The Roast is Clear

I’ve said it before and I will undoubtedly say it again. I love food. I love to cook it. I love to eat it. I love to smell it. And, what’s more, I love to look at it.

Very often on cooking shows, the chef will point out just how beautiful the meal looks. They will accent a dish by plopping a sprig of parsley or a rosemary branch or perhaps some basil leaves on the side of the offering, making it aesthetically pleasing.

I understand why they do it. I think that food ought to be pleasing to the eye if it is to be pleasing to the palate. I can’t say that I accent my food with sprigs of anything, but I really love to mix up the colors of the food I make.

I recently made a pork tenderloin. I don’t make pork tenderloin often because it’s simply not one of my favorite foods. Whenever I prepare it, I think it tastes good, and my husband always likes the leftovers between two pieces of bread (of course). Nevertheless, despite it’s relatively affordable price tag, it’s not something I make often.

But what I can get excited about are roasted vegetables. Don’t hate me because I’m a geek. I just like the sweet taste that roasting gives veggies, especially any kind of root vegetable.

I found a recipe for roasted pork tenderloin and potatoes, and got the notion to make it even more interesting by serving it with roasted vegetables. I went to the market and picked out two of my favorite (and what I consider to be the most beautiful) vegetables – brussel sprouts and carrots.

I know, I know. Brussel sprouts. I see all of you turning up your noses right now. But when you roast any vegetable, the sugars are released and even something quite bitter like brussel sprouts becomes sweet and tasty. Especially if you couple them with already-sweet carrots.

Roasted Pork and Potatoes (loosely excerpted from Food Network Magazine)

1-1/2 lbs. small red potatoes, cut in half (or quarters if they’re largish)

1 large handful of brussel sprouts, with the tops cut off and then cut in half

2 large carrots, cut in large pieces

2 T. olive oil

1-2 tsp. fresh thyme, pulled from the twig

Salt and pepper

1 pork tenderloin

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Toss the potatoes, brussel sprouts, and carrots with the salt and pepper (to taste), thyme, and 1 T. olive oil in a shallow baking dish (I used a 9 X 9 baker). Place in oven and roast until the potatoes are slightly tender, 20 – 30 minutes (it takes slightly longer in our high altitude).

Meanwhile, pat the tenderloin dry, and season with salt and pepper. Heat the remaining olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the pork and sear on all sides until golden brown.

Once the vegetables are slightly tender, transfer the pork to the baking dish and continue to roast until a thermometer inserted into the center of the pork registers 145 degrees (about 20 minutes more).

Let the pork sit on a cutting board for about five minutes before slicing. Serve with the beautiful roasted vegetables. I also served a side of applesauce, just to celebrate the beginning of fall.

By the way, if you simply can't abide the thought of eating a brussel sprout (perhaps your mother made you eat them as a child and you said you would never do so when you had your own home!), you can choose any vegetable you like. In fact, the recipe from which I adapted my meal actually called for red pepper and potatoes. Use your imagination.  

But make it pretty.

Dough a Dear

A few years ago, when Krispy Kreme finally made its way out west and the first one opened in the Denver metro area, there was literally a line of cars several blocks long for the drive-through window for over a month. People eagerly sought that sugary piece of dough, and they would purchase the glazed doughnuts by the dozens.

That enthusiasm has waned over the years, and now you can walk right up to the counter to get your doughnut without a wait. Maybe folks are more health conscious, or maybe they simply buy their doughnuts at the supermarket, where they are less expensive.

Being the child of a baker, doughnuts were available to me whenever I wanted one. People used to ask me if I got sick of doughnuts. The answer is, no. To this day, there is nothing that tastes better to me than a fresh doughnut. Every so often, my husband and I will treat ourselves after church on Sunday. I always choose the lemon filled glazed bismarck.

I must admit, however, that despite being parented by a professional baker, and despite so loving these doughy treats, I have never made a yeast doughnut from scratch. I can’t really say why. Maybe I just know they would never taste as good as my dad’s.

But that isn’t to say that I have never fried a doughnut. In fact, recently my 3-year-old granddaughter helped me make perfectly good doughnuts, and she loved every sugary bite.

The secret? Pizza dough. Often I will go to my neighborhood Whole Foods and buy their pizza dough. But since my idea to make doughnuts with little missy was a last minute notion, I simply used the pizza dough that comes in the cans you find in the refrigerated case at your favorite supermarket.

I brought out my trusty cast iron skillet and filled it with about an inch worth of vegetable oil. I turned on the heat on my stove to medium high, and let my candy thermometer tell me when the oil had reached the temperature of 375 degrees.

Meanwhile, I patted the dough out to about a half-inch thickness and gave little missy my biscuit cutter and let her have at it. She needed some help, but surprisingly little. Since I wanted my doughnuts to have holes, and since I don’t own a doughnut cutter, I simply took the lid from a bottle of water and used it to cut out the hole (which I also fried).

It only takes a minute or so on each side to become golden brown. Once they were browned on both sides, I let them drain on paper towels for a minute or so, and then rolled them in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. I considered also making a chocolaty glaze out of Nutella and heavy cream, but went for simple.

It only makes about a dozen, and Krispy Kreme doesn’t have to worry about competition, but nevertheless, the doughnuts were sweet and yummy and little missy and I both got a kick out of eating our hot treats, making sure to lick our sugary fingers after.

Sloppin' it up

I’m a summer person. I love the long days and watching the flowers and trees bloom. I love watching my grandkids swim. I love grilling dinner. I love hot dogs and hamburgers drenched in ketchup and mustard and sticky barbecued ribs.

But I have to grudgingly admit that I’m kind of relieved when dusk comes around a bit earlier and it starts to cool down somewhat at night. It’s fun to watch the neighborhood kids walking to school and home again in the afternoon. And, I must admit that I enjoy winter-styled cooking.

There is little that satisfies me more than cooking a tough (and therefore, inexpensive) cut of meat in my enamel and cast-iron Dutch oven at a very low temperature for such a long time that the meat relents and eventually falls off the bone. Scrumptious.

But today I wasn’t in the mood to braise a meal. Instead, I wanted something simple. Sloppy Joes came to mind.

When I cooked for my family when we were all younger, I would simply brown some ground beef and throw in a can of Manwich. It couldn’t have been simpler, and we all loved it.

I mentioned this to my sister this past weekend, and she was aghast. Why don’t you make it from scratch, she wondered. After all, you write a cooking blog.

So true, so this evening I gave it a whirl, and it was a success.

Homemade Sloppy Joes

1 lb. of ground beef (or ½ lb. of ground beef and ½ lb. of ground turkey)

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

¾ c. ketchup

2 T. water

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

½ tsp. yellow mustard

½-1 T brown sugar

splash white vinegar

Brown the ground meat until cooked through. Add the onion, and cook until the onions are transparent. Add the minced garlic, and cook for about a minute.

To the meat, add the ketchup, water, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Stir to mix. Add ½ to 1 T. brown sugar, enough to make it a bit sweet. To counteract the sweetness a bit, add just a splash of vinegar.

Cook for 20 minutes, and serve over hamburger buns.

I always eat my sloppy joes with pickles, so I opened up a jar of my homemade dills, and enjoyed the nip in the air as we ate on the patio.

Dill with it!

