What will you cook in 2022?

 

2022 is the Chinese Year of the Tiger

Christmas is behind us, with its turkey or prime rib or tamales or whatever else you chose to fix. But there’s still New Year’s with it set menu, at least for us Texans—black-eyed peas and ham. When I was a child in Chicago, my parents always had oyster stew, a sort of milk soup that was way beyond my taste buds, but they loved. I’d never eaten black-eyed peas until I moved to Texas, and even then, I was slow to try them. Finally, I made Hoppin’ John one night for my children (we called Hoppin Uncle John after my brother), figuring that I could disguise the peas with rice, tomatoes, and seasoning. Today I like black-eyed peas with their pot likker, no disguising them. My Mississippi daughter-in-law has also taught me to like them mixed into mashed potatoes.

Tomorrow, I will make a big pot of peas with ham. We’ll have it for New Year’s and for Twelfth Night—January 6. And thereafter in the freezer so we can pull them out on a cold night and warm our bellies.

I approach the new cooking year with three specific goals: I want to roast a duck, do a prime rib (maybe for my youngest son’s fiftieth birthday), and present a Beef Wellington. Each one poses problems. Although I received a wonderful new toaster oven—bigger, with an air fryer—for Christmas, I think I’ll still have to use the oven inside for these projects. Duck, because I hear lots of raves about it, and I want to do duck fries with the grease; prime rib because it’s so expensive it intimidates me; and Beef Wellington just because it’s a challenge—a luxury dish I’ve never attempted.

Meantime I worried about a seasonal recipe to give you all this week. Everyone knows how to cook black-eyed peas and Hoppin’ John too. If you don’t, email me at j.alter@tcu.edu. Cranberries are pretty much out of season or I'd share the chutney recipe I like or the delicious cranberry cake recipe my neighbor gave me. I guess you can still get frozen, but fresh seem to have disappeared as Christmas left.

Do you still have turkey left over, either in the fridge or the freezer? How about this casserole? I’ve read that casseroles—hotdishes, they call them in the Midwest—are passé, like Jell-O salads, but I don’t for a minute believe it. I love a good casserole. This one isn’t a celebratory dish for New Year’s Eve, but it’s a good, easy supper some weekday night.

Confession: I’ve been making this casserole for years, but as I keyed in the actual directions tonight (from some long-forgotten cooking magazine), I realized I’ve strayed from the recipe a lot. Instead of the thyme and parsley, I just throw in a handful of dried herbs—basil, oregano, thyme, etc. And for topping I often use French’s fried onion rings. The point is that this recipe is forgiving—you can use it as a base and go where you want. Don’t like cooked carrots? Leave them out. Or substitute. But don’t skip the wine infusion—it gives the dish its distinctive taste.

Turkey casserole (or chicken or tuna)

1 cup white wine

¼ cup chopped parsley

½ tsp each dried thyme, salt and pepper

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1 cup cooked rice

1 10-oz. pkg frozen green peas, thawed

1 can baby carrots and 1 can tiny onions, both drained

Topping:

½ cup dry breadcrumbs

¼ cup grated Parmesan

¼ cup minced fresh parsley

2 Tbsp butter

Directions:

Combine wine and herbs in oven-proof 3-quart casserole. Boil hard for three minutes to get the “ash”—the herbs will blacken. Remove from heat and stir in canned soups. Add rice and vegetables and cook on medium, stirring frequently, until vegetables are cooked and ingredients are thoroughly warmed.

Mix topping ingredients and sprinkle over the casserole.  Broil one or two minutes, until cheese melts and topping turns golden. Watch carefully that it doesn’t burn.

Serves six.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

 

Tradition . . .and Christmas Eve supper

My family talks a lot about tradition—year after year, they want Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner just have they have always been:  turkey, gravy, dressing, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole—yes, that with French’s onion rings. No to the enchiladas and tamales some Texans enjoy, no to prime rib, no to any experimentation. But somehow we never settled on a traditional menu for Christmas Eve.

If you are like we were, looking for a special dish without a lot of fuss, let me suggest this terrific salmon recipe that neighbor Mary Dulle recently gave me. Easy and delicious.

