Some things just don’t need updating

 

 

 

          

Cottage pie
Photo by Mary Dulle

A day late but maybe not a dollar short: I usually do my cooking column on Thursdays, but all my attention was on my dog yesterday, so here’s the column I meant to write last night.

Scanning through the most recent copy of one of the few major cooking magazines left, I came across a recipe for Caribbean Shepherd’s Pie. Wrong, I thought! Absolutely terrifically wrong! Shepherd’s Pie is of British origin—there’s some disagreement among Shepherd’s Pie “scholars” about whether it came from Scotland or Ireland, but it was definitely the United Kingdom. And the dish calls up an image of a shepherd tending his flock, not a mental picture that translates easily to the Caribbean. Now I know much of that territory was once part of the far-flung British empire, but still.

Shepherd’s or Cottage Pie is a pretty basic dish—meat and vegetables in gravy, either surrounded by a crust or covered with mashed potatoes. Again “scholars disagree” about the names—some say Shepherd’s and “Cottage are interchangeable, but others insisted the meat in Shepherd’s Pie is lamb, the recipe originating in Ireland, and in Cottage Pie is beef and reflects either Scottish or British origins. According to one theory, the dish started in Scotland with a pastry crust but when the Irish fixed it, they added the potatoes, because they had aplenty. The vegetables traditionally are the root vegetables of winter—turnips, carrots, etc. In our country, most cooks use lighter vegetables—peas, carrots, corn, green beans.

So what distinguishes Caribbean Shepherd’s Pie? The Ingredients are pretty close to the usual, although there is a whopping 10 cloves of garlic and onions plus green onions. Breaking with tradition, though, the recipe calls for habanero chiles, ginger, tamari (a soy sauce made from miso paste), coriander, and thyme—to me, that’s a lot of discordant flavors in one dish. Plus the traditional ketchup. And the potatoes are whipped with coconut milk, which may be there for health reasons or may be an attempt to add another exotic ingredient. (You can tell I have a bit of bias working here.)

Others have tried to update what started as a homely dish, cozy comfort food on a winter’s night. Celebrity chefs from Tom Parker Bowles to Alton Brown and Emeril Lagasse have published their versions of the pie. Parker Bowles (yes, he is Camila’s son and therefore the stepson of King Charles) adds red onion and olive oil, both of which might be all right, but then he shows his culinary snobbishness by adding Thai chilies. Yet another chef with aspirations to greatness adds more discordant spices—rosemary, thyme, and cinnamon—and three glasses of red wine, stirred in a half glass at a time (and this is supposed to be an easy dish). Some recipes call for cubed meat, others ground; Martha Stewart avoids that dilemma by just calling for two lbs. beef (on her website, cubed is called for but the direction is omitted in her early printed versions of the recipe).

So what’s the average cook to do? I say, keep it simple and omit the chilies. One expert I read also said, “Choose on herb, and us it liberally.” So here’s the recipe I have used for my family for years. They seem to like it.

Shepherd’s pie

1-1/2 lbs. red potatoes

¾ c. shredded sharp cheddar, divided use

1 lb. lean ground beef or ground lamb

2 Tbsp. flour

4 c. frozen mixed vegetables—your choice; I prefer corn, green beans, and sweet peas)

¾ c. beef broth

2 Tbsp. ketchup

¼ c. shredded sharp cheddar

Heat oven to 375^o.

           Boil potatoes and mash with cream and butter (use a dollop of sour cream if you wish. Stir ½ cup grated cheddar into hot potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Brown meat in skillet. Stir in flour and cook briefly. Add vegetables, ketchup, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in beef broth and simmer until mixture thickens.

Spoon into a deep-dish pie plate or an 8 incj square baking dish. Cover with mashed potatoes. Bake 20 minutes. Sprinkle remaining ¼ cup cheddar over the top and bake another 3-4 minutes, until cheese melts and casserole is bubbly. Serve six, but only if they’re not hearty eaters.

A green salad is really good with this.

