Lately, I've been noticing all sorts of camping recipes and tips getting repinned on Pinterest, and most of them are just plain silly. My personal favorite is this bucket fastened to a milk crate to be used as a toilet. Really? I can't picture hauling this monstrosity to a campsite....and what does one do after someone uses it? This blogger recommends covering in in sawdust and using it as compost! Nice....no thanks. I've camped in many kinds of places, and even the most rustic offers some kind of pit toilet, which is fancy talk for an outhouse. It might not be enclosed, but it is a place to do what you need to do. If there's not one available, you can dig a hole....but I guess no one wants to pin that to Pinterest. For some reason, people think the milk crate getup is cute or something.

There's another pin that's getting a ton of play entitled 20 camping recipes that will make your mouth water, but the blogger must not camp (or cook) very much, because most of these recipes aren't very camp friendly. She's planning on going on a 50 day camping trip this summer....I wish her luck. There's lots of recipes that show a picture of a cast iron frying pan. Why is it that people think that a cast iron frying pan is "camping equipment"? I love my cast iron frying pans, but leave them home! Camping is the last place to bring one. They are heavy and they will rust if kept outside. Perhaps people envision cooking over an open fire with one, but it is actually not a good idea. Cast iron retains heat, and it is really easy to burn food in one.

I have a feeling that most people on Pinterest are not really roughing it - they are probably "car camping" which gives you the opportunity to camp with a cooler and more cooking gear than you would on a backpacking trip. Most of my camping is done this way - we have a pop up camper that our family uses, and for Boy Scouts, we travel with a camping trailer that has room for lots of gear to cook for lots of people at one time. For Girl Scouts, we tend to stay in lodges but do lots of cooking outside. For this type of camping, there's really only 3 ways to cook - using a camp stove, grilling or in the campfire itself. Using a camp stove is the easiest....anything you can make at home on the stove top can be made while camping. It's also great to use to heat up water to do the dishes - a big part of camp cooking is doing the dishes, plan ahead for it. Before you even start cooking anything, start heating a large pot of water for the dishes. This is the best camping cooking tip I can give anyone!

Grilling is a technique most people are familiar with, but it's important to use an actual grill to do it on. Not one of these contraptions.

Setting a grate over a campfire and trying to cook on it is an exercise in futility. Things will burn on the outside and be undercooked on the inside. Again, it's not a good idea to set a cast iron frying pan on one of these either. Most camping areas have grills and picnic areas - use one of the camp grills with charcoal and grill out just like you'd do at home.

My favorite way to cook while camping is in the campfire itself. Foods wrapped in foil, such as baked potatoes, can be cooked in the hot embers of the fire (not in a flames!). My favorite ways to cook things over the fire are pie irons and a dutch oven.

pie iron

dutch oven

Think of a pie iron as your own personal panini press to make any kind of hot sandwich, or individual meal. The camping dutch oven is the workhorse of all camp cookery. You can bake in it, cook soups and stews in it, fry in it, use its lid as a griddle. It's my favorite way to camp cook. In upcoming blog posts this summer, I will share some of my favorite camp cookery recipes. But if you are looking for a great camping cookbook, I can suggest a couple of my favorites:

Happy camping!

Canning success stories

2013-05-25T22:18:00.001-04:00

May is always a good time to take stock of the pantry, and figure out what worked and what didn't from last year's canning exploits. Based on consumption, here is what definitely worked for us:

Corn relish - I've only got one 8 oz. jar left. I took it to work all winter for my lunch.

Woodchick's BBQ sauce - we're all out

Mustard Beans - it's like a salad in a jar....so good! One jar left.

Pickled Brussels Sprouts - I won an honorable mention at the Downtown Home and Garden pickle contest with this recipe. It's great! I didn't make any last fall....bummer.

Strawberry Jam with natural pectin - I can never make enough. I made some with boxed pectin last year for a demo and it totally sucked compared to this recipe. As soon as strawberries are in, I will make more

Salsa #5 We were totally out in February. I should quit my day job and do nothing else but can this salsa in August

Peaches - canned these with my friend Lisa this year; we need to do it every year. One jar left!

Pickles - only a couple jars left, and I made a TON last year/ Saving the last to make fried dill pickles as soon as my son catches a mess of fish for a big pan fish fry.

Not so much....

PGT and pickled beets - I still have a couple jars left. I'm their only eater.

Potato Salad and Kaiser Rolls

2013-05-09T17:34:00.003-04:00

Last month, I was cooking out of The Mile End Cookbook: Redefining Jewish Comfort Food from Hash to Hamantaschen , and I think my two favorite recipes in the book were for the potato salad....

...and the Kaiser rolls...

Overall, I found the recipes to be a little bit fussy - i.e. calling for "3 cups plus 2 tablespoons bread flour" as if the 2 tablespoons are really necessary. Also "4 1/2 teaspoons sugar" seemed a little odd - why not make it 1 1/2 tablespoons and call it a day? The potato salad called for home made dressing, which I was nervous about making since the demise of my old Osterizer blender, which made wonderful emulsions. My new Kitchen Aid blender ended up with "broken" mayo the last time I made it - I think the shape of the pitcher is the root cause of the problem. The old blender was tall and thin; the new one is much more stout. This cookbook suggested using a food processor, which worked great. Now I can make mayo again! I normally don't like potato salad, but I ate this one with gusto. I had some leftover mustard mayonnaise, which was delicious in tuna salad, too. Here's how I made both - tweaked the recipes to be less fussy....

Potato Salad

For the mustard mayonnaise
2 egg yolks
2 T spicy brown mustard
juice of 1 lemon
2 T white vinegar
1 T. kosher salt
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 3/4 c. safflower oil

Combine all dressing ingredients except the oil in the bowl of a food processor. Process until smooth and tripled in volume, about 3 minutes. Then, with the processor running, add the oil in a slow, steady stream through the hole in the top of the processor; continue mixing until the oil is fully emulsified.

For the potato salad
3 lb small red potatoes, halved
kosher salt
6 green onions, sliced
1 c. chopped flat leaf parsley
1 c. thinly sliced red onion

Boil potato in a pot with about a 1/2 c. kosher salt, drain and cool. Mix potatoes, parsley, scallions and onions and about a cup or so of the mayo (or to your preference). Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Later, I will write about the kaiser rolls. Meanwhile, I plan on enjoying this potato salad all summer!

Mile End: Smoking is good for you....

2013-04-30T20:50:00.000-04:00

For this month's Cook the Books Challenge, I made many things out of this month's selection....The Mile End Cookbook: Redefining Jewish Comfort Food from Hash to Hamantaschen. I loved this cookbook so much that I bought it. I even made the Montreal smoked meat, which takes 2 weeks to make. When I have more time to write, I will post details!

Seed starting

2013-04-20T16:39:00.002-04:00

I started these seeds the weekend of March 23....

Chadwick Cherry Tomato - it's supposed to be the best tasting cherry tomato you can grow. 70 days
Black Prince - deep garnet round, 2-inch tomatoes are full of juice and incredibly rich fruity flavors. This is a tomato that chefs rave about for it's rich flavors. The small fruits contain deep rich colors on the inside. Perfect for patio gardens. Perfect for eating fresh, and in cooking in tomato sauce or other culinary wonders.70 days
Cherokee Purple - one of the best tasting heirlooms. 80 days
Camp Joy tomatoes _ after planting, I learned it's the same as the Chadwick. Oh well....
Basil - I can't remember what variety, it was some leftover seeds I had kicking around
Thai hot chili peppers
Cayenne Peppers
Borage - edible flowers

Most of these were all ready to be transplanted into potting soil from their seed starting medium last weekend, a few of the peppers needed a little more leafing so I let them be until this weekend.

For this weekend, I transplanted the

Cilantro
Bells of Ireland - only 2 of 8 sprouted
Mallow - 6 of 8 sprouted

Epic fails

Mexican sunflowers - I saved these seeds from Greenfield Village last year. These flowers were beautiful in the Burbank Garden. None sprouted, so I bought some seeds to try again. Lady Bird Cosmos - only 1 plant that was so leggy it tipped over and croaked out of 8

Passion Flower - My daughter bought these seeds 2 years ago, and she has been dying to grow them.