 Sheet Pan Mediterranean Salmon with Artichokes and Spinach

Ingredients:

11 oz. fresh organic baby spinach, cooked and drained

2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

12 oz. frozen artichoke hearts, halved or quartered (I prefer canned)

1 box small cherry tomatoes 

Lemon Butter Sauce (double the recipe)

1 oz. Capers

4 6 oz. wild-caught salmon fillets (you may use cod if you prefer) 

Lemon slices for garnish

 

Directions:

 

Preheat oven to 350^o degrees.

Add raw spinach, washed and drained, to parchment paper or foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. (The first time I made this I pre-cooked the spinach—made a whole different dish.) Drizzle evenly with oil; season with salt and pepper. Top evenly with artichokes, tomatoes, and capers. Pour lemon butter sauce over vegetable mixture. (Save about 1/3 of the sauce & pour it on the fish before roasting.) Top with fish; season with salt and pepper.

Bake 20-25 min. until internal temp of fish reaches 130^o degrees (check temp by inserting thermometer halfway into thickest part of fish). 

Garnish with lemon slices.

 

Lemon Butter Sauce: (double this if you like a lot of lemon)

 

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Salt and finely ground pepper

 Melt butter in a small saucepan or skillet over medium heat. Leave on the stove, whisking / stirring every now and then. When the butter turns golden brown and smells nutty, remove from stove immediately and pour into small bowl.

Add lemon juice and a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir, then taste when it has cooled slightly. Adjust lemon/salt to taste. Set aside - it will stay pourable for 20 - 30 minutes. 

Top it off after dinner with a cup of eggnog, and you’re all set to watch for Santa to come down the chimney. Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

 

 

 

Here’s an easy, bright holiday menu

 

Spatch-cocked chicken

Sometimes as the holidays approach we’re so focused on the “big” meals—Christmas dinner, Christmas Eve for some—that we forget the family has to eat on “ordinary” nights. So here’s my suggestions for combining several dishes I’ve made recently: spatch-cocked herbed chicken, Brussel sprouts and artichoke hearts in a casserole, rice or noodles if you want a carb, and the best cranberry cake you’ve ever eaten for an easy dessert.

Spatch-cocked chicken

For those who don’t know, this is a chicken cut apart along the backbone and spread out—cooks faster, has less tendency to dry out. You can buy a spatch-cocked chicken at the market, or you can do it yourself. Intimidating at first, but fairly easy. Turn the chicken on its breast, use your kitchen shears to cut through the flesh as close to the backbone as possible. Flip the chicken, put both hands on the breastbone, and press hard—you’ll hear it pop. (If you’re strong enough, you can do this with turkey, and it cooks so much faster.)

Please note you should let the seasoned chicken sit in the refrigerator overnight before cooking.

½ stick soft butter

3 garlic cloves, minced or use your micro plane

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. dried oregano

½ tsp. dried basil leaves

1-1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. herbes de Provence

½ tsp grated lemon jest—use your micro plane

½ tsp. ground pepper

1 5 lb. chicken

           Spread the chicken out in a roasting pan. Mix butter, garlic, parsley, herbs, salt, lemon zest and pepper. Rub ¾ of the mix all over the chicken, sticking some under the skin if you can. Refrigerate four hours or overnight, uncovered.

Roast the chicken at 450^o for about an hour until juices run clear. A thermometer in the thigh should read 165^o. Let sit ten minutes before carving. Serve with reserved butter and pan drippings.

Jordan said this was maybe the best chicken she’d ever had. I adapted it from a NYTimes recipe.

Spatch-cocked chicken
ready for the oven

Brussel sprouts/artichoke hearts casserole

           Thanks to Cathy Lyon of Ottawa, Ontario for this.

1 bunch Brussel sprouts (recipe calls for a 10 oz. box frozen, but I prefer fresh)

1 14 oz. can artichoke hearts, drained

½ cup mayonnaise

½ tsp. celery salt

¼ cup Parmesan, fresh grated

¼ cup butter

2 tsp. lemon juice

Cook Brussel sprouts until just tender. Drain and arrange with artichoke hearts in a greased casserole dish. Combine everything else and spoon over vegetables. Mix. Bake uncovered at 425^o for eight to ten minutes. Cook it while the chicken is “collecting itself.”

Cranberry cake

Thanks to neighbor Nina Hyre for this recipe, which was a huge but wonderful surprise to me. No, it’s not at all like fruitcake.

1 cup flour

1 cup white sugar

½ tsp. salt

2 cups cranberries

½ cup chopped walnuts (I call these optional)

½ cup butter, melted

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp. almond extract

Pre-heat oven to 350^o. Grease a 9-inch pie plate.

