Updating the old familiar

 

I am not a modern cook who scorns canned soup as an ingredient.
I proudly cook with canned soup frequently.

This time of year, two themes run through food magazines and online sites. There is either advice on how to cook the perfect turkey or suggestions for alternative entrees for those who are tired of the bird. That’s never a question for my family: they want what they have always had, cooked the way they have always had it.

So our Thanksgiving begins with a cheese ball of blue, cream, and cheddar (read Velveeta these days). Pride of place goes to the turkey, with dressing in a separate pan and never again in the turkey, mashed potatoes (Jordan’s specialty), gravy lots of gravy, green bean casserole with French’s fried onions, and, ideally, my mother’s everlasting yeast rolls (kudos to granddaughter Morgan who has volunteered to make the rolls this year). No substitutions, no “improving” the recipe. I’ve made it all for so many years I can do it from scratch.

This year Jordan is slated to provide the green bean casserole, cheeseball, and potatoes. As we made a grocery list, we quibbled over how many cans of green beans (oh yes, they must be canned) to buy, so for kicks I looked up the recipe online. Just for quantity, you understand. But I found a new twist—Campbell’s own web site suggests adding a bit of soy and some milk. Jordan was absolutely horrified when I read that to her, but I’ll keep working on it, because I think it would be a good addition. Here are the ingredients for a casserole to feed six (we will double or triple the recipe):

Green bean casserole

4 cans cut green beans

1 can Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup

½ cup milk

1 tsp. soy sauce

1-1/2 cups French’s French Fried onion rings    

I was so taken with the idea of checking out old favorites that when we decided on a pot roast the other night, I went back to Campbell’s for the traditional onion soup recipe, long a favorite. Once again, I found updates. I used to make it for the kids with carrots and potatoes, cream of mushroom soup, dry onion soup mix, and red wine, but here’s what I did this time:

Onion soup pot roast     

3-1/2 lb. beef chuck roast, boneless

¼ tsp. salt

2-1/2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

1/8 tsp. pepper

1 can Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup

1 packet dry onion soup mix

1 cup red wine

3 cloves garlic, sliced

Potatoes, carrots, and celery

4 sprigs fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

1 6-inch sprig fresh rosemary

Salt and pepper the roast and brown in oil. Mix soups, wine and garlic and pour into slow cooker (I did it stovetop all day—and it took all day!). Stir in vegetables. Place herbs in center of cooker on top of vegetables and place the meat directly over the herbs. Cook on low 7-8 hours. Remove meat to cool and thicken gravy with 2 Tbsp. flour stirred into ¼ cup cold water.

This is one of those recipes that prove how helpful it is to have your own herb garden! It got raves from the family and recipe requests from Christian and Chandry, who was our guest that night. I think I heard Christian say it was better than the Mississippi pot roast he makes. Good leftovers too.

Do you have some old favorites you might want to rethink or upgrade just a bit? Nothing drastic.                                                                                              

Thinking ahead to Easter

In my family, Easter dinner has always been one of the major holidays for family to get together and have a special meal. Now is not too early to start planning, and I’ve given it some thought. This year, we will have Christian’s family. Christian and I have learned to meet in the middle about what I cook and what he wants to eat but cooking for his family suggests some reconsideration on my part.

Given my absolute choice, I would cook a leg of lamb or a good spring lamb stew, but I don’t think the Burtons eat lamb. I suspect salmon is also ruled out for that a reason (beside salmon for eleven is an investment), and a beef roast just sounds too heavy to me. Chicken? Cooked how? One thing I don’t do is fry chicken—lots of restaurants do it better than I do.  Finally I landed on turkey—everybody likes it, and to avoid repeating Thanksgiving, I’d serve some sauces rather than gravy. I really had tonnato sauce in mind—a wonderful tuna sauce for cold fish or poultry. I am, however,  the only one in the house who would eat that. I am probably the only one who also envisions cold turkey. When I said sauce, Christian said, “Yes. We can have cranberry sauce.” Back to Thanksgiving. I gave him what I hope was a withering look.

I haven’t solved the sauce dilemma yet, but we pretty much have a menu. The appetizer will be love dip from Central Market because all the Burtons love it. Turkey breast with sauce (I have asked Christian to take charge of deciding between a turkey which he could fry and two breasts), potato salad (with a bit of pickle juice in the dressing, and I’ll take some out for Tom Burton and Jacob before I add onion), and marinated vegetables, which Julie, the vegetarian in the family, will love.

Because I really want to try it some time, I thought of a pavlova for dessert—those showy confections of meringue topped with fruit, but I’m afraid to experiment and I think making a pavlova ties up your oven for a long time. Maybe a Black Forest cake from the bakery.