The moral of this story is a thought I find myself increasingly repeating in this column and in my own cooking: not all traditional recipes need to be updated. Some of those recipes from the fifties and sixties are jut fine the way they are. Not necessarily, the “salad” with hot dogs in jelled pickle juice, but maybe the pot roast I do with onion soup mix or the tuna noodle casserole I learned as a teenager. Please let me know if those recipes interest you.

Here's to old-fashioned, home cooking—American food, with all its varied international origins.

 

Texas Caviar - CORRECTION

 

            Yesterday, while stretched thin from worry about the dog and dealing with computer problems (my mouse wouldn't work), I posted the recipe for Texas caviar but left out an essential ingredient: the vinegar which gives it flavor. This morning, I am glad to report Sophie's fever is gone and she's eating, and Colin fixed my mouse over the phone. So I am a happy camper--and here is the corrected recipe.

Since I blogged about caviar last week, I thought it an easy transition to talk about Texas caviar this week. I thought everyone knew about Texas caviar, even non-Texans. After all I first ate it at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame Café in Santa Fe (now long gone). But a friend, a relative newcomer to Texas, wrote to ask what it is when I casually mentioned I’d made some. Simple answer: it’s marinated black-eyed peas. But there’s a story behind the dish.

The year was 1940, and Helen Corbitt, who would become the shining light of food service at Neiman Marcus, was working as an administrative dietitian at Cornell Medical Center in New York City. She had wanted to become a doctor, but her father informed her that because of the Depression, her family could not afford medical school. She majored in home economics at Skidmore College and embarked on a career as a dietitian. But she was unhappy with her life, longing for something more. Her job search was fruitless until an offer came from the University of Texas to teach a class in quantity cooking and manage the university faculty tearoom, which functioned as a laboratory for home ec students. When she got the offer, so legend says, she roared, “Who the hell wants to go to Texas?” She later amended that, saying she only learned to swear after she came to Texas.

She came to a land of brown food—beans, steak, bourbon in a brown bag—and she was appalled at how much her students didn’t know about cooking and food. Beef was barbecued, chicken-fried, or well done; potatoes were mashed or fried and topped with a glop of cream gravy; salads were wedges of lettuce topped with an orange dressing. This was the culinary landscape over which, in the next almost forty years, she wrought tremendous changes.

When she was just three weeks in Texas, she was challenged to create a banquet menu (if memory serves, it was for 300 people), using only products native to Texas. So she invented Texas caviar This is her original recipe—I just made it this week to use up the leftover New Year’s black-eyed peas, and it was delicious.

2 cans black-eyed peas

1 cup salad oil

¼ cup red wine vinegar

1 clove garlic

¼ cup thinly sliced onion

½ tsp. salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste.

           Drain peas and put in dish with a cover. Add remaining ingredients and stir to mix well. Refrigerate at least two days before serving and up to two weeks. Remove garlic clove after one day.

           The internet has countless recipes for Texas caviar with various ingredients—tomatoes, corn, lime juice, cumin. But the above is Helen Corbitt’s original recipe. Great as a dip with corn chips or serve as a salad in lettuce cups. And think of all the good luck you’ll have!

Caviar on my mind

New Year’s Eve makes me think of sparkling celebrations with champagne and caviar. Not that we had either one when I was growing up in Chicago. Mom and Dad saw the new year in with oyster stew. Mom was a terrific cook, and I don’t have many negative food memories from my childhood, but oyster stew probably tops the list. Those gray things floating in milk? As an adult, I Iove oysters, often order them fried or Rockefeller, am a bit afraid of raw though I consider them a treat. Truth is, I have little reason to associate champagne and caviar with the New Year celebration.

But I am intrigued by caviar, and lately I’ve been reading a bit about it. We’re talking about two things here: caviar and roe. True caviar is the unfertilized eggs from a sturgeon fish—not just any fish, but a sturgeon. The most common types of caviar are:  Beluga, Ossetra, Sterlet, White Sturgeon, Amur Sturgeon, Kaluga, Hackleback, and Sevruga. I would venture that few among us have eaten pure caviar. To say it’s pricey is an understatement.

