Big Night

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

Back in 1996, there was a critically-well-received movie – called Big Night –that featured two brothers from the Abruzzo region of Italy who were trying to make a go of an Italian-American restaurant someplace in New Jersey, but were failing miserably. I have spoken before in this blog about the difference in food you eat in Italy and its Italian-American counterpart. Well, in the story, the brother who was the chef wanted to continue to make truly Italian food, but the other brother – who ran the business – saw the handwriting on the wall and knew that to be successful, they were going to have to change their cooking ways and begin offering the kinds of Italian cooking Americans want. Drama (and clever comedy) ensues.

Enough said about the plot (it’s a wonderful movie; you should rent it sometime if you can find it), but a featured event in the movie – and the single thing people who watched the movie still talk about — was the chef/brother’s (played by Tony Shalhoub) preparation of something traditionally called a timballo in Italy, but referred to as a timpano in the movie.

I had come across this domed pasta masterpiece before via Bec’s daughter Kate who had sent her mom a photo years ago and basically said, “I don’t know what this is, but I think you should make it sometime.”

That was a bunch of years ago, but it has been on my mind since. To illustrate this fact, please note that last winter I bought a timpano bowl (which I show here with a wine bottle in it so that you can see how large it is, 15 inches to be exact), with the intention of trying my hand at preparing a timpano.

A timpano is a domed (shaped like timpani drums) pasta extravaganza. It is literally layer after layer of everything you like at an Italian restaurant wrapped in a layer of pasta and baked. It is, as you can imagine, massive, but oh-so-beautiful when it emerges from the oven and you turn it over onto a platter and it sliced open. Abbondanza!

So I have been waiting for just the right time to prepare said timpano. It is, after all, enormous, so it had to be for a large number of people. Also, it is such a, well, thing, to prepare because of all of the various layers and kinds of food that goes into it, so it wouldn’t be anything I would want to prepare all by myself. Such an opportunity never seemed to present itself.

But leave it to my sister Jen to make it happen.

She is here in AZ visiting and it became apparent that Sunday was going to be a day when all of the female family members were going to be spouseless. Golf, football, and/or NASCAR had claimed all of the male members for the day. A gathering of the estrogen crowd seemed in order.

“Let’s do a timpano!” she cried.

“Yikes,” I responded. It seemed an overwhelming amount of work. And an overwhelming amount of food for our gathering of nine women and a scattering of kids.

But upon further research and a great deal of discussion, we decided it would be doable if we made a simplified version. Store-bought marinara, frozen meatballs, etc., and wrapped in store-bought pizza dough instead of homemade pasta dough.

Food Network chef Sandra Lee would call it semi-homemade, but then she would go off to make a matching tablescape, something we did not do. Wouldn’t happen. Not that day. Not any day.

But back to the timpano.

We followed a recipe, but we used it only as a guideline. As I said, while the traditional timpano is lined with a homemade pasta dough, we chose to line it instead with pizza dough, and storebought (from the can) at that.

Then we commenced to begin layering – a layer of cooked ziti in a marinara sauce, a layer of cooked Italian sausage, a layer of mozzarella cheese, a layer of meatballs, a layer of grated pecorino cheese, some beaten egg over it all, a layer of tomato sauce. Repeat. Your bowl is filled.

Bake at 350 degrees for an hour-and-a-half, then remove from the oven and let it sit until you can no longer stand to not see what it looks like. Turn it over onto a very large platter, and then commence patting yourself on the back. It’s beautiful. Especially when you cut it open.

And it’s delicious. Remember how I said it was going to be too much food. Well, nope. We didn’t eat the entire thing, but food was taken home, allegedly for the spouses, but I can’t confirm there wasn’t some midnight snacking. My niece is nine months pregnant, after all.

Here is a link to the recipe. The recipe is complicated as the author makes the marina, meatballs and pasta dough from scratch. I’m going to do that someday, but in the meantime, we had a delicious Italian extravaganza and a lot of fun to boot.

Here’s some photos….

I’m preparing the pizza dough in the bowl.

Layer after layer of goodness.

Out of the oven. We’re just about to begin the unveiling, and required everyone to knock on the bowl for good luck. Not an Italian tradition!

Jen and Bec begin the unveiling….

Voila!

Nana’s Notes: Our pizza layer was VERY THIN, and because of this, perhaps a bit overcooked in the oven. I think if I was going to do it again and still didn’t want to make homemade pasta, I would make the pizza dough a bit thicker so that it totally encased the pasta.

6Oct2014

Is it Soup Yet?

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

The other day I decided I needed to either use or toss some fresh broccoli that was in my refrigerator taking up a lot of space. (The reason it was taking up a lot of space was because I had spent way too much to buy the already-cut-up kind of broccoli in big plastic containers because for whatever reason, cutting up broccoli or cauliflower is as yucky a job as peeling potatoes or emptying the dishwasher.)