I’m a big fan of the dill pickle. When I was growing up, my mother used to make three-day dill pickles every year just as soon as the tiny pickling cucumbers became available. I still can picture the big green bowl in which she would place the sliced cucumbers that she covered with the mixture of vinegar and salt and dill. She would then put a plate over the pickles, and on top she would put a large can of tomatoes to hold the cucumbers down into the vinegar mix.

We would maybe give the pickles an hour. Before long, we began reaching our fingers under the plate and grabbing a barely-pickled cucumber. They literally never made it to the third day.

For some reason, though I have Mom’s recipe, I’ve never made her three-day dill pickles. It is perhaps because my husband really doesn’t care that much for pickles except to accent his hamburger. I do, however, make and can regular dill pickles, which I mostly give away.

This year, I bought a big bouquet of fresh dill at the farmer’s market for a grand total of two bucks. It was truly beautiful dill. I made my dill pickles, and had probably $1.87 worth of dill remaining. The dill was so beautiful that it broke my heart to think about throwing it away. I put it in a vase, just as I would a bouquet of flowers, and every time I would enter my kitchen, the fresh smell of dill would sweep me back to that Nebraska kitchen with the big green bowl of Mom’s dill pickles.

But what to do with the remaining dill? I was simply frantic to not waste that buck eight-seven. Then it hit me! Dilly beans.

Dilly Beans

2 lbs. fresh green beans, rinsed and trimmed

4 cloves garlic, peeled

4 dried red peppers

8 sprigs fresh dill weed

4 t. salt

2-1/2 c. white vinegar

2-1/2 c. water

Cut green beans to fit inside pint canning jars. Pack the beans into four hot, sterilized pint jars (I used the wide-mouth). Place a clove of garlic, a dried pepper, 1 t. salt, and 2 sprigs dill weed in each jar.

In a saucepan, bring vinegar and water to a boil. Pour over beans in each jar to about ¼ inch from the top.

Fit the jars with lids and rings and process for 10 minutes (I do it 20 minutes because I’m at high altitude) in a boiling water bath.

I used both green beans and yellow wax beans. They are delicious to eat right out of the jar, but they are especially good when placed in a bloody mary!

I recently had a three-year-old eat an entire jar. Minus the bloody mary, of course.

Krafty Kids

To celebrate Father’s Day, we entertained two of our children and four of our grandchildren. I told my husband I would make whatever he wished in honor of the day, and he, of course, chose fried chicken. If given a choice, he will choose it every time.

What I cook for side dishes doesn’t really matter, as long as there is fried chicken on a platter in front of him. However, I know he likes macaroni and cheese – and the creamier, the better.

Making mac and cheese is not rocket science, and though preparing it from scratch certainly is more time consuming than opening a box of processed mac and cheese, it really doesn’t take all that much time to put together a cheesy macaroni casserole.

Because there was going to be a total of four kids 8 years old or under, I decided that I would make a full recipe of macaroni and cheese instead of cutting it in half as I normally would. What kid doesn’t like homemade mac and cheese, after all?

Well, it turns out, there are at least four.

I have seen these four children consume, as though they haven’t eaten for several days, macaroni and cheese that is nothing more than pasta, milk, and a powdery substance full of salt and chemicals, with perhaps a cheese wand waved over it at some point. Yet, they nibbled politely on a few pieces of the macaroni, checking to make sure they could still eat dessert if they didn’t finish their serving.

While I was surprised, my feelings weren’t hurt. They really weren’t. I remember, after all, eating that self-same boxed macaroni and cheese as a child, and LOVING it.

I checked on line and learned that Kraft began making their boxed macaroni and cheese in the mid-1930s. It was originally called simply Kraft Dinner. I had forgotten that fact, but was immediately transported back in time and heard Mom telling us that we were having Kraft Dinner for supper. That always made me so happy. I’m sure if I looked at the ingredients (which I don’t think I ever will) I would find out that it’s loaded with lots of sodium, probably some sugar or corn syrup, and lots of things with names I don’t recognize (what in the name of heaven is xanthan gum anyway?).

No matter, once kids have dined on Kraft mac and cheese (or probably any boxed mac and cheese) they apparently turn their little pug noses up at the real McCoy.

As a result, I had made-from-scratch (and quite delicious) macaroni and cheese coming out my ears. My husband and I have been eating it for several days now, and I’m about ready to eat the last bite. I have learned my lesson.

Here is my recipe:

Creamy Macaroni and Cheese

1-16 oz. bag of macaroni
9 T. butter
2 c. shredded cheese (you can use any kind, but I use a mixture of sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack
8 oz. Velveeta, diced
1-1/2 c. half and half
2 eggs, beaten
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook macaroni until desired doneness. For macaroni and cheese, I like it cooked thoroughly. Drain well. Melt 8 t. butter (frankly, I often use a bit less butter), and stir into the pasta. In a large bowl, combine all of the cheese (including Velveeta) and mix. Add half and half, 1-1/2 c. of the cheese mixture and eggs to the macaroni, and mix together. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a large casserole dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and add 1 T. butter.

Bake for 35 minutes.

I generally cut the recipe in half, and it still makes way more than I need.

Now, here is a tip: If you like your macaroni and cheese really creamy, double the amount of shredded cheese (not the Velveeta), and only bake for about 20 minutes. Creamy goodness, if not exactly health food.

Getting Harry'd

On a business trip to Chicago many years ago, my husband and I had the opportunity to eat dinner at Harry Caray’s Restaurant in downtown Chicago. Harry Caray, of course, was the legendary bespectacled Chicago Cubs’ announcer who subsequently became known for his dining establishments around the city.

Since the original restaurant opened in the late 1980s, none of the infamous Chicago mobsters of the 30s ever dined there. Nevertheless, its atmosphere is such that you keep looking at the door, waiting for Al Capone to enter, machine guns blazing.

I don’t remember what I ate, but I remember that my husband had Chicken Vesuvio. I had never heard of this particular dish, which originated in Chicago in the 1930s. Chicken Vesuvio is one of those Italian-American dishes that didn’t come from Italy, though I assure you, it would be enjoyed by any self-respecting Italian (and probably is by now).

Roasted chicken with crispy skin, potatoes cooked in white wine, chicken broth, and garlic – how can this dish be anything but delicious?

Still, I never really gave the dish another thought for a very long time.

However, recently an 80-something Italian friend mentioned she had recently prepared Chicken Vesuvio for her family. My friend is an outstanding Italian cook (about whom I will talk in future blogs), and I asked for her recipe. She, of course, had no recipe, but was happy to tell me how she made it. I was unprepared to write down what she told me, but I knew I could get her recipe (or something close to it) on the Internet. You can get anything on the Internet.

A search for Chicken Vesuvio, of course, brought up a link to Harry Caray’s Restaurant, since they are said to have the best in town (and that is no small thing in a food town like Chicago). So it was Harry Caray’s version of Chicken Vesuvio that I made, and it was extremely good.

Harry Caray’s Chicken Vesuvio

1 cup frozen peas
2 whole cleaned (4 pound) roasting chickens
1 cup olive oil
4 large Idaho potatoes
10 cloves whole garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon dry oregano
1 tablespoon granulated garlic
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 1/2 cups chicken broth

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.Blanch the peas by putting them in boiling water 1 minute. Joint each chicken into 8 pieces.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters lengthwise. In a large roasting pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the potatoes and garlic cloves and sauté the potatoes until golden brown, stirring so they cook evenly. Remove the garlic cloves from the roasting pan and discard them. Remove the potatoes and set aside.

