Ham roll-ups, really? How about pork tenderloin?

 

Since I'm so intrigued by vintage recipes these days--and appalled that what I cooked for my children is now vintage--I decided it's time to give a shout-out to my first cookbook. The kids each contributed memories and favorite dishes to this one, and there are pictures of each grandchild. Of course now they're all over ten years older. And, yes, that's Jacob on the cover--his pre-school dressed him in that outfit and it was too perfect not to use on the book's cover. As you can imagine, it sparked a lot of complaints among the parents of the other grandkids.

In line with my vintage interests, one member of a mystery writers’ group I belong to is starting a new series set in a vintage cookbook shop in New Orleans. Her announcement of this sparked a lot of emails about vintage recipes and images of cookbook covers. One image several people sent was a cookbook titled Cooking for Two, apparently part of a series. Don’t bother looking on Amazon, because there are literally dozens of books with that title—and I didn’t find the picture I was looking for.

The image in the emails was of ham roll-ups. Remember them? No, not the ubiquitous appetizer suggestions we have today, but the main dish, usually ham wrapped around broccoli (or maybe asparagus) and topped with a cheese sauce that was suspiciously yellow. Yep, Velveeta. The sauce alone occasioned many comments, mostly derogatory about Velveeta. I jumped in with my opinion that there are a few recipes where nothing but processed American cheese will do, and I was gratified that the author of the forthcoming series agreed with me.

But ham roll-ups is not one of them. In fact, the whole idea of roll-ups, served perhaps like crepes, is not appealing, unless you grew up eating them and the memory takes you back to your mom’s table. Even then, I think Hollandaise would be better than the cheese. To top it off, a half of a canned peach sat next to the roll-ups, with a Maraschino cherry carefully placed in it. Ah, the food of the Sixties!

Of course, part of the appeal of food from that era was the convenience. Housewives were just learning they did not have to spend their entire day in the kitchen. Some days I don’t want to either. Sometimes I want something quick and simple, and the other day I fond it in a crockpot recipe (thanks, but no Instant Pot or air fryer for me!). Crockpots are old-fashioned but reliable. Also, with this recipe, I accidentally demonstrated that a crockpot could overcome the problem of an unreliable cook. Here’s what I did:

Slow cooked pork tenderloin

About two lbs. pork tenderloin (we are at that breaking point where one is not enough and two is too much; I’d always rather have leftovers)

¼ cup white balsamic vinegar

½ cup dark brown sugar

2 Tbsp. low sodium soy sauce

1 Tbsp. corn- or potato starch

½ cup water

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. fine ground pepper

           Put the meat in the crockpot, mix the remaining ingredients, stirring until sugar and starch are well blended into liquid, and pour over the pork. Cook on low for 6-7 hours or high for 3-5 hours.

I really need to learn to read directions more carefully. I thought it said cook on high for 6-7 and then low for 3-5, which I thought was an awful lot of cooking for a tenderloin. Nevertheless, I persisted—and realized my mistake about three hours in. So I turned it to low and let it cook the rest of the day. The meat was a little dry, but generous use of the sauce compensated for that—and the flavor was wonderful. We served it over Asian noodles.

Terrific leftovers the next day: sandwiches on rye bread with generous dollops of mayonnaise and a crisp leaf of lettuce or two. The meat shredded easily, making it perfect for sandwiches. I’ll definitely do this again and just cook it most of the day on low.

You can’t win all the time in the kitchen, but this was an instance where my carelessness—or haste—worked out just fine. I do recommend careful reading of instructions, however.

More on Sunday suppers

         

Smashed potatoes

   If you’ve followed my blogs at all, you know Sunday supper has been a big deal for me and my family for many years. It’s a time for the family to come together, share our week past and our hopes for the coming week. All over food, which I truly believe binds people together almost as much as prayer.

I’m also a fan of the almost daily email column from Sam Sifton, food editor at the New York Times. So I was delighted to find that Sifton has a new cookbook, out this week: See You on Sunday. Sifton believes, as I do, that people want a sense of belonging, and where better to find it than at the table. When people show up, he advises, feed them.

