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.