Add the chicken to the pan and sauté lightly on both sides of each piece until it is golden brown. Deglaze the pan with the wine and reduce by half.

Return the potatoes to the pan. Season the potatoes and chicken with the salt, pepper, oregano, granulated garlic, and parsley. Add the chicken broth and transfer the pan to the oven for 45 minutes or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 155 degrees.

Place the chicken on a serving plate and arrange the potatoes around the chicken. Pour the sauce from the pan over the chicken and sprinkle the peas on top.

I use chicken thighs, and cut the recipe by at least half. I leave out the peas (though they are present in the photo) as my husband is not a big fan of the pea, and they really are mainly for color. Giada De Laurentis suggests artichoke hearts or lima beans, but neither of those would make my husband jump for joy either, so I leave out a vegetable.

There is a Harry Caray’s at Chicago’s Midway Airport. I always need a stiff drink before I take off from that particular airport where the airplane must begin a steep ascent immediately upon taking off since the airport is located in the middle of a neighborhood. You can practically see what the residents have on their grill as you ascend. Every time I order my glass of wine or martini, the server asks to see my identification. Now, I know that they are required by city law to do so, but I always pretend they simply aren’t certain that I am of age. It gives me great pleasure.

Sexy Salmon

The price of Copper River salmon can take your breath away. Ranging from $15.99-to-unthinkable-per pound, the taste had better be good to justify the price.

It is.

I had never heard of Copper River salmon until a few years ago, when a co-worker who is a very good cook mentioned it. I’m a fan of salmon, so I was very interested.

The Copper River salmon season is very short (May and June), which likely accounts for its price tag. The poor, unsuspecting wild salmon are caught while swimming upstream in the Copper River in Alaska where they will breed. Wild salmon have more flavor than farm-raised, and these salmon are particularly delicious because they have to store a lot of fat to make the 300-mile trip upstream. Fat = Flavor.

But it doesn’t matter to my husband whether the salmon was farm-raised or caught wild. He doesn’t care how far they traveled to spawn. In fact, they could have tweeted their sexy fishy parts to lady salmon in Scotland, and it wouldn’t make my husband any more interested in eating salmon – expensive or otherwise.

Every once in a while, I will use the Omega-3-is-so-good-for-you argument, and he will allow me to serve salmon, but I don’t push the envelope. Instead, I simply order salmon at restaurants whenever possible. Sometimes I will go to Whole Foods and buy a hamburger patty for him and a salmon burger for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to see if he would be willing to eat Copper River salmon for dinner. I didn’t want to fork out that much money only to have him pick at his fish and yearn for a pork chop. I explained how delicious Copper River salmon is, and, of course, reminded him how good Omega 3 is for us. He acquiesced.

My original plan was to cook the salmon on the grill. I could taste the simple yumminess of grilled salmon with maybe just a couple of lemon slices on top and some capers. Then I suddenly got an idea.

“Eureka,” I said. I had just remembered a recipe I had discovered many years ago in a snooty cooking magazine called Saveur. (I only call it snooty because I don’t know what the word “saveur” means, being it’s French and all. The magazine was actually quite interesting and many of the recipes were delicious.)

The recipe involves bacon. If a salmon filet doesn’t excite my husband, at least the addition of bacon would make it that much more palatable.

Here’s what you do:

In a skillet, brown a few pieces of bacon. For my two filets, I browned (until crispy) four slices of bacon. Once the bacon is brown, remove it from the pan and drain it on some paper towels. Once it is cool, break it into pieces.

In the bacon grease that remains in your skillet, brown your filets on both sides. You want it fairly crispy, so cook it for maybe five minutes or so on each side. By the way, if the bacon you cooked didn’t render enough fat, add some olive oil (or even better, add some bacon grease that you have in a little jar in your refrigerator left over from previous breakfasts – oh, wait a minute; that’s me, not you). Once the salmon is caramelized, cover your skillet and cook on low temperature for about five minutes, until it is translucent.

Once the salmon is cooked through, set it aside. Pour some red wine vinegar (maybe a third of a cup or so) to the bacon grease in the skillet. This will splash, so stand back, and be prepared to clean your stove top later. Add a bit of sugar to the dressing that you have just prepared. Pour the hot dressing on top of a salad, top with the bacon, and serve along with the salmon. If you wish, a hard-boiled egg would be delicious on this wilted lettuce salad.

My husband ate the entire piece of fish and proclaimed it to be delicious. The moral of the story is when all else fails, add pork.

Making the Rotation

No matter how you look at it, pigs make for good eating. Think about it. Bacon, barbecue ribs, Italian sausage, carne adovada -- all good eats thanks to the sacrifice of a pig. (Which reminds me of a very funny poster I saw recently at a breakfast restaurant: “Bacon and eggs – a day’s work for the chicken, a lifetime commitment for the pig.”)

What’s more, I find pork to be fairly affordable. Despite my recent near-death experience when I priced center-cut bacon, I still can find pork chops at a price that doesn’t require me to take a sedative following its purchase. I think pork chops are overlooked – the redheaded stepchild of the meat world as my always-politically-incorrect-and-proud-of-it husband would say.

So recently, as I leafed through a grilling magazine I had picked up at the grocery store (because I don’t have enough cookbooks or recipe cards at home!), I was pleased to find a large number of recipes for pork. One in particular caught my eye – mostly because the recipe’s author put as her preface that pork chops prepared this way are on her family’s regular dinner rotation. In other words, these pork chops made the rotation.

That expression is one that I think is used by many new cooks (and I’m specifically picturing one of my nieces as I write). “This meal makes the rotation.” You try different things. Some you vow never to make again, and some work out (i.e., make the rotation) and you make them again and again. As for me, my rotation consists of about five or six things that I make over and over, intermixed with various recipes I find in cookbooks, magazines, or on cooking shows or the internet. Unfortunately, even when a recipe turns out to be delicious, it doesn’t often make the rotation at my house. Too many recipes; too little time. Except for the five or six things that I make over and over.

Having said all of the above, I offer you this recipe, which came from the Taste of Home Grill It Cookbook.

Hearty Pork Chops

2/3 c. lemon-lime soda
½ c. soy sauce
¼ c. honey
1 t. dried thyme (I used fresh)
¾ t. dried rosemary, crushed (Again, I used fresh)
¼ t. black pepper
6 bone-in pork loin chops (I would buy whatever is on sale)

In a large resealable plastic bag, combine the first six ingredients; add the pork chops. Seal bag and turn to coat; refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight, turning bag occasionally.

Drain and discard marinade. Grill pork, covered, over medium heat 6-8 minutes on each side or until juices run clear.

The pork chops I bought were very thick, so it took longer than 8 minutes on each side to cook through. If you have any questions, cut into them to see if the juices run clear. Don’t overcook. I cooked mine about 10 minutes on each side. Also, because of the honey and soda in the marinade, the chops carmelize (get brown) very easily. They are not burnt. But keep an eye on them.