We will also have guests for brunch that day, and I’m debating store-bought quiche vs. homemade. If I get ambitious, I’ll make and freeze early in the week—one  and serve them with fruit and rolls.

My family has been eating this marinated vegetable salad for years—a friend served it when my kids were still very young. It’s a favorite, and you can tailor it to the taste of your family, though with such diverse tastes you’re going to hit some and miss others.

Marinated vegetable salad

Green beans—yes, canned work better than fresh or frozen; cut but not French cut. For eleven people I’ll probably use two big cans. They are the backbone of the salad.

Shredded carrots

One small head of broccoli, blanched and cut into small flowerets

One small head of cauliflower, blanched and cut into small flowerets

A red onion, sliced and added in rings

Artichoke hearts – I prefer canned to frozen; if fresh, trimmed and parboiled (just go with the canned

Brussel sprouts – optional; if used, trim and blanch, cut in two if large

Mushrooms – optional, sliced, raw

Commercial vinaigrette dressing—we prefer Paul Newman’s Own Oil and Vinegar (not the Balsamic vinegar dressing); you want enough to cover all the vegetables but not so much that you end with salad soup (it has happened in this house).

The salad as I first ate it had chopped iceberg lettuce and sliced avocado. The trouble with those is that they don’t keep well; any leftover salad will be fine in the fridge for several days, but lettuce will turn soggy, and avocadoes will brown. The ideal would be to serve them on the side.

Best to make this a day ahead and let the vegetables soak up the dressing. You can add more at the last minute if needed.

 

 

The joy of brown butter sauce

 

Ravioli with brown butter sauce
Salad of sliced pear, radish, and blue cheese
chardonnay
a menu fit for a fine restaurant

In my recent no-holds-barred cleanout of my refrigerator and freezer, I discovered a twelve-pack of frozen wild mushroom/truffle ravioli. No idea when or why I got them, though I think I expected them to be smaller, appetizer size, and they must have been on sale. I have blogged about this before, so if I’m repeating myself, please forgive me.

My dilemma was what do you put on mushroom/truffle pasta. Eating it without any sauce did not appeal. Both marinara and Alfredo would smother the ravioli, I thought. I took the problem to the Facebook page of “Not the New York Times Cooking Community” (it used to the “The New York Times Cooking Community” until the newspaper disowned us). A wide variety of voices contribute ideas, recipes, pictures, equipment recommendations, renovation suggestions. Some of the contributors are way above my grade level, especially in baking, and I suspect some professional chefs lurk. Occasionally someone will get testy, but generally it’s a good-natured group.

And they are willing to answer questions, so I posed my dilemma and was deluged with answers. I bet I got a hundred responses, everything from marinara lightened with cream to pasta water and butter. Cream sauce, either as is or reduced, was mentioned several times. Someone suggested butter and sherry vinegar, someone else, Hollandaise, which I love but think might also have overwhelmed, and someone said pesto. But the one sauce that showed up most often was brown butter with sage.

I knew about brown butter of course, have eaten dishes incorporating it in restaurants, but never worked with it at home. Truth: I was a bit intimidated. But I found a recipe that was specific for ravioli and adapted it, both in amount and ingredients. The recipe called for chopped walnuts, which I thought added the wrong texture (I don’t like to find nuts in my salads either). It also called for a tiny bit of fresh spinach, which I think would have been wonderful for taste and visual appeal, but I didn’t have any and wasn’t going to the store for a quarter pound of spinach. Fresh sage was specified—my neighbor offered hers, but I have rubbed sage in the fridge and thought it would be fine. So I set about my experiment.

Because in the cottage I can’t cook two things at once, I made the sauce first. It takes a long time to brown butter without burning it, slow and easy and lots of stirring. I wasn’t sure what shade brown I was looking for, but I kept stirring until the butter smelled nutty and looked fairly brown. Some time in the stirring I added minced garlic, but I think another time pressed would work better—if I didn’t want tiny pieces of nuts, I didn’t want to chomp down on a mince of garlic either. You want the garlic to turn golden without burning.

I pulled the sauce from the hot plate and made plated salads of sliced pear, fresh radish, and blue cheese, dressed with a light olive oil and lemon vinaigrette and garnished with watercress. And then it was time to cook the ravioli—a new procedure for me. The trick they say is to let them pop to the surface of the water, but they popped so quickly I knew they weren’t done. I guessed at the timing and ended up with them a bit too much on the al dente side.

