cooking

50s Food is Pretty Tasty!

Nibbles

Or so said Todd, midway through my latest Junior League cookbook week. I’m not exactly inclined to disagree, either!

Monday we met up with friends at George and Louie’s for a much-needed catch-up session. Considering the restaurant has a retro feel with it’s sign and it’s music, I’m going to say that it was a happy accident to make it fit in with the rest of the week (well, most of it).

Italian Pizza Pie with Savory String Bean Salad

Italian Pizza Pie with Savory String Bean Salad

Tuesday kicked off the tour through the original River Road Recipes (affiliate link), published in 1959, with Italian Pizza Pie and Savory String Bean Salad. Like last time, I’m including the images of the recipes rather than typing them out because part of the undeniable charm of these sorts of cookbooks is the look of them. Transcribing them just insn’t enough!

River Road Recipes, page 89

River Road Recipes, page 89

Yes, pizza night, and the pizza was very good for being a simple ground beef and cheese combo. While the recipe called for roll mix (and I’d originally planned to use gluten-free Bisquick for that step), I ended up buying the Schar gluten-free pizza crusts. I’ve had their bread before and it was a little iffy, but these pizza crusts were amazing! It may have helped that I added garlic olive oil to the crust, some of which seeped through the docking marks, meaning the bottom of the crust “fried” in the olive oil as it baked, but whatever. I’m definitely buying those crusts again.

River Road Recipes, page 34

River Road Recipes, page 34

The side dish was the real surprise. It was a bed of lettuce topped with dressed green beans, topped with egg salad. But that egg salad, though. It had bacon in it. I’m pretty sure I’ve made egg salad sandwiches somewhere in my past that had bacon on top, but this was very next-level. If you like bacon and egg salad, chop up some bacon and added to the egg salad next time and let it sit for a bit before eating it. Trust me.

Lemon Pork Chops + Eggplant Supreme

Lemon Pork Chops + Eggplant Supreme

Wednesday was another winner of Lemon Pork Chops and Eggplant Supreme.

River Road Recipes, page 84

River Road Recipes, page 84

Making some rice or noodles would not have gone amiss with the very tomato-ey Lemon Pork Chops, as there was a fair amount of gravy left over.

River Road Recipes, page 55

River Road Recipes, page 55

Eggplant is rather hit-or miss for Todd, but I keep searching for ways to prepare it that he might like. This Eggplant Supreme was a surprise win with the celery, bell peppers, and cheese. The bits of Worcestershire and hot sauces weren’t super-strong, but they definitely added a little something to the dish!

Thursday was a bit of a rough day at the office, resulting in a tension headache that just wouldn’t go away until sometime after 8pm. I didn’t feel up to cooking, so Todd picked up sushi for us.  Maybe not the standard headache “cure” but it worked for me, that night!

Shrimp Floridian en Papillote + Baked Potatoes with Sour Cream

Shrimp Floridian en Papillote + Baked Potatoes with Sour Cream

Friday I was back in the kitchen with a little Shrimp Floridian en Papillote (try saying that without a Justin Wilson accent, I dare ya!) along with some Baked Potatoes with Sour Cream.

River Road Recipes, page 113

River Road Recipes, page 113

Usually en papillote would have me making parchment paper packets but this recipe just called for cooking it in a covered dish. You will not see me complaining about this fact. The combination of blue cheese, cream cheese, garlic, and white wine (a Florida muscadine wine, because we had it in the fridge) was quite good, and could have easily been a topping for pasta or the baked potatoes we had with it.

River Road Recipes, page 60

River Road Recipes, page 60

Now, why would we feel the need to have a recipe for baked potatoes–isn’t that pretty simple and straight-forward? Yes, but there was something special about the sour cream mix, namely the addition of celery salt and a little hot sauce. It wasn’t a lot, but it did change the overall flavor of the topping in a very tasty way.

Pot Roast in Red Wine + Sour Cream Noodles

Pot Roast in Red Wine + Sour Cream Noodles

This past Saturday was the first in a long time that I got to just spend at home, working in my pjs in The Abyss, and not having to go into Tallahassee, since the beginning of July. It was heaven. So was the Pot Roast in Red Wine and the accompanying Sour Cream Noodles.