As an aside, I don’t know why, but I really prefer thinner pork chops. I just think they have more flavor. And they are decidedly less expensive. I guess I’m a cheap date. It’s what my dad always cooked.

The Secret of the Hidden Recipes

I am a voracious reader. I always have at least one book going, and often a couple. I must – absolutely MUST – have a book waiting so that when I finish the one I'm currently reading, I can simply pick up the next, taking only time to visit the rest room if necessary.

I read many different kinds of books – fiction, biography, nonfiction (particularly if it's about World War II or at least that era), even some light romance if it's not too gooey and I'm in the mood. But, without a doubt, my favorite kind of book to read is a really good mystery. That's been true since I read Nancy Drew starting at age 7.

In fact, I like to try and solve mysteries. I'm really no good at it. While watching detective shows on TV, my husband will undoubtedly figure out who the murderer is about 25 seconds into the show. He will always ask me if I have it figured out, and I almost never figure it out prior to the end of the show. I would make a lousy detective.

I'm sort of the same way when I am standing in the grocery line or sitting at the mall. I try to solve the mystery of people's lives. I will create a story line based on watching a young mother talking with great animation to another person. For example, based on the scowl on her face as she talks, I think she had a fight with her husband, who is the brother of the woman with whom she's speaking. She is probably asking her, based on her relationship with her brother, if she thinks she should stay with him or get a divorce. See what I mean? In fact, I have no idea what's really transpiring, but that doesn't stop me from creating an interesting scenario.

Anyway, I recently began reading a book that I picked up at a used book store – The Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather. The copy I picked up was kind of old, and had been read by many people, or perhaps read many times by the same person. The pages were kind of yellowed and stiff. So, I'm reading along, and all of the sudden, I turn the page and there is a 3 X 5 index card with a recipe written in grandmother cursive. You know the kind of handwriting about which I speak. The letters are perfectly drawn with sort of a flowery flourish to them. The handwriting is very pretty. The recipe is called Bet's Gingersnaps.

Because I'm fascinated by recipes, I perused the card very quickly. It was an old fashioned recipe, something a grandmother would make. I set it aside and continued reading.

A day or so later, I noticed a recipe card fall out of that same book. Hmm, I thought I had put that recipe in the kitchen. I looked at the card, and saw that it was a second recipe card, this time for Marjorie's Pickled Figs. Marjorie also had an elderly person's perfect penmanship.

That's when I began to try and solve the mystery of why there were two recipe cards in this book. I quickly envisioned a book club, similar to the ones in which I participate. This book club must have had some sort of recipe exchange. I'll bet they were asked to bring one of their mother's favorite recipes. Or maybe they were offering a recipe for something their kids especially loved them to make. Or, I know, they were exchanging recipes that had been passed down in their families for many generations. The group was made up of older women who had been meeting once a month for years and years and years. No one under the age of 60 is named Bet or Marjorie.

I would love to have been able to see the other recipes. In fact, I would love to have been part of the discussion about that book. Did they tie the recipes into the discussion somehow? The book is about a Swedish family that lived in a small Colorado mountain town in the 1800s. Did the recipes tie in somehow to that theme?

I'll never know.

Here are the two recipes, exactly as they wrote them:

Bet's Gingersnaps

½ c. Crisco
½ c. or less Br Sugar
1 egg
4 T mild molasses (not blackstrap)
½ tsp salt
1 tsp or less B. Soda
2 tsp Ginger
2 ¼ c flour

Cream shortening sugar together. Add egg, molasses. Beat. Add flour salt spice gradually. When blended I put in frig over night or until stiff. Then I take out small globs and put on greased cookie sheet. Press flat with floured fork.

I bake at 350 till brown – They burn easily – but crispy if well baked.

So, here is are my questions for Bet. What in blazes does that last sentence mean? Do you want them crispy? Aren't gingersnaps always brown, so how do I know when they're brown? Define well baked. How much less brown sugar or b soda? And would it have taken that much more time to write out "baking"?

Marjorie's Pickled Figs
6 c sugar
1 c water
1 c white vinegar
¼ t oil of cloves (drug or health foods store)
¼ t. “ “ cinnamon or sticks (3-4)
Blanch figs 5 – 7 min – set aside.

Do this for 3 days.
Can & seal or freeze
6 – 8 pints

Okay, now Marjorie, just exactly what am I supposed to do for 3 days? Seriously, I haven't a clue. It's not really that much of a problem, however, because I can't think of a reason that I would ever try to pickle a fig. What ever made you, or your mother, or your grandmother pickle a fig? Pickle a cucumber, or maybe an okra, or even a bean. Leave the figs alone!

As an aside, I recently heard some grade school teachers talking about the fact that they are being less and less encouraged to teach young children cursive. I guess I'm not surprised, but it makes me very sad. I guess that means that before long, there won't be such things as recipe cards.

Ham It Up

Another holiday draws to a close, which in my family means a full stomach and exhaustion from the sheer energy it takes to chew so much food. What a way to celebrate the risen Christ.

While I can’t quite remember exactly what my mother cooked in Easters past, I’m sure it involved a ham. I don’t know why or when Easter became synonymous with smoked pork butt, but it’s hard to imagine an Easter dinner or buffet without it. Even if one isn’t exactly a fan of the ham, there it generally sits on your Easter table.

While I wouldn’t say ham is my favorite food, I must admit that a spiral cut ham with a crunchy sugary glaze tastes really good to me, as long as it isn’t more often than once or twice a year. What’s more, as it sits on the buffet table, I am virtually unable to walk by it without picking a piece off of the bone. And I walk by it a lot, I’m afraid.

This year one of our sons and daughters-in-law hosted the Easter feast. Somehow, however, I ended up with a whole lot of the ham. I’m not sure how that happened. Oh, I know. It’s because I suggested to her that life as we know it would end if she threw away the ham bone.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what I would do with it,” said the harried mother of four, “but I will send it home with you.”

So, there it sits in my refrigerator. I don’t have any problem thinking about what to do with the ham bone. There is Senate Bean Soup, of which I’ve spoken. I can also make green beans and ham, which has also been discussed in Simply Cooking Simply. There is, however, the matter of all of that ham which she left attached to the bone.

Hmmmm. I’ve been trying to think what my mother did with leftover ham. I recall eating ham with my eggs for breakfast in the morning. I also have a vague memory of creamed potatoes with ham, though I haven’t been able to find the recipe.

After putting on my thinking cap (and let’s not get started with that again), I came up with a couple of ideas.

My husband has never struggled with his masculinity when it comes to eating quiche. He has never found a pie he doesn’t like, nor has he ever met an egg concoction that he doesn’t like. Combine the two and you have a happy man. I found a lot of recipes that suggest making a piecrust from scratch, and far be it from me to discourage you from doing that. However, I give you permission to buy a good quality refrigerated piecrust in which to put your egg custard. They are so darn easy – you don’t even have to roll them out. Just lay them in your pie pan and fill it up. Here is a wonderful recipe from Taste of Home. Personally, I would substitute Swiss cheese because I love the combination of Swiss cheese and ham. Suit yourself. Make a couple of quiches and freeze one for later.

My second idea has to do with baking potatoes. I’m a fan of twice-baked potatoes, but I’ve never prepared one for dinner. But a baked potato filled with ham and cheese sounds like a substantial and relatively easy dinner.

