Now these cookies are more like a ball, and young children are likely to turn up their nose, but that only means more for you. A combination of dates, nuts, Rice Krispies, coconut, butter and vanilla, it’s a Rice Krispie square for grown-ups. And if you subscribe to the gluten-free craze, these are the cookies for you.

Granny’s Saucepan Cookies

1/2 cup butter

1 cup chopped dates

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

2 beaten eggs

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla ( or a little extra if you love vanilla)

Cook the ingredients over low heat for 10 minutes and then add vanilla

(DO NOT OVER-COOK OR THE BALLS WILL GET SUGARY)

Cool for 5 minutes and fold in 2 cups of Rice Krispies.

Form into balls and roll in 1.5 cups of coconut.

Refrigerate. Freezes well.

]]> https://www.dontburntheribs.com/?feed=rss2&p=1539 7 https://www.dontburntheribs.com/?p=1467 https://www.dontburntheribs.com/?p=1467#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:44:56 +0000 http://www.dontburntheribs.com/?p=1467 I was sixteen when Pierre Trudeau swept back into power in 1980. Months before the election, as a “Young Liberal,” I attended a fundraising dinner dressed in a shiny blue kimono-styled dress at the Ukrainian Hall in Sydney, Nova Scotia, the keynote speaker—Trudeau himself.  On his way to the podium he stopped at my table and touched my arm. “I like your dress, ” he said, flashing that same devilish smile that had repatriated a constitution. I gazed up, my mouth full of Ukrainian food and smiled the way you do when you’ve been eating cabbage. He winked and went on his way. I’ve loved shiny dresses, cabbage rolls and Trudeaus’ ever since.

Pierre Trudeau

A spicier, meatier version of the Ukrainian favourite, John Dan’s (well, actually his wife’s) Scottish version of cabbage rolls is the perfect combination of sweetness and fire, not unlike a Trudeau. Although there are a thousand different recipes for cabbage rolls (many of them meatless) John Dan’s recipe is the only one you’ll ever need. A long-time holiday family favourite it’s one of the few recipes I’ve never altered.

So to celebrate the return of a Liberal government in Canada, let’s throw on a shiny dress and bring in the new year Scottish-Ukrainian style a` la Trudeau!  Justin’s gonna love it!

Justin Trudeau

John Dan’s Cabbage Rolls

2 large cabbage–Steam/boil cabbages, removing leaves gradually

Cabbage in the pot

blanched cabbage leaves

Filling:

2 tsp dried basil

2.5 lbs of ground beef

1 tsp red pepper (or an extra 1/2 tsp if you like it spicy)

1 cup long grain rice-raw

1 egg

4 large onions—chopped

1/2 c.lemon juice

4 cloves chopped garlic

1 tsp. salt

1 tbsp dried parsley

Mix together, form into rolls and wrap with cabbage leaves

Ready to roll

Rolling

Sauce (So simple and sooo delicious)

13oz. can Tomato paste

1/2 tsp to 1 tsp red pepper (cayenne)
2 cans water

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt

1/2 cup Lemon juice
1 tbsp.parsley

Bay leaf
2 tsp. basil

Simmer sauce ingredients for a half hour. Pour sauce all over the cabbage rolls (reserving some, or even doubling recipe if you want extra sauce for reheating.)

Cabbage Roll Sauce

All rolled up

Layering

Line the bottom of the roaster with sauce and layer the rolls on top, saucing between the layers and finishing with more sauce.

Bake covered at 300 degrees for three hours.

Since I’ve been away in Miami, the carnivore has been in charge of re-stocking the fridge which is generally done on a as-needed basis involving the slaughter of some sort of fresh prey. I should have rushed to the grocery store upon touchdown, but instead, I opted to unearth my neglected rock garden and hope for the Let’s Make a Meal chef to show up.

Late in the day with my game-show hopes shattered, I reluctantly opened the fridge. A quick survey revealed only two onions, four cloves of dried up garlic, four semi-shrivelled carrots, two wrinkled Lemons, a slightly out-dated package of Portuguese Chourico and a package of thin sliced pork that with a buy before date of the day before.