This weekend, I am starting the rest of my seeds:

Moonflower
Blanket Flower - Golden Goblin
The aforementioned Mexican Sunflower - Torch
Marigold - French Favourite blend

Mexican Sunflower - it's 4-6 feet tall!

The seed packet for the Mexican Sunflower suggested planing them with Grandpa Ott Morning Glories, which would be lovely! I'm worried the morning glories will choke the sunflowers when they climb. I'll have to think about how I will do that.

Morning Glory - Grandpa Ott

I usually plant morning glories on my mailbox, but this year it's going to be moonflowers. I saw some last summer in a yard near the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market and I vowed to plant some myself. They bloom at night, and they are supposed to smell heavenly. I can't wait for summer.

Moonflower vine

Lemon Bars

2013-03-30T07:10:00.000-04:00

No one makes lemon bars anymore, and I am on a campaign to bring them back in style. they are perfect for this time of year, when taste buds long for something light and springlike. And lemons are still in season now. Lemon bars make a great Easter dessert! It's a simple recipe you can make from pantry items, if you are the type of person that always has a bag of lemons hanging around. I'm that kind of gal - fresh squeezed lemon juice tastes so much better than the bottled stuff. Plus, I learned from Cooks Illustrated that storing lemons in the fridge in a sealed plastic bag makes them last much longer than in the fruit bowl, so that's where I keep them. They can last a month in there. Plus, buying them in bulk is much cheaper than individually. I weigh the 2 lb bags and pick the heaviest one I can find - usually I get at least 2 1/2 lbs for the same price as a handful of lemons.

Making lemon bars allows me to use 2 of my favorite kitchen gadgets - a Microplane rasp and a citrus reamer....

Microplane rasp

citrus reamer

Hopefully, you already have these 2 beauties in your kitchen gadget drawer, but if you don't, I highly recommend both of them. Need a little bit of Parmesan on your pasta? How about some fresh ginger for your stir fry? No need to haul out a heavy appliance - the rasp will make quick work of it and can be easily rinsed off and put away. Come summer, make some simple syrup and keep it in a jar in the fridge - with the reamer, fresh lemonade is just a quick juicing away. My teens make their own fresh lemonade all the time - we never use the powdered stuff.

Lemon Bars

For the crust:
1/2 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

For the filling:
6 eggs
3 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest (4 to 6 lemons)
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup flour
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

For the crust, cream the butter and sugar until light in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Combine the flour and salt and, with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed.
Press the dough into a 9 by 13 pan.

Bake the crust for 15 to 20 minutes, until very lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on.

For the filling, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and flour. Pour over the crust and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature.

Cut into triangles and dust with confectioners' sugar.

Happy Easter!

Good Fish: Not so good for me...

2013-03-19T19:48:00.000-04:00

I hate to be a complete killjoy, but for the second month in a row, I haven't liked the cookbook selected for the Cook The Books challenge.   I'm so bummed because I really, really, really wanted to like this month's cook book, which was
Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast by Becky Selengut. First, it is beautifully photographed.   Second, I loved her storytelling, especially when she wrote about working in a galley of a boat headed to Alaska. How cool is that? I also really like her how to videos on her website that show you how to do just about anything with seafood, from devein a shrimp to fillet a fish I adored everything she wrote about eating fish from the Pacific Northwest seasonally and sustainably.   Living in the Great Lakes region, I can see that there really needs to be a book written just like this one, but featuring our local catch.

I come from a long line of fishermen and women.   I grew up fishing my whole life because I lived within 10 miles of Lake St. Clair, the lake that borders Lake Huron and the Detroit River. My first fishing rod was a bamboo number without a reel and a big red and white bobber on the line. My uncle had a fishing boat and we went fishing many weekends in the summer when I was a kid; I can still remember going out to the golf course late at night with a red filter on my flashlight to pick night crawlers to use for bait. I went to college on the shores of Lake Superior, where I took bait and fly casting for P.E. credit.   I have very fond memories of buying lake trout right on the Superior shore from a fisherman and stuffing it with herbs and grilling it.  We went smelt dipping in the spring when the tiny fish venture upstream to spawn. Currently, we live on a small lake where we can catch pan fish anytime we want. We live within walking distance of the Huron River, and my son is an avid fly fisherman who can't wait to get out there and "match the hatch" this season.   So I was thrilled to try my hand with some of these recipes - especially this month, since I am Catholic and so we don't eat meat of Fridays during Lent.

I didn't get very far, because my very first attempt was such a dismal failure, I lost my enthusiasm. To be fair, my family isn't very adventurous when eating seafood.   Their favorite way to eat it is pan fried with Drake's Fry Mix (another local Michigan taste treat). So maybe I shouldn't have picked roasted black cod with bok choy and soy caramel sauce, it might have been too ambitious for their taste.   But it looked so delicious in the picture - and I have had soy caramel sauce at a favorite Vietnamese restaurant before, so I thought it would be an excellent choice.   However, it wasn't very good at all. I think the problem might be that it called for 2 large bulbs of bok choy, which is an awful lot of the stuff   The recipe would be better served if it used baby bok choy instead, because the large bulbs didn't really roast at all; instead they steamed themselves into a slimy pile. As a result, the vegetable mixture of the bok choy, cabbage, tomatoes and green onions seasoned with a little sesame oil and rice wine vinegar came out watery and bland - the serrano chile got lost in it.   And there really wasn't enough soy caramel sauce to add any significant flavor to the dish.   My teenage son, who eats everything that isn't nailed down, left more than half of his plate uneaten and he didn't touch the vegetables. My husband, who good naturedly tries everything I cook and tries to say something nice about it (even if it isn't his favorite) summed it up in one word, "Yuck". Sad to say it, but I had to agree with him. Even I didn't finish mine - and I love bok choy and cabbage!  I knew better than to make fish for my seafood hating daughter; hers was made with chicken instead, which we all were eyeing enviously.   Perhaps the dish would have been more flavorful if the fish was marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil. I'm not sure...

So the cookbook sat forlornly on my table for a few weeks - I poked around looking for something else I could try but nothing jumped out at me.   Maybe I should have tried some of the shrimp recipes - after all, they are farming shrimp in tanks now up near Lansing.    Or I could have tried some of the halibut recipes with Lake Superior whitefish instead.   Or I could have sent my son down to the lake with his tip ups and his auger and had him pull some bass out of the ice on our lake and tried my hand the fish taco recipe. But I just lost my gumption, and the book is going back to the library tomorrow.   I finished up my Lent instead with my favorite fish taco recipe and some tuna casserole instead. But the idea of a Great Lakes seafood cookbook intrigues me; maybe the best think I got from this book is an inspiration.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Parmesan Dumplings

2013-03-02T18:37:00.000-05:00

In Warren, Michigan, where I grew up in the 1970s, you were either Polish or Italian. It was so cool to be Italian - all the popular kids were Italian. The Italians had famous Hollywood characters like Rocky Balboa and Vinnie Barbarino. There was the whole "Godfather" thing, too. Sadly, I was born on the Polish side of the tracks. Instead of wearing Italian horn gold chain necklaces, and wearing 1st Holy Communion dresses that rivaled wedding dresses, we were the butt of all the Polish jokes. We got called "Polacks" on the playground (it wasn't a compliment). I secretly hoped my brown hair looked almost black like the girls in "in" crowd. In the summer, my singular goal was to work on my tan to transform my pale Eastern bloc complexion into something that looked a little more Mediterranean by laying out in the sun drenched in a homemade mixture of baby oil and mecuricome that allegedly guaranteed a deep dark tan. I wanted to pass as an Italian.