Bake a couple of russet potatoes until they are soft. In our altitude, it takes an hour-and-a-half at 375 to completely cook. Once they are soft, cut a small section off of the top of each potato and scoop out the potato into a large bowl. Add cooked diced ham, maybe a cup or so, along with some cheese. Add a couple of dollops of sour cream, or a bit of half-and-half or milk. You can also add some cooked onion or mushrooms – really anything that sounds good and that you have in the refrigerator. Add salt and pepper. Carefully refill the potatoes (which will now be overstuffed and delicious), top with some more of the cheese, and bake in a preheated 450-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the cheese has melted. Serve with a tossed salad.

Personally, I would prefer leg of lamb for Easter, but that rarely appears on my table. Unfortunately, I’m the only one who likes lamb. Oh well.

Happy Easter to all my friends and family.

Meatless Madness

Growing up Catholic in the 50s and 60s (and don’t be a smart aleck; I mean the 1950s and 1960s) meant abstaining from meat on Fridays. And growing up in the land-locked cattle-heavy Nebraska plains meant tuna casseroles or fish sticks on Fridays.

I would assume that times and tastes and grocery stores have changed since then, even in Nebraska. I can probably buy shrimp, for example, as easily there as I can here in Denver. I can likely even find fresh fish if I look a bit. But back in the good ol’ days, we ate our fish out of a can or as breaded sticks, and eagerly awaited our Saturday morning breakfast of bacon and eggs as a reward for our penance.

Nowadays, at least for me, not eating meat on Fridays is not only easy to do, but quite enjoyable. It really doesn’t feel like much of a sacrifice. I don’t know that my husband would feel quite the same way, although he enjoys most shellfish and really likes almost all kinds of pasta dishes. And though he would always prefer Italian sausage on his pizza, he wouldn’t turn his nose up at a simple cheese pizza. Hold the vegetables for him, however.

As I paged through the newest cookbook from my very favorite chef and cookbook author Lidia Bastianich, I discovered that an extraordinary number of her recipes, especially her pasta recipes, are meatless. I assume that is because in Italy, they take advantage of the wonderful cheeses and the fresh seasonal vegetables to produce the most delicious and mostly simple sauces for pasta. Two of them caught my eye.

The first is Baked Penne and Mushrooms. To enjoy this recipe, you must like mushrooms. But the earthiness of a variety of mushrooms is kept in check by the richness of the cream and butter that is added to the mix. Topped with rich fontina cheese and baked until that cheese is brown and crusty makes a meal that even someone reluctant to try mushrooms would have to like, especially on a meatless Friday.

The second recipe that made my mouth water is Maccheroni with Fresh Lemon and Cream Sauce. Her recipe explains how to make maccheroni using a complicated contraption known as a chitarra, which resembles a guitar. The strings are used to cut the pasta into long strands. My recommendation would be to use dried linguini or spaghetti, but far be it from me to dissuade you from being creative. On her television show, she even demonstrated how you could cut the pasta by hand. Seemed like a lot of work to me.

I’m not normally drawn to pasta sauces that have cream or half and half as an ingredient, but the cream in this sauce is offset by a hearty amount of lemon and lemon zest, which would take away some of the richness that I would find a bit off putting for a pasta sauce.

The first recipe requires a stint in the oven, so you have to account for that time. The second, however, is so quick that you can throw the sauce together in the time it takes to cook your pasta (particularly if you are using a dry pasta as opposed to a fresh pasta; dry pasta takes a few minutes longer to cook).

The best news about both of these dishes is that they would be relatively inexpensive. If you don’t want to pay the price for fancier mushrooms, simply substitute the less pricey and more familiar button mushrooms. Heavy cream can be somewhat expensive, but you can substitute half-and-half if you want. It won’t be quite as rich, but that’s not always a bad thing.

Unfortunately, true fontina cheese is expensive. I would think you could substitute another kind of cheese that melts easily, such as Swiss or even Monterey Jack. If it’s up to me, however, I would fork out the cash for fontina if you can find it. After all, you aren’t paying for meat. And you could easily substitute Parmesan cheese for the pecorino cheese called for in the lemony sauce.

Meatless Fridays aren’t too tough anymore. Perhaps I should consider a meatless meal every week, even when a man in Italy wearing a pointed hat isn’t telling me to do so.

Pizza Il Forno

My husband and I have been lucky enough to travel quite a bit, and undoubtedly, our favorite place to travel is Italy. A couple of years ago, we spent three-and-a-half months traveling around Europe, and two out of those 3+ months we spent in Italy. We began to feel almost like locals.

Having spent so much time there, and loving the way Italians live and eat, we are always surprised to hear that some people haven’t enjoyed the food they have eaten while traveling in Italy. The first time someone told me that she thought the food in Italy was awful, I pressed her to explain. “We couldn’t even find spaghetti and meatballs,” she whined.

Inwardly I groaned, but patiently, I explained to her that spaghetti and meatballs really aren’t an Italian dish, but more of an Italian-American dish. When Italians immigrated to the United States, they took the ingredients that were plentiful here (such as ground beef) and, in familiar fashion, turned them into something wonderful to eat. But you are unlikely to find meatballs on a menu at any restaurant in Italy.

Out of all the wonderful things you can eat in Italy, my husband’s unqualified favorite thing is the pizza. Rome and Naples have a continuing argument on who makes the best pizza, but I like them both.

Italian pizzas are simple, with few ingredients. You won’t find pizza crust loaded with a tomato sauce, handfuls of mozzarella cheese, and piles of meat and vegetables. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love those kinds of pizzas as well. But the simplicity of a thin-crust pizza charred in the wood-fired oven and topped with maybe some slices of prosciutto and handful of arugula make for good eating. Oh, and of course, a glass of vino rosso.

It’s hard to find that kind of pizza here. There’s a restaurant a few miles down the road that comes close. But I have found that I can do a pretty good job of making a typical Roman-style pizza at home by making it on my grill.

Most of the recipes that I have found call for a homemade pizza crust. Far be it from me to discourage you from making a homemade crust if you so desire and have the time. I buy my crust at my neighborhood Whole Foods. Most pizza places will sell you their crust as well. And, if all else fails, you can use the refrigerated crusts sold in all grocery stores.

The key to a successful grilled pizza is having everything prepared in advance. It all goes very quickly, and you don’t have time to mess around or your crust will go from charred to black. Yuck.

Here’s how you do it:

Preheat your grill while you prepare your ingredients. Divide your crust into individual portions and roll it out as thin as you can.

While your grill is getting hot, warm some olive oil in a pan, and throw in a crushed garlic clove. Let the oils from the garlic flavor the olive oil, and then brush the olive oil on both sides of your individual crusts.

Put your ingredients in bowls and take them with you out to the grill, along with the crusts. I recommend very simple ingredients. Maybe you will want to brush a little tomato sauce on the crust after it has cooked on one side. Perhaps you will put on a little cheese. You can add some garlic or maybe a little prosciutto or few slices of pepperoni (but not both).

Once your grill is preheated, carefully place the crusts (on which you have brushed some garlic-infused oil) directly onto the grill rack. One web site recommends that you put your crust on a piece of aluminum foil that you have floured and slide it from the foil onto the grill. I have generally just used my hands. However you do it, this is probably the trickiest part. But you can do it!