River Road Recipes, page 79

River Road Recipes, page 79

I usually do anything pot roast-related in the slow cooker for ease and consistency. I stuck to the stove top this time and took my luxury of time at home to let it cook nice and slow for a few hours. Worth. It. I’m not 100% sold on baking the noodles for an hour (I think I did just 30 minutes), but the combo of the sour cream noodles and the rich pot roast gravy was reminiscent of beef stroganoff, so yeah. Very tasty.

Sunday Night Quickie

Sunday Night Quickie

If Saturday was my day home to play, Sunday was the make-up day as I made my pilgrimage to the old office for a couple of hours. But I had an ulterior motive as there was a planner meet-up that afternoon that I wanted to go to. This meant I didn’t get home until after 6, though, so something called a Sunday Night Quickie sounded like a good supper option.

River Road Recipes, page 71

River Road Recipes, page 71

Essentially it’s scrambled eggs on toast but mixing in a can of chicken noodle soup? Color me intrigued. It was surprisingly tasty and not overly salty like I thought it might have been. Go figure. Breakfast for dinner is nothing new around here. of course, which is why I felt semi-confident about putting it on the menu in the first place. I think, were I ever to make this one again, I might opt for some grilled tomato slices on the side or something just to brighten up the plate.

So that wraps up our trek through the 50s, or does it? I never got to the poultry chapter and there were plenty of other intriguing recipes–do I stay in the 50s for my next week in the kitchen or shall I turn the clock back further? Time will tell!

A Blast from Recipe’s Past!

Nibbles
Tassies are basically tarts, but they are so much better than just mini pecan pies.

Tassies are basically tarts, but they are so much better than just mini pecan pies.

Last weekend I was in the mood to bake just for fun, and I decided to make some Tea Time Tassies from the Junior League cookbook that has long been a family staple: River Road Recipes. There are three volumes of RRR these days [I take that back, there are now four!] and the first two are what I grew up browsing through. When I moved out of the house after high school, Mom gifted me a set of I and II of my own.

The funny thing is, though, that while I wouldn’t feel at home without them, I almost never cook from them. Holidays are usually the only time I consistently grab them because holidays are the only time we cook “home food” like what is in these books. The first volume is from the 50s, the second from the 70s, and like a lot of fundraiser cookbooks, they have their fair share of questionable includes. But throw-backs are fun, and not just for Thursdays, so I thought, since I had it out anyway, why not cook from this book all week?

Mexican Chef Salad

Mexican Chef Salad

Monday started off with a Mexican Chef Salad that really did remind me of some of the food I grew up eating. I also found it highly amusing that Doritos were a legit part of my shopping list for this week.

River Road Recipes II, page 48

River Road Recipes II, page 48

Now, I opted for hominy as my bean substitute and used my own homemade taco seasoning mix. While the recipe brought me back to my childhood with its fairly simple flavors, I cannot for one minute deny the tastiness of the meal. I wouldn’t necessarily serve it for company, but I will remember how well Thousand Island dressing pairs with taco meat the next time I crave a taco salad.

Sushi Rice Bow + Teriyaki Chicken

Sushi Rice Bow + Teriyaki Chicken

Tuesday’s dinner didn’t come from RRR but it almost could have. I’d been craving a Sushi Rice Bowl and decided to marinate some chicken tenderloins in teriyaki sauce and call it a day. This batch of seasoned sushi rice featured steamed carrots, sweet potatoes, eggplant, and cucumber, plus avocado, sesame seeds, and strips of nori. Still one of my favorite go-to meals and very versatile for clearing out leftover veggies in the crisper.

Wednesday was an off night thanks to Mr. Duncan of the puppy puberty Duncans. He was being particularly insufferable so I opted to pick up Jimmy John’s for supper and call it a night.

Pork Chops and Turnips + Swiss Green Beans

Pork Chops and Turnips + Swiss Green Beans

No need to adjust your color settings, this meal really is that brown. You know, sometimes Todd and I will have a night where cook up a bunch of appetizers and have that for dinner. These nights are referred to as brown-food nights since most things are breaded, fried, or naturally tan in color.