The challenge was great, but not impossible. I opened a bottle of wine and opted to become the chef on Let’s make a Meal. With a pantry stocked with enough canned and dried goods to last through the apocalypse, this would be a breeze (provided the meat passed my sniff test.) There would be no trips to the grocery store.

The carnivore immediately set his sights on Chourico and Chicken sliders with pork as the substitute, using the lovely freezer burnt mini-portuguese buns in the freezer drawer.

Chourico & Chicken sliders

I had to give him a A for creativity, but his meal was devoid of all vegetables. It was then that I remembered a recipe for Melissa Clark’s Red Lentil and Lemon Soup posted recently in the New York Times  as one of the 10 best recipes of 2015.

And after all, I’d been trying to get a decent bowl of lentil soup for weeks.

I rummaged through my pantry and miraculously had the necessary ingredients. Well, sort of. I substituted the required tomato paste with a can of diced tomatoes. And I didn’t have cilantro, but I motored on determined to win the game. The beauty of this recipe is that you can make it in 5 simple steps and it calls for only 7 key ingredients (8 if you include the cilantro, but who’s counting). It’s seriously one of the most simple and delicious soups I’ve made—healthy too!

6 Simple Ingredients + 1 unpictured shrivelled lemon

While the carnivore fired up the grill for the sliders, I quickly got to work on the soup, peeling my shrivelled carrots, (caramelized one onion for the sliders), chopped an onion and diced the garlic. Within minutes the soup was simmering away in the pot.

Melissa Clark’s Red Lentil and Lemon Soup

INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons olive oil, more for drizzling
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced (4 is good too)
1 tablespoon tomato paste (you can substitute a 14oz can of diced tomatoes)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
Pinch of ground chile powder or cayenne, more to taste (of course I added more…)
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth
2 cups water
1 cup red lentils
1 large carrot, peeled and diced (Four small shrivelled ones work just as well)
Juice of 1/2 lemon, more to taste
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (can do without this and add it the next day when you go to the store)

PREPARATION
1.In a large pot, heat 3 tablespoons oil over high heat until hot and shimmering. Add onion and garlic, and sauté until golden, about 4 minutes
2.Stir in tomato paste, cumin, salt, black pepper and chili powder or cayenne, and sauté for 2 minutes longer.
3.Add broth, 2 cups water, lentils and carrot. Bring to a simmer, then partially cover pot and turn heat to medium-low. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary.
4. Using an immersion or regular blender or a food processor, purée half the soup then add it back to pot. Soup should be somewhat chunky.
5. Reheat soup if necessary, then stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Serve soup drizzled with good olive oil and dusted lightly with chili powder if desired.

The soup deserves to be in the 10 best recipes category. It was the perfect consistency and crazy tasty. In fact, the next day it was even better. It’s a must make even if you’re not part of the Let’s Make Meal show.

Oh… and it turns out thin sliced pork is even better for Chourizo and Chicken sliders than chicken, and really old onions are super sweet and delicious.

My Perfect Lentil Soup

Lucky for me the soup of the day is lentil. Perfect. Not only will I finish my Christmas shopping, I’ll lose weight just eating what will most likely be a hardy brew. The cafe is busy as usual, but the waiter brings my food quickly and runs off to serve one of his other 20 tables.

I dig into the soup and it’s delicious, stupendous, in fact, but unless these lentils have been genetically modified, the soup tastes distinctly like seafood. I dive in again and again and finally flag the waiter who tells met he’s made a mistake. My lentil soup is crab bisque. Firm in my resolve, I insist he bring me the lentils.

The waiter nods and runs off without taking the bisque. I pause. I shove my hands under my ample thighs. I survey the restaurant and play with my phone. I count to 100. I flap my hands in the direction of the waiters back. I wait. But it’s only a matter of time before I am unable to resist the creamy, perfectly seasoned, laced-with-tiny-pieces-of-gherkin bisque. I pick up the spoon and the rest is bisquetory.

When he finally returns with my lentil soup, I look up sheepishly and then down at my empty bowl. I try to blame him, but words fail me. The bisque has won. He packs up the lentil soup in a to-go box and sends me on my way. The good news, I think, is that I’ve gotten two bowls of soup for the price of one.