Fall is in the air, so it’s beginning to be soup season. I decided a pot of Cream of Broccoli soup was the answer!

I did as I usually do, firing up my IPad and Googling “Cream of Broccoli Soup.” Of course, many links to soup recipes magically appeared. But suddenly it occurred to me that Mom had frequently made a delicious Cream of Broccoli soup when she was preparing soups for the coffee shop they inadvertently owned in Leadville. (I say inadvertently because the only reason they owned the coffee shop was that it was attached to the Leadville bakery they bought, and so they suddenly became restaurateurs as well as bakers. It never was anything they were too happy about, I can assure you.)

Anyhoo, I began going through her recipe box. That is not an easy task, my friends. It is literally stuffed with handwritten recipes and newspaper clippings of all sizes. After all of these years, the recipes are no longer in any kind of order. It took me some time, but as I literally got to the last few cards, there it was.

Broccoli Soup.

I looked at the recipe, written in her oh-so-familiar handwriting, and found it to be not all that different than the other recipes I had looked at that morning on my IPad. The main difference is that she used chicken bouillon cubes and water instead of chicken broth. I don’t think that was

Mylee is tearing up the cheese for the soup. I’m pretty sure Mom didn’t sit on the counter when she put her cheese into the soup.

particularly uncommon back in the days when she was making her daily soup.

She listed the ingredients, and then wrote out the instructions. After detailing how to put the ingredients together to make the soup, she wrote, “I like to add 2 or 3 slices American cheese.”

Suddenly and unexpectedly, I began to cry. Serious crying, with tears rolling down my cheeks.

I probably think about my mother almost every day, mostly in passing. I will be doing my sheets and will think about how she changed bed linens every Wednesday. Or I might be getting ready for bed and I will think about how she took a bath every night and got in her pajamas before sitting down to watch TV with Dad.

But those thoughts never make me cry.

So I’m not sure why the recipe brought me to tears. Something about her adding that note about what she liked to do to enhance that recipe was simply so poignant. It was like she was talking to me.

After I had my cry, I started thinking about how glad I was to have many of her recipes in her handwriting. It made me begin to wonder if there was something I could do for my son that would be as meaningful. I’m not sure handwritten recipes would be the thing, but I’ll bet there is something. I’m going to have to ask him.

And for the record, Mom would never have purchased prepackaged and precut broccoli. But she wouldn’t judge me for doing so. And, in fact, I suspect she likely used frozen chopped broccoli, which worked just fine.

Also, despite the fact that it will take a trip to the grocery store, I plan on adding 2 or 3 slices of American cheese to my Broccoli Soup (that’s what she called it as opposed to Cream of Broccoli Soup.) If it was good enough for Mom, it’s good enough for me! The best part of it all was that Mylee helped me make the soup!

Do you use recipe cards? Do you use any of your mom’s recipes? Do you think I’m a big baby for crying?

Broccoli Soup

Ingredients

4 c. chopped fresh broccoli

½ c. chopped onion

3 c. water

2 T. instant chicken bouillon or 6 bouillon cubes

1/t. leaf thyme

1/8 t. garlic powder

¼ c. butter or margarine

¼ c. flour

1/8 t. pepper

2 c. half and half or milk

Process

Cook broccoli, onion, water, bouillon, thyme, and garlic powder. In blender or food processor – 1/3 at a time – blend until smooth. Melt margarine over moderate heat. Add flour and pepper. Cook a few minutes, stirring. Add cream. Cook over moderate heat, stirring, until thickened. Add broccoli mixture. Heat but don’t boil. I like to add 2 or 3 slices American cheese.

Nana’s Notes: Forgive me Mom, but I made a couple of changes. I cooked the onion in vegetable oil until softened, then added a clove of garlic, minced, and cooked that for a minute or so. I didn’t add the garlic powder. Instead of the chicken bouillon and water, I used 3 c. of chicken broth. Also, I used butter instead of margarine. But, of course, I added the slices of American cheese.

22Sep2014

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

I don’t know what possessed me, but last week I went to my favorite farmer’s market to buy some tomatoes, and left with some tomatoes and a half-bushel of roasted green chilies.

Now, that is remarkable only in that in the past 10 years, I’ll bet I have only made green chili five times. That means once every two years. A half bushel. What was I thinking?

But I walked into the market and the smell of green chilies being roasted hit me like Mohammad Ali hit Joe Frazier. Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee. There is absolutely nothing that smells as good to me as the smell of chilies being roasted. And I grew up in a bakery. Cinnamon rolls fresh out of the oven is a close second.

The chilies were sold by the bushel or the half bushel. Nothing smaller. “Did you ask?” my sister Jen quizzed me, also puzzled by my extreme purchase. Nope. I’m a rule follower.