Combine sugar, flour, and salt. Stir in cranberries and nuts, if using. Toss to coat. Stir in butter, beaten eggs, and almond extract. Mixture may be thick if you use frozen cranberries—this time of year fresh are so available in the markets. Spread batter in pan.

Bake for 40 minutes. Test with wooden toothpick inserted near center.

I like this plain, but you can serve it with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Happy holiday eating!

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat!

 

No need to get fat but you can splurge a bit over the holidays. A few days ago I wrote a nostalgic post about the tree trimming party I gave annually for countless years. Today I thought it would be good to share a few of my favorite appetizer recipes with you.

Imitation Escargot (makes 28)

           Once when my children were little, they saw these miniature rolls and thought they were a version of the cinnamon rolls I sometimes made for their breakfast. They got quite a surprising disappointment, but most adults like these, even anchovy haters. Just don’t tell them.

1 pkg. crescent rolls

2 Tbsp. anchovy paste

2 Tbsp. butter, softened

Dash of garlic powder

Mix anchovy paste, butter, and garlic powder. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to form four rectangles. Spread one-fourth of the butter mixture on each rectangle. Roll up from the narrow end. Slice into one-half-inch pieces. Place, cut side down, on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350^o for 10-12 minutes, until light golden. Serve hot.

Caesar dip with crudities (serves 8-10)

1 cup mayonnaise

½ cup sour cream

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

1 garlic clove, pressed

1 anchovy filet, or ½ tsp. anchovy paste

Mix all ingredients and refrigerate. Serve with assorted dipping vegetables—carrots, celery, radishes, bell pepper, etc.—or baguette slices. If you want to imitate the original Caesar salad, serve with tiny leaves of heart of Romaine or endive for dipping.

Artichoke hearts with caviar (serves 10)

Not to worry. You don’t have to use the stuff that costs upwards of $200 an ounce. A nice Romanoff 2 oz. jar of black lumpish for about $10 is fine and oh so showy! This would be good, but not as spectacular, without the caviar. You could use paprika to add color—or be creative.

1 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened

2 Tbsp. sour cream

2 tsp. mayonnaise

1 tsp. lemon juice

1 8-1/2 oz. can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped

2 tsp. grated onion

Dash of garlic salt

Caviar

Mix cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise, and lemon juice thoroughly. Stir in artichoke (be sure it’s well drained—you don’t want a watery spread), onion, and garlic salt. Again, mix well.

Shape the mixture into a mound (about five-inch diameter) with an indentation in the middle. Fill the indentation with drained caviar. Serve with crackers.

As I look at these recipes, I realize you have to like my strong, fish flavors—anchovy and caviar, so here’s something for less bold tastes.

Sun-dried tomato cheese spread

1 garlic bulb

1 tsp. olive oil

1 11-oz. roll of goat cheese

1 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese

1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and chopped

2 Tbsp. green part of green onion, minced

¼ tsp. salt

Cut off pointed end of garlic. Place bulb on a sheet of foil big enough to wrap around it. Drizzle olive oil over cut top, wrap to seal. Bake at 425^o for 45 minutes. After garlic cools, squeeze pulp out of cloves and mash. Mix with remaining ingredients and use hand mixer to blend to smooth consistency. Chill.

Serve with vegetables, crackers or baguette slices.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Taming the wild rooster

 

During pandemic, lots of us developed new interests and skills. For Jim Cox, friend of Jordan and Christian, it was salsa making. Wait! That’s not quite right. Jim says he’s been making salsa most of his life. Growing up in Midland, he worked in Mexican restaurants and says, “You always started the day by making salsa.” Besides, he’s the kind of guy always looking for something to do. So making salsa was a natural for him.

Jim has always made salsa according to his own taste, which is fairly hot. He says he’s his own judge of quality and flavor. His original Wild Rooster salsa is spicy, but then he developed a spicy variant. He’s now added salsa verde and is developing a barbecue sauce. Why the name Wild Rooster? He tells people his grandmother collected figurines of chickens and roosters, but privately he’ll admit it’s a play on his last name.