We Polish kids ate weird food, too. Stuff like golapki (stuffed cabbage) and czernina (duck blood soup). Besides sentencing me to a lifetime of uncoolness; being Polish also meant that I didn't get to eat the Italian foods that everyone else loved....fettucine alfredo, pasta carbonara, lasagna, etc. After all, there was no commercial about kids running home to eat Polish food that we ate (like a big plate of kapusta with kielbasa); instead there was this one about a young Italian boy named Anthony:

While I have come to appreciate my own clan's food, the only true downside of being Polish is that I had never really tasted real Parmigiano Reggiano until I was an adult. Sure, we had spaghetti, but we didn't have it every Wednesday like Anthony. My mom made spaghetti with hamburger in it and sauce from a jar. Of course, it was topped with the stuff in the green can...

Fast forward to my adult life. I was running late coming home from the office and I was supposed to bring an appetizer to a book club meeting. No time to cook, so, I stopped by Morgan and York, a fine Ann Arbor purveyor of wine and cheese...or should I say cheese...cheese....CHEESE....

...and the young fellow behind the counter suggested I bring some Parmigiano Reggiano with a baguette and some of their wonderful aged balsamic vinegar they sell in bulk. I blanched at the price of the cheese - after all, the real deal costs a lot more than the stuff in the green can. However, I was assured that I didn't need all that much cheese. All that was needed was a little sliver of cheese and a thin slice of baguette dipped in some of that sweet and tart vinegar. I tasted it and it was out of this world! The book club ladies skipped everyone else's appetizers and went straight for my snack. I felt a little guilty because my contribution didn't even require cooking! "This is so good!" they exclaimed. My one friend, quite the food snob, sniffed, "This is real Parmigiano Reggiano, isn't it? I can tell." And she is right, you can tell. It has an unrivaled texture and nutty taste. Genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano is made only in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, following stringent guidelines. The milk used to make the cheese comes from cows that spend most of their days grazing in grassy meadows. It must be made from April 15 to November 11 so that the cows from which the milk comes can graze only on fresh grass. It must be aged for a minimum of 14 months (though most are aged for 2 years) in wheels that weigh at least 66 pounds.

My friend Ann makes the most wonderful cheese dumplings. When she gave me her recipe, she warned me not to use real parmesan cheese, saying that it wouldn't work, the dumplings fall apart. "Use the stuff in the green can!" she admonished. So use it I did, but I got to wondering if I could make them work with the real deal? A quick scan of the ingredients of the green can showed that it contained cheese and something called "cellulose powder". Wondering if that could be the secret, I Googled "cellulose powder" and found out it is "minuscule pieces of wood pulp or other plant fibers that coat the cheese and keep it from clumping" . Yikes! I didn't want to have to add sawdust to my dumplings....but I got to thinking that maybe the cellulose powder was acting as a thickening agent. I tried adding a little cornstarch instead, and that did the trick. They're perfect for this robust flavored tomato soup. This recipe is wonderful and easy - to save even more time, buy finely grated Parmigiano Regiano. I got some at Whole Foods, who are celebrating Parmageddon by simulaneously cracking into 400 wheels of cheese on March 9.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Parmesan Dumplings

For the soup
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 T olive oil
1 can (28 oz) roasted tomatoes (I used Whole Foods 365 Diced Fire Roasted Tomatoes)
1 yellow squash, diced
1 zucchini, diced

For the dumplings
3/4 cup finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (grated like powder, not shards)
1 t kosher salt
1/2 t corn starch
1 egg

In a 2 qt saucepan or Dutch oven, saute garlic in oil until fragrant. Puree tomatoes (including the juice) in a blender until smooth. Add to pan and heat until boiling, and then turn down to medium low heat. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Make the dumplings by mixing the egg, cheese, cornstarch and salt in a small bowl until combined. Form 1/2 inch dumplings and drop them a few at a time into the hot tomato sauce. Wait for them to puff up a bit and float before adding more.

When all the dumplings are adding, cover and cook over a medium low fire for 5 minutes. Resist the urge to stir - the dumplings will break up - however if a few break, it's okay.

Add the squash and stir gently to combine. Cover and cook for 5 more minutes, or until squash is soft.

That's it! Couldn't be simpler....it's great as it is or even better topped with some additional cheese. Delizioso or Smaczne as we say in Polish!

Gyoza: Japanese Pork and Shrimp Potstickers

2013-02-16T20:01:00.001-05:00

I had been dreading this month's Cook the Books challenge since I signed up. It's a monthly challenge of cooking from a particular cookbook, and this one involved Asian dumplings. I've tried to make potstickers at home a couple times and it has never ended well. I've found them to be a big hassle to make and I could never get them to stay together and I'd end up with a skillet of wonton skins and their innards all spewed out and calling the whole mess "stir fry". So I settled on eating them frozen or going to a Japanese restaurant to get my fill of gyoza, but I adore them.

This month's selected cookbook is Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More by Andrea Nguyen, who is a food writer who often appears in Saveur. So, I set my jaw and my mouse clicker finger and interlibrary loaned it from the library. It took a while to get it - the book appears to be pretty popular. All the copies were checked out in the network - perhaps it wouldn't be too bad if everyone is checking it out. I started reading it when I had the foreshadowing that this might not go well for me. First of all, there is lots of special equipment required - a wooden dowel rolling pin that can only be found in "housewares and restaurant supply houses in Asian enclaves". While Ann Arbor is home to a good many Asians - many on the University of Michigan faculty and the headquarters for both Toyota and Hyundai in North America are in our town, there isn't any restaurant supply stores nearby, and there's only one Asian grocery store, and it is very small. I thought I could just make my own rolling pin from hardware store dowel rod, but that would require more effort than I was willing to put into the task. I do have a Chinese steamer and a scale, but I didn't have the required tortilla press and I refuse to buy one. The author makes the whole dough process sound so difficult - the basic dumpling dough calls for only 2 ingredients - flour and water, but she writes a whole paragraph about how to boil water and let it rest first, because boiling water is "dangerous". Really? Dangerous? Then, each piece of dumpling dough is supposed to be weighed to "be precise". I decided I was going to have to take her up on her judgmental "lazy day tip" and buy premade wrappers instead of making my own dough.

I decided to make gyoza - the Japanese adopted Chinese potstickers. I headed out to my town's sole Asian grocery and bought some frozen gyoza wrappers - they had many varieties of frozen wrappers, not just gyoza style. I also needed some sake for the recipe, which I don't particularly like drinking and still have most the bottle in my fridge, to go along with the remaining napa cabbage it called for. Napa cabbage heads are big, and the amount needed is small. Curiously, throughout the book, Ms. Nguyen makes many recipes that start out with two cups of lightly packed, finely chopped napa cabbage, that she claims will reduce down to 1/2 cup after salting and rinsing it. but I didn't find that to be the case. All you really need is a couple leaves of napa to for a batch. I'll need to figure out something to do with the rest of it.

Ms Nguyen's recipe goes on for 3 pages and with every possible step explained into minutiae. It has some strange warnings, like how to hold the lid of the skillet to "lessen the dramatic affect of water hitting hot oil"....huh? This gal has some serious worries about hot water. Every little step of every recipe is explained in annoying detail. It got to the point where I was waiting for her to tell me when to breathe. The bottom line is that I discovered that despite her best effort to disguise the fact, making gyoza wasn't really all that hard. I read through her descriptions of how to make the master shapes of dumplings and found out that I loved the pea pod shape - like a pair of sweat pants, it lets you stuff the dumpling with filling and pleat it up at the seam. It was super easy and they looked authentic, too:

Even though I used the "lazy day" method by buying frozen dumpling wrappers, I'd definitely recommend making gyoza from scratch instead of buying the frozen ones - they tasted way better. Here's how I made Ms. Nguyen's recipe....