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River Road Recipes II, page 118

River Road Recipes II, page 70

River Road Recipes II, page 70

Thursday was an unintentional brown-food night between the turnips (tinted from the Worcestershire Sauce) and the Swiss cheese and corn flakes-topped green beans. Despite the bland color, the turnips were a very good pairing for the pork chops, and something we’ll like do again in the fall. The green beans were interesting but probably will not appear on our table in the future.

Carbonnade de Boeuf

Carbonnade de Boeuf

A variation on a traditional beef stew, Friday’s Carbonnade de Boeuf was surprisingly tasty and filling.

River Road Recipes II, page 103

River Road Recipes II, page 103

I opted to leave the bacon in the pot and not play hokey-pokey with the beef and the dish certainly did not suffer. Since we also do not own a dutch oven (the hows and whys of which were discussed at length over the meal, in fact, and we both agree we would get good use out of one, I just haven’t been able to ever pull the trigger on the Le Cruset I’ve been lusting over for years) I let this simmer on the stove for maybe an hour. I also added a spare red bell pepper we had in the fridge and bought fresh parsley for this dish–I think the parsley and the quality of the beer used have a lot of bearing on how tasty the final dish is.

Since I’ve been working at my old job on Saturdays, I feel like I only get single-day weekends lately. This is to make up for all those 3-day weekends in May and June in the cosmic order of things, but still. Anticipating this, I’d planned a no-cook night for Saturday and we ended up at the local Chinese buffet.

Chicken Jerusalem + Baked Pepper-Cheese Squash

Chicken Jerusalem + Baked Pepper-Cheese Squash

We finished out the week with what just might be my favorite recipe so far. Chicken with artichoke hearts is something we done in several permutations over the years and was just as good in this iteration.

River Road Recipes II, page 152

River Road Recipes II, page 152

River Road Recipes II, page 75

River Road Recipes II, page 75

It’s the squash that was absolutely amazing and I’m already planning to have it on the holiday table for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I did not boil the squash, that just sounded like a recipe for mush to me, and I think it was a good call. I also used the green part of a leek instead of onion rings and seasoned gluten-free breadcrumbs. I was concerned, at first, that it didn’t call for any salt and I was expecting it to be bland. Apparently the bacon and pepper-jack cheese were enough, though, because there was no lack of flavor nor was the pepper overpowering. Definitely a keeper recipe!

I’m very tempted to do this again for my next cooking week, and then I remembered this old set of recipe cards I have, the Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library from 1971. There’s a good chance those recipe cards will be appearing here in the future and the chances of a jello mold being required are rapidly rising!

Thank Heavens for Freezer Meals

Nibbles

Between the changes at work and our new family of three, last week was one of those that I could have easily bailed on cooking any given night and not felt very guilty at all. The fact that I only skipped one planned meal in favor of take-out is a small victory.

Home-cooked meals from May 2-8, 2016

Home-cooked meals from May 2-8, 2016

Check out the video right here: https://youtu.be/aNylk87DuQ0

Monday: Sweet Potato Cake Turkey Burgers + Side Salad + Grapes
Super simple freezer meal number one–this one didn’t even need defrosting! I believe the patty recipe came from Multiply Delicious and I just subbed turkey for chicken as the former is way easier to find and frequently on sale. I also doubled the recipe to make 12 patties or 3 meals at a time. We’ll definitely be making another batch because they are just so simple to have on hand and very tasty.

Tuesday: Chicken Curry with Cabbage and Peppers + Basmati Rice
Never a bad time for a good curry, this was our first try of the recipe from Loving My Nest and I think it’s a keeper. A freezer meal, yes, but I didn’t bother with the crock pot and it was the right call–the chicken may have become mealy if it cooked all day. Now, I believe I added a can of coconut milk to the mix before I froze it and, yes, it “broke” a bit (separated) when I cooked it. Would I do it again? Maybe, maybe not. I was just trying to avoid planning this meal and forgetting to have a can of coconut milk on hand and while it affected the appearance slightly, the taste didn’t suffer one bit. And, yes, I’d definitely use coconut milk over cows milk for this curry and pretty much any curry.