The problem with buying a half bushel of roasted chilies is that then a) you have to get them home; and b) you have to clean them.

(A) isn’t so bad because, well, see above. I LOVE the smell of roasted green chilies. I will admit to you, however, that my little yellow bug still has the lingering smell of green chilies, and it’s been five days. But, see above, so I don’t mind. The grandkids wrinkled their nose a bit, however. But they’re used to Nana’s eccentricities so they let it go. When I made a comment yesterday, Kaiya said, “But Nana, it smells good.” Ah, a girl after my own heart.

(B), however, is another story. They simply must be cleaned. And if you’re going to clean any, you might as well clean them all and be done with it. Now, if you read my sister Jen’s blog post from last week, she referred to the job of cleaning roasted chilies as “ghastly.” I have to disagree with that assessment. I actually find that I fairly enjoy cleaning them. If the chilies are roasted correctly, the charred skin should simply slide off. Then you just open them up, discard the stem, scrape out the seeds with your gloved hand, and rinse. Boom.

And the chilies I purchased were roasted perfectly, so the charred skins slid off like a snake shedding its skin. The problem was in the sheer number of chilies. I filled 16 little quart bags with cleaned chilies just awaiting a visit to the “green chili hot tub.”

My back hurt from bending over the sink for what turned into a two-hour job.

But once it was done and I had my 16 little bags of chilies, I divided them up – four bags for Jen (who actually DOES make green chili), four bags for our son Court (who actually DOES make green chili), and eight bags for me (who actually only makes green chili once every two years. But I paid for them and cleaned them, so get over it.)

As I’ve done every time I have purchased roasted green chilies, I vow that I am going to make green chili more often. It’s not rocket science, and both Bill and I LOVE good green chili. This time I mean it.

No, I really do.

Honest.

My niece Maggie has begun to take over her mom’s role of being the preparer-of-all-food-Mexican. And the thing is, she actually has Mexican ancestry instead of only Swiss and Polish.

Here is Maggie’s recipe for green chili.

Chili Verde Con Cerdo (Green Chili with Pork), courtesy food.com

Ingredients

2-3 lbs pork roast

2 T. cooking oil, lard, or bacon grease

1 large onion, chopped

1 head garlic, minced

6 T. flour

1 15-oz. can tomatoes, drained

2 c. diced green chilies

3 large tomatillos, husks removed and coarsely chopped (optional)

2-4 t. jalapenos (optional, depending on heat of green chilies)

5 c. water or chicken broth.

2 T. ground cumin (or to taste)

2 T. chili powder (or to taste) (optional)

1 t. salt

Process

Simmer roast in a large pan until meat is tender and removes from the bone easily. (You can also use diced pork, or pork cube steaks cut to bite size pieces, browned in the pot with the onion and garlic before adding the rest of the ingredients).

Cool meat enough to handle. Cube cooked pork into bite size pieces.

Process half of the green chilies until smooth.

Add onions and garlic; sauté until tender but not brown. Stir flour into the onion, garlic and fat until flour absorbs the oil or fat. Add broth or water. Cook and stir until mixture comes to boil and is slightly thickened.

Add cubed meat, drained tomatoes, chopped tomatillos, all of the green chilies and jalapeños if desired (taste first). Add the spices a little at a time until you get the taste you like, bringing to a simmer before each addition.

Simmer for at least 1 hour (longer if you can afford the time), stirring occasionally to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

If you want more of a stew type chili, add cubed potatoes 20 minutes before serving; serve with warm tortillas.

Nana’s Notes: Maggie cooks her pork shoulder in the crockpot instead of on the stove top. The meat is always very tender and her chili is delicious.

20Sep2014

Saturday Smile: Happy Birthday, Mom

Posted in Desserts, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

Mom and Court, circa 1987, in her kitchen in Dillon, Colorado. I’ve always loved this photo because the looks on their faces are the same — not happy to get their picture taken. I wish I could remember what they were doing….

This past Tuesday was my mom’s birthday. She would have been 88 years old. Nearly impossible to think that she has been in heaven almost 20 years. I love to think about what she would look like had she lived. She was so petite and pretty, so conscious of always looking her best. I think she would have been beautiful still.

When my sibs and I reminisce about life with Mom, we often talk about how she was very no-nonsense (which she was). However, our grandkids are often surprised to hear this as the Nana they knew was funny and loving and clearly adored her grandkids. Their perception is not wrong. I have already talked at length in this blog that we are different with our grandkids than we were with our kids as they were growing up.

Mom and Dad had nine grandchildren, and to date, there are 14 great grands, with one on the way. They would adore every single one of them. But since this is my Saturday Smile, I have to offer you something that will make you smile. Here are photos of Mom’s and Dad’s three youngest great grands….