Japanese Pork and Shrimp Potstickers

1 cup finely chopped napa cabbage
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 t grated fresh ginger
2 green onions, copped (white and green part)
1/2 lb ground pork
6 medium shrimp, shelled, deveined and chopped fine
pinch of sugar
2 T low sodium soy sauce
1 T sake

small package of frozen gyoza wrappers

Sprinkle cabbage with salt and let it sit in a fine mesh strainer for 15 minutes. Squeeze any moisture out through the sieve, and dump into a medium bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until it's well blended. Let it sit for a half hour or so to let the flavors blend. Meanwhile, thaw the wrappers.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, and form dumplings....I'll let Ms Nguyen show you how to do it herself here:

It's not hard at all to make them. Cover the pan with a towel as you create them so they don't dry out. To pan fry them, head a tablespoon or so of canola oil and the same amount of sesame oil in a nonstick frying pan. Place the dumplings in the pan and fry them for a couple minutes until they are light brown on the bottom. Add water to the pan to make it be about 1/4 of an inch deep - no need to freak out...but know that you are adding water to a hot pan. It will sizzle, but it's not going to kill you or anything. There is no drama. Cover the skillet and lower the heat to medium and cook for 8 minutes, then vent the lid and cook for a few minutes more. While they are cooking, make dipping sauce:

Dipping sauce
3 parts soy sauce
1 part rice vinegar
dash hot chili oil

Adjust ingredients to suit your taste. Remove the lid from the pan and cook the dumplings until the bottoms are brown and crisp. Serve with the dipping sauce.

The bottom line? The cookbook isn't one I'd want to own. Many of the recipes are repeats of the same thing with one or two ingredients changed. As previously mentioned, it belabors even the smallest points of cooking, instead of making things sound easy. What I learned is that dumplings are easy - I'm definitely going to make more. But I'm not buying the tortilla press....sorry. Frozen wrappers are just fine for me! Call me lazy....

Ask Mom's Kitchen: Canning questions answered

2013-02-03T07:54:00.001-05:00

Readers write, I respond....

I just found your site, and am wanting to can my grapefruit later this week. Can it be done without the syrup and cold packed? I don't want to add more sweet to my grapefuit. Thank you! Trish

Yes, grapefruit can be canned without syrup, using just water. Read all about it here in the University of Minnesota's Extension website. Happy canning!

How long does it take for the fruit to thicken up enough when making Strawberry Spoon Fruit? Kara

It will take about 45 minutes, depending on the pectin content of the strawberries you are using, Kara. Strawberries can be unpredictable! I wish I lived somewhere where strawberries are in season right now. It's cold and snowy here today in the Mitten!

I've been looking for ways to modify canning recipes. Is it safe to say that as long as the product is of the same consistency and below 4.6, it's ok for water bath canning? I have a sweet potato BBQ recipe that I really want to make for people for Christmas. Thanks Bethany

Sorry....A sweet potato BBQ sauce wouldn't likely have a pH of < 4.6. Also, I'd worry about the consistency. Did you know it's not safe to can pumpkin butter because it gets too thick? I've never seen a recipe to can anything but boiled potatoes and it is for pressure canning only. So I'd stay away with anything that had sweet potatoes in it.

Chard Stuffed Pork Roast

2013-01-12T06:40:00.003-05:00

I'm participating in a blog challenge this year hosted by some old blogging friends called Cook the Books where each month, a cookbook is selected and bloggers are asked to write about it. This month's book is Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table....

I have actually made some of Dorie Greenspan's recipes before...most notably her cocoa sable cookies, which is also included in AMFT. (I just went back and read that blog post and it still made me laugh) I checked another one of her other books out of the library before....

which I enjoyed reading, but have to admit my version of the cake featured on the cover looked nothing like hers. Baking really isn't my forte, but I try. So I knew I would enjoy this month's challenge. I got the book out of the library - the jury is still out whether I want to buy it or not. I think I need to see if there are some more recipes I want to try in it. Over the holidays, I took the opportunity to cook something new most every day, and when I saw this recipe for a chard stuffed pork roast, I decided to give it a shot. I had all the ingredients in my fridge - no special shopping required! Dorie's recipe is on page 276 of AMFT, but here is how I did it....Dorie actually suggested this recipe could be prepared on a busy weeknight, but she and I clearly live different lives. This recipe takes well over an hour to prepare - it's not anything I'd make on a weeknight, but it's great for a weekend. I made extra stuffing and used it as a base for a frittata for the next morning's breakfast. It was great!

Chard Stuffed Pork Roast

1 small bunch Swiss chard stalks
2 T olive oil
1 small onion, chopped fine
2 garlic cloves, chopped fine
salt and pepper
1/4 c raisins (I used dried cranberries)
red pepper flakes
1/2 t black peppercorn
1/2 t coriander seeds

Cut the leaves off the chard stems, and chiffonade the leaves. I like the way Dorie doesn't use the actual word "chiffonade" in the recipe; instead, she just tells you how to do it: roll the leaves up like a cigar and slice them crosswise.   She used her chard stems and chopped them up, too, but I had a pickled chard stem recipe I wanted to try, so that's what I did with mine instead. She also uses too many pans in her version of the recipe - it can all be made in cast iron frying pan, so that is what I did. I heated my medium cast iron pan with 1 T of the oil and I added the onions and cooked them until soft.   I then added the garlic and chard leaves until the chard wilts, and then I put the mixture in a small bowl and added the cranberries, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper.

I cut the pork roast in half as shown, Dorie recommended "opening the pork roast like a book" which I think is a great way to describe it.   I added the stuffing, and then carefully closed it and tied it at intervals with kitchen twine.   I pulverized the peppercorn and coriander seeds roughly in my mortar and pestle, and then I rubbed the roast with the remaining oil and pat the peppercorn mixture into the roast and seasoned it with salt.   I then roasted the pork at 375 F in the very same dirty cast iron frying pan until it got to the temperature of my liking, which is 160 F. It took about an hour, and I liked that Dorie didn't judge me for wanting my pork roast well done. She suggests 140 F, but says if you want to cook it longer, to go right ahead.   So many chefs these days talk about pork cooked medium rare, but I just don't like it that way.   I want my pork well done. Another thing Dorie does that I don't do is to remove the germ from the center of her garlic cloves.     She said it makes the garlic have less of a bite, but I like that about garlic. So, I skipped that step.

I made this recipe with her broth based potatoes (AMFT page 358) which were perfectly fine, but nothing to get excited and blog about. It's just boiling potatoes in broth and seasonings instead of plain water.  You could find a similar recipe on the side of a can of Swanson's chicken broth. In all, I really liked the pork recipe and I'd do it again. I love Dorie's writing style and just reading her cookbook makes me want to go Paris right now.    I am looking forward to trying out more of her recipes, but I have never remade those cocoa sable cookies.   Maybe I'll start there!

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

2012-12-29T03:11:00.002-05:00

It must have been some party! I love the look on the man of the house's face as he contemplates doing the dishes at a quarter to three....

The good people at Whole Foods invited me to sample their new Whole Foods Market™ line of appetizers, entrees and desserts. So my family sat down the other night for a pre NYE taste off of some of their new products. Compared to similar offerings at Whole Foods, their house brand was well priced. Also, they have no artificial flavors, bleached flours, hydrogenated fats or high-fructose corn syrup in these new products. Our favorites were their "6 Ingredient" Ice Cream - which is a lot like the Haagen Dazs but cheaper and their Wood Fired Stracchino Cheese with Arugula pizza. They'd like readers of my blog to try them out, too, so drop a comment below letting me know what your food plans are for New Year's Eve, and a winner of a $25 Whole Foods Gift Card will be selected at random. All comments must be received by midnight, December 31, 2012 for the drawing.

Happy New Year!

Lubiyeh - Green Beans and Tomatoes with Garlic

2012-12-28T08:05:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, we celebrated Christmas No. 3 at my brother's house in Warren.   My sister in law Becky assigned me the vegetable for the dinner, in addition to the kapusta I was already planning on bringing.   We are already out of the kraut I fermented myself earlier in the season, so I picked up a gallon of kraut at Copernicus Deli in Ann Arbor, our very own Polish food emporium. I also got some beet horseradish to go along with the kielbasa.   But I was stumped about what to make for my vegetable....as much as I love the Campbell's Soup green bean casserole, I had just had it the other day at my sister in law's house and I didn't have a can of the Durkee Fried Onions laying about in the pantry, which are critical.   I looked in my veggie drawer and all I had languishing in there was carrots, celery and some mixes salad greens. I didn't want to go to the store....what to make?