Wednesday: Cod Creole + Parmesan Orzo + Green Beans
What is it with me and forgetting to actually buy the fish I put on the menu?! I stuck it out this time, though, and it was definitely worth it. Cod is not only a very milk white fish it also doesn’t tend to fish-up the house when cooked. And this preparation from Hello Spoonful is just so simple it’s hard to beat! The one brand of gluten-free orzo we can find is a love-hate thing for us. We love orzo and have many dishes that call for it, but the gluten-free version puts out so much starch while boiling that it really does resemble risotto by the end more so than plain pasta. Straining it is a joke, so I usually don’t even bother, just mixing it into whatever else I had in mind and going with the flow.

Thursday: Broiled Steak + Mexican Street Corn Salad
Mmmm, Cinco de Mayo–as if we needed an excuse to have Mexican food for dinner, but I’m happy to take it anyway. The meal was mostly about the salad, which I found over on Live Eat Learn. I could have eaten a large bowl of this salad and skipped the steak and not been deprived whatsoever–I can totally see us making it again. We did a few substitutions, though. Normally I’d swap hominy for beans in most recipes, but since we were already focusing on the corn, I opted for some zucchini and yellow squash that needed to be used from the crisper. Also, while I adore feta and cotija cheese, we had a sizeable block of white cheddar leftover from my party and I shredded that up into the salad instead. I also cooked most of the ingredients for a bit to soften the squash and peppers up. I’m sure there are endless variations one could make on this salad and not go wrong–some halved cherry tomatoes come to mind, and maybe some avocado chunks, too?

Friday: Take out!
I debated making breakfast for dinner, but my heart wasn’t in it. Instead I picked up fried chicken and fixings and enjoyed the hell out of it!

Saturday: Sweet Potato Carbonara with Spinach and Eggplant
Since Todd isn’t a mushroom fan and they’re pretty High-FODMAP to boot, I substituted eggplant for the mushrooms in this recipe from Eating Well. Even though my sweet potato “noodles” didn’t hold their shape, this was a very filling, very tasty dish overall and I would encourage you to try it, even if yours ends up a bit more like a sweet potato vegetable hash like ours did.

Sunday: Shepherd’s Pie-Stuffed Potatoes + Jicama Citrus Salad
I’m sure you’ve seen those quick-cut videos of inventive food on Facebook, right? Have you actually tried any of them out? Well, I can now say that I have and it wasn’t that bad! While I did neglect to add additional liquid to make up for the thirstyness of the coconut flour I used, everything went more or less according to plan in this recipe/video from Tip Hero. I even dug out my large star pastry tip to pipe the potatoes onto the top! The salad though, that was a disappointment since my jicama ended up well past it’s use-by date (something a little hard to tell with the leathery outside to judge by). I will attempt the salad again, though, as I really do love jicama in cold salads.

Booze tip: I totally took a short cut on the citrus salad and bought the large container of pre-sliced fruit in extra-light syrup. If you are a fan of  greyhounds (the drink, not the dog, though they are lovely dogs), save said syrup and mix with your favorite gin for an slightly sweeter version of this simple libation. Fabulous, refreshing, and super-quick.

And that’s another week’s menu! I hope you got some good ideas from what was on our plates this week and have an excellent week in your own kitchen! Remember, it doesn’t have to be “gourmet” to be good, or even great. Make what you like, mix things up a bit, get some variety in there, and enjoy your meals!

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry + View From the Countertop #2 (video)

Nibbles

Once again I filmed this past week’s meal prep and, since I had a request after the last one, added narration to the video instead of music (maybe next time I’ll do both, depending on time).

(Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Countertop #2)

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

With the Luau the weekend before and so many delicious leftovers in the fridge, it’s probably no surprise that half of this week was made up from those.

Monday: Pulled Pork Sliders + Potato Salad
See the Luau post to get the links for the potato salad. I chopped up some of the leftover pork and mixed it with the tart bbq sauce from Fallin’s for our sliders. Easy and perfect for a Monday night supper.