His book is a guide to preparing meals for a group larger than the average American family of four. (I used to feed about 15 on a Sunday night when my kids were in high school.) Pushing it on the TODAY show, Sifton fried chicken. The recipes seem chosen for the average cook, a refreshing change from a man whose recipes often call for dukkah, za’atar, harissa and houlamie. Certainly the table of contents is reassuringly familiar, with chapters on pasta and pizza, big meats, big pots, birds, and salads.

In the chapter on seafood, for instance, there are directions for roast fish, grilled fish, fish chowder, fish cakes, and so on. Your basics. A chapter on rice and beans offers discussions of white, brown, and wild rice, followed by a recipe for pilaf and then goes for the gold with paella. And red beans and rice, of course.

One of my weaknesses is that I copy or print recipes that sound wonderful but are so complicated that I know I’ll never fix them, cooking as I do on a hot plate and or in toaster oven. One such I recently found was for cabbage rolls stuffed not with beef and rice but with a chicken mixture and in a velvety cream sauce instead of the traditional red. I’m quite sure Sifton’s book doesn’t offer me those temptations.

But here’s what I did last Sunday night:

Salmon filet

1 lb. salmon

Olive oil

Minced parsley

Chopped garlic

Grated Parmesan

            Slather the filet with oil. Top with parsley, garlic, and cheese. Wrap in non-stick foil and bake at 400^o for 15 minutes. My family thought it underdone, and we put it back for another five minutes, but I like my salmon closer to underdone than overdone. With this I served smashed potatoes. The fish was delicious and the potatoes good but not as crisp as I’d like.



Smashed potatoes

12 small potatoes (new red potatoes work but I used Yukon gold, about the size of a golf ball)

1 Tbsp. olive oil

Salt and pepper

3 Tbsp. butter, melted

I have seen far more complicated directions, with herbs and a complex sauce, but I went for simplicity and am glad I did. Boil potatoes until you can put a fork through them, but they are still firm, not mushy. Grease a glass baking dish with the olive oil. Put the potatoes in the dish and use a potato masher to smash each one individually. Paint the potatoes with olive oil, using a pastry brush. Salt and pepper to taste and pour butter over them. Bake 40 minutes at 350^o.

I think too much butter prevented them from crisping up. My daughter put leftovers in a toaster oven, and they got crisp. You might try a higher temperature or a quick broil at the end of cooking time.

And here’s what I did with a tiny bit of leftover salmon: added one chopped green onion, about four slices cucumber, peeled and diced, juice of half a lemon, and enough mayonnaise to bind. Don’t make soup by adding too much mayo.

Happy Sunday dinner. Now I have to figure out what we’ll have this coming Sunday. Wish I already had Sifton’s book.

Holiday cookies

Several years ago I lost a lot of books when the flat roof over my family room failed during an incredible rain- and hail-storm. The room was an add-on before I owned the house and was being re-roofed at the time. Most of my good-sized collection of cookbooks were among the books damaged beyond saving—they ranged from slim paperbacks to lovely coffee table books. Unbeknownst to me, Jordan had saved some and has had them in a cupboard in the house all this time. We got to talking about a dip she particularly liked, and I said I thought the recipe was in an old book that held several of my favorites.

To my great joy, she produced the book yesterday. It’s a much battered and worn scrapbook type thing, titled My Favorite Recipes, where I pasted in recipes that I’d collected from various places, many of them printed in the magazines and newspapers which were my favorite sources before the internet. But the greatest finds were some of my mom’s recipes—what she called Alice MacBain’s Bread, her yeast rolls that the kids still clamor for the holiday dinners, the cookies she made every Christmas. Mom signed her recipes GM for Grandmother or GW for Guess Who. In one instance, after GM, she added (not General Motors).