What’s even more exciting, is that I’ve found (actually one of my loyal readers found) the recipe for the bisque in the link below. It turns out I’m not the only one who finds this bisque simply delicious. I have a sparkling clean bowl to prove it, along with a container of lentil soup in my fridge.

Recipe for Norstrom Crab Bisque

(ps. it turns out what I thought were little pieces of gherkin, is simply a gazpacho salsa)

In my quest to balance my writing with my overall sanity and my love of food, I decide to take my sleek MacBook Air to a jazz bar attached to what is, admittedly, an upscale restaurant. I shower (really) and put on appropriate clothing. I need to get away from my noisy Halloween frenzied frat and enter into, what I believe, will be a world of grown-up civility.

I find a tiny table jammed against the wall and order a steak (which I was craving, after my recent and dangerous brush with vegetarianism) and a glass of red wine. The steak, although tiny and over-priced, is perfectly cooked  to  medium rare, and I savour every bite (a good thing because there’s only about three bites anyway.)

Belly full (or sort of full,) the jazz duo becomes the perfect backdrop to a new and exciting chapter. I open my Mac, order a Grand Marnier and settle into a writing zone of pure bliss, stopping every now and then to quietly sing along to a Nora Jones tune or two.

But then the unthinkable happens and my writer’s flow is broken.

I become aware of bodies hovering over me, like dark and dangerous clouds. I look up and find myself staring into the eyes of misery, in the form of two overly perfumed old bats.  Like two Halloween witches they cackle for a moment and feign a touch of friendless until frozen face witch says,  “Why don’t you go to Starbucks?”

“You want me to come to Starbucks with you?” I say, both confused and afraid. These dames don’t look like my idea of good time.

“No.” she says, leaning in closer, her smoker’s voice raspy and her face managing only a few awkward twitches. “Go there.” She points to the door. ” This isn’t that kind of restaurant.”

“That kind of restaurant?” I look down at my clothes, but they are modest and fitting, my bra straps are covered and I’m wearing glasses. Does this woman think I’m Hooker? A high-priced call girl booking appointments on her laptop?

I look at the other witch who  seems to have some control over her facial muscles, but she only shrugs, obviously complacent in the attack.

Unable to furrow her brows, and unhappy with my lack of enthusiasm for her plan, frozen face deepens her voice until she sounds like Darth Vader’s mother and says, “If you need the Internet go to Starbucks.”

“But I’m not using the Internet, “ I say. “I’m writing.”

“Writing?” She cackles incredulously, and repeats the word,  “Starbucks. “

Go Home!

Before I’m able pull myself out of my stocked stupor and garner the words necessarily to tell these ladies where to go,  they gather their capes and fly out of the restaurant leaving me open-mouthed and needing a Pepto Bismol after what had otherwise been a perfectly delicious steak dinner.

Later, back in the elevator of the frat, I’m greeted by a couple of friendly Ninja Turtles and a walking-talking Ho-Ho pastry.  I think back to the witches of the steak house and question my ideas of civility. Next time I crave food, music and creative inspiration, I’ll buy a keg and some hot dogs and throw a party at the frat—invite a couple of Ninjas and a few ho-hos and see how that works out. There’s nothing to lose here, really.

The steps to vegetarianism and beyond:

1. You have an exceptionally delicious bowl of black bean soup and a lovely glass of Shiraz at Nordstrom’s Bistro and decide, in that moment, you should become a vegetarian.
2. You go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of vegetables and cans of beans
3. You put the vegetables  in your fridge and let some of them get all oozy and gross
4. You go and buy more vegetables and promise to cook them and follow through on your vegetarian dreams.
5. You buy Shiraz
6. Drink the Shiraz and then buy another bottle to go with the soup.
7. Chop up lots of things that are actually choppable like onions, peppers, carrots and other herbivore types of things. At this point you feel very green and healthy and happy (it helps if you open the wine while cooking)
8. Add your black beans (puree some if you’d like your soup to turn into a stew)
9. Then you decide that oven roasted squash would be a delicious (and maybe even meaty) addition to your soup which is starting to resemble a stew.
10. You start to butcher the squash and quickly realize it is easier to butcher a wild boar.
11. You wish you had the skills of a Samurai and/or a recently sharpened machete (see handy tips section) rather than a cheap ceramic knife. You blame this on your husband. Why? Because you can.
12. You peel off part of your recently acquired shellac manicure which you suppose is better than peel off part of your finger.
13. Seeds and other sorts of orange gore splatter around your kitchen until your apartment resembles a crime scene.
14. Exhausted, you put the squash in the oven until it is a golden brown and spend 2-3 hours scrubbing squash guts off your black splash.
15. You put the golden squash nuggets in the soup turned stew and taste.
16. It is delicious if only it had a little chourico.
17. You find some in your pre-vegetarian freezer cook it up and add it to your stew.
18. Perfecto.
19. Add some avocado and sour cream and other yummy bits that will help cover up the chourico if you are inviting other vegetarians over or simply want to pretend the meat isn’t in there.
20. 

