With three boys, a daughter, and son-in-law coming home for the Holidays, hearty, comforting dishes are in order for those days between festivities. This is a favorite! Linda G. wrote me with memories of her great aunt Caroline, a Chicago career woman who was also a seamstress, cook & baker. The dish Caroline used to make that Linda misses most combined bread, pork chops, sauerkraut and apples—a yummy mix originally celebrated in Southern Germany. Continue Reading…
Homemade chicken soup may be a comfort for body and soul, but tuck that beautiful stock, chicken and vegetables under cover of a flaky pie crust and you’re going one better! Fabulous hot from the oven, and just as good chilled, sliced and reheated the next day with a bit of cheddar, savory pies are a favorite of mine. My corn pie is a summer wonder. I love curried lamb pie with some silky whipped turnips served alongside. Piquant picadillo empanadas and Louisiana-style Natchitoches porkpies (a recipe I need to put up for you! ) are also so good. The list goes on : )
But for the fall and winter, with family coming home, this is a great dish to have on hand. Continue Reading…
I didn’t have the chance to visit 4000-year-old Otzi The Iceman, oldest mummy in Europe, at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, while I was in Italy. But I was amused to learn that the last meal he ate may have included a very rough version of pancakes, based on the highly-processed einkorn scientists found in his belly.
Pancakes, it seems, are one of the world’s longest-standing culinary creations. Stone Age pancakes may have been made of ground cattails, mixed with water and baked on hot rocks. The earliest known pancake in China, made of millet meal, dates back to the 4th century B.C. Ancient Greeks ate a version called kreion with honey. Native Americans made theirs of cornmeal. And from all of these far-flung origins there developed crepes, galettes and eventually, the pancakes we know today.
In my household, allegiances swing widely, from thin-battered crepes, to earthy buckwheat cakes, to fat and fluffy buttermilk pancakes. Sometimes a Saturday thing, they have the power to coax late-sleepers out of bed, and, nothing says “company brunch” more comfortingly. But as much as we like all of the above, our newest favorite is actually a gluten and sugar free pancake made of sweet rice flour called a crespelle. It’s a bit like a crepe, and includes milk and eggs in the batter, but no sugar. The texture reminds me of a blintz, with a satisfying bit of chew to it. Continue Reading…
Berries and cream have been a thing as long cows and brambley hedges have roamed and rambled across the British countryside. “Fooles”–desserts of tart, sugared fruit, simmered, crushed and mixed with cream, were first mentioned in British texts in 1598, but some food historians think they may go back as far as the 15th century. In America, fools led the way to “fridge cakes” billowy fruit-mousse desserts with whimsical names like “marlowes” and “mallowbets” that emerged with the advent of the electrically powered refrigerator. Continue Reading…
A thing is the sum of its parts. If the parts are stellar the whole can be a beautiful thing. Take Seven Layer Salad for example. An American creation of the 1950s borne out of someone’s need for “quick, tasty and feeds-a-crowd,” the salad has popped up at picnics, on home buffets and at community dinners ever since. Classically, it’s built in a glass dish and includes layers of chopped lettuce, tomato, hard-cooked egg, cucumber, sharp cheddar cheese, bacon, green onion, a thick mayo-sour-cream dressing and lots of sweet peas. The recipe’s provenance is thought to be Southern, but it doesn’t appear in my regional cooking tomes (Clementine Paddleford, Helen Corbitt, etc.) just community cookbooks where it was initially referred to as “Seven Layer Pea Salad.”
I’ve always loved the “green” scent of peas, their looks, their shape, their shoots, and how they “pop” when you bite them. But there are few recipes that really let peas shine. In this salad, they are at their best. Continue Reading…
Gorgeously colored from ruby to pinky-red with blushes of celery green that take on a satiny-sheen in the light, rhubarb is soooo pretty. It’s also delightfully odd. Super-tart rhubarb is actually a perennial vegetable, not a fruit, in spite of being called the “pie plant” in 19th century cookbooks. It comes in season in April peaks in June and if you’re lucky, hangs around in the home garden until September. It has a very distinct aroma—sharp, sort of vegetal funky—and if I had to put a color to the scent: red-brown. And although it very-much resembles celery (with its fleshy stalks and “strings,”) unlike celery, rhubarb cooks VERY quickly, and the strings entirely disappear, making it a lovely choice for topping this sweet-tart of an upside-down cake. Continue Reading…
It’s been a while since I’ve been to Beeville, TX. Not far from Normanna, Orangedale and Skidmore, it’s the Bee County seat, built around a typical Texas town square with an enormous Renaissance Revival courthouse at the center. It’s not like there’s a plaque or anything, but ask around, and you may find old timers who know the town’s connection to America’s long-lingering flavor obsession: Red Velvet. Yep. When chemist John A. Adams pulled up stakes in Michigan to move his family in 1905, this was where he landed, launching the eponymous food-coloring and additives firm in Austin that truly put the “Red” in Red Velvet. Continue Reading…
January being a time of new beginnings, it’s not surprising I’ve heard from readers and friends searching for the healthy recipes they once saved but now lost : ) I told them what I’m telling you: Keep it simple and feel free to experiment! Some of my favorite daily put-togethers are salads that combine the varied textures and tastes of hot & cold ingredients, and, that don’t weigh you down with too much meat or fat. Which brings me to this bowl. A mix of peppery baby arugula, with the mellow smoothness of oven roast potato, onion and garlic, and crisp-oven “fried” brussels sprout petals on top, this dish also stars red quinoa which is gluten-free, and the only plant-based protein to have all nine essential amino acids. Pulling it all together? A drizzle of paprika-spiked tahini-lemon dressing. This bowl works very well at lunch. To make that easy-doable, prepare the quinoa & roasted veg the night before and then microwave quick-heat those ingredients when you toss the salad together next day. Continue Reading…
Using freshly made poultry-bone stock to make your gravy yields a result that is truly liquid gold. To make the stock for the gravy, you’ll roast the bones from two chickens or one turkey first with onions and garlic, and then a second time for three hours, covered in water. Deglazing the pan with white wine and adding mushrooms and thyme adds extra flavor. Chicago chef Mike Sheerin shared his technique with me a few years back and I use it frequently. Bonus: View our marvelous mashed potatoes recipe using best-of methods from Mike and another famed Chicago chef, Matthias Merges. Continue Reading…
Chicago chef Mike Sheerin has been making the mashed potatoes at family gatherings since he was six years old. On one childhood holiday, “I had the unfortunate timing of catching my mother on the phone with one of her sisters in California,” Sheerin laughs, recounting that first mashed moment. “She was trying to mash the potatoes and talk on the phone at the same time—and this was before cordless phones.” Giving up on the effort, Mike’s mom handed him a towel, poured milk and butter in the hot potatoes, “And I went to town mashing them,” says Sheerin. “I kept pushing down the masher and lifting just enough to catch a little air to lighten them. I wasn’t even thinking about what I was doing at the time, but somehow, they were pretty amazing.”
In the decades since, Sheerin has perfected his methods. We asked him, and another famed chef, Matthias Merges, to please share, because who hasn’t messed up the mashed on at least one occasion? Too wet, too dry, gluey or pasty, mashed potato fails, well, FAIL. Both chefs obliged with top tips, and a great recipe. Continue Reading…