There are other old friends I was glad to see again—my grandmother’s banana drop cookies, which I used to make into cupcakes when my kids were little. I cannot tell you how many batches I made just to avoid throwing away two overaged bananas.  Mary Helen’s Mother’s Coffeecake is aa Bundt cake I’ve made so often I need no recipe, but I’d need directions for the green goddess dressing, which I remember as excellent, or the Gore Blimey Quiche—spinach, bacon, mushrooms and Parmesan. My chili recipe is here—another I now do automatically. Things I’ll probably never make again: Russian kasha, red beet eggs, Russian black bread. (If you see a bit of a trend there, yes, these were recipes chosen to please my ex-husband, who was of Russian descent or so he thought—they tell you how old this cookbook is!)

A recipe I’m glad to have provides simple directios for Krispie Orange Cookies, a holiday tradition when I was a child and then when I had children. They require cookies cutters, and I inherited Mom’s good, old-fashioned metal ones—so much easier and cleaner to use than today’s plastic versions. Mom had a Santa, in profile with a pack on his back, a Christmas tree, a bell, a donut-shaped one we made into wreaths, and an oversized gingerbread man. We decorated with white, red, and green icing, sprinkles, and silver shot. After Colin, my oldest, married, his wife took over the cookie-making, and I passed along the cutters. Colin likes these cookies soft, but I keep telling him they need to bake just a bit longer for crispness.

Krispie Orange Cookies

2 c. sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 orange, juice and rind

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

3-1/2 c. four

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs and beat. Add orange juice and the grated rind. Separately mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Carefully stir flour mixture into shortening mixture. Chill dough. Then roll out and use those cookie cutters.

Bake 10 minutes at 375^o but watch carefully. They burn before you know it.

PS: We’re still looking for Jordan’s dip recipe—all I remember was you served it in a round pumpernickel bread bowl, and it had Beau Monde seasoning. It will show up here if we find it, but so will others from My Favorite Recipes.

A weird day of food, some avocado ideas, and a list of dislikes

Dinner tonight

Admittedly, my eating habits today were a bit weird. I started the day with a biscuit with butter and honey—good wild honey, straight from the hive. Good but not nutritious, nor the balanced breakfast nutritionists recommend.

For lunch today I met two friends—how we know each other is complicated, but one is the mother of kids my kids went to school with and the other is the aunt of yet another schoolmate. We met at Carshon’s deli, and I ordered something I’ve been wanting—pickled herring with sour cream. Turns out I was eating with a picky eater who said it almost turned her stomach to watch me eat herring. Surely, she was joking—you think? Then she mentioned sweetbreads, which I’ve never tried and apparently, she thought were revolting. She even made a face at the server’s suggestion of butterscotch pie. I must learn to be more sensitive to other people’s finicky tastes. Often at the deli, I have a tongue sandwich, and I know that’s hard for some people to watch me eat it.

Today my friend said, “Who taught you to eat like this?” and I said, “A little bit my folks. We had tongue when I was growing up”—though I think of it as British and not Jewish. But the real culprit or benefactor, interpret it as you will, was my Jewish ex-husband. From him I learned to eat herring, and lox and bagels, and chopped liver, and other delicacies. I’ve always said he gave me two wonderful gifts: four beautiful children and a taste for Jewish food. But a balanced meal, my lunch was not.

I did better at dinner, with hamburger Stroganoff (the recipe is in Gourmet on a Hot Plate) and a green salad with leaf lettuce, avocado, croutons, blue cheese, and Paul Newman’s Own Vinaigrette, because making the Stroganoff took a while, and I was too lazy to make my own dressing. If you want to talk about Jewish food, Stroganoff would not be on the list. I have known adults who, having put their religion aside, still cannot eat Stroganoff because it violates the old kosher law against mixing meat and dairy. Fortunately, I have no such baggage and love it. Tonight, I had a half pound of ground sirloin left, for a recipe that requires two pounds, so I kind of guessed at the amounts, but it came out fine.