Hand tips for butchering a butternut squash:

1. Buy a small squash
2. Set aside 3-4 hours to butcher and clean your kitchen in the aftermath
3.  Only cook the day before you are going to have a manicure
4. Use an ordinary peeler to peel. If you take off part of your finger and add it to the soup, it will no longer be vegetarian.
5. Acquire an exceptionally sharp machete—use it
6. Drink wine

Wild Boar

Black Bean Vegetarian Chourico/Chorizo Stew-Soup

3 cans of black beans (1 can puree’d)

1/2 green pepper

1/2 red pepper

3 average onions

4 cloves garlic

2 diced jalapeno

3 stalks of celery

2-3 carrots

2 ears of corn—niblets removed (unless you forget you bought them)

1 small squash. (butchered, cubed tossed in olive oil and baked at 350 until it is golden and soft)

1-2 containers of chicken broth (1 if you want stew, 2 if you want something that resembles soup)

1 28oz can of nice Italian whole tomatoes

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp chilli powder

Handful of chopped coriander

Juice of a lime

salt

pepper

1/2 tsp cayenne or more if you like it hot.

Method

Chop and cook all of the vegetable type things in a pan with a little olive oil. If you are adding meat to your vegetarian dish (recommended) add 1 pound of some sort of crumbled sausage at this point

Open can of tomatoes and squish each tomato with your hands. Add. If it gets on the walls it will only compliment the yellow squash guts. Add remaining juice

Add 2 cans of black beans and puree another with some of the chicken stock and add.

Add more chicken stock to desired consistency.

Add the squash once it’s cooked

Let it simmer for 2 hours.

Garnish with yummy things. Note this in no way resembled Nordstrom’s Black Bean Soup but it is very tasty and practically vegetarian

I’ve picked the right place because even though there are likely no Canadians here, there are people next to me speaking French. One of the men has slicked back hair, a petite moustache and a blazer. No one is fat. They may even be mainlining butter. If I listen carefully they’re singing a jaunty French tune.

I order the mussels and they’re amazing. Not too big, not too small and served with a broth that’s to die for. Winey, salty and delicious. They’ve likely used shallots. Warm French bread appears in a little brown bag with a glass of Chablis. Even though I’ve ordered the appetizer portion, there is more than enough to fill me (especially when you eat a bag of bread slathered in butter, dredged in broth).

Dining solo is empowering. I become a Russian spy, a nuclear physicist, a journalist. I take pictures and pound on my keyboard— jot down the weekly specials and smile, assure concerned servers I’m fine—really. Uncomfortable with my contentment, they hover, suspect I’m a food critic sent to ruin their reputation, toy with their livelihoods.

But I am merely a hungry Canadian hell bent on enjoying a Saturday Thanksgiving eve in Miami. Brasserie BC doesn’t disappoint.

The cassoulet

When your husband finds you cradling the shiny pot in the All-Clad display of the Home store on Water Street, he says, “What are you going to cook in that?”

You say, ” Coq au vin.”

He says “You never cook coq au vin.”

“Exactly. I’ve never had the right pot.”

He picks up the cassoulet to test its weight, holds it into the light, rubs a spot with the bottom of his shirt and says, “Well, I’m not carrying it,” and drops it back into your open arms.

You smile and head to the register.