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Faith Naomi

Lilliana Marie Eve

Cole Jonathan

One other quick thing. As part of my apple and pear extravaganza, I made an apple pie that was delicious. I mention it because it was somewhat different than apple pies I have made in the past. The biggest difference is that you cook the apples before you put them in the pie to bake. The reason for this is that if you pile up the apples without cooking them down a bit, and then lay the crust over the pile of apples, the fruit will cook down and you will have a funny shaped pie. This way, the apples are already cooked down and the pastry lies over them, making a perfect pie.

Here is the link to the recipe and a picture of the final result. A-YUM!

Have a great weekend!

17Sep2014

Cooking for One or Two: Fall Favorites

Posted in Cooking for One or Two, Main Course, Recipes by kzmclain

By Jennifer Sanchez

There’s no way around it, summer months are my very favorite. I love hot weather, sleeping with my window open at night, blooming flowers, green lawns and long days of daylight.

But every year the tastes and smells of autumn make me very happy. I burn a fragrance candle every morning before work and every evening when I am relaxing. The smells of pumpkin, cider, apple and cinnamon mean autumn is upon us. Those fragrances make my heart smile and my blood pressure go down. Okay, maybe no health benefits, but the fragrances of fall take me to a happy place inside.

My favorite fragrances this fall are Pumpkin Cupcake, Apple Orchard, Apple Cider Donut, Mulling Spices and Apple Chutney. And yes to anyone wondering. Candle storage takes up a good deal of space in my little house!

Coffee in the morning is my favorite meal of the day. Yes, I said meal. Because when you pour milk and flavored creamers in your coffee it takes up calories you could be consuming as an egg white omelette with whole grain toast. Yuck. My favorite coffee of the entire year is pumpkin spice with pumpkin spice creamer. Please notice in the picture, Maple Brown Sugar flavored coffee. Oh happy days!

One final and favorite taste and smell of fall is my first dinner prepared with green chilies freshly roasted at my favorite farmers market. Because skinning and cleaning the chilies is a ghastly job, I clean enough chilies to last the entire year.

It’s always fun to prepare the first meal with the chilies to taste how hot and flavorful they are. You never know until you taste them. Almost always, my first-taste meal is chili rellenos. Many years I’ve filled an egg roll wrapper with chili and cheese. I fry them in a little oil or spray a cookie sheet lightly with oil and bake them in a hot oven.

This year I tried a relleno recipe a friend has been talking about and they were delicious. I cut this recipe in half and it worked out well.

My fall time taste honorable mention goes to Palisade peaches. I know Kris has blogged about them this summer but they taste even sweeter when fall is in the air!

Though summer will always be my favorite season, the tastes and smells of autumn delight me and prepare me for the cold weather ahead.

Chicken Chili Relleno

Ingredients
1-1/2lbs cooked, cut up chicken. (place chicken in slow cooker with a cup of verde sauce cooked on high for 4 hrs and shredded)
6-8 Pasilla chiles, roasted, skinned and seeded. (you can use 2 cans of whole green chiles if you like)
1 lb. of shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 lb. shredded Monterey jack cheese
1/4 lb. of pepper jack cheese
1 can evaporated milk
4 eggs
2 T. flour
2 t. of salt

Process
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a 9×13 casserole dish, place a layer of green chiles. Add chicken on top of chiles. Top with shredded cheese (about half of your mixed cheese) Add a layer of chiles on top of cheese.

In a bowl beat eggs, evaporated milk, salt and flour. Pour on top of chili layers. Top with the rest of cheese. Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes or until done.

Let rest 5 minutes before cutting!!

Nana’s Notes: This recipe sounds delicious, and I will try it soon. This is the full recipe, but Jen mentioned she cuts this recipe in half.

15Sep2014

And So We Harvest and Prepare Food

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes by kzmclain

Let us sing a sweet song, a song that’s of praise

For our crops to be ripened and harvesting days

For the apples and pears still ripe on the trees

For the fill of the honey pot, the toil of the bees

When the harvest is done, our glasses we’ll raise

And thank mother earth who deserves so much praise. – Deirdre Omaidin

Shortly after we got married, Bill and I were in a hardware store – the old-fashioned kind, not a big box. Suddenly Bill said, “Look at that! We have to buy that for you.”

It was an apple peeler, the kind that you screw onto your counter, stick the apple on the end, and turn the handle.

“We do?” I said, having never in my life felt the need for an apple peeler.

“Of course we do,” he said. “My grandmother had one.”

Well, far be it from me to belittle the importance of buying something simply because it was owned by an ancestor. I do it all the time.

So I became the proud owner of an old-fashioned apple peeler. And, much to my surprise, I have used it often – very often. It does a stand-up job of quickly peeling an apple. Supposedly it will also peel potatoes, but I have never tried a potato. I should, since peeling potatoes is a dreadful job, right up there with emptying the dishwasher.

