From my mom’s kitchen

In Irene in Danger and Finding Florence, the two most recent cozies in my Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries, narrator Henny James stars in her own TV show titled, “From My Mom’s Kitchen.” In contrast to Irene’s focus on French cuisine, Henny shares down-home recipes from her mom’s Texas kitchen. This morning I went searching for a specific recipe from my mom—a leg of lamb with plum preserves—to share with you. Never did find it but I sent myself on a nostalgia trip remembering some of the ordinary dishes Mom cooked.

Alice Peterman Peckham MacBain was of German descent, and her mother Granny Peterman, whom I barely remember, served traditional German meals. One result of that was Mom refused to touch or serve sauerkraut, and I never tasted it until I was grown and fixing my own meals. And as a child, I never had sauerbraten or schnitzel or rouladen, and there might have been cabbage but never sweet and sour. Still, married to an Anglophile who wanted roast beef and potatoes every night, Mom managed to cook some foods that I think she probably learned from her mother. Here are a few simple ones:

Sausage and apple skillet

1 lb. ground pork sausage

3-4 tart apples, cored and cut into slices but not peeled

Fry pork sausage until crumbled and done; drain off some of the grease and add two or three sliced apples—maybe McIntosh? a tart variety—and cook until apples are mushy. In those days we didn’t have choices between hot or mild or maple-flavored sausage. There was only what today would be labeled “regular” or “original.”

Mom sometimes served this for breakfast, but more often it was a light supper. We had a tradition of Sunday supper eaten on a rolling tea cart in front of the fireplace rather than at the formal dining table. This skillet dish was typical of those suppers; so were souffles and stratas (a layered casserole of bread and egg, usually with cheese.)

 

Wilted lettuce

Dad struggled to grow vegetables in the soot and smoke of Chicago, but when we had fresh leaf lettuce, Mom often wilted it. Christian was cautious when I mentioned wilted lettuce (it does conjure a negative image), but he now likes it.

2-3 slices bacon cooked crisp and crumbled – save 2 Tbsp. grease

Vinegar to taste (start with 1 tsp. and taste)

Fresh leaf lettuce

Mom would fry bacon, drain some of the grease off and add vinegar to the remaining, and crumble the bacon into it and reheat until just warm. (She did not measure, and my suggestions are approximate.) Then she poured the warm grease on the lettuce. You can only do this with fresh leaf lettuce.

 

Mom also used to fix beets and greens, which you almost never see these days. I don’t think people eat fresh beets much—or any other kind. She’d cook the beets, slice them, and return them to the pan with the washed and stemmed greens to simmer until the greens were soft. She poured vinegar over beets and greens, and one of my sons always ate them that way. I prefer them with butter and lemon. But a warning: it’s hard to find enough greens on fresh beets.

Beets and greens

1 bunch fresh beets with full, healthy greens still attached

Butter

Lemon and butter or vinegar to taste

Remove greens from beets; wash and set aside. Boil or roast beets until they can easily be pierced with a fork. Run under cold water until cool enough to handle and peel (the peel slips right off once cooked). Cut off the ends, slice, and return to drained saucepan. Trim stems off greens and add to pan with just a bit of moisture. Cook until beets are heated and greens are wilted and cooked.

 

I never ate southern dishes as a “northern” kid, but it occurs to me all these years later that Mom’s fried mush was typically southern. I think fried mush was one more thing from my Granny Peterman’s kitchen. Today, we’d call it hard polenta and serve it at supper. In Mom’s kitchen, it was breakfast.

Fried mush

Cornmeal

Oil

Butter

Syrup

Make cornmeal mush in a loaf pan, following directions on the cornmeal, and chill. Slice and fry in skillet with small amount of oil or maybe she used margarine (I’d use butter today) until lightly browned. Serve warm with butter and syrup. It’s delicious!

 

As for that sauerkraut Mom wouldn’t eat, try this:

Caramelized sauerkraut

Sauerkraut - about ½ cup per person (I do not like canned sauerkraut and always use a brand that comes in a glass jar or plastic pouch; drain well before frying)

Butter

Sugar

           Stir-fry sauerkraut in butter, constantly stirring and sprinkling with sugar, until it turns a lovely shade of light brown. It’s hard to get this right, and you may have to try a couple of times, but it’s so good. Mom didn’t know what she was missing!

 

 

Dresdner Christstollen—A Holiday Gift from Far Away

Please welcome my guest, Heidi Noroozy, with a special German treat from her childhood.

 

When I was a child growing up in a German-Swiss family, Christmas at our house had a different feel than in the other homes in our small Vermont town. Less boldly cheery and more sedate, but every bit as fun. For one thing, we opened our presents on Christmas Eve and saved only the nut- and candy-filled stockings for Christmas Day. For another, our tree was light on tinsel and heavy on hand-painted wooden and glass ornaments sent by relatives in Germany.