Looking again at the pantry, I saw tons of canned green beans and canned tomatoes.   True confession time: I love the taste of canned green beans....frozen green beans are like cardboard, and I like to buy my produce seasonally, if possible. So unless it is summertime, we eat canned green beans. There. I said it.   Hopefully no one takes away my food snob credentials.   There's something homey about canned green beans, plus I think the canning process concentrates the beans flavor.   It's what I grew up with.     I also had lots of cans of diced tomatoes....confession #2: I don't can my own tomatoes.   It's a hassle, and I can't preserve them as cheaply as I can buy my favorite local brand Red Gold. When I can tomatoes, it's always in condiment form: salsa, ketchup, barbecue sauce.   But I leave plain canned tomatoes to the Red Gold people.    So then I decided to make a dish my fellow Michigan Lady Food Blogger Joan made a few years ago at one of our get togethers.   She called it Maan's Beans. The recipe originally came from her Lebanese neighbor Maan who lived by her back when she lived next to Frog Holler Farm.   Evidently Maan's beans are famous there, too, because a recipe shows up for them on their website as well. That's how I found the Arabic name for them - Lubiyeh. They are so delicious!

The trick to making these beans is to not skimp on the garlic.  My version calls for 2 heads (not cloves) of garlic.   Also, they take a long time to cook - the long, slow cooking mellows the garlic and will make your house smell wonderful.   They can be made on the stove top, but I found that it works best to make them in a lidded pot in a slow oven - no stirring required. The best part about this recipe is that it's essentially zero Weight Watchers points, if you are counting them.

Lubiyeh

olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 15 oz. cans French cut green beans, drained
4 15 oz. cans petite diced tomatoes (do not drain)
2 small cans tomato paste
2 heads garlic, cloves peeled and smashed
Salt and pepper, to taste

In a dutch oven or other lidded heavy pan, sauté onion in olive oil until soft. Add all ingredients (except salt and pepper) and cook in a 250 F oven for 5 hours or until the garlic is soft. Add salt and pepper to taste.    This can be served on pita bread as a dip, or over rice for a meal.

There were no leftovers to bring home - everyone kept eating helping after helping with our holiday ham.   Sure, it wasn't traditional, but it was great to have a vegetable to eat that wasn't laden with cream sauce but still tasted rich and flavorful.   I need to make this more often....thanks to Joan for the inspiration! I don't get to see her anymore now that she has moved to Japan, but we still consider her a Michigan Lady Food Blogger.

Mustard Roasted Potatoes

2012-12-24T08:28:00.003-05:00

I am thoroughly enjoying my holiday break from work - everyone at my work gets from December 22 until January 2 off, but I decided to take some vacation days early in 2013 so I can be off the first week of January, too. My goal is to take a nap every day that I am off, and so far, that has been working out great! Sure, I've got some other things planned - I need to sew 3 costumes for the Dexter High School musical, and I really need to get our family room cleaned up, but I am not going to let those things get in the way of my naps. A girl needs to have priorities...

Yesterday, after my nap, we were supposed to bowling as a family, but my son was feeling a little under the weather, so my hubby and I decided to treat ourselves to happy hour instead. One of our favorite holiday traditions is to sneak out for a holiday cocktail together. I can remember when we first moved to Ann Arbor, we sat together in the famous hippy bar Del Rio (long closed) and enjoyed our Christmas cocktail while the snow fell in the twilight. We had to run into Dexter to pick up a last minute gift, and the town was pretty much empty, so we stopped at the pub for our cocktail this year. It should be my New Year's Resolution to take advantage of my programmable oven often - it has a feature where you can set the start time, the cooking time and the temperature, and the food will cook later on, as directed. It's a great way to cook frozen dishes like casseroles on a work day - just pop it frozen in the oven, program it, and it will be ready when you arrive home.

I used the feature yesterday to try out this recipe I saw on the Barefoot Contessa. A couple weekends ago, I was on a ladies weekend with my friend Ann, and she doesn't have a TV in her house. So whenever we are at a hotel together, we watch the Food Network. During the day, they actually show cooking shows instead of the stupid faux reality cooking competitions they have at night. I've always liked Ina Garten's recipes - in fact, her original cookbook...

is one of my favorites - every recipe I have ever made from that book is stellar. So we watched Ina whip up a meal for her husband Jeffery - it seems that Ina leads a charmed life, where all she does is cook up a fabulous meal for her husband that she only sees on weekends, when he pops in for a visit. Otherwise, her days are spent shopping and cooking for any guests from the Hamptons that might drop in. Ina said that she used to make these potatoes by the truckload to sell in her food shop....

I love the idea of mustard mixed with potatoes - I had just bought a big jar of Polish style mustard for Christmas. The bonus of this potato recipe is that the mustard coats the raw potatoes and prevents them from discoloring. So, they can sit in the oven for a while, waiting to be cooked. I decided to try it out and it worked great - while we ran our errands and enjoyed our cocktails, the potatoes waited in the oven until it was time for them to cook. Delicious!

Mustard Roasted Potatoes

2 1/2 pounds small potatoes
2 yellow onions
3 tablespoons good olive oil
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
Kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (or, set your oven for 425 to cook later)

Cut the potatoes in halves or quarters, depending on their size, and place them on a sheet pan. Remove the ends of the onions, peel them, and cut them in half. Slice them crosswise in 1/4-inch-thick slices to make half-rounds. Toss the onions and potatoes together on the sheet pan. Add the olive oil, mustard, 2 teaspoons salt, and the pepper and toss them together. Bake for 1 hour, until the potatoes are lightly browned on the outside and tender on the inside. Toss the potatoes from time to time with a metal spatula so they brown evenly, if there's someone home to do it.

Serve hot sprinkled with chopped parsley and a little extra salt.

Gingerbread Cookies

2012-12-09T08:03:00.002-05:00

It's already been a long December for me. Work gets frenetic as people are trying to get everything done they said they would in 2012, way back last January. Then, others are trying to get their last vacation days in before they lose them at the end of the year, so it's difficult to make things happen. Of course, there is holiday lunches and potlucks to attend, too. On Thursday, it took all my resolve to go into the office instead of staying home and baking cookies. Specifically, gingerbread cookies.....

Michigan, my Michigan

Gingerbread Cookies

3 c all-purpose flour

3/4 c firmly packed dark brown sugar

1 T ground cinnamon

1 T ground ginger

1/2 t ground cloves

1/2 t salt

3/4 t baking soda

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces

3/4 cup robust molasses

2 tablespoons milk

In bowl of standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, stir together flour, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, salt, and baking soda at low speed until combined. Add butter pieces; mix at medium-low speed until mixture is sandy and resembles fine meal, about 1 1/2 minutes. Reduce speed to low and, with mixer running, gradually add molasses and milk; mix until dough is evenly moistened. Scrape dough onto work surface and divide in half. Working with one portion of dough at a time, roll 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch thick between two large sheets of parchment paper. Leaving dough sandwiched between parchment layers, stack on cookie sheet and freeze until firm, 20-25 minutes. (You could also refrigerate the dough 2 hours or overnight.)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or a silpat. Remove one dough sheet from freezer; place on work surface. Peel off top parchment sheet and gently lay it back in place. Flip dough over; peel off and discard second parchment layer. Cut dough into desired shapes and transfer the shapes to your parchment-lined cookie sheets. Space them at least an inch apart. Repeat with remaining dough until cookie sheets are full. Bake cookies until set in, 8 to 11 minutes, rotating cookie sheets front to back and switching positions top to bottom halfway through baking time. For crispier cookies, let them bake for a little longer and roll them thinner. Cool cookies on sheets 2 minutes, then remove with wide metal spatula to wire rack; cool to room temperature. Gather scraps; repeat rolling, cutting, and baking in steps 2 and 4. Repeat with remaining dough until all dough is used.