The apple peeler has earned its keep this year, Friends, as I have been up to my elbows in apples and pears for the past week-and-a-half. It’s harvest time, you see.

For the first 15 years we lived in this Denver house, I virtually ignored my fruit trees. Oh, I would enjoy their springtime flowers. And I carefully watched as the flowers turned to fruit and the fruit grew larger and developed color.

But come late August and early September when the trees were heavy with fruit, I watched the squirrels make havoc with the pears and carefully picked up the half-eaten apples from the ground and tossed them in the garbage. I might gather a few of the low-hanging apples before they fell to the earth and make a pie or a crisp, but that was about all.

But, for the past week-and-a-half, here’s how Bill and I have been spending much of our time…..

As a result, we have ended up with a fall fruit extravaganza, and I have been busy making apple sauce and pear sauce, enough to satisfy my grandkids and repay my neighbor for the wonderful rye bread she always brings us when she bakes. I have made a couple of apple crisps, an apple cake, and an apple pie. I have made a beautiful pear tart.

Now, alas, the fruit flies are beginning to notice the plethora of fruit in my kitchen. I am happy to say I am beginning to see the bottom of the pear and apple barrel.

I’m about ready to put the apple peeler away until next fall and move on to all things pumpkin.

Before I move on, however, this week I’m going to share some of my apple and pear recipes with you.

Do you have any good recipes that use apples or pears?

Homemade Applesauce, courtesy Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

6 lb.s apples, peeled, cored, and cut into slices

1 c. apple juice or apple cider

Juice of 1 lemon

½ c. brown sugar, packed

1 t. cinnamon, more or less to taste

Optional ingredients, nutmeg, maple syrup, allspice, butter

Process

Combine all ingredients in a large pot and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 25 minutes.

Carefully puree in a food processor or blender (don’t fill too full; split into two portions if needed) until smooth.

Store in the fridge and serve by itself, over pork chops, over ice cream, over pancakes, or any place where applesauce is needed.

Nana’s Notes: Applesauce is so easy to make from scratch that I can’t believe I haven’t done it before. My grandkids have mixed opinions about cinnamon in their applesauce, so I made mine without, figuring they could add if they wished. Because of this, I added a bit more brown sugar, because, well, why not? I added none of the optional ingredients. I could have processed the applesauce to can for the winter, but I found the grandkids ate it about as fast as I prepared it.

21Aug2014

Let There Be Peach on Earth

Posted in Desserts, Recipes by kzmclain

There are several states which purport to produce and sell the very best peaches. Georgia, of course, is renowned for their famous peaches. I’m not sure I have ever tasted a Georgia peach but I’m sure they are delicious and deserve their fame. Even Arizona has a farm – Schnepff Farms in Queen Creek, Arizona – which proclaims they grow delicious peaches. Might be so. Can’t say because I haven’t tried them. Still, I’m having a bit of trouble equating the desert with juicy peaches. Scorpions, yes; peaches, no.

I will always argue, however, that the peaches grown on Colorado’s Western Slope – specifically, Palisade – can’t be beat for flavor and juiciness. The great unknown, of course, always is whether or not there will be a late spring freeze resulting in a depleted crop. This year, the crop was not just on time; it was a bit early. And the peaches are as good as I’ve ever tasted.

Every year, we buy a couple of boxes of the delicious peaches from our neighbor, who sells them as part of a fundraising effort by his Optimist Club. The peaches are literally picked the day before they are delivered. Provided it’s been a good year for peaches, they are delicious.

In the past, I have bought several boxes, eaten some and canned the rest. This year I decided I simply don’t have it in me to can peaches. So I only bought one box. Bill and I have been running around with peach juice on our chins for about a week-and-a-half now, but we still had a few left over. Heaven forbid they go to waste.

Instead of canning, I elected to make a peach pie and freeze it. That way, in November, when I’m feeling blue and dejected and so very cold, I can bring a little summer back into my life with a yummy peach pie.

There’s no trick to freezing a pie. I simply prepared the peach pie using the recipe below. It’s my mother’s recipe, and the best I’ve ever tasted. And I want you to notice that I cut a “P” into the top crust of the pie. The crust needs to be ventilated, and it’s a wink to my dad, who always indicated what kind of pie it was in the bakery by the letter he cut on top — “B” for blueberry, “A” for apple, and so forth. I, of course, only have one pie in my freezer (though there’s always the danger of my aging brain forgetting what kind of pie I froze; three months from now I will be asking my readers what the “P” stands for!).

At this point, if you have a freezer bag large enough to fit a pie, place the pie inside the freezer bag and place it in your freezer. I, however, didn’t. But some time ago for some long-forgotten project, I had purchased some freezer paper. So I wrapped the finished pie in plastic wrap nice and tight, and then wrapped the whole thing in freezer paper and placed in my newly defrosted freezer.