Most grocery stores offer small portions of caviar—only it is not real caviar but roe. Roe is the unfertilized eggs of any fish except sturgeon. Trout roe is common (and bright red). Lumpfish is one of the most inexpensive roe offerings. What’s confusing is that roe is usually labeled with the fish of origin and the word caviar. So at my upscale market, you can get about an ounce and a half of Ossetra caviar (enough for two people) for $200, but you can get two ounces of black lumpfish caviar for $10 and the same amount of red salmon caviar for $20. People who dine on caviar frequently and have large budgets can probably discern a distinct difference. My palate is not anywhere near that sophisticated.

Because the sturgeon population was decimated in recent years, caviar today is mostly farmed—raised in tanks or other enclosures and fed pellets of special food. Some, particularly roe, is wild-caught, or some may come from fish raised in a hatchery until they are strong enough to survive and then released into the wild. There are subtle differences in taste, probably too subtle for my palate.

Some people are put off by caviar—it has a snobbish association (even the inexpensive varieties), it is often strong in flavor, and many (some of my family) don’t like the idea of fish eggs. I happen to like seafood and strong flavors, and I enjoy caviar, even the kind I can afford.

Experts advise buying caviar in a tin, though it often comes in a small glass jar. Either way, it should be kept very cold until used, and once opened must be eaten within 24 hours.

So what do you do with it? The simplest way to serve is to put a dab of sour cream on a sturdy potato chip and top with a smaller dab of roe—bright red salmon is nice. It is often served on blini (tiny Russian pancakes), again with sour cream. A dab of caviar will brighten scrambled or hard-boiled eggs or even a lemony capellini. The New York Times has a recipe online for a caviar sandwich and another for a sour cream dip topped with caviar and served with potato chips. A classic caviar plate has caviar in a small bowl, set in ice, and surrounded by small bowls of chopped hard-boiled egg, diced red onion, sour cream or crème fraiche, lemon wedges, and thin-sliced good white bread.

When I used to do large Christmas parties, my favorite caviar spread was the hit of the buffet table. I am sure I used lumpfish caviar (roe).

Caviar spread

2 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened

1 3-oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened (it is no longer sold in that size pkg. so just guess)

1 c. mayonnaise

1 small onion, grated

 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire

1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Dash of hot sauce

1 4-oz. jar black caviar

3-4 hard-cooked eggs, finely chopped

Chopped parsley

Mix first seven ingredients with electric mixer until smooth. Spoon into shallow serving dish. Top with caviar, eggs, and parsley. Serve with small pumpernickel breads.

Note that if you search caviar recipes online, you will be deluged with recipes for Texas or cowboy caviar. That’s a whole different thing, with an interesting story behind it. Watch for that in this blog next week.

 

Soup of the week, or what do we do with the turkey carcass?

 

Christmas night a lot of households will face that old question: what do we do with the turkey carcass? Some of my children roast the turkey in a disposable pan, and at the end of the meal just fold the carcass, picked as clean as reasonable, into the pan and pitch the whole thing. But I was raised by a mom who had lived through the Depression, and I grew up with a strict code of “Waste not, want not.” Mom boiled the turkey carcass. Mom also made what she called soup of the week, and it strikes me that turkey soup can easily be soup of the day, if not the week.

You really don’t need a recipe for turkey soup, though the internet is alive with them. You want to begin by simmering that carcass twenty-four hours or longer. This is admittedly something that can’t be done on a hot plate, at least not on my hot plate which automatically turns off after an hour. In my case, I’ll ask Jordan to simmer the bones in the main house. You want to add onion, celery, carrots (chunks are okay—no need to chop fine), maybe parsley, a bay leaf or two, salt and pepper so that the turkey stock has some flavor. Cover the bird with a generous amount of water, bring to a boil, and then simmer on low heat. Forever or so it seems. Your kitchen will smell wonderful.