Going public was a learning process, and Jim credits Doug Renfro of Renfro Foods for mentoring him. (He also snuck in a plug for Mrs. Renfro’s Chow Chow, saying it’s the best to be had.) For public consumption, you have to insure the pH in salsa is below 3.8 to make sure people don’t get sick. At first, he and his wife, Kim, made the salsa in their kitchen and sold it at farmers’ markets. Today, he uses an Arlington company, County Fair Foods, which makes hundred-gallon batches to his specifications. The salsa is cooked, not raw, and canned in a hot water bath to make it shelf stable. 

Jim and Kim still spend a lot of weekends at farmers’ markets, and his oldest son, Connor, mans a booth at a market in Flower Mound. In Fort Worth, you can find Wild Rooster products at the Sunflower Shoppe on Camp Bowie or Burgundy Beef, the butcher on West Seventh. The product is also in an outlet in Dallas and in the Burgundy Beef store in Grandview.

We had a delicious Wild Rooster dinner at our house recently. I’m a wimp about spicy things, but Jim assured me the salsa verde is milder than the rojo versions—and he gave me the following recipe:

Crock Pot Verde Chicken

 1 package of boneless skinless chicken thighs (4-5) (or breasts)

 ½ jar of Wild Rooster Verde Salsa

 Spray the liner of the crock pot with canola oil, add the chicken and then pour the salsa over it. Cook on low for six hours. Shred the chicken to use in tacos, salads, rice bowls, enchilada’s, etc. For enchiladas, combine the remaining half jar of salsa and 8 oz sour cream in a saucepan and heat on a moderate flame. Do not bring to a boil just heat through to combine the ingredients. Roll the chicken inside corn tortillas, pour the enchilada sauce over the top, add cheese and broil in the oven until the cheese is melted.

We used the meat to make tacos, with tomato, cheese, avocado, lettuce, sour cream, and a sueeze of lime. Even spice-shy me loved it. Jim also suggests this recipe:

Tortellini Salsa and Alfredo

One 19 oz package of frozen or fresh cheese tortellini

1 cup of Original or Spicy Wild Rooster Salsa

1 cup of Alfredo sauce

1/2 cup of grated cheese (we use cheddar to give it a Mexican flare)

Combine the tortellini, salsa, and Alfredo sauce in a pan. Cook the tortellini per directions on the package. Once the sauce is hot, stir in the cheese and serve.

Read more about Wild Rooster at http://www.wildroostersalsa.com, on Facebook or Instagram (@wildroostersalsa).

 

 

 

 

 

A small but significant act of thanksgiving

Yesterday on what seemed a long drive from Fort Worth to Tomball, my oldest son casually, quietly showed me a lesson about thankfulness. As we waited in a long line for a stoplight to change, he reached into the side pocket of his door, took out an unopened bottle of water, and then took some kind of card from a pocket in the dash. As we passed an apparently homeless man sitting by the road, Colin handed the water and credit card to the man with a soft, “Hey, man!” I asked—it was a ten-dollar gift card for McDonald’s. And then Colin showed me his “stash”—he had ten or twelve such cards and said he usually tries to keep a couple of unopened water bottles handy. I thought it was a great lesson in being grateful for your blessings and sharing with others. The ”gourmet” with the hot plate is taking the holiday off—it didn’t seem fitting to write about home-made salsa on Thanksgiving, although I know families who have enchiladas on their menu. We are of the traditional school—turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, dressing, gravy, and apple pie. But I’ll be back next week with the story of those salsas. Meantime, I leave you with this quote from Willie Nelson: "When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around." Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Puff Pastry and the fear of failure

 

Lunch today, with a hand pie reheated too long--it got too browned
artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes, asparagus, and hearts of palm
and, yes, that's a mince tart from neighbor Mary.

Puff pastry has intimidated me too long. I decided to stand up to it recently and sifted through my appalling recipe file for one I’d wanted to cook for a long time: chicken hand pies (every culture has some version of this pastry shell stuffed with a meat filling, from empanadas to pierogies to pasties—this recipe was from the New York Times). My first mistake: somehow I got it into my head that the recipe was for chicken salad hand pies. Not until I got to making the filling did I realize it was a cooked meat filling of chicken, mushrooms, onion, broth, crème fraiche, and seasonings.

But it wasn’t the filling that intimidated me. It was the puff pastry. (I’m also intimidated by phyllo.) I had been making tuna pasties using biscuit dough, and as one friend gently said, there was way too much bread and not enough of the tuna filling. And I’d been rolling out the biscuits, so why not roll out puff pastry?