And as an aside, isn’t defrosting the freezer a dreadful job? But the ice had gotten so thick my freezer looked like the inside of an igloo. My embarrassment got the better of me and I defrosted. (Which, for me, includes throwing out about $100 worth of frozen food that is no longer edible. Sigh.)

By the way, instead of using those inexpensive throw-away pans you buy at the grocery store that make a pie so small it could fit in an Easy Bake Oven, I went to Dollar Tree and bought a regular sized aluminum pie pan. How much did it cost? One dollah! If you’re going to make two, buy two pans. How much? Two dollah!

Three months from now, when the snow is flying, here’s how you will bake your pie:

Thaw the pie overnight in the refrigerator. (You can bake it frozen, but my experience is that by time your fruit gets cooked, the pie crust is too dark and dried-out.) Brush the top of the pie with milk, egg wash, or just water, and sprinkle the crust heavily with sugar. Then bake according to your recipe. As a caution, place it on a cookie sheet to bake, as it might be full of drippy goodness.

You’ve heard of Christmas in July? This is July at Christmas.

I have posted my mother’s recipe before, but it’s worth posting again.

Peach Pie
Ingredients
5 c. sliced, peeled peaches (about 7 medium peaches)
1 t. lemon juice
1 c. sugar
¼ c. all-purpose flour OR 2-1/2 T tapioca
¼ t. cinnamon
2 T butter
Sugar

Process
Mix peaches and lemon juice. Stir together sugar, flour or tapioca, and cinnamon. Mix in with the peaches. Turn into your lined pastry pan, and dot with the butter. Put on your top crust, and crimp. Using a pastry brush, brush top with an egg wash or cold water. Sprinkle a generous amount of sugar over the top crust. Take a scissors or sharp knife and cut several holes in the pastry. Place pie on a baking pan and bake at 425 degrees for 35 to 45 mins. until top is golden brown.

Flaky Pie Crust
Ingredients
2 c. flour
1 t. salt
1 c. cold shortening
1 egg
½ c. ice cold water
1 t. white vinegar

Process
Mix the flour with the salt. Using a food processor, cut in one cup shortening.
Break the egg into a measuring cup and mix; add enough of the ice water to bring it to ½ c. Add the vinegar to the ice water. Pour into the flour mixture and pulse it until it’s mixed. It is a very sticky dough.
Divide in half and wrap each half in wax paper. Chill for at least an hour before using. This step is critical as I cannot emphasize enough, it is a very sticky dough.
Roll out into a 9-inch pie pan. Keep the other half in the fridge until it’s time to top your pie.

Nana’s Notes: To easily peel the peaches, drop them into boiling water for 45 to 60 seconds, remove them, and drop them in ice water. If the peaches are nice and ripe, the skins will come right off. If the peaches aren’t quite as ripe, it will take a bit more work, even perhaps peeling them by hand. And, by the way, pioneer women didn’t use a food processor for their crusts, so you don’t need to either; it just makes it a bit easier. If not using a food processor, just mix together using a wooden spoon.

12Aug2014

Chicken Dance

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes by kzmclain

There’s a little cabin in the sky, Mister

For me and for you

I feel that it’s true somehow

Can’t you see that cabin in the sky, Mister

An acre or two of heavenly blue to plow

We will be oh so gay

Eat fried chicken every day

As the angels go sailing by

-From the Broadway Musical “Cabin In The Sky” (1940) (Vernon Duke / John Latouche)

When my sister Jen heard that I was frying chicken for my family Sunday night, including the visiting Vermonters, she told me she thinks I might be the only remaining person in the world who still fries chicken.

“Well, there might be five or so in the entire world,” she said, “but you’re the only one I know of.”

There you have it. Fried chicken. It’s what’s for dinner.

Sunday night was the first time I was able to prepare a meal for the whole gang since they arrived.

“What would you like me to cook for you?” I asked our daughter.

“Whatever you would like,” she said. (She’s more polite than the rest of the family.)

“It doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “What sounds good to you?”

The sheepish look she got in her eye should have given me the answer immediately.

“Weeeeelllll,” she said, “I have been hungry for your fried chicken.”

Whaaaaaaaat? Heather too? She’s got celiac disease and can’t eat gluten! Doesn’t that count for something?

There isn’t a single time – not one single time – that I ask Bill McLain what he would like me to make him for a special dinner that he doesn’t say fried chicken. It runs in the family. It’s the one thing I make that will bring everyone to the table in a way that, say, eggplant and kale casserole doesn’t.