Avocado toast

I am loving avocados lately. I’m not sure if they’re in season or I have just happened on good ones and finally learned how to treat them—refrigerate at the first sign of softening. But I fix them every which way. Jordan’s version of avocado toast is more elaborate, but I simply butter a piece of toast, done medium, and put chunks of avocado on it, mushing them with a fork until they turn into a lumpy mess. Then I sprinkle lemon or lime over them and enjoy. Sometimes, as in this picture, I put a little smoked salmon under the avocado. Or try scrambled eggs on top of it.

My favorite avocado salad is so easy: chunk up a half or whole avocado, depending on how piggy you feel, in a bowl with a sliced scallion, some halved cherry tomatoes, and a generous crumble of blue cheese. Dress with lemon juice. With the oil in the avocado, you don’t need oil in the dressing.

Finally I saw a thing on the internet tonight about foods some celebrities won’t eat. To my delight, bell peppers were on the list for two chefs, and one said, “They ruin everything they touch.” That’s what I’ve been preaching for years. Mayo made the list for Rachel Ray because the idea of eggs in shelf-stable mayo bothers her (that’s a mild translation of what she said), Ina Garten doesn’t like cilantro (a lot of folks don’t, and some are allergic—it was an acquired taste for me), Martha Stewart and Alton Brown are united in opposing truffle oil which they say is nothing but chemicals and has nothing of truffles about it. Anne Burrell—remember her from America’s worst cooks—can’t eat salmon or blue cheese but wishes she could. I don’t blame her—they’re both favorites of mine. And finally there was a man I didn’t recognize who said he can’t eat okra because of the slime factor. Now there’s a man after my own heart.

Happy cooking everyone!

Gourmet on a Hot Plate

Sneak preview: 

New cookbook due in November

Four years after that last post, I'm far from closing down my food blog--in fact, I'm rejuvenating it under a new title. With a new cookbook on the horizon in November, I want to invite you to be part of my ongoing cooking adventure. For two years I've been cooking in a postage-stamp kitchen with no built-ins. That's right--I cook with a magnetic hot plate, a toaster oven, and a coffee pot. And it's not a hardship. It was my choice.

As I aged, my children and I wanted to be proactive about where and how I lived. Many possibilities were discussed, and it came down to some basics: I was still in control of my faculties (or so I still think), still actively writing, still independent to some degree. The best solution? Redo my existing garage and guest quarters into a cottage for me, while my youngest daughter, her husband and child moved into the main house. After six months construction, I had a wonderful cottage--600 square feet, with a living/office space, a bathroom with a walk-in shower, a large closet and a fairly small bedroom--plus the postage-stamp kitchen which does hold a good-sized refrigerator/freezer.

My first six months in the cottage involved a broken ankle, extreme reconstructive hip surgery, the cleansing of my system of a variety of drugs, (some of which caused hallucinations). I didn't care what I ate, let alone cooked. But gradually I reclaimed my cooking skills and learned new methods of cooking and using food. The results is my third cookbook--Gourmet on a Hot Plate.

Tada! Publicaiton is scheduled for early November--so you can add it to your Christmas giving list, and after that this blog will, I hope, become much more active.. Meantime, check in for an occasional recipe, to comment or ask questions. You know the Insta-Pot Community? This is sort of the opposite end of the cooking scale.

So welcome. To subscribe and receive posts on a regular basis, please go to my web page: www.judyalter.com. And to get you started, here's one of my favorite recipes, a good one for  football games and watch parties coming up in the fall:

Sherry cheese pâté

 6 oz softened cream cheese (not whipped)

1 c. grated sharp cheddar
1 Tbsp. dry sherry
1/2 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 8oz jar mango chutney (or any chutney you prefer)
2 green onions, chopped

Mix cream cheese, cheddar, sherry, curry, and salt together, thoroughly. Spread the mixture on a serving plate. Chill. Spread the chutney on the top of the mixture and sprinkle green onions on the top. Serve with crackers

Happy cooking, y'all. I'll pop in with a new post now and then, but after November I expect things to get popping around here. Meantime, if you want to be on my mailing list please write me at j.alter@tcu.edu