It comes in a twelve-inch square, and the recipe says to roll it out to a fifteen-inch square on a lightly floured cutting board. Fifteen inches is pushing the limits of my work surface and besides the dough began to tear, but I think I got to about thirteen and a half. When the directions on the box say lightly floured, take it literally. I had been afraid of lots of flour that flew everywhere and was a hot mess to clean up. Not so, I floured the work surface and the rolling pin very lightly, and the dough did not stick at all.

Next up: use the tip of a knife to divide the dough into nine squares. After a couple of stabs at it, that too proved easy. So I moved ahead, put filling in each square (not the three-quarter cup recommended but more like half a cup), folding the ends to make a triangle, and crimping the edges with my fingers. I had hand pies! The last step was to brush with either melted butter or an egg wash of one egg mixed with one Tbsp. water. I prefer the egg wash. Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Chicken hand pies as they should look,
but not good photography. Sorry.

Here are two fillings I’ve used with other pastry shells in the past and will now make—soon!—using the puff pastry in my freezer.

Tuna pasties

1 7 oz. can albacore tuna, in water

1 cup shredded cheddar

¼ cup celery, diced finely

1 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped

1/3 cup sour cream

This may not make enough filling for all nine squares. Serve warm.

Coulibac

 Coulibac is the Russian version of a stuffed pastry shell, traditionally made with fresh salmon or sturgeon, rice or buckwheat, hard-boiled eggs, mushrooms, onions, and dill. My version is a shortcut, using canned salmon.

1 cup shredded carrots

½ cup finely chopped onion

½ cup finely chopped celery

3 Tbsp. olive oil

1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms

1/3 cup sour cream

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

½ tsp. dried dill

½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. pepper

1 16 oz. can salmon, drained, bone and skin removed, meat flaked

Cook carrots, onion and celery in oil until tender. Add mushrooms and sauté until just limp. Remove pan from heat and add sour cream, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and dill. Gently stir in salmon.

My next challenge may be to make spanakopita with phyllo—or, hmmm, could I use puff patry?

Of cabbages and kings, frittatas and casseroles

Dinner at this house one night recently was a frittata fail. I’ve never made a frittata, but it’s just a crustless quiche, right? And it’s a popular dish now. I happened on to a recipe for a vegetable frittata and thought I’d use it as a guide. How hard could it be? Of course I had to adapt it—Christian and Jacob want meat with their meals (although not much red meat for Jacob) and the recipe had bell pepper, which doesn’t like me and I don’t like it. Jordan pointed out that we had a lb. of pork sausage in the freezer, and I have found that Christian will eat finely chopped spinach stirred into soup or something. Substitute cheddar for Parmesan and there was my frittata. Only I was way off on proportion of my substitutions. Instead of a half lb. of sausage, I used the whole lb., about 8 oz. spinach, and 6 oz. cheese. Stirred in 7 eggs—and it looked like a meat and spinach mixture. The eggs got lost. I dutifully baked and served it. Christian, with a skeptical look: “I’m used to more egg in a frittata.” It tasted okay—actually the flavor was good, but it was kind of like hash.

If frittatas are in vogue, casseroles are not. Facebook every once in a while pictures a casserole with the line, “Do people still eat this?” I often find myself defending tuna casserole (see last week's blog post). Somehow that makes me even more interested in retro foods. I associate casseroles with my childhood and then with the lean years when I was the single parent of four teenagers, but those are good memories. (I used to make gorilla casserole—the heading said you could feed ten gorillas at twelve cents apiece or something like that.) I still make casseroles. Here’s one I served to a guest recently:

Baked chicken salad casserole

3 c. chopped chicken

3 hard-boiled eggs

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

½ Tbsp. lemon juice

¼ c. mayonnaise

1 tsp. salt

2 c. chopped celery

½ tsp. black pepper

2 green onions, chopped fine

           Layer chicken and eggs in greased casserole; mix remaining ingredients and pour over eggs and chicken. Top with crushed potato chips. Bake at 375^o for about 30 minutes or until heated through. Enjoy!

 

 

Re-imagining the tuna casserole—and a bit of fiction

 

As you know if you read “Judy’s Stew” online, I’m taking a course on the culinary cozy mystery. Today’s assignment was to take one dish and describe it in terms of all five senses. It’s been along time since I shared my tuna casserole recipe—don’t groan, please—so I decided to focus on it. I thought for fun in this blog, I’d repeat that scene from Irene Keeps a Secret, the as yet unwritten third entry in my Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries series. The recipe is also attached. Henny is preparing to fix tuna casserole for one segment of her TV show, “Recipes from My Mom’s Kitchen.”