I fry chicken the way my mother fried chicken. She was taught how to fry chicken by my grandmother. I only learned as an adult that it isn’t necessarily the way everyone fries chicken. And, in fact, I only learned a couple of months ago from a Food Network program that I fry chicken the way they fry chicken in the Midwest as opposed to the South. Thanks Amy Thielen from Food Network’s Heartland Kitchen. I thought I was an anomaly. The main difference is that you fry the chicken until it’s brown, but not completely cooked, and then finish it in the oven. Instead of being really crispy, it’s more tender and falls off the bone. Yum.

Frying chicken is messy. There really is no way around that fact. The grease splatters. If I don’t get snapped by grease at least once in the chicken frying process, I’m doing something wrong. I have ruined many a shirt by frying chicken without wearing an apron. Shame on me.

By the way, I used gluten-free flour to accommodate our daughter.

So am I really the only remaining person who fries chicken? Do you or does someone you know fry chicken?

I have provided this recipe before, but it’s worth repeating……

My Family’s Fried Chicken

Ingredients
1 frying chicken, cut into 10 pieces (my mother always cut each breast into two pieces}
1-2 c. flour, well-seasoned with salt and pepper and a pinch of cayenne pepper
Butter and vegetable oil, half and half, deep enough to fill a pan to a depth of about a quarter of an inch

Process
Preheat the butter and oil in the fry pan until it’s hot enough to sizzle if you flick a drop of water into the pan. Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour, shaking off the excess. Lay the pieces skin-side-down into the hot oil. Cook until it’s nicely brown, 5-6 minutes. Turn over and do the same on the other side. It doesn’t have to be cooked all the way through. Only fry a few pieces at a time or your shortening will cool down too much and your chicken pieces won’t brown nicely.

As you remove the chicken pieces from the pan, place them into a roasting pan. (Conversely, you can place them temporarily on a plate and return all of the pieces to the pan to finish. Make sure your pan is oven-proof and has a lid if you choose this option.) Cover the roasting pan with aluminum foil and place into a preheated 350 degree oven for an hour or so until the chicken is cooked through and falls off the bone.

Nana’s Notes: I’m convinced the key to good fried chicken is a cast-iron pan. I would never fry chicken any other way. I’m a cast-iron using fried chicken snob. What can I say?

11Aug2014

Vermont Visitors

Posted in Desserts, Recipes by kzmclain

Micah and Alastair enjoy a brief moment of relaxation just after Micah awoke from his nap. It doesn’t last long!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The best job I’ve ever had is being a grandmother. I’m lucky enough that out of my 10 grandkids, eight of them live within a 15 minute drive of our house. As a result, I see them often. But two of them live far, far away in Vermont.

BUT…..

They are visiting us this week and I’m having a chance to love them up and play with them. And, best of all, a chance to get to know them better.

I only had one child, and by the time Bill and I married, his children – who became my children – were nearly adults. So I didn’t really get a chance to watch them develop their personalities. Now God is giving me a second chance via my grandchildren.

What I’m learning is that boy-oh-boy, is every child different!

They are different because of gender. They are different because of family background. They are different because of their own personality traits. They are different because of birth order. Each one is his or her own little unique person. Of course, intellectually I knew this to be true. However, seeing it in action has really brought the fact home.

Joseph and Micah are visiting us from Vermont. Joseph just turned 5. He is loveable and gentle and likes to pretend. He giggles readily and is quick to give hugs, but mostly he is infinitely happy to be able to have this chance to spend lots and lots of time with his cousins. And his cousin Alastair, despite being four years older, is happy to have a boy cousin to play with for a change.

Micah, who will be 2 in a week, is a clown, plain and simple. In fact, his daycare provider needs to feed him 15 minutes before everyone else because he spends his entire lunch time trying to entertain the other kids and won’t eat unless he’s by himself. After spending time with him these past few days, I have no doubt this is true. The child is going to be a stand-up comedian.

Joseph, on the other hand, will work for the Peace Corps! What a pair.

Saturday we had a bunch of the grandchildren at our house for much of the day. Here are some of the fun times they had…..

Micah looks a bit like Colonel Sanders after enjoying an ice cream cone.

Not to be outdone, Addie has a plenty dirty face herself post-chicken-wings.

Ice cream seems to be a theme, and Joseph is sporting a dirty face following his Rocky Road.

Allen wins Uncle of the Year!

In a complete non sequitur, here is a recipe for an incredibly delicious zucchini bread I made, using the ubiquitous zucchini that we all end up with via a friend or neighbor who didn’t remember not to plant more than one zucchini. It is delicious.

Zucchini Bread, courtesy Paula Deen and Food Network

Ingredients

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Process
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. Bake in 2 standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.

Nana’s Notes: I don’t care for nuts in any of my sweet breads, so I left them out. The bread is extremely moist and delicious. Micah ate a half a loaf by himself. You think I’m kidding.