At this point, don’t walk away from the grill. Keep your eyes open as you watch the crust begin to bubble. It really only takes a minute or so. Once the bottom of the crust has gotten a little charred, turn the crust over using tongs. Brush more oil onto the crust, and quickly put on your ingredients. Close the lid and let the pizzas cook and the cheese melt (if you used cheese) for a few more minutes – probably no more than five. Keep your eye on the pie. The result is almost as good as pizzas we ate in Italy.

Our dream is to build an actual wood-burning pizza oven in our back yard. In the meantime, we will continue to use our grill.

Low Down

This morning as my husband and I drank our morning coffee, we began talking about saving money. This talk generally happens about this time of year, not coincidentally because we just filed our tax return and had to send a check to Uncle Sam. (Really? You didn’t get enough throughout the year?)

As frequently happens when discussing our budget, I began wailing about the increasing cost of groceries. As far as I’m concerned, there’s a problem when I can’t feed two of us for less than $100 a week. But don’t get me started…..

Anyway, just as serious as a heart attack, my husband says to me, “Well, I guess we’re just going to have to start eating low on the hog.”

Now, I want to make something clear. My husband grew up on the south side of Chicago. I’m not talking about a cushy little suburb; I mean he lived in the city of Chicago, probably not too far from Leroy Brown, you know, as in

The south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town
and if you go down there you’d better just beware
of a man named Leroy Brown. – Jim Croce.

Now, granted, my husband’s southside neighborhood was probably a little more affluent than Leroy Brown’s, but I’m trying to make a point. He grew up in the city.

However, his father grew up in rural North Carolina, on a farm where they grew tobacco and corn. Every summer, his dad would load his wife and their four children into their Buick and drive from Chicago, Illinois, to Statesville, North Carolina, where they would spend two weeks on the farm. My husband always says he would take off his shoes when they arrived and put them back on when they left for home two weeks later.

There is definitely a little bit of the rural south in my husband, which he learned from his dad. It mostly comes out in colloquialisms. The first time he described a bumpy road as being “rough as a cob,” I laughed out loud.

All this is to say that I understood immediately what he meant by eating low on the hog. Literally speaking, it means eating the cheaper parts of the hog, which are generally down low. He simply meant let’s look at less expensive cuts of meat – maybe even eating occasional meatless meals.

Just for fun, I googled “eating low on the hog” and learned that pork jowl, pigs feet, and hog maw (stomach) are all cuts from low on the hog. Having never eaten any of these, I’m reluctant to offer a recipe for them. Actually, that’s not true. While traveling in France, my husband and I had the unfortunate experience of eating andoulette sausage at a truck stop outside of Lyon. Since I’ve never met a sausage I didn’t like, I was surprised to find I thought this sausage tasted foul. I later learned that’s because it comes from the pig’s colon and is considered a delicacy in parts of France. This picture tells it all.

But I am not at all hesitant to include a recipe using ham hocks, also from low on the hog. In fact, one of my favorite things to eat when I used to travel to our nation’s capital for work was Senate Bean Soup. This recipe is from allrecipes.com. Ham and Bean Soup is a hearty soup that you can serve with biscuits or crusty French bread on a chilly evening.

I also like to make green beans with ham hocks. Cut up an onion, and soften it in butter in a big sauce pan. When the onion is translucent, add a tablespoon or so of flour, and cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly, until the flour loses it’s starchy taste. Add a cup or so of chicken broth, a couple of baby red potatoes that you cut in half, and a big handful of fresh green beans. On top of it all, place a ham hock. Bring it to a boil, cover it, lower the heat, and let it cook for an hour or so.

You can serve this as a side dish, but I like it as my main course. Particularly when you can use fresh homegrown green beans in the summer.

That’s what I call eating low on the hog!

Recipe Fantasy Life

I’ve talked about my mom before. You will recall that she was a simple, yet spectacular cook. She cooked comfort foods before they were called comfort foods. She didn’t cook anything fancy. But almost every night she prepared a delicious meal for my dad and their four kids, and always made it seem easy.

I don’t recall that she particularly took time to teach any of her daughters how to cook. We learned from watching her, but even that took place mostly after we were grown up. We would sit at the counter and watch as she cooked, making mental notes. At least I did.

She died in 1995, and somehow I ended up with her recipe box. It is a hodge-podge of recipes written in her hand, recipes written in the handwriting of my sisters and me, recipes given to her by persons (with handwriting) unknown. Several recipes are even in the handwriting of a couple of her children’s ex-spouses! Guess she figured you could toss out the spouse and yet keep the recipe. The box is crammed with recipes on yellowed newsprint from years back.

The thing I have always found somewhat amusing about my mom’s recipe box is that almost none of the things we ate as we grew up are in that box. Almost like a secret fantasy life, my mom had recipes for things such as Shish Kabob Sauce, Coquilles St. Jacques au Gratin (I’m pretty sure the only scallop you would have been able to find in the Nebraska town in which I grew up in the 60s would have been at the bottom of a kitchen curtain), and no fewer than four jambalaya recipes.

Needless to say, jambalaya never graced our dinner table as a child. However, Mom did become much more experimental in her cooking as her kids grew up and left home. I don’t think my father ever complained.

As I went through some of her recipe cards, I noticed the names of the dish often included one of her kids’ names, i.e. Kris’ Eggplant Pasta Sauce or Jennie’s Party Pork Chops. One recipe name made me laugh out loud (and I’m writing it exactly as it was written in my mother’s hand): Beckie’s Chili (originally my chili). Only a mother would hand off a recipe (and the credit for it) to her daughter and not look back.

One recipe that I came across looked yummy, and I want to share it with you. Flank steak is a delicious, though not particularly inexpensive, cut of beef that generally requires a marinade to tenderize and flavor it. After it has marinated, a quick trip to the grill (or under a broiler) so that it is crusty on the outside and pink on the inside is all it takes.

Mom’s Flank Steak Marinade
1 to 1-1/2 c. beer
3 scallions, minced
1/3 c. olive oil
3 T soy sauce
2 T sugar
2 cloves of garlic, minced
¼ t. Tabasco

Mix the ingredients. Place your flank steak in a zippered plastic bag and pour the marinade over the meat. Marinade for six to eight hours, giving your bag a squeeze and a turn every once in a while.

The meat should be removed from the marinade and grilled or broiled for about five minutes per side (less if you like it really rare). Let the meat rest five minutes. Then slice the meat against the grain and serve with some roasted potatoes or hash browns and a veggie or a salad.

As an aside, as I began writing out the recipe, it started seeming familiar to me. I think the recipe came from me. Now I’m a bit hurt that it wasn’t labeled Kris’ Flank Steak Marinade. Sigh.

Cooking with Quills?

As a small child, my son was a picky eater. He would eat grilled cheese sandwiches, plain hamburgers, the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms, and tacos. And getting him to eat tacos required absolute dishonesty on the part of his father and me. We told him the lettuce on the crunchy tacos at Taco Bell was Mexican grass. For some reason, that appealed enough to him to get him to eat them.

Though we later divorced, his father and I went on to coauthor the bestselling Lying to Your Children for Dummies.