When you are ready to make the soup, strain the broth off and finally discard that carcass and all the vegetables it cooked with. Then make your soup, and here’s where Mom’s soup of the week comes in. Don’t be limited to what a recipe says—create your own, using all those leftovers. Start with dicing leftover meat. Mashed potatoes? Stir them in—they’ll make the soup creamy. The ubiquitous green bean casserole? You might fish out the onion rings because by now they are soggy but dump in the rest of the casserole. Sweet potatoes are fine. So are almost any other vegetable you served—spinach, broccoli, turnips, carrots, peas, etc. Dressing will add great flavor. Taste for seasoning. If the broth is a bit bland, add a bouillon cube or some Better Than Bouillon. You’ll have a pot of soup that recreates Christmas dinner. And so easy! The only thing I probably wouldn’t put in the soup is cranberry in whatever form you served it. Or salad if you served one.

Creamy turkey soup with pasta

As I write, it is 15^o outside, which makes me think we’ll be eating soups for weeks to come. Want to adapt the soup of the week technique for other meals? Save even the tiniest bit of leftovers. If you’re feeding a family, you’ll probably accumulate enough leftovers for soup once a week. Rather than fill your freezer with a dab of this and a bite of that, make a soup container. Spinach casserole left one night? Put it in that container and freeze. Some chopped steak a few nights later? Dump it on the spinach and freeze. You need a bit of common sense here. Maybe start two soup containers—in Texas, we’d have one for chili, beans, things with Mexican or southwestern flavors, and another for meat-and-potatoes kinds of dishes.

To make soup: Defrost your odds and ends when you have enough. You’ll probably need something to bind them together as soup, so always keep concentrated broth (beef, chicken, or vegetable) on hand (I prefer Better Then Bouillon these days, but you can also use boxed broth or bouillon cubes) and canned, diced tomatoes. Use one or both. No matter what you use, soup of the week always seems to come out brown, but that’s okay. In Texas we’re known for brown food anyway—beef, beans, chicken-fried steak, and the like.

If you need to add to your soup pot, frozen corn is a great addition, along with frozen petite peas. Dice carrots, onion, celery (you can make a mire poix by sautéing those vegetables before adding); cooked potatoes, rice, egg noodles or even spaghetti will add bulk to your soup. I’ve read that adding cream cheese gives you a rich, creamy soup—but I have not tried. Let the soup simmer all day in a crockpot or low heat on a hot plate if you’re around to keep re-starting it. Just check occasionally that you don’t cook away all the broth. Season to taste—salt, pepper, garlic powder, herbs; cumin and oregano if you’re going for a chili or enchilada-based soup.

Leftovers? Use them to start a new soup. In fact, that bit of leftover Christmas turkey soup would make a great start on a new pot.

 

Quick and easy—mostly

 

Back in the day I used to give an annual Tree Trimming Party at Christmas. Each guest was asked to bring an ornament to hang on the tree. At the beginning of the evening there was a bare tree; at the end, there was always a festive, fully decorated tree. And I still have a wonderful collection of ornaments, each with a story. (Of course, there was the year the tree fell over, caught just in time by one quick guest.)

Weeks before the party, I began cooking. And days in advance, the dining table was spread with empty dishes, each with a little note indicating what as to go in that dish. The first year Christian saw those empty dishes, he told Jordan, “You and your mother have a screw loose.” Now he understands our methods.

My Christmas offering to you is some of the favorite recipes from those parties. Mostly, these are standard appetizers that were served twenty or thirty years ago, but you, like me, may have forgotten about them. So here’s a reminder.

Crab and cream cheese brick

Boston lettuce leaves

2 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese

6 oz. frozen snow crab (this is an old recipe and crab may not be available in that quantity; you can use canned crab if necessary)

Bottled cocktail sauce

Line serving platter with lettuce leaves. Place cheese bricks on lettuce. Flake the crab and drain well on paper towels, discarding any membranes, etc. Arrange crab on cheese bricks and drizzle with sauce. Be careful not to use too much sauce as it gets messy quickly. This is good with cocktail rye.

Bourbon hot dogs (my kids’ choice)

2 pkg. hot dogs, preferably kosher

¾ cup bourbon

2 cups ketchup

½ cup brown sugar

2 Tbsp. minced onion

Combine everything except the hot dogs and simmer until sugar melts. Cut hot dogs into chunks and add to sauce. Continue to simmer. Serve warm with toothpicks.