Tuesday: Hawaiian Chicken Legs + Sweet Leilani Luau Salad
As I mention in the video, I’d planned to make chicken salad with the leftover legs, adding pineapple and macadamia nuts into my usual chicken salad recipe. But bad news at work had me seriously considering ice cream for supper, so I feel somewhat proud of myself for eating real food. (And let’s not kid ourselves, I had a good helping of ice cream afterwards.)

Wednesday: Beef Stir Fry + Brown Rice
Freezer meals to the rescue. Yes, we could have still been eating leftovers but I figured we needed a change of pace so pulled out one of the recent freezer meal additions. It’s a pretty simple kit: vegetables, beef, and sauce (a few tablespoons of sauce is added to the packet of beef as a marinade). I added half a head of cabbage we had in the crisper and it was a good thing I did. I’ll be adding that to the notes on my freezer meal spreadsheet–the meal would have been a little light without it!

Thursday: Luau Leftovers
They pick up our trash on Friday mornings so it was a good idea to eat, freeze, or toss anything left from the party at this point. Plus, the work news from Tuesday was/is the type to hang out all week, so a night with no cooking duties was appreciated.

Friday: Shrimp & Eggplant Curry with Cellophane Noodles
A kitchen experiment that totally worked, we enjoyed it so much that I’ve transcribed it from memory/video so you can try it, too. This is a Thai-style curry so it’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and totally delicious. The basic cubes are the little freezer cubes of chopped basil I’ve found at Trader Joe’s. They’re nice to keep on hand for recipes like this when you can’t always count on having fresh basil in the crisper. The lemongrass paste is another quick tip, found in the produce section by the fresh herbs, we also buy cilantro and ginger in paste form from time to time.

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry

serves 4

2 T olive oil
1 T garlic olive oil
1 large eggplant, peeled and diced
1 bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 package cellophane noodles plus water to cover
2 T Thai red curry paste
2 T grated ginger
1 T lemongrass paste
2 basil cubes (or 2 t dried basil)
1 can coconut milk
12 oz medium shrimp

Pour hot water over rice noodles in a bowl large enough to hold the bricks of noodles and an inch of water above. Let the noodles soak while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Heat olive oils in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat.

Add bell pepper and eggplant to pan and saute until peppers start to soften slightly and eggplant edges start to brown.

Stir in curry paste, ginger, lemongrass, and basil, then stir in coconut milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer until vegetables are fully cooked.

Add shrimp, simmer and stir for about a minute, then turn off the burner and let the heat of the coconut milk mixture to finish cooking to shrimp (this helps prevent over cooking the seafood). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Drain the cellophane noodles (I find a pasta scoop works best for this, as the noodles are so small as to slip through most colanders with ease) and mix them into the shrimp and vegetables, stirring to distribute the sauce throughout.

Enjoy!

I think I’ve stumbled upon the perfect combination in eggplant and coconut milk. Usually you’d salt and press the eggplant to draw out any bitterness but, I admit, I was lazy this time and skipped that step. But the slight sweetness of the coconut milk seems to have counteracted any bitterness in the eggplant because it was the second best eggplant I’ve ever had and Todd really enjoyed it as well! (The best being this sweet eggplant dish that Bahn Thai sometimes has on their lunch buffet, it’s absolutely amazing; they leave the skin on and it’s still the best eggplant ever.)

Saturday: Corned Beef Hash + Eggs
Lazy Saturday, I slept in, it rained all day, Todd napped in the afternoon. Yeah, we did nothing much of importance and it was just fine, so a late supper of breakfast seemed like a good idea to both of us.

Sunday: Zuppa Toscana
It rained almost all of Easter Sunday as well, and since we’d all just gotten together for Todd’s birthday last weekend we’d decided to forgo a family Easter event. I grabbed the pouch of Zuppa Toscana from 12tomatoes was a good answer to an unplanned Sunday supper. Rainy weather is perfect soup weather and this one was pretty tasty. It’s been so long since I’ve been to Olive Garden I really can’t say whether it’s a convincing copycat recipe or not, but we definitely enjoyed it. Maybe next time I’ll actually plan ahead and make some fresh bread sticks to go with it.

And that work news I keep mentioning, it does deserve an explanation, but this isn’t the right post for it. I’ll try to organize my thoughts about it for the next one.

Tuesday Reviews-Day: Sous Chef by Michael Gibney

Tuesday Revews-Day

When Hell’s Kitchen first aired in 2005 I remember my mom complaining about Gordon Ramsay’s combative tone and frequent swearing. All I could respond with was, yeah, that sounds about right. I was about 5 years out of Culinary School and no longer working in hospitality at all, but what I saw on the episodes I’d seen reminded me a lot of Gil, the executive chef when I started at the Plantation, who had a favorite phrase of resigned disappointment (F— me sideways with a brick) and a hatred of being called Sir (which, in the South, takes a lot of effort to break that habit).

souschef_cover

A professional kitchen is not just a bigger, busier version of dinnertime at home, it’s a well-oiled machine that relies on a handful of people juggling a lot of roles in too little space with too little time. It’s carefully orchestrated chaos. And Michael Gibney does an excellent job of describing 24 hours of that chaos, and the life and reasons behind it, in Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line.

Using second-person narrative (a la a Choose Your Own Adventure book), Gibney begins your day in his shoes, arriving at the NYC restaurant. Reading about the stillness of the kitchen in the morning reminded me of days I’d get to work around 10 am–the kitchen would be finished with breakfast service, the Chef would normally be in his office, if already there at all, and I’d have the space to myself to start my prep list for the day. Other days–big events or holidays–I’d walk in and there’d already be steam and bustle and you just had to jump right into it.

As Gibney gears up for service–in this case not an occupation but the time when the restaurant is actively serving guests–the tension of all those years ago came back to me. Honestly, I hated service. I was a pastry specialists for many reasons, but one of them is that I don’t like the constant frenetic pace of being on the line. The author does an amazing job of putting you there in the middle of the action, getting you into his head as he goes from working the pass (checking and grouping items for the Executive Chef to plate and send to the front of the house) to working the fist station because his cook goes down sick in the middle of a 300-cover night.

But it’s not a best or worst case scenario of a night in a restaurant kitchen–any of the instances recounted in Gibney’s 24 hours (which includes prep and service as well as getting off work in the wee hours, going to a bar with coworkers, and then getting up the next morning to work Brunch, hungover) could and do happen in countless restaurants on any given day. I’d witnessed scenarios like these and many more (and much worse) in my brief kitchen career (the fact that Gibney includes the pastry chef and baker as almost a footnote, with said professionals coming in only twice a week, is a good hint at why I made the choice of a desk job to be able to pay my bills all those years ago).

If you’ve ever wondered what a day in the life of a chef is like, this is one of the better records I’ve come across. There’s no grandstanding, there’s also no sugar-coating. The cadence of the kitchen pulls you through each page of this relatively quick read. There’s even a little philosophizing that goes on–the benefit of a Friday night/Saturday morning reflection, not to mention the perogative of the reporting writer–that really sums up what working in food is all about (or needs to be, in my opinion, in order to survive it).

…every guest is a VIP. They all deserve to be looked after, cared for. We are here to cook for people. Alimentation: the provision of nourishment–this is what we do. And we continue doing it long into the night, not because we favor adversity, but because we know that in doing so we get the chance to create with our hands something that sustains people and brings them joy. …

The self isn’t even part of the equation. Cooking is altruism. It’s not about you. It never will be. It’s only about what you do for others. And that’s what hits me where I live. There is honor in it.

Reading Sous Chef was a trip down memory lane, but not one that made me miss kitchen work in the least. It’s a hard life to choose “Ten years in this industry is like two dozen in another,” he writes, and looking at many of the chefs I knew I can see the ravages of that accelerated time. Yet there’s also the part that never leaves us: “No matter how much time you spend away from the kitchen…cooking will always keep calling you back.” I still love to cook for others, to see the enjoyment on their faces, but I’m very clear that I consider myself a former chef, no longer a practicing hospitality professional, but chef still at heart.

Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line was published by Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine on March 25. I was provided a digital copy for purpose of review.