Showtime: ravioli in soup plates, with the sauce over them. And oops, much later I realized I had forgotten the sage. I still have six ravioli in the freezer, so next time. It was a good learning lesson and a good dinner besides. Here’s what I recommend:

Ravioli with brown butter and sage

Three or four medium size ravioli per person (some will be ambitious and make their own, but in spite of having made pasta years ago, I’m going to buy frozen)

1 clove garlic, pressed

4 or 5 Tbsp. butter (no substitutes)

½ tsp. dried sage or a handful of fresh leaves

¼ lb. fresh spinach (frozen will not work)

Salt and pepper

Parmesan or pecorino

 

For the ravioli: bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook ravioli until tender. If you’re lucky, the package will give you a guide to time. Drain, reserving ¼ cup pasta water.

Put butter in a large skillet and melt over medium-low heat, stirring all the time. The butter will sizzle and them foam—add the pressed garlic at this point and keep stirring until it is a deep, golden-brown. At least five minutes, though it seemed a lot longer. Remove from heat and stir in sage. Add spinach and reserved pasta water and stir. Put cooked ravioli in the skillet. Toss to coat and briefly reheat at a low setting. To serve, sprinkle with grated Parmesan or Pecorino and optional cracked pepper.

A bonus: I had leftover brown butter, so last night I used it to brown ground sirloin for Hamburger Stroganoff. Added a bit of new flavor! I think I’ll find lots of uses for brown butter now and may store some in the freezer.

Quick summer meal

 

Please welcome my guest chef, Judy Copek. An information systems nerd for twenty-plus years, Judy is a survivor of Dilbert-like re-engineering projects, 3:00 a.m. computer crashes and the Millennium Bug. In her writing, she likes to show technology’s humor and quirkiness along with its scary aspects.

Occasionally Judy takes a vacation that spins off into a novel. World of Mirrors was born when Judy and her husband visited the Baltic island of Rugen shortly after the reunification of East and West Germany. Time stood still on the idyllic island, yet all the elements of suspense were there: the Soviet Navy, ex-Stasi, Vietnamese “guest workers,” a dog that had formerly patrolled the Wall, and bad vibes from the days of the DDR.

 Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, New England Pen, and Toastmasters International. She has published poems, short stories and memoir as well as an earlier novel, The Shadow Warriors.

 ****

Sometimes one needs to produce a tasty meal when the “to do” list is long and devoting a lot of time to the task is impossible. Steak on the grill?  What about veggies? Salad? Dessert?

 Browsing through the newspaper ads, I saw shish-kebab meat on sale for $3.99 and I recalled an excellent recipe from days of yore, a recipe I have kept for over thirty years and still resurrect at least once a year. When I found the recipe, it was only for the marinade, not the cooking itself, with a cryptic note: Marinate 2 hours. 

 Not only did our local supermarket have the meat on sale, they had red bell peppers, baby bella whole mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and Vidalia onions on sale, too. I had some cooked rice in the freezers and a whole garden full of fresh herbs. Lots of lettuce, and a ready-made piecrust with some fresh rhubarb, strawberries and raspberries.  The fastest dessert ever is a crostata. 

 I’d make rice aux fines herbes, (sauté herbs with a little spring onion and garlic, add rice and heat). We are talking easy here.

 Sad experience has taught me that the vegetables I use for kebabs don’t always cook evenly. What happens is that the tomatoes fall off the skewers and the onion and peppers are half-cooked. A remedy is at hand. But first:  the ever-important marinade.

 Shish-Kebab Marinade for four shish kebabs

 Juice of ½ lemon

1/3 c. olive oil

½ cup sherry  (you can use white vermouth if no sherry)

1 T. Worcestershire sauce

1 T. salt  (I use about half that much).

½ t. freshly ground black pepper

1 t. curry powder

1 clove garlic (I’ll use two and smash them)

½ t. ground ginger  (by all means use fresh if you have it—this recipe predates assuming you can get fresh ginger)

1 small onion grated

Mix everything together in a large bowl, add cubed meat and toss. Marinate two hours.  Refrigerate, but remove ½ hour before you plan to grill.  Drain meat. There’s something about this combination of ingredients in the marinade that makes me keep coming back to it.

 About the grilling:

Cook the meat, the tomatoes, the onions and the red (you can use any color) pepper on separate skewers. This solves the problem of the overcooked tomatoes and undercooked onions. We remove everything from the skewers and serve meat and veggies together on a large wooden platter. 

 Let’s review the menu:

Shish kebab with onions, peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes

Rice aux fines herbes (chives, thyme, oregano and a leaf or two of sage)

Green salad (your favorite lettuce)

Crostata of rhubarb, raspberries and strawberries

For the crostata, I always mix sugar to taste and either cornstarch or instant tapioca with the fruit so the juices don’t run all over creation. This is the time to line your baking sheet with baking paper for easy cleaning and ten put pie dish on the baking sheet. 

 The meat is lean and you’re ingesting lots of fruits and vegetables. Tastes terrific, too! 

Bon Appétit!

 

 

 

The night I didn't cook

Hummus salad

I always, always feed dinner guests a homemade dinner, sometimes down home, sometimes a gourmet experiment. Except for last night. I had lured friends with the promise of a pot of soup since a "wintry mix" is headed to North Texas. But then I remembered that the "he" of this couple is sort of vegetarian, and I had that pan of spanakopita in the freezer. I went with a friend to the annual Greek festival and brought home the spanakopita, wondering who to share it with. Christian would have said, 'You want me to eat WHAT?" Jordan would probably have declined, and Jacob would have taken the required one bite and given his usual opinion: "I don't like it." My guests last night were perfect! The last time we dined together, we had Lebanese food, so this fit right in.
But what to serve with it? Aside from a Greek salad? As I've said here before I'm getting tired of tossed salads, Greek or not. I couldn't find tabouleh in the grocery (in retrospect I think I looked in the wrong place) but I did find tzatziki which I'm perfectly capable of making--but there it was already made. And from the company that makes the hummus I like best. Both items went into my shopping cart, and then from the long row of condiments, etc., at Central Market I chose marinated artichokes and dolma. I bought pita bread, which I had to search for, and overlooked the fact that it was honey-flavored. Nobody mentioned the honey in the pita.
So I had an array of appetizers--dolma, marinated artichokes, tzatziki, and pita. We lingered over them in front of the fire. Dinner itself was the spanikopita and a hummus salad, which is the only thing I fixed...and I hardly did any fixing for that.

Hummus salad

Spread a container of hummus evenly over serving plate.
Optional: top with a layer of Greek yogurt (actually I forgot to buy the yogurt or I would have)
Top with chopped cucumber, scallions, halved cherry tomatoes, and crumbled feta.

All of the above made great leftovers for lunch today.

And the soup? It's simmering in the crockpot. A huge pot of soup. I'll need to share with someone.

Quick and good appetizers

Faced with a potluck supper the other night, I leafed through a pile of recipes I wanted to try and came to this simple idea: spread hummus on a plate (use on small container, about 8 oz.) and cover with diced plum tomato, red onion, cuke (seeded), and feta cheese. I'm not a fan of flavored hummus--I prefer Cedar's Original, won't use the garlic--too garlicky, and avoid the artichoke-olive like the plague. I don't eat olives. Cental Market was out of original in the size I wanted, so I tried tomato-basil. Really good. I put it in a star-shaped small plate, so it was showy--and had very little to bring home.
Zucchini oven chips are a bit more trouble but worth it--mix 1/4 c. dry breadcrumbs, 1/4 c grated Parmesan (fresh, not the stuff in a green cardboard tube), a pinch each of salt, garlic powder, and fresh ground black pepper. Slice two zucchini, dip in milk, and then in the cheese/crumb mixture. Spray an ovenproof rack and put it over a cooksheet; lay zucchini slices on the rack and bake at 425 for 30 minutes. Keep a close eye for the last few minutes--they turn brown and crisp and can go from brown to black quickly. Look for this at http://www.health.com/health/recipe/0,,10000001087041,00.html.
And finally, from Pinterest, here's the quickest salsa ever: Put all this in a blender and whirl away:
2 c. coarsely choped, rinsed, husked tomatillos (no, you don't have to cook them)
1 jalopeno (or 1 can chopped--my preference, because I'm a wimp about peppers)
2 large avocados, peeled, halved, pitted, and diced
One large slice white onion or to taste
1/2 c. chopped cilantro
3 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
Enjoy!

Supper at my house tonight was zucchini chips (above), tomato cheddar pie, deviled eggs, and a make-ahead salad. I thought the idea of a tomato/cheddar pie sounded great, but when I read the instructions I realized I'd better make it yesterday, which I did. It was delicious but so rich that I couldn't eat much--and it was a lot of work. A biscuit-like crust that was hard to work with, a filling that alternated layers of tomato, a mayo-based sauce, and cheddar with just a bit of parmesan. My guests loved it, and the husband went home with a huge piece that he said he'd eat tomorrow. I still like the idea but think I'll look for other recipes. I have one in my file that calls for a ready-made crust. I'm not very good at pie crusts, but I can do an ordinary one. This biscuit-like one had the stickiest dough ever--next time I'd freeze it or chill a lot longer, and I'd dust it with flour before rolling it between sheets of waxed paper. No wonder the recipe said peel off carefully--half the dough went with the paper.  And I think that buttermilk based dough was one thing that made the pie so rich.  So it was a nicely conceived summer menu, my guests liked it, but I wasn't quite satisfied. Will try again.