Flash forward several months and you still haven’t made Coq au Vin. You do, however, regularly peer inside your pot drawer and admire the sleek sexy lines of your cassoulet and imagine a delicious a braised and slow-cooked meal bubbling inside, but the right recipe has yet to rear its head. Coq au Vin suddenly seems too base, too provincial for your precious cassoulet.

When you receive the October issue of Food & Wine magazine, the picture on the cover screams, “Time to bring out the cassoulet!”  Of course, had you never bought the cassoulet, had you never seized the moment on that foggy Newfoundland day  you would only be able to look at the recipe for Coconut-Braised Chicken with Chorizo and Potatoes and say,“Wow. That looks delicious. I should really buy a cassoulet sometime.”

Then you’d bury the magazine in a pile and you’d never make the dish or buy the cassoulet.

With the recipe stocked full of your favourite ingredients—coconut, ginger, lime, garlic and cilantro, how could you go wrong? Even though you substitute Portuguese Chourizo for Mexican Chorizo and add two times as much as the recipe calls for, and you don’t even bother with the ground up coffee beans, and you add two full cans of coconut milk (instead of 3 cups—why waste a third of a can?) as well as a carrot, and since you don’t have enough regular potatoes you add a couple of sweet potatoes to make up the difference, the results are still very impressive. Your cassoulet does not disappoint. You can braise, bake and serve everything in this one wonderfully expensive pot.

Not surprisingly, your husband is very quiet at dinner while eagerly lapping up what just might be the most delicious dish he’s ever tasted.  When the meal is over, he cradles the cassoulet in the warm water of the kitchen sink, gingerly cleaning its belly, full of gratitude for his wife’s foresight and determination. If you listen closely, he’s humming a jaunty French tune.

Method

Follow the recipe here by clicking on the link  Coconut-Braised Chicken with Chorizo and Potatoes and feel free to make the substitutes I mention above. I would also suggest using 8 chicken pieces instead of 6 and a mixture of thighs and legs. Oh, and I also used a fresh finger chilli instead of a dried one.  The recipe seems to be very forgiving and ever so crazy delicious.

Twin dishes

After years of cooking with other people in mind,  I’d finally have the chance to eat with purposeful selfishness.  I envisioned myself whipping up salads of quinoa, chick-peas and lentils. I’d try new vegetables like Romanesco, Daiken, Kohlrabi. With my cart stacked up like a contestant on a free grocery shopping spree, my virgin run to Publix showed signs of promise. Cupboards stocked and my mini-kitchen fully operational, like Mary, I was ready to take the world on with my smile (and my spatula.)

Things I should be eating

Fast forward a few months later, and I’d succumbed to the one-pot wonder. The refined salads of may imagination had become “dump everything in your fridge into a pan with some boneless chicken” and voila! Lunch and dinner for a week. Cooking was messy and with no one around to appreciate the end result except me, well—why make a mess at all? Besides I had writing to do. Wasn’t that why I was in Miami in the first place?

Then I discovered Epicure Market  conveniently located below my building. I started to eat beautiful expensive salads, that were all the same—bland and too oily. Then came the Lean Cuisine phase, the  Jamba Juice phase, the Turkey-Bacon Egg-White Starbucks Sandwich phase, the Nordstrom salad phase, the Nordstrom pizza phase, and the Daily Bread humus and Tabbouleh phase, only to return to the one-pot wonder phase. Sure I could throw my tam, but it turns out cooking and eating, for that matter, are social activities. Who knew?

The good news is that now I know that someday If I end up on my own, I’m destined to become a crazy old lady and there’s a certain comfort in knowing your destiny. I’ll live for weeks off a box of crackers, or make a meal out of a stale piece of toast and a bottle of Scotch. I’ll dip broken pretzels into a container of butter and eat black beans out of a can. I’ll tell people in my old lady voice, “I’m fine. Don’t you worry about me, dearie.”

When I accidentally press the wrong button on my TV, I’ll live with fuzz on my screen for months until one of my nineteen cats (okay, maybe a pack of small white dogs) finally walks over the remote hitting the proper sequence of buttons. Then I’ll sit with a bowl of undercooked white rice and watch reruns of Chopped. I’ll throw my wig up into the air and reminsce about my glory days in Miami.