New cookbook...and a cooking failure to recommend

Like desserts? Like mysteries? You've got a treat coming--the new cookbook, Bake, Love, Write: 105 Authors Share Dessert Recipes and Advice on Love and Writing, edited by Lois Winston--a massive undertaking. Authors often turn to something sweet for celebration or consolation--a new book contract, a fabulous review, a negative review, a rejection. Anything be an excuse to whip up a dessert. These authors, including me, share their recipes, their concerns about writing, their writing process, and provide a glimpse into their lives. Cakes, pies, cookies, candy and more--along with words of wisdom (?) on love, life, and writing. Available on Amazon, and ebooks versions for Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and iTunes.

About my cooking failure: my friend Mary Dulle is a wonderful, innovative cook, who particularly likes baking pies. She likes that so much that she taught a class in pie-baking this summer at Chautauqua and put together a cookbook for it. The other day she posted on Facebook that she had made a crustless quiche, and it looked so good several of us clamored for the recipes. In her words it sounded simple:

2 slices bacon, crisp and crumbled
1 small onion, diced
1 tomato (preferably heirloom), sliced thin and then quartered
1/2 cup corn kernels
1/2 cup shredded cheese-sharp cheddar, Swiss, Gruyere, your choice
3 eggs
2/3 cup low fat milk
1/2 tsp. herbs de Provence
salt and pepper to taste 

Pre-heat oven to 350.
Cook bacon in pie plate in microwave; remove from pan, add onion to drippings and "sauté" in microwave. Layer vegetables, bacon and cheese in pie plate. Whisk eggs into milk, add seasonings, and pour over the vegetables. Bake 35-45 minutes and then let sit to set.

I went amok in several ways: forgot the corn, used scallions instead of onions, whole milk instead of low-fat, thyme because I didn't have herbs de Provence in my vast collection. I used a 9" pie plate, which Mary suggested, but I think something smaller might have worked better--my quiche was flat, more like a frittata.
But my main problem was that halfway through the baking time, I noticed my new dog was not in the yard. Went cruising the neighborhood, found him across the street from the house. He leaped into the car with a grin that said, "Oh, Mom, I'm so glad you came along just now." But by the time I got him home and crated, the quiche had probably cooked an hour. It had good flavor but not texture--flat and chewy (I like soft eggs). But with the lessons learned and barring another runaway by my escape artist, I'll try that again. Here's Mary's quiche: I'm not showing mine.

A new cookbook

A package arrived from Amazon the other day, and as I opened it I thought, "I didn't order this, but it would sure make a good present for John (my brother)." Then I saw the card--it was a birthday present from John and Cindy (my birthday was in July, but then his is in March, and I think I gave him a present in June--we wait until something jumps out at us as perfect). And this cookbook is perfect--perfectly fascinating.
It's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking  & Curing. When I called John to thank him, he said he didn't expect me to cure my own meat but thought I'd like the sections on brining, making your own corned beef, and other things. Every time I pick this book up, I find some new fascination--whiskey-glazed smoked chicken, Canadian bacon (who knew it's cured smoked pork loin?), smoked salmon, smoked scallops (still think about that one). I once had a mixer attachment for stuffing sausage casings (and used it, though the results were imperfect), and I'll have to see if I still have it. My German heritage comes out when you talk about bratwurst and weisswurst, venison sausage, even hot dogs. When my mom was in her eighties, she liked nothing better than sausages grilled with onions. Hey, at that age, we let her eat whatever she wanted. I'm not so sure about dry-cured meats but I will read up on them. I do love bresaola and salami. Blackstrap molasses country ham sounds good, but lardo and cured pork belly gives me pause.
My favorite chapter is "The Cinderella Meat Loaf" which is, of course, pate. There are recipes for smooth pates, pate en croute, country pates, a venison terrine with dried cherries, a veal terrine gratin, salmon pate in basil cornmeal crust, or how about avocado and artichoke terrine with poached chicken? I think I'll pass on headcheese, but it's there. I've never understood confits but apparently what they amount to is slow-cooking meats submerged in fat. Before you panic about fat content, you can make onion or tomato confit, and it's a great way to preserve meat..
And there's a bonus chapter on sauces and condiments, subtitled, "Not optional." An index of recipes and a list of sources complete the revised edition of this book--not sure where to get duck? The book offers the information. Line drawings clearly illustrate various techniques, such as putting a pate in a crust or making pancetta.
The dilemma here is where to begin. A lot of the recipes are complicated, and this is one of the times I want a cooking buddy, even if it's just someone to cheer me on. I'd like to start with a good pate, but I may have to work my way up to it. Meantime, I'm having fun just prowling through the book. Great birthday gift. With thanks to John and Cindy.