As I unpacked the groceries I’d brought and slipped the pre-made casserole in the oven, Bob, the station manager, walked by. “Hey, Henny, watcha cooking today?”

“Tuna casserole,” I replied, my back to him as I worked. I knew what was coming next and mentally got ready for his objection. Bob’s idea of comfort food was probably a Big Mac.

“Tuna casserole!” He exploded. “Henny, we all had to eat enough of that as kids. Nobody eats it anymore. I told you, now that we’re national, you gotta ramp up your act.”

“I’m doing retro recipes, remember? Last week I even did a jellied salad—well, okay it was gazpacho—but it got raves. And national bought the show with the title, ‘Recipes from My Mom’s Kitchen.’ This is from my mom’s kitchen.”

He shrugged and walked on, but not before he muttered something about not blaming him if my ratings tanked.

I turned back to my groceries—a can of tuna, a can of mushroom soup, a pre-measured cup of wine, a small baggie with assorted herbs, some chopped celery and green onions. The pre-cooked noodles bothered me some. I hoped they wouldn’t clump when I tried to use them.

As I worked, memory took me back to Texas. On chilly nights, Dad lit a fire in the fireplace, and we ate dinner camped around it, sitting on the floor or a footstool or whatever was handy. I could almost see the flames and feel their warmth, hear them crackle, smell the piñon wood Dad insisted on. Tuna casserole was a family favorite for those Sunday night suppers by the fire, and as I stood there in that dingy TV studio I thought about Mom’s casserole—the crispness of the fried-onion topping against the creaminess of the noodles and tuna, with an occasional pop when you came to a green pea or the crunch of a bite of celery. I was suddenly hungry, and as I picked up the tuna and soup cans to open, I only hoped my casserole would taste as good as Mom’s. Patrick would be the taste tester tonight at supper, but, alas, no cheering fire.

Tuna casserole re-imagined

1 c. white wine

Assorted dried herbs—thyme, parsley, oregano, summer savory, tarragon, etc. (avoid Mexican spices like cumin); just throw the spices into the wine

1 small onion, chopped

½ c. celery, diced

2 Tbsp. butter

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 7½-oz. can water-packed tuna, drained

1 c. carb filler of choice, cooked noodles or rice

½ c. green peas

1 small can French’s fried onion rings

Boil wine with herbs until the herbs turn black (about five minutes). Remove from heat. Meanwhile sauté onion and celery in butter. Add this to wine, along with soup. Add tuna, drained, or 1 cup diced chicken or turkey, the carb filler, and green peas for color. If there’s not enough liquid for your solid ingredients, add more wine. You can also vary the amount of meat and noodles or rice to suit your taste. Put into casserole dish and top with canned fried onion rings. A shallow dish means more of the casserole gets fried onion topping. Bake at 350° until bubbly and onions are brown.

Irene in Danger, second in the series, is now available from Amazon in paperback of Kindle editions: Irene in Danger: An Irene in Chicago Culinary Mystery - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

 

Lesson learned, this one about simplicity

The work area in my tiny kitchen

For five years now, I’ve been knocking my head against the wall, trying to demonstrate that I can cook anything with a hot plate and a toaster oven that I could with a full kitchen. Close, but no banana. The other night we had chicken thighs in a sauce, but we didn’t eat until eight because the adjustments I had to make took more time than I anticipated.

Recipes that call for an oven-proof skillet do me in. You can’t fit a skillet handle into a toaster oven. And my largest skillet won’t hold four chi
cken thighs, so I had to brown in batches. Then transfer to an oven dish. Bake, and transfer back to the skillet to make the sauce. I now banish all recipes calling for an ovenproof skillet. Those pork chops in my freezer? I baked them without browning. Mixed a can of mushroom soup, an envelope of onion soup mix, and about a half cup white wine. Seasoned the chops with salt and pepper and poured the soup mix evenly over them. Covered the dish tightly with foil and baked an hour at 350. Lots less work.