Sausage cheese balls

2 lbs. uncooked sausage – you choose hot, medium, or mild

1 lb. sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1-1/2 cups Bisquick or similar baking mixture

½ cup finely chopped celery

½ cup finely chopped onion

½ tsp, garlic powder

Mix everything together and form into one-inch balls. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 375^o for 15 minutes until golden brown. Makes 6 dozen.

Onion sticks

½ lb. butter, softened

One envelope onion soup mix

12 slices white bread, crusts removed

           Mix soup and butter together and spread evenly on bread. Cut each slice into five strips. Bake at 375^o on ungreased cookie sheet for ten minutes. Makes five dozen.

Imitation escargot

1 tube refrigerated crescent rolls

3 Tbsp. anchovy paste

2 Tbsp. butter

A dash of garlic powder

Unroll the dough on a lightly floured surface and press the seams together until you have four rectangles. Mix anchovy paste, butter, and garlic and spread evenly over each rectangle. Roll up, starting at narrow end. Slice into 1/2-inch pieces and place, cut side down, on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake twelve minutes at 350^o and serve warm. Makes twenty-eight rolls.

My favorite story about these is that once, when my children were very young, they saw a basket of imitation escargot ready to be served, mistook them for pecan rolls (they do look like the miniature pecan rolls they sometimes had for breakfast), and helped themselves. I’m not sure they’ve forgiven me to this day.

Happy Holidays!

 

 

 

 

 

Tis the season

 

Cheeseball.

As the holidays approach, many of us turn our thoughts to cooking those family favorites that have come down to us, perhaps through a generation or more. Maybe it’s the special cookie recipe your mom had or your dad’s favorite dressing recipe. Remember when we used to call it stuffing and it was inside the bird? No more. Food experts have told us that way lies food poisoning, and we serve it separately now—though I can’t recall anyone in my childhood getting sick on turkey dressing.

For me, two Christmas Eve dishes stand out—pickled shrimp and the family cheeseball. My kids still want the cheeseball at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sophisticated foodies tell us that a cheeseball is so retro! If you follow Facebook, which I admit I do without embarrassment or apology, you’ve seen those questioning memes: “Does anybody still eat this?” It may be salmon patties or meatloaf or, yes, cheeseball. In my household, the answer to all three is a resounding yes.

There are many versions of cheeseballs, but I’m happy to share with you the MacBain/Alter version:

Cheeseball

½ lb. Roquefort

1 pkg. Old English cheese (no longer available—I use an 8-oz. pkg of Velveeta)

l 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese

½ lb. pecans, chopped fine

1 bunch parsley, chopped fine

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 small onion, chopped fine         

½ tsp. horseradish (pure horseradish, not the horseradish cream sauce that is all over the markets these days)

Let the cheese soften to room temperature and mix thoroughly. Add Worcestershire, onion, horseradish, and half of the parsley and pecans. Mix thoroughly and shape into a ball. (Do not do this in the food processor, as it will become too runny. A mixer will make it too smooth and creamy—wash your hands thoroughly and dig in, so the finished cheese ball has some texture but no big chunks of cheese.) Roll the ball in the remaining parsley and pecans. Chill.

I like to serve this with Ritz crackers; Jordan prefers Wheat Thins; cocktail rye is also good.

To my surprise, cheese balls develop mold if refrigerated too long. But you can freeze this one for three to four months if you’re really preparing ahead for the holidays or if you have leftovers. Jordan and I took a huge one to Tomball at Thanksgiving and have another in the freezer. We’ll share with neighbors, and then, with leftovers, we’ll reshape and freeze, maybe for Twelfth Night. I suggested we could save it for her March birthday, but she claims it’s only to be eaten at the holidays.

 

Since I developed an allergy to shrimp in my twenties, we don’t serve pickled shrimp, but I long to have it again. For those of you who can eat shellfish, here’s my mom’s recipe.