Eventually, my son became more tolerant of a variety of foods, though his love of tacos stayed with him into adulthood. As a teenager, he once ate 13 tacos at my dinner table. I had stopped telling him I used Mexican grass by that time. I had no interest then and have no interest now in knowing whether he was familiar with any other kind of Mexican grass at that point in his life (or ever). President Clinton didn’t invent “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Simply Cooking Simply recognizes that cooking for spouses is often as difficult as cooking for children – sometimes worse. But unless you’re a vegetarian, meatballs appeal to everyone.

Meatballs of all kinds. Swedish meatballs, Italian meatballs, sweet and sour meatballs – any time you mix ground meat with a egg and something to hold it all together, throw on a sauce, you have a comforting meal that will appeal to children and grownups alike.

Even as a small child, my son loved porcupine meatballs. I brought the recipe into my marriage from my mother’s recipe box. If you go on line, you can find all sorts of recipes for porcupine meatballs. Some are fancier than others. The recipe below is not fancy, and is exactly as my mother wrote it.

Porcupine Meatballs

1 beaten egg
1 can tomato soup
¼ cup uncooked rice*
2 T chopped onions*
1 T. snipped parsley*
½ t. salt
¼ t. pepper
1 lb. ground beef
½ c. water
1 t. Worchestershire sauce

In bowl, combine the egg and ¼ c. of the soup. Stir in the uncooked rice, onion, parsley, salt and pepper. Add ground beef. Mix well.

Shape into small meatballs, and place in a 10-in. skillet. (At this point, my mother never says whether or not she browned the meatballs. I do.)

Mix remaining soup with water and Worchestershire sauce; pour over meatballs. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 35 – 40 minutes, stirring often.

Makes 4-5 servings.

* I’m pretty sure my mother used dried onion flakes. I always use about a half of a finely minced onion. Also, I don’t believe I ever saw a bunch of fresh parsley in my mother’s house, unless it was curly parsley that she put around a molded jello salad. So, again, I’m pretty sure she used dried parsley. I always use fresh. Finally, I think you can probably use either instant or regular rice. I always use regular.

Mashed potatoes are required with this dish. I don’t believe you would be breaking any major federal laws if you use noodles, but I’m pretty sure it’s a misdemeanor in most states!

As for the name, I understand the reasoning, but they never really looked much like porcupines to me.

Chinese Eat-In

Mondays are my grocery shopping day. For the record, Monday is not a terribly good day to grocery shop because the shelves are often nearly bare following the busy shopping weekend. Nevertheless, when I retired, I designated Mondays as my shopping day, and, despite frequent frustration at not finding certain items, so it continues to be. But I’m not stubborn….

I used to like grocery shopping. That’s because I really like to cook, and it’s fun strolling around leisurely (now that I’m retired) looking at the various ingredients I can use in my recipes. Any more, however, I find shopping to be extremely depressing. Prices haven’t just crept up; in some cases, they have sprung to nearly unaffordable heights seemingly overnight. I picked up a pound of bacon today and nearly fainted at the cost. I’m not exaggerating. When I gasped, a woman who was also considering the bacon looked at me and said, “No sh**!” True story. Grocery prices are making nuns swear. (That part’s not true; she wasn’t a nun.)

Anyhoo, I am always looking at ways to save money. I recently watched a cooking show on television that is specifically focused on feeding your family inexpensively. This particular show featured Chinese recipes so delicious, the perky cook promised, that you will no longer feel any need to order Chinese delivery. Now, I appreciate her attempt to help me save money, because there is no way around it – when you order Chinese, you spend at least $20 to $30 plus tip. But, homemade Chinese food, unless you are Ming Tsai (the illustrious host of PBS’ Simply Ming) just does not compare to Chinese take out. Plus, you don’t have those cute little white boxes or the fortune cookies that taste like they have been in the restaurant’s pantry since the Ming Dynasty.

But remembering the price of that bacon, I went to my old recipe box in which I knew I had some Chinese recipes that I had clipped out of newspapers years ago and never made (because homemade Chinese food does not compare to Chinese take out). The first recipe I found was for hot and sour soup, which I love. As I perused the recipe, I noticed that the first ingredient was tree mushrooms. Ah ha. That’s why I never attempted homemade hot and sour soup.

Having said all of the above, I believe we can make really good food with the taste of China if we put our minds to it. We just need to recognize that we are not going to be making food for which a Chinese mother-in-law would yearn. But let’s face it. If your mother-in-law is Chinese, you will be eating as often as possible at her house anyway.

I recently found a wonderful and easy recipe for Chinese chicken wings at one of my favorite websites, Allrecipes.com. These wings are delicious, healthy (since they are baked rather than fried), and are really good if you serve them with some stir-fried vegetables. I like steamed broccoli sprinkled with soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds. Or if you want to make it really easy on yourself, just buy a bag of frozen stir-fried vegetables.

The recipe is for five pounds, so cut it down to meet your needs. Also, it calls for marinating the wings for eight hours or overnight. While you can make them without marinating them, they really are better if they sit in the marinade for a day.

Xiǎngshòu nǐ de shíwù (which means "enjoy your food").

Yo Yo

Last night I had a quadruple whammy.

Problem #1: Because of a health issue, I am currently (and temporarily) on a low- to no-fiber diet – not as easy as you would think;

Problem #2: A couple of nights ago, I came down with a cold, which for some reason has knocked me on my bee-hind;

Problem #3: We had plans to have dinner with my stepmother, but because of my cold, we had to cancel; as a result, I had nothing planned for dinner, and little to work with; and

Problem #4: It was Friday, and as a Catholic, I am not eating meat on Fridays during Lent.

But since I think I could be breathing my last breath and still be hungry, and because my husband does not cook (and I mean never – something I knew prior to marrying him so I can’t complain) and was looking at me with woeful eyes, I had to put on my thinking cap.

(As an aside, I’ll bet none of you under the age of 40 knows where that term thinking cap came from, and many of you over the age of 40 can’t remember – perhaps because you aren’t wearing your thinking caps. But I digress.)

There are a few things that I recommend you always have on hand in your pantry. Among those are fresh garlic, extra virgin olive oil, some kind of Parmesan cheese, and pasta. And I had all of those ingredients in my pantry. The result? I was able to put together a healthy dinner –Pasta Aglio e Olio – in literally the time it took to cook my pasta (which, since I used gemelli, was eight minutes).

Here’s how you do it.

Bring a big pot of heavily salted water to a boil. It is better if you bring the water to a boil and then add your salt as the water will come to a boil quicker without salt; however, when I do that, I almost always forget to add the salt. Sigh.

Once your water is at a rolling boil and is salted, add however much pasta you need. Typically, spaghetti is used for this traditional Italian dish. Last night I chose to use gemelli. Gemelli is one of my favorite pastas, and I find it hard to get. Gemelli means “twin” in Italian, and gemelli pasta is two short strands of pasta twisted together. I found it recently at a wonderful Italian deli and market in Scottsdale. Since I used it last night, I must wait until I’m back in Arizona to replenish. Sigh again. And again, I digress.

Once your pasta is in the water boiling away, put about ½ c. of extra virgin olive oil in a skillet and begin warming the oil. Mince anywhere from four to six cloves of fresh garlic – depending on how much you like garlic, but remembering that aglio e olio translated from Italian to English means garlic and olive oil. Garlic is key to this dish, and if you don’t like garlic, you shouldn’t be making this particular recipe.

