This recipe story moves from Chicago to England to California and back again : ) It started back when I was doing Lost Recipes Found as a Chicago Tribune column. A woman wrote in to say she’d heard you could boil an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk to make some kind of dessert, and could I find it? Imagining exploding tins of hot milk, I tossed that request into the “not likely” bin and moved on. Until this… Continue Reading…
The waitress at Ernie Risser’s family restaurant in Womelsdorf, PA, watches me looking dubiously at the gravy boat she plunked down with the corn pie I ordered. Assuming we’re in cahoots, she leans in, whispers, “I like to eat corn pie with hot milk, too!” and winks conspiratorially. Whisking away the gravy she returns with a little pitcher of milk. Stranger and stranger, think I, new to these small town Pennsylvania gustatory habits. The savory pie wasn’t bad, though bland. But before I left, it had me plotting something more flavorful & akin to my Midwest upbringing: Homemade creamed corn with bacon and onion. What if I put THAT in a flaky pie crust? The result is this lovely recipe. Continue Reading…
Anchovies, chives, parsley, wine vinegar, sour cream…the original Green Goddess dressing was created by Chef Phillip Roemer of San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in 1923 for a banquet in honor of actor George Arliss who was starring in William Archer’s play, “The Green Goddess.” Add some minced garlic and zowie-wowie! It becomes a potent dip like this one we found in a 1940s “Let’s Eat Red Dot Potato Chips” company flyer. Continue Reading…
My mom loved pimiento cheese. She had an old box grater and used to make me shred mounds of cheddar to prepare the spread from scratch, keeping it in the fridge next to jars of pickled peppers so hot even the brine made my eyes water. Hers was the simple cheese-mayo-pimiento blend. But remembering those jars of jalapenos, I thought, why not add a little more kick? Continue Reading…
Preserving lemons in salt is an ancient practice with delicious results. I am crazed for these, eating them sliced and diced on simple vegetable meals, even rice and beans. Continue Reading…
Here’s a little-known fact: Early corn-dog purveyor Ed Waldmire, Jr., wanted to call his corn-dog stand “The Crusty Cur”….his wife convinced him to change the name to “Cozy Pup.” Like most other American fried-food-on-a-stick, batter-fried weiner wands have state fair connections. Vaudeville actors Carl and Neil Fletcher abandoned their Dallas song-and-dance act tent show in 1938 when the Texas State Fair offered them the chance to operate a food booth. The two had read about a man in the Oaklawn neighborhood of Dallas who was baking corn-battered hotdogs in molds, and the idea intrigued them, so the brothers set out to improve on the product. They perfected their batter-dipped and fried corn dog in time for the 1942 Texas State Fair. Continue Reading…
This is the corn relish recipe that has won self-professed “ribbon slut” Barb Schaller eight blue ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair. (Those, and a mock marriage proposal from Garrison Keillor.) Crunchy, colorful and easy to make (well…mostly easy–cutting all of the corn off the cobs takes a little practice), the relish cooks up in 30 minutes flat. Follow Ball canning instructions to can, or, store finished relish in refrigerator.
This beautiful cake is our family-birthday must. After I researched this story about it and developed the recipe, with input from the Dressel family, the Chicago Tribune ran a little feature on my work, and–I’m pleased to say, liked it as much as we do : )
Here’s the original story…
There’s no clue that the breezy, grass-covered, empty lot at 66th and Ashland was once the master plant of Chicago’s most famous bakery, or, that the red brick storefront at 33rd and Wallace was its first location. Although gone without a trace, Dressel’s Bakery was for 60-plus years the maker of Chicago’s beloved Chocolate Fudge Whipped Cream Cake. Continue Reading…
The berry world has its less-than-romantic nomenclature. I mean, “straw” or “rasp” don’t scream, “Eat me!” But those berries eclipsed their names to become berry rockstars. But serviceberries? Few here in the U.S. know they are edible. I’d love to change that! Reddish-purple, shaped & textured like a small blueberry but with more “red-berry” flavor, serviceberries are the fruit of one of America’s favorite ornamental trees. Known as saskatoons in Canada, serviceberries have also been called sugarplums, juneberries and shadblow.
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I am a strawberry girl. I eat strawberries out of hand, make pies & jams with them, macerate them, even grill and pepper them. So imagine my delight at finding myself kneedeep in Pete Ambrose’s organic strawberry patch on Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina. Continue Reading…