These can be decorated with fancy royal icing....my friend Olivia makes the most beautiful Christmas cookies...

Olivia's cookies

and every year, I try to make ones as nice as she does, but I rarely succeed. Maybe this year will be the year! To make cookies like this, it requires a lot of stuff....

sprinkles and sugars

...and it also requires cake decorating tools and really good food coloring. The best way to learn how to do it is this website, which I found, thanks to Olivia. Over the years, I've also used squeeze bottles instead of icing bags and tips. I use this Royal Icing recipe - there are tons out there, but I've had good luck with this one. The key is to make sure that the icing is the right consistency.

Royal Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

3/4 cup warm water

5 T meringue powder

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

2.25 lbs powdered sugar

Directions:

In mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and the meringue powder. Mix it with a whisk by hand until it is frothy and thickened…about 30 seconds. Add the cream of tartar and mix for 30 seconds more. Pour in all the icing sugar at once and place the bowl on the mixer. Using the paddle attachment on the LOWEST speed, mix slowly for a full 10 minutes. Icing will get thick and creamy. Add just drops of water at a time to make the icing runnier. If you add too much water at a time it’s more difficult to thicken it with icing sugar than it is to add water to it. To make sure the icing is the right consistency for flooding, try the “10 second rule”. Drag a butter knife through the surface of the icing and count to 10. If the icing surface becomes smooth in anywhere between 5-10 seconds, then the icing is ready to use. If it takes longer than approximately 10 seconds, the icing is too thick. Slowly add more water. If the icing surface smooths over in less than 5-10 seconds, it is too runny. Mix the icing longer or slowly add more sifted icing sugar to thicken it.

Cover the bowl with a dampened tea-towel to prevent crusting and drying.

Tint with food coloring of your choice. This is always hard for me to figure out, because I really don't have a good eye for color. I need a theme this year, too. Maybe I will make all snowflakes, or Christmas trees, or mittens. I have a million cookie cutters....more than any one person should have. I'm not sure when I am going to bake some cookies this season. Maybe today will be the day!

Turkey Soup with Lemon and Barley

2012-11-24T15:54:00.000-05:00

Pinterest has been such a blessing to me - I can pin recipes I think I want to try....and yesterday, I saw this one that my friend Kate had posted. I already had prepared a turkey stock - the last thing I do each Thanksgiving is to throw the carcass with whatever meat is left on it in the slow cooker with an onion and a carrot and a bay leaf or two, and let it cook on low all night. The following morning, I pick off the meat and save the stock to make soup. But after a couple Thanksgiving dinners now, I am getting tired of the traditional Thanksgiving flavors. I made nachos for lunch and for dinner, I tried my hand at this soup, and it is terrific. It tastes light and lemony. It's just what I need after a couple days of really heavy eating.

Turkey Soup with Lemon and Barley

3 T olive oil

1 large onion, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

Salt and black pepper

1 t ground turmeric

1/2 t ground cumin

1/2 t ground ginger

Juice of a lemon (about 3 to 4 Tbsp)

Strips of lemon zest, from one lemon - peel it with a vegetable peeler

6 cups turkey stock or chicken stock

1 cup barley

Whatever leftover turkey you have kicking around

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a heavy pot or Dutch oven. Add the onion and cook until the onion is translucent, about 3 minutes. Stir in the chopped garlic and cook another minute, then mix in the turmeric, cumin, ground ginger and a generous pinch of salt.

Pour in the lemon juice and turkey stock and turkey and add the strips of lemon zest. Bring to a simmer, then add the barley. Simmer gently until the barley is cooked, about an hour.

When the barley is cooked through, add the cilantro, and salt and pepper to taste. Remove the lemon zest strips before serving.

Butter Rolls

2012-11-24T07:25:00.000-05:00

I'm a blogging fool this weekend - I don't want to forget everything I cooked this Thanksgiving because it was so good. Here's another recipe inspiration I got from Paul Virant....I never thought to bake rolls in my cast iron skillet. To make these rolls, you need a big 12 inch cast iron frying pan. It keeps the rolls warm while you are waiting to serve them.

These rolls require no kneading, which is nice when the kitchen's already busy with other things. I like to use my microwave oven as a "proofing box" - I heat a coffee cup full of water for 3 minutes on high, and leave it in the back of the even and place whatever I need to rise in it and shut the door. The heat from the water makes a foolproof rise. Ever since I started doing this, by breads always turn out right.

Butter Rolls

1 t instant yeast
1 1/2 c milk at room temperature
1 T honey
4 c all purpose flour
2 t kosher salt
6 T butter, cubed and softened

In a stand mixer bowl, add milk and sprinkle yeast on top. Don't stir, and let it stand for 5 minutes. Then stir in honey. Attach the dough hook to the mixer and while it is running on low speed, add half the flour and stir until a paste forms. Then add the rest of the flour and salt and mix on low speed until smooth, about 4 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, and set aside. Add butter cubes to bread dough, mixing with your hands in incorporate the cubes evenly into the dough. Place the dough in the oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise until the dough is doubled, about 1 1/2 hours. Punch the dough down and let it rise again for another 30 minutes or so.

Oil a 12 inch cast iron skillet, set aside. Lightly flour a work surface, and place the dough on the counter and cut it into30 golf ball sized balls. Roll the dough into balls and place in tight concentric circles in the skillet. Cover the pan with a damp kitchen towel and let the dough rise until rolls have doubled in size. At this point, you could place them in the fridge overnight, but let them come to room temp before baking. Preheat oven to 350 F, and bake until dough is evenly browned and baked through, about 30 minutes. Serve the rolls in the skillet to keep them warm at the table.

Cranberry-Apple Crisp

2012-11-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm different, I guess. I bet I am the only person around that would seek out a restaurant because I have read the cookbook of said restaurant. Next time I am in Chicago, I plan on visiting one of Paul Virant's restaurants, Perennial Virant, which features his canned goods, or Vie, which is out in the suburbs. It was this cookbook that caught my eye:

I'm interested in trying his recipes for aigre-doux, which is French for "sweet and sour" - canned sauces for savory dishes, but I haven't gotten a chance to do it. Instead, I found a wonderful recipe for a cranberry-pear crisp that he suggests for the Thanksgiving table. I didn't have any pears, so I made it with apple instead. What makes it unique is the crumbly topping - instead of oats and brown sugar, this one is a sweeter crumble. The texture is more like sand than chunks.

Cranberry-Apple Crisp
3 apples, peeled, cored and chopped into small chunks
5 c fresh cranberries
2 c sugar
2 c flour
1/4 c whole wheat flour
1 t salt
1 c cold butter, cubed

Preheat oven to 350 F. Spread apples and cranberries in a 13X9 pan, sprinkle with 1/2 cup sugar. In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, mix the remaining 1 1/2 cup sugar, flours and salt on low speed. With the mixer still running, add the butter and continue to mix until a coarse crumble forms. Spread the crumble evenly over the fruit,, pressing it into the fruit. Bake until the cranberry juices are bubbling and the topping is golden brown, about 50 minutes.

Upside Down Apple Gingerbread

2012-11-23T07:08:00.001-05:00

I always make pie for Thanksgiving, except this year. I just wasn't in the mood to do it, and I had some recipes kicking around that I wanted to try for a long time. Maybe it's because I make pies year round, and gingerbread is something that only seems right in the fall and winter. I found this recipe originally in an old Taste of Home cookbook, long before it became the rag of a magazine it is now, full of recipes pushing prepared food and paid for product placements. Back in the day, it was full of people's own recipes and testimonials. I used to love it! I changed this recipe to add more ginger - to me, a gingerbread should have a real kick to it. I also prefer a more robust blackstrap molasses flavor.

Upside Down Apple Gingerbread

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 large apples, peeled and sliced

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup blackstrap molasses

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

3/4 cup brewed tea

Pour butter into a 9-in. square baking pan; sprinkle with brown sugar. Arrange apples over sugar; set aside.