With simplicity in mind, I adapted a recipe for salmon bowl from the New York Times. It called for short-grain (sushi) rice and fresh salmon. I used good, canned salmon (wild caught) and long grain rice because that’s what I had. Recipe said to cook it in water flavored with rice vinegar, soy, and sugar. I did not season the cooking water. Drained the meat and chunked it. I thought the avocado would get lost and didn’t waste it. I had bought broccoli slaw, which was good and crisp, but the finished dish was too fussy with too much going on. Here’s what I’ll do another time:

Salmon bowl (serves four)

Four servings of rice (short- or long-grain)

Two 7 oz. cans wild-caught salmon

1/3 Persian cucumber, sliced thin

4 green onions, sliced on the diagonal

For the dressing

2 Tbsp. vegetable or canola oil

¼ c. soy sauce

3 Tbsp. white vinegar

Avocado (optional)

Make the dressing (you may want to double) and marinate cucumber and green onion in it while rice cooks. Cook the rice according to directions on the package, though you may want to rinse some starch off first. Let it cool a bit and divide among four bowls. Add chunks of salmon—try not to flake it. Top with dressing, cucumber, and green onion. Add avocado if you want. A nice, easy meal.

This reminds me of a dinner a good friend served several years ago, before bowls were so popular. At the time I thought it quite innovative. Two of us were her guests that night.

She put rice in a bowl and topped it with a layer of black beans and then chopped fresh vegetables—I’m not sure I remember what all, but probably tomatoes, cucumber, green onion, avocado for sure. She was about to finish the bowls off with shrimp, when both her guests howled about shrimp allergies. She poured salad dressing, probably homemade, over it, and served us a delicious, satisfying meal. If you don’t make your own dressing, I recommend Paul Newman’s Own Oil and Vinaigrette (not the balsamic vinaigrette).

So that’s my lesson for today: simplify. This started out to be a blog for cooks in tiny kitchens and sort of branched out from there, but at least for today, I’m back to the Idea that you can be a gourmet in a tiny kitchen.

Where I wash dishes
Large refrigerator is to the right
And that's my kitchen in two pictures

 

 

Sloppy Joe

In a previous life a long time ago, a friend gave me a cookbook titled, I think, With a Jug of Wine. The book is long since lost in down-sizing, and the only thing I saved is the recipe for Sloppy Joe. Okay, it isn’t called Sloppy Joe in the book. It’s called wine casserole. But the first time I made it, I thought, “This is Sloppy Joe.”

There are several theories about the origin of that sandwich, generally considered cheap restaurant or lunch counter fare. Some say it began with the loose meat sandwiches of the 1930s, thought to be a Maid-Rite invention, but another story is that the sandwich was developed in Sioux City, Iowa, by a cook named Joe. There’s even a suggestion the sandwich came from Cuba. In the 1940s, you could buy a Sloppy Joe sandwich for a dime, and in the 1960s big companies began to produce prepared ingredients. Remember canned Manwich?

I don’t care about the origin, but with cool weather approaching, I’m ready for a Sloppy Joe. It’s not real popular in my house, so I think I’ll just make a batch for myself. It’s something my kids grew up eating. Sometimes I’d serve it on toasted hamburger buns, but other times I’d just serve a bowl of it, like stew.

When my oldest daughter, then married a few years, called from Austin one night for the recipe, I sent it to her. She reported that Brandon, her husband, said, “It’s good, but it’s not Sloppy Joe.” Megan wrote, “I guess I’m the only one who grew up thinking red wine is an essential ingredient of Sloppy Joe.”

Note: this is a repeat. I’ve probably posted this several times, but it’s that good. And if you’re relatively knew to my posts, maybe it will be new to you. If not, maybe this will jog your memory that it’s Sloppy Joe weather. Here’s what I did:

Judy’s sloppy joe

1 lb. ground beef

1 15-oz. can of beans (any kind you want), rinsed and drained

½ c. chopped onion

½ c. diced celery

2 Tbsp. bacon drippings (If you can bring yourself to use it in this health-conscious age, use vegetable oil, but the bacon flavor really makes a difference; I keep a small jar of bacon drippings in my fridge.)

¼ c. ketchup

1½ Tbsp. Worcestershire

Dash of Tabasco

1 tsp. salt

⅛ tsp. pepper

¼ tsp. oregano

¼ c. dry red wine

1 Tbsp. A-1 sauce (If I don’t have this, omit it; I can never tell the difference.)

Cook onion and celery in bacon drippings. Add beef and brown. Add remaining ingredients and simmer 20 to 30 minutes. Serve in buns (there’s that loose meat connection) or in bowls. Good accompanied by chips and/or a green salad.