Place the minced garlic into the oil in your skillet, and slowly brown the garlic. (I have learned the hard way that garlic turns from golden to burned very quickly, so I emphasize slowly. Keep your temperature down. Burned garlic is bitter.) Also add a pinch of red pepper flakes. Red pepper flakes are traditional in spaghetti aglio e olio, and I always have them on hand. However, if you don’t, forge ahead without.

Once the garlic is golden brown, add a ladle of water from the pot in which you are cooking your pasta. Let this water cook a bit in your skillet until the amount diminishes a bit, but doesn’t disappear. When your pasta is slightly undercooked, use a slotted spoon or tongs and put the pasta into the skillet with the garlic and pepper flakes. Mix thoroughly. Let it finish cooking for a minute or so, and then turn off your heat. Add Parmesan cheese and minced Italian parsley (if you have it, which I didn’t last night).

Serve with bread, a salad, etc.

A couple of notes: If you only have regular olive oil rather than extra virgin olive oil, use it, because I’d rather have you use that instead of not making the dish. However, you can buy extra virgin olive oil at a fairly reasonable price (you can also buy it at a price that would require you to take out a second mortgage), and you should really have it on your shelf if you want to be a serious cook. Do not use any other kind of oil in this particular recipe.

And regarding your cheese, parmigiano reggiano is, in my opinion, the most delicious cheese in the world (well, I could probably be talked out of that opinion since I love so many cheeses), but it is painfully expensive. Buy it when you can afford it. When you can’t, use regular Parmesan cheese. Don’t use, however, the kind that’s in a little container that looks like a sink cleaner. Buy it in the cheese department.

My favorite neighborhood pizzaria makes spaghetti aglio e olio, but has shortened the name to Spaghetti Yo Yo. Clever.

By the way, thinking cap comes from Tom Terrific, a cartoon character from what was my absolute favorite program as a child – Captain Kangaroo. It’s unnerving how many times I use names of characters from that program in my everyday life. For example, I kept referring to my husband, who recently painted our fence, as Mr. Bainter the Painter, and I’m not sure there was a single soul who knew what I was talking about. Of course, that’s nothing new.

Finger-lickin'

Who doesn’t like fried chicken? Seriously, I personally think fried chicken of any kind is delicious. And if I ask my husband what he would like for his birthday/anniversary/father’s day dinner, he will always (and I really mean without exception) request fried chicken.

But I must also tell you that fried chicken is a pain to make. Frying chicken makes a mess. So, unless you fall for the assertion that you can put crushed corn flakes on chicken breasts and bake it in the oven and it tastes like fried chicken, you are going to have to clean up a mess.

But, oh, it’s worth it. Every single time.

But I have a suggestion for frying chicken that won’t require you to haul out your deep fat fryer (Yeah, right. That’s what all newlyweds request on their wedding registry. Well, maybe if you’re related to Paula Deen. Or me.) It’s fairly quick, relatively unmessy, and makes really delicious, tender, and moist fried chicken.

The key is thinking ahead. Something I’m not terribly good at, I might add. I actually have to write myself a note to remind myself to do what I’m about to tell you. In the morning, before you go to work or before you get too bogged down with the details of your day, put your chicken pieces into a bowl. (And since I generally cook for just my husband and me, I buy pieces rather than the whole chicken. If you can find chicken pieces on sale, buy them, use what you need and freeze the remaining pieces until such time as you have forgotten about the mess.)

Mix together about a cup (more if you are using more than four or five pieces of chicken) of buttermilk with as much hot sauce as you would like to give it a zing – maybe a tablespoon or so – (I use Frank’s Louisiana Hot Sauce) and add a teaspoon or so of salt. Pour this mixture over your chicken and use your hands to slosh the pieces around in the buttermilk. The buttermilk breaks down the muscles of the chicken, which will help you produce tender and juicy fried chicken that evening. If you are home, occasionally stir the chicken pieces. If not, don’t drive home every two hours to do it because it’s not a big deal.

In the evening, pour about three-quarters of an inch of vegetable oil in a frying pan (I’m crazy about my cast iron skillet, but it’s not a deal breaker). Heat up the oil while you remove your chicken from the buttermilk. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

With a paper towel, wipe off excess buttermilk so that you don’t splash oil when you place the chicken into the skillet. Mix together about a cup of flour with some bread crumbs (seasoned or unseasoned, whatever you have on hand). Add some garlic powder (a teaspoon or so) to the flour, along with some pepper. Dredge your chicken pieces in the flour, making sure to shake off excess flour as well.

Carefully place the chicken pieces in the hot oil, and fry until the pieces are brown and crispy on the outside. The chicken won’t be cooked all the way through. It may take anywhere between five and 10 minutes per side. If you are doing a lot of pieces of chicken, fry in batches. If you fry too many pieces at a time, you will steam the chicken rather than getting a good crust.

Once the chicken is nice and brown on both sides, put the pieces onto a rack that you have placed on a large cookie sheet. (I would recommend you cover the cookie sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper to help mitigate clean-up.)

Finish cooking your browned chicken in the oven for about 20 minutes or so. Dark meat takes longer than white meat. A meat thermometer should read 170, but if you don’t own a meat thermometer, cut into a piece and make sure the juices run clear. And go out tomorrow and buy an instant read thermometer.

Unfortunately, you really can’t reuse the grease, so that will be your biggest mess. I pour the excess grease into a coffee cup, wipe out the remaining grease with a paper towel, and wash my pan. Once the grease is cool tomorrow, I will place it in a plastic bag that I seal really well and throw it in the garbage.

Making your fried chicken this way really is easier than you think, and I can assure you of crispy, delicious chicken that you will make again. Maybe not for awhile, however. And to make yourself feel less guilty, tomorrow serve grilled tilapia and steamed broccoli.

Don't Make it So Difficult!

Every cook, whether he or she is a professional chef or cooks for a spouse and kids, was at one time inexperienced. At some point, each of us had a lot to learn about cooking. As a result, most of us have a cooking horror story to tell. It’s inevitable.

Mine? Making some sort of forgettable dish for my brother and his wife, with the rice having the look (and taste) of wallpaper paste. My brother, who has a long memory and a heartless sense of humor, reminds me of it on a regular basis. Oh, and the first pie I made during which I got so frustrated while rolling out the pie dough that I said a bad four-letter word that sounds somewhat like fudge, and threw it on the floor.

Simply Cooking Simply thinks we make it too hard on ourselves. And as I look at different cooking web sites and blogs or watch cooking shows on television, it becomes clear to me why. I can almost hear young cooks saying....

“This recipe calls for gruyere cheese, and have you seen how much that costs?”

“I’m suppose to use unsalted butter in this recipe, and all I have is salted butter!”

“A tablespoon of freshly grated lemon zest? What do I do with the rest of the lemon?”

“What the hell are blood oranges?”

See what I mean? The chefs on television make it seem as though you simply MUST use these ingredients or your cooking world will be shattered. And if I’m just beginning to cook for a family and am on a limited budget, I don’t want to go out and buy expensive ingredients that will grow old in my refrigerator or pantry shelf and need to be discarded.