For gingerbread, in a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, then molasses. Combine dry ingredients; add to sugar mixture alternately with tea, beating well after each addition.

Pour over apples. Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto a serving plate. Serve warm. Yield: 9 servings.

Ann's Cheese Dumplings

2012-11-22T14:38:00.002-05:00

My friend Ann is one of the best cooks I know. I wanted to share her dad's recipe for cheese dumplings - these are terrific!

Cheese Dumplings

3/4 c parmesan cheese (use the canned Kraft stuff in the green can. The real stuff doesn't work)

1 egg

4 cups tomato sauce she uses canned diced tomatoes liquified in the blender

1 zucchini cut into chunks

1 yellow squash cut into chunks

Knead egg and cheese together until you have a dough like mixture. You want it to easily be able to form one inch balls. Not too wet, not too dry, they should easily form into balls.

Heat the sauce until it is lava hot. It works better if the sauce is slightly on the watery side.

Drop the balls in a few at a time after a minute or two they should bob up to the surface and swell up a bit.

When all the cheese balls have popped up add the squash chunks and cook until the squash is tender.

Thanksgiving thoughts

2012-11-22T11:05:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving always involved travel for me, but not the "over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house" kind of idyllic scene. Ours involved a trip to the faraway land called the "West Side". We'd load up in the car and go to my aunt's house....she lived on the west side....and we lived on the east side. Native Detroiters speak in this parlance to describe themselves - if you live east of Woodward Avenue, you're what is known as an "east sider". If you lived west of Woodward, you're a "west sider". As a kid, I never knew any west siders, in fact, I rarely went west of I-75, let alone Woodward. When I started working at Ford as an adult, I couldn't find my way around Dearborn because the streets weren't parallel like they are on the east side. Every once in a while, I accidentally end up in another provenance of Detroit called "Downriver", which borders Dearborn, but it is a notable difference in white urban class status. Dearborn considered to be more upscale than it's downriver neighbors of Allen Park or Taylor. I couldn't find my way around the west side. None of the roads were numbered in mile increments, and familiar roads I knew like 15 Mile was called "Maple" and 8 Mile became "Base Line Road". Weird!

A key difference of the east side vs. west side is that most of the Polish people ended up on the east side. When the Detroit riots occurred in the 1960s, all the Polish crowd decided to head north of 8 Mile from Hamtramck on a beeline up Van Dyke. Many landed in Warren, like my family, and as the white flight continued northward, many headed even further up to Clinton Twp. or Rochester during the 1980s. But for some reason, my mom's sister actually stayed in the city, and sent her kids to Catholic school, and moved to the west side. She lived in a really nice neighborhood....where Detroit cops lived and some of the Detroit Tigers had homes right on her street. I don't remember exactly where it was, but I remember the car ride down 8 Mile (this is before I-696 made this commute much quicker) and we'd go under 2 bridges - the first one was the Woodward overpass and the second one was the Southfield Freeway. We were officially deep into west side territory. My aunt's house was way nicer than our house - it had a finished basement with a wet bar that my Uncle Carl dubbed "The Happy Hallow" complete with light up sign letting you know that, and really groovy Naugahyde bar stools that spun around. My sister and I would take turns spinning each other around until we were nauseous. We liked to spend time in the presence of our ultra hip cousins that were teenagers - the girls wore go go boots and bouffant hair styles and powder blue eye shadow and lots of eye liner, and our mysterious cousin Carl Junior that would come home from U of M for the weekend with his long hair. I remember wondering if he was a "hippie" and if he took LSD. Now, as an adult, I realize how far off base I was about him, a bookish man that studied philosophy and currently works in computer support.

But the best part of my aunt's house was the pool table. When I was a kid, I loved to shoot pool - I still do, in fact. My dad taught us pool hall etiquette, i.e. always call your pocket for the 8 ball, do not take another turn if your last shot was "slop", make sure to chalk up the cue, etc. There was strategy suggestions, too. For example, shots that involved sending the cue ball across the length of the table are hard - he called them a "long green" shot. Avoid them! Or that maybe you wanted to have a "dog" - to intentionally leave a ball in front of the pocket to block it from your opponent. We kids would shoot pool any chance we got our hands on a cue. Once we tired of playing pool, or the uncles decided they wanted to play, we'd play cards. As small children, we were all taught how to play Pinochle, which is a really hard card game for a kid to learn how to play - there's all sorts of strategy and scoring things you needed to know. Plus, it was hard to hold 12 cards in my small hands. My Polish grandpa, who didn't speak much English, would yell at me in Polish if he could see my cards or I reneged. I hated playing it, and was relieved when Euchre came into vogue, which only required 5 cards in a hand and there was the opportunity to win some money via gambling. My dad's set wagering was always a dollar a game, 50 cents a euchre.

A No Brainer

Now, some of those traditions still carry on. Tomorrow, I will drive to the east side to my sister's house. Living in Ann Arbor means that I am far beyond even what is considered west side territory. I might as well live in another state. My mother felt that Ann Arbor was "too far away" and would only travel here for Easter, in case there was some black ice on M-14. She died in 2010, but we still follow her holiday rules: Thanksgiving at my sister's house, Christmas at my brother's and Easter here. We don't have to worry about the black ice because it is 60 degrees today. We'll play cards for sure, although I don't remember how to play Pinochle anymore, I'm sure there will be Euchre, maybe some Texas Hold 'Em. My sis has a pool table, so maybe we'll "shoot some stick" (as we used to call it). Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Books I Loved: Seventeeth Summer

2012-11-15T18:53:00.001-05:00

Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly

I can't remember how I actually got a copy of this book when I was a kid - maybe it was a garage sale, or the neighbor girls had it, but it was vintage in the 1970s when I had it. It was paperback, and I had it with this cover on it. It was written in 1942, and published for adults, it became one of the first to capture a teenaged audience. Some scholars consider it the first "Young Adult" novel. Maureen Daly started writing it when she was 17 herself, and finished it when she was a senior in college. It has never gone out of print. In fact, its latest reincarnation looks like this:

It is about a 17-year-old girl named Angie Morrow. It takes place in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Angie gets asked out on her first date by the local high school's basketball star, Jack Duluth, age 18. They fall in love but soon the summer will end, for Angie has to go to college in Chicago, and Jack is going back to his home in Oklahoma to help his uncle with the bakery business.

I always loved the description of that summer in Wisconsin. Once, as a college student, I stopped in Fond du Lac just to see it - it didn't measure up to my expectations of how the book described the town, but I had to make the pilgrimmage. There was something about how Maureen Daly described the place (and her own home town) that made me want to visit it. I remember Jack taking Angie out for a sail on Lake Winnebago and whispering that she "sure looked pretty with the wind in her hair".

Indeed, it was the way she described things that stuck in my head.   To this day, on a hot July day, I think of the beginning of the July chapter when she described the heat of summer:

It was hot. It was hot with a steady, beating heat that comes from a bare sky and a high sun. still and glaring, that covers the whole ground without a shadow. It was the kind of sun in which high school girls go about with their long silk hair pinned in knots on top of their head like scrubwomen, and little children splash in tubs of shallow water in their back yards and older people drag mattresses onto airing porches and wait for a breeze in the still quiet heat of the evening.

I still think of Angie and Jack going out on their last date ever when they decided to ditch their plans for the evening to bring in the green tomatoes and wrap them in newspaper because her mom was worried about them every time the first frost of the fall catches me by surprise.    I think of Angie's mom telling her that it was good to travel in "clean of the morning" when she boarded the train for college to Chicago every time I leave early on a trip.   It is good to travel in the clean of the morning -so much better than leaving midday or at night.

I've got to find my copy of the book somewhere on my shelves. It's been a long time since I've re read it.....