Pie and Ice Cream

Of course, this requires you admit to never having made a pie, which is embarrassing, especially when you’re masquerading as a food blogger. You have to admit that you’ve lied and cheated.  Many a hypothetical pie has fallen off your counter and been eaten by your dog, maybe even your soon-to-be hypothetical husband. But that carefully constructed deception will soon be a thing of the past. You are about to visit your mother!!! She is the PIE and teeny-tiny cinnamon roll expert.

She eagerly divulges her deepest pie secrets, happy to pass the long-overdue pie torch.  At first you worry that not having an 85 year old cutting board, a 55 year old pastry cutter or a 40 year-old lucky plastic bowl and a 30 year old rolling pin will effect your future pie results, but then you realise you could slip these items effortlessly into your carry-on luggage. Your mother would blame it on her forgetfulness.

Antique Pastry Cutter

You surrender yourself into the hands of the pie queen and the result are impressive. The pie is flakey, sweet, juicy and the cinnamon—divine.  The teeny-tiny cinnamon rolls (made from the trimmed crust) the perfect flakey nibble with a cup of coffee or tea. You wonder why it took you so long to do this.

It’s a “No Fail Pie-Crust” which means a no-fail pie. YUM!!!

No Fail Pie Crust (good for a nine inch pie or an 8″inch pie with enough pastry left over for Teeny-tiny cinnamon rolls.

2 cups Flour                               1 egg

3/4 tsp salt                                2 Tbsp cold water

1 cup shortening                       1 Tbsp Vinegar

Method

Mix flour and salt in your ancient plastic lucky bowl and cut in shortening using 55 year old pastry cutter.  Mix egg water and Vinegar in a small bowl and add to shortening mixing with a fork until combined. According to my mother, it is the addition of this egg and Vinegar that gives this crust it’s flakey “no-fail” consistency.

Press the dough into two equal balls for rolling.

Two perfect balls

Roll one ball at a time, (using a well-floured board) squishing each ball slightly  before you roll. My mother says you have to use a light touch and roll in all directions to make something that resembles a circle. If your rolling pin is 30 years old or older it will help.

Roll into a thin pie-crust thickness (keep checking to make sure it’s not sticking) and then delicately roll the pastry in order to transfer it to the pie plate.

Dough rolled out

At this point  be happy you’ve made it this far. Your first pie is only moments away.

Take the apples you peeled and thinly sliced and have floating in a bowl with cold water and a dash of lemon juice to keep them from going brown. Drain the water and:

Filling for an 8″ Pie

5 cups sliced apples (Something firm and crisp like Courtland, Gravenstein or Gala)

Apples

1/2-2/3 cup of sugar depending upon the sweetness of the apples

2 Tablespoons flour

1/2  tsp cinnamon (slightly rounded)

1 Tbsp Butter

Dash of salt

9″ Pie

6 cups sliced apples

3/4-1 cup sugar

3 Tablespoons flour

1 Tablespoon butter

Dash of salt

Mix these ingredients together and put them in the pie.

Ready for the top

If you have any left over chuck them in a small pot and cook them on low until you burn them and then throw them out.

Next repeat the rolling process for the top of the pie.

Dampen the bottom edge of the crust with water and unroll the second crust on top.

Pinch edges together and cut off excess to be used for teeny-tiny cinnamon rolls. Cut a few slits in the top and then bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes or until you see bubbling through the slits and the top is nice and brown.

Serve with ice cream or cream or a slice of cheese if (like my step-father) you want to ruin a perfectly lovely piece of pie. (Remember to stash all of the key ancient cooking equipment in your luggage while your mother is watching the “snooze.”)

Tiny Tiny Cinnamon Rolls

• Take the remains of the pie crust and re-roll until you’ve formed another circle. Spread with soft butter, brown sugar and cinnamon.
  

  Ready to Roll

• Roll, Cut and arrange on a little cookie sheet and pop into the oven with the pie. I don’t remember how long they take to bake, but if they are brownish and look cooked take them out. Make a cup of coffee and have one while you wait for the pie to
  

  Ready for the oven