6Aug2014

Finding Nemo’s Southern Cousin

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by kzmclain

I am heavily influenced by what I read in books, especially when it comes to food. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I read a mystery called The Lost Ones by one of my favorite authors, Ace Atkins. The series is about a former Army Ranger who returns to his roots in a small town in Mississippi and becomes sheriff. Since this isn’t a book review, I won’t tell you how much I liked the book, though I will offer the link so you can decide for yourself.

However, in what almost seemed like a theme, throughout the book, the characters ate fried catfish. Seriously, I can’t tell you how many scenes took place over a plate of fried catfish. There was even a discussion by some of the characters about how you can tell if a person eating the fried catfish is a Yankee because he or she will use a knife and fork. Southerners use their fingers.

I don’t know if that is true. But what I can tell you is that since I read that book, I have been hungry for fried catfish.

In the past, I would have called up one of my friends and we would have gone to M&D’s Barbecue for some fried catfish. Unfortunately, that restaurant closed several years ago because the owners apparently didn’t pay their taxes. Kids, always pay your taxes.

Since they closed, I have been completely lost in my attempts to find good southern food, specifically barbecued ribs and fried catfish. But I was reminded in the past week or so that there is a restaurant in the Five Points area near downtown Denver that offers really good southern food, including fried catfish.

Bill and I considered taking light rail to Tom’s Home Cookin’ as there is a train stop steps away from the front door. But it would involve a change of trains and Bill is busy painting everything in our house that doesn’t run away from him (I try to keep moving to be safe), so he didn’t want to take that much time. So we drove. It took probably twice as long. What can I say?

Well, one thing I can say is that the restaurant was amazing. It is such a good example of a couple of guys having a REALLY good idea and carrying out that idea in sublime fashion. The menu changes daily, except for a few items (such as fried catfish and fried chicken). Each day offers a simple menu. You choose your main dish (today choices included meatloaf, roast beef and gravy, barbecued pork, as well as the standard catfish and chicken). You choose two sides and your choice of beverage (which includes sweetened iced tea). You order at a counter. They don’t take credit cards. You aren’t allowed to have a person save a table; it’s first come, first served. And absolutely NO USE OF CELL PHONES IS ALLOWED, as it is a very small restaurant. They are opened Monday through Friday from 11 to 3. Period.

It sounds very crabby, but the two guys who own the restaurant and work the counter couldn’t possibly be friendlier or nicer. The line yesterday, and apparently every day, was out the door at 11:30. People of every age, gender, nationality, color, and economic background were represented. Suits, shorts, skirts, and jeans.

My catfish was delicious and I was a very happy diner. I am not offering a restaurant review, though I would give Tom’s a good one. I’m just impressed that a couple of guys had such a good idea and are apparently so successful. God bless America!

During Lent last year, I got a notion to make my own fried catfish on a Friday instead of going out for our standby cheese pizza. I used a recipe supplied by Food Network’s The Neely’s, and, if I must say so myself, my result was very good. It’s just that any time you have to fry anything, it involves a lot of cleanup. And I always worry way too much about where I’m going to go with the leftover grease. It seems easier just to eat out.

Nevertheless, I am going to provide you with the recipe so that you can enjoy yourself some fried catfish. A side of macaroni and cheese, some cornbread, and spicy collards provides just about the perfect Lenten meal. (Well, except for the Lenten sacrifice part.)

By the way, I ALWAYS eat my catfish with my fingers. How else?

Memphis-Styled Fried Catfish, courtesy Patrick and Gina Neely and Food Network

Ingredients

1 c. yellow cornmeal

1 T. paparika

1 t. cayenne pepper

¾ c. buttermilk

1 T. hot sauce

4 catfish fillets, skin and bones removed, rinsed and patted dry

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Peanut oil for frying

Process

Preheat a deep-fryer to 375 degrees.

Mix the cornmeal, paprika and cayenne in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, add the buttermilk and the hot sauce. Season the catfish with salt and pepper. Dredge in the buttermilk and then the cornmeal and spice mixture.

Drop carefully in the hot oil. Fry for 4 minutes until crisp. Remove to a paper towel lined sheet tray. Season with salt and pepper.

Nana’s Notes: I used a skillet with a couple of inches of oil in it rather than a deep fryer. It worked fine. The Neelys offered a recipe for a remoulade sauce, but if I can’t dip my catfish in hot sauce, why bother? I made collard greens and homemade cornbread, and it was delicious.

Nana's Whimsies

Musings of a Baby Boomer….

Category Archives: Recipes

Big Night

Is it Soup Yet?

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Saturday Smile: Happy Birthday, Mom

Cooking for One or Two: Fall Favorites

And So We Harvest and Prepare Food

Let There Be Peach on Earth

Chicken Dance

Vermont Visitors

Finding Nemo’s Southern Cousin