The glory of an old cookbook

Good friend Carol Roark gave me an old cookbook she’d picked up at a garage sale for next to nothing. It’s Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook, copyright 1969 and signed by Princess Pamela herself. That’s not so old, but the pages are yellowing and feel fragile.

Princess Pamela ran a tiny soul food spot in Manhattan, Princess Pamela’s Little Kitchen, where noted food expert Craig Claiborne was one of her regular customers. The book is subtitled “The Cooking of Black America,” and a blurb tells us that “What Julia Child did for Beef Bourguignon, Princess Pamela does for ham hocks and turnip greens.”

There’s a reproduction of the hand-written menu in the front of the book, with 1969 prices: BBQ ribs, $2.75; Meatloaf, $2.00; Liver (smothered with onions), $2.25; Oxtail (ragau [sic]) $2.00; fried chicken (southern style) $2.25; pork chops (smothered with onions) $2.80. No price on the vegetables but they include collard greens, blackeye peas, salad beautiful, steamed rice, homemade potato salad, and yams. Hot corn bread was served with meals but if you wanted an extra serving, it cost you twenty cents.  For dessert: rum cake, bread pudding (with fruit sauce), and peach cobbler, seventy-five cents each. Buttermilk was among the drinks offered, which says something huge to me about a food culture.

Princess Pamela was a philosopher as well as a cook, and each page of the cookbook is enlivened with one of her sayings: “One way to stop an argument is to fill a man’s mouth with good cookin’.” Or “Three things I find offensive—mean men, back-bitin’ women, and sloppy cookin’.” And “I prefer my meats firm but tender which goes for chicken, pork chops, and men.”

I prowled through every page of the book and found some recipes you and I probably won’t ever cook, like chitlins, fried salt pork, tripe either boiled and served with tomato sauce or fried, cracklin’s, scrambled brains, pig tails ‘n’ beans, roast possum with sweet potatoes. But others sounded intriguing—peanut butter biscuits (my grandson would love those), chess pie (what’s not to love?), skillet corn bread, fried green tomatoes with milk gravy.

Many recipes intrigued me, but here’s one I really want to try because I’ve always wondered what to do with a ham steak (other than cook it in a pineapple/raisin sauce, which my mom did and I didn’t care for):

 Milk-Baked Ham

 A 2” thick slice of ham

1 Tbsp. flour
2 heaping tsp. dry mustard
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
Sweet milk

Combine the flour, dry mustard, and brown sugar. Work the mixture into both side of the ham. Place in baking dish and cover completely with milk. Bake at 350 for about an hour, until ham is tender. When it’s done, the surface should be brown and the milk almost all gone.

 Curious about salad beautiful? It’s pretty much a tossed salad, with Boston or iceberg lettuce, a cucumber (unpeeled and chopped), a tomato, chopped, 3 scallions chopped, sweet green and red peppers sliced into rings, Greek olives, and lemon wedges or salad dressing.  If you choose lemon juice, Princess Pamela suggests dissolving salt, freshly ground pepper and a little sugar in a mild vinegar and added to the salad, tossing lightly, before decorating with pepper rings and olives.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? I wish I could have eaten at Princess Pamela’s Little Kitchen.