Used Books

2012-11-04T08:52:00.000-05:00

I'm a sucker for used cookbooks - and sometimes, I like to peruse craft and gardening books, too. One of my favorite haunts is the huge used book section of the Ann Arbor Kiwanis Thrift Sale, held every Saturday 9 am to noon. Since Ann Arbor is truly a melting pot of people, I can find a wide variety of cookbooks from all over. This weekend was no exception - here's what I got:

I am a sucker for Junior League Cookbooks, no matter when or where they were published. I have spent a lot of time in Louisville, KY for business, so this one caught my eye - especially because it has a "special Derby recipe section". Louisville is one of my favorite US cities because it is beautiful and everyone is so friendly and nice and polite in a Southern hospitality sort of way, and the food is terrific. I am always on the hunt for a recipe for burgoo - the spicy stew made of whatever wild game you have on hand, which is so popular in Kentucky. My son and husband hunt, and it's hard to find recipes for rabbit, squirrel, venison, etc. Sure enough, this book has one from a Mrs. John S. Rhodes. I love that Junior League cookbooks of this era (1970s and earlier) always refer to the husband's name, but not the wife's first name. Does the Junior League still do this? I have a copy of the Junior League of Ann Arbor's Cookbook, which was published in the 1990s, but it doesn't give anyone credit for their recipes. Still on my quest for burgoo...I also found this cookbook:

from the Garden club of Lexington. This cookbook is still in print, so it must be pretty good. Sure enough, there's a recipe for burgoo as well as bourbon balls, another Kentucky favorite that I would like to make this year for Christmas. There is a good section of candy recipes and pickles and relishes too for canning....including one for pickled green tomatoes and pickled peaches. Next up, I found:

I liked this book because it promises recipes for the slow cooker, pressure cooker and Dutch oven - all favorite techniques of mine. Interesting recipes like Haitian Chicken-in-a-Pot or Honduran Style Arroz Con Pollo. Next, I got this pair of books because they looked liked they be interesting reads:

I'm not sure if I would ever cook anything from either, but who doesn't want to learn about Richard II's feasts and Elizabethan recipes? Plus, Lorna Sass is a fine cookbook writer - I have her pressure cooking cookbooks and they are well done. Lastly, who doesn't dig vintage Martha Stewart?

This one was written back in 1984 in hardcover, and it is filled with lots of Martha style writing, where everything is "just so" such as her Victorian Christmas party and her life with adorable baby Alexis and her charming husband Andy. I know Martha has her haters but I've always loved the way she writes. Wish she'd do more of it now....

So, I paid a whopping $7 for this stack of books that will entertain me for a few weeks!

Dexter Drama Club Cheeseball

2012-11-03T07:06:00.003-04:00

When I got married 20 years ago, I was given a Hallmark recipe book that I used to write my favorite recipes in longhand or physically clip and paste from the paper or magazines.   Now that I have this blog, I rarely use it anymore. It's now more of a museum of recipes from a long way back in my cooking life, such as my recipe for Olga's Kitchen Bread or Bob Talbert's White Chicken Chili that I clipped from the Detroit Free Press. It also has some of my favorites from the Ann Arbor News when it had a print edition and a decent cooking section every Wednesday.

I have a couple recipes I copied from The Complete Tightwad Gazette which was a book written back in the 90s about being frugal before it was as fashionable as it is today. Most of the recipes she wrote about how to stretch your food dollar weren't very good, like adding water to leftover casseroles to make soup the next day. Yuck! If you are looking for a much better book on economical cooking, I would suggest An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, by Tamar Adler.   However, Amy Daczyzyn did leave me with one recipe that I have adapted as my own over the years for a cheese ball. Her other recommendations, such as having a perpetual garage sale at your house or using a menstrual cup instead of a tampon really didn't leave a lasting impression on my life, but her cheese ball recipe has become mine.

I have made it so often, I no longer use the recipe itself.   I ditched her suggestion of using pimientos in it in lieu of using more fresh peppers and I much prefer using garlic powder instead of garlic salt. I added fresh ground pepper to the mix, too. Not sure why she went for pimentos in the first place - they are way more expensive than red peppers.   She suggested making cheese balls for Christmas gifts, and I have to agree it's a great hostess gift. I make it for family gatherings - at Christmas time, I like to make it with red and green peppers.  I also make them for the green room for every production of the Dexter Drama Club, and the high school kids love it.   I will make them in bulk the week of the show and store them in the fridge wrapped in plastic, but I haven't tried freezing one yet to see if that would work, too.    Maybe this holiday season, I will give freezing one a try!

Cheese Ball

1/4 brick cream cheese
1 T minced onion
1 t garlic powder
2 T mayonnaise
1/4 c green pepper, chopped fine
8 oz finely grated cheddar cheese
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
1/2 c chopped or ground nuts (optional - there's usually a kid with a nut allergy in every production, so I usually skip this when I make it for the drama club)

Combine all ingredients except the nuts in a medium bowl, it's easiest to fix with your hands.   Add salt and pepper to taste. Form into a ball, and roll in nuts. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 4 hours so the flavor melds and the cheese softens and forms a cohesive ball. Serve with crackers.

Wood Chick BBQ Sauce for Canning

2012-10-28T08:24:00.002-04:00

On this blog, I have written several times about my favorite recipe for barbecue sauce - it's one I tried from a Food Network recipe from an old episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay.   It used to be that I watched FN every night when I couldn't fall asleep, but I never watch it anymore.   It's turned into a network devoted to "reality" (I put the term in quotes because anyone that thinks that these shows aren't scripted is fooling themselves) chef competitions like "Chopped".   I hate these shows - I love the old kind of shows that they used to have on Food Network, like Paula Deen without the studio audience, or the Barefoot Contessa or Alton Brown.   They showed people cooking recipes that I might actually try - now I have to go to PBS to get my fix, or the Hallmark network, although I don't watch that much now that they canceled Lucinda Scala Quinn's Mad Hungry.

A couple years ago, I developed a version of the Wood Chick BBQ sauce for canning as part of a blog contest I was in called Tigress Can Jam, but I developed that recipe in the dead of winter and I used canned tomato puree.   This year, I finally got around to trying it out with actual tomatoes. The 2nd week of October, we had a good frost and I called my friend Ann Ruhlig to see if she had any tomatoes left and she said she had, and that they were "good for canning", which is a great euphemism to describe a tomato that isn't picture perfect...i.e. they might have a few bad spots.   I picked up a box of tomatoes the size of a ream of paper for $10, which is a great deal! I got them home and cored them and cut off the bad spots, and followed a great technique I learned from Linda Ziedrich for making tomato puree for canning. Core each tomato, give it a gentle squeeze one at a time as you put them into a stock pot   Cook the tomatoes until they are soft, then drain them in a colander.    Then process them through a food mill - I like to use the fruit and vegetable strainer attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer,but a Foley style food mill will work, too.    Tomato puree made this way will not be too watery, and the tomatoes don't have to be peeled first, which is a giant pain to do. I am not one to can tomatoes straight up for this reason - it's too labor intensive to peel tomatoes. I'll peel them for salsa and that's it!

The beauty of this recipe is that it can be doubled or halved or whatever, depending on how much tomato puree you might end up with.   Note that you must keep the ratio of the ingredients the same, or you may end up with a recipe that isn't safe for canning i.e. 10 cups tomato puree means you'd add only 2 3/4 c chopped onions, etc.

Wood Chick Style Barbecue Sauce for Canning

20 c tomato puree
5.5 c. finely chopped onions
6 c. white vinegar
3.5 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. dry mustard
1 T. black peppercorns
2 cloves garlic
1 T. paprika
1/2 c. maple syrup
3/4 c. honey
1 T. ground cloves
2 T. canning salt
1/4 c. Worcestershire sauce
2 T. hot chili powder
2 T. allspice

In a large stock pot, combine tomatoes puree and onions and bring to a boil, boil gently for 30 minutes until onions soften, about 30 minutes. At this point add the remaining ingredients and boil gently stirring often until the sauce reaches the consistency of thin commercial barbecue sauce, about an hour. Prepare the canner and lids, and then ladle hot sauce into jars, removing bubbles and leaving a 1/2 inch headspace. Process for 35 minutes. Makes about 5 pints.