As a child with a major sweet tooth, the arrival of a special package from East Germany (GDR) was always cause for great anticipation. I’d check the mailbox daily for weeks in advance. My mother’s family lived in the GDR, and between our infrequent visits, we had little contact with them. Except at Christmas, when Tante Grete mailed us a Christmas stollen (Christstollen)—a yeast cake filled with raisins, nuts, and candied fruit and covered with a lovely crust of vanilla-scented sugar. The most authentic ones are said to be made in the city of Dresden, which is where she lived.

The pastry came packaged in an oblong metal tin with a pretty winter scene painted on the side. The tin was sealed so tight, opening it required a bit of ingenuity—and my father’s toolbox. Because of the odd shape, a can opener didn’t work. So my mother would set the tin down on one end and pry the lid off with a hammer and chisel. The oval cake—a sweetbread, really—would slide out onto a cutting board, dribbling a trail of powdered sugar like a light dusting of snow.

Years later, when I moved to East Germany to study at Leipzig University (or Karl-Marz-Universität, as it was called at the time), I would scour the shops in mid-December in search of a real Dresdner Christstollen. I found many lesser cakes during the Christmas holidays but none in the familiar tin box with the winter scene painted on the side. The explanations varied.

“Mangelware,” one friend said, claiming that the ingredients were in short supply, due to the GDR’s perennial deficit of hard currency for imports. I had no trouble believing this explanation, having witnessed butter rationing and empty store shelves with my own eyes.

Another acquaintance told me that specialty products such as authentic Dresdner Stollen went straight to the export market, bypassing East German shops altogether. This, too, I knew was common practice.

Recently, I published a short story inspired by my years in the GDR. “Trading Places” features a disillusioned East German policeman on the trail of a graffiti artist whose cryptic political messages threaten to spark public unrest. Lieutenant Maibeck is an outsider in his world, a former aristocrat who’s tried hard to overcome the liability of his noble birth to fit into East Germany’s Communist society. In his single-minded pursuit of this goal, he’s alienated most of the people he loves. Christmas will be a lonely affair for poor Maibeck, but I like to think that he’ll slice up a sugar-crusted Christstollen to go with his morning coffee on Christmas Day.

You can read the story online in the October 2013 issue of Nautilus Magazine.

And here is a recipe I found in an old family cookbook. I can’t say whether it comes from the German or Swiss side, but it hardly matters. The Germans, Austrians and Swiss enjoy this festive cake in equal measure.

German Christstollen

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 package dry yeast

¾ cup milk

1/3 cup sugar

Grated zest of ½ lemon

1 ½ sticks butter, softened (3/4 cup)

¼ teaspoon ground saffron (optional)

½ cup black raisins

½ cup golden raisins

½ cup chopped almonds

½ cup chopped hazelnuts

For the topping:

1–2 tablespoons melted butter

1 cup powdered sugar*

Heat the milk then cool it to lukewarm. Add the dry yeast, lemon zest, saffron and sugar, and stir to dissolve. Add 1 cup of the flour and mix to form a sponge. Cover with a towel and let rise for ½ hour.

Mix the rest of the flour with raisins and nuts. Add to the wet ingredients along with the softened butter, and work into a dough, kneading until it's smooth. This can also be done in a mixer or food processor with a dough blade. Form the dough into a ball, and let rise until doubled, about 1 to 1 ½ hours.

Punch down the dough, and roll out into an oval. Fold one side of the dough over the other, leaving about 1/2 inch of the long edge of the bottom layer extending beyond the top fold. (This gives the stollen its distinctive, lopsided shape). Tuck the short ends underneath the loaf. Cover and let rise for another 45 minutes.

Place the loaf on a cookie sheet and bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for about an hour.

While the stollen is still warm, brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Dribble a bit more melted butter on top of the sugar, and then sprinkle on another layer of sugar.

* This topping is especially tasty with vanilla-scented sugar. You can make your own by sticking a whole vanilla bean into a jar of powdered sugar and letting it stand for about a week. Or mix a packet of vanilla sugar in with the powdered sugar before topping the stollen.

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 Heidi Noroozy is a translator, blogger, and writer of multicultural fiction. Her short stories appeared in German crime anthologies and have been translated into five languages. Her most recent story, “Trading Places,” was published in the “Secret Codes” issue of Nautilus Magazine in October 2013. She lived in the GDR in the 1980s and holds a degree in German language and literature from Leipzig University. Heidi lives in Northern California with her Iranian-born husband and is currently writing a novel set in present-day Iran.