Pickled shrimp

2-1/2 lb. shrimp

½ cup celery tops

3-1/2 tsp. salt

¼ cup mixed pickling spices

           Cover the above with boiling water and cook briefly, just until the shrimp are pink. Drain, cool, and peel the shrimp. (Note: don’t use pre-cooked shrimp—you need them to heat with the other ingredients).

           In  shallow dish, alternate layers of shrimp (sliced in half if you wish) and 2 cups sliced sweet onions. (Mom didn’t have sweet onions available, but I think they’re better.)

Combine:

1-1/2 cups salad oil

¾ cup white vinegar

1-1/2 tsp. salt

2-1/2 Tbsp. capers with juice

Dash of Tabasco

           Mix well and pour over shrimp and onions. Cover and let stand in refrigerator for at least twenty-four hours before serving. Will keep a week, refrigerated.

Happy Holidays                                                                                            

 

 

Time for some bean soup

 

 

Black bean soup

Growing up in Chicago, I knew only what Texans call “northern beans” and I was taught were Boston baked beans—we’d open a can and season it with brown sugar or molasses. Ketchup, mustard, onion. Pretty much, it was a kitchen sink dish. When I moved to Texas (well over fifty years ago), I discovered pintos. I was leery, especially of refritos, which I first ate at Joe T. Garcia’s where I was overwhelmed by dishes I’d never heard of and, at first, ate tentatively. But I learned to love TexMex and to cook pinto beans. And I gave up cooking “northern” beans. I still love them, but Bush’s Original tastes just like home to me.

In recent years, I’ve really broadened my bean menu. I learned, for instance, that I could never cook black beans soft enough. I buy the canned. And lately I’ve learned a new trick: you don’t always have to drain and rinse beans. It depends on what you’re doing with them. Before, I was a bit disdainful of that thick, syrupy liquid, but it turns out it’s packed with flavor and vitamins. I learned this making the easiest black bean soup ever. I may never do it another way. I adapted this from America’s Test Kitchen.

Black bean soup

2 cans black beans

2 cups chicken broth

1 4 oz. can green chilis

¼ cup milk (as needed—I don’t like bean soup too thin)

¼ cup plain Greek yogurt

Lime wedges and cilantro to serve

Three things are key to this soup: Do not drain the beans; process about half the beans until they are thick and smooth; be generous with the lime juice.

Simmer beans, broth, and chilis until the mixture begins to thicken. Put about half the mixture in food processor, run until smooth, and return to the pan. Simmer until heated through to serving temperature. If the consistency is too thick, thin with a bit of milk but do it gradually.

To serve: pour soup into bowls or soup plates and top with a generous dollop o f yogurt and a sprig of cilantro. Serve with lime wedges.

Want a white bean soup? Here’s one I adapted from Cook’s Kitchen. The big difference here is the use of pickled celery for garnish. My dinner guest kept saying, “I’ve never had pickled celery.” It was different and good.

To pickle celery:

½ cup rice vinegar

1 scant Tbsp. sugar

½ tsp. salt

1 celery rib, minced

           Heat first four ingredients until simmering. Add celery off heat and let it sit for fifteen or twenty minutes while you make the soup. Drain and set aside.

The soup:

2 Tbsp. olive oil

½ cup chopped onion

1 celery rib, minced

½ tsp. dried thyme

2 garlic cloves, minced

A pinch of cayenne (optional but it adds a good spark)

2 cans white beans, undrained

2 Tbsp. fresh grated Parmesan or Pecorino

2 cups chicken broth

2 Tbsp. butter

Lemon wedges

Sauté onion and celery in olive oil until soft. Add thyme, cayenne, and garlic and cook for a minute. Then add undrained beans and simmer until heated through.

At this point, use an immersion blender if you have it and want a smooth soup. If  you want some chunky beans in  your soup, remove half the beans to the processor. Add Parmesan, 1 cup broth, and butter. Process until smooth and return to the bean mixture. Stir in remaining broth a bit at a time until you get the thickness you want. Heat to desired serving temperature.

Serve in soup plates. Garnish with the celery. Serve with lemon wedges.

So guess what we’re having for dinner tonight? Rice bowls with chicken, black beans, and chopped fresh vegetables. Yep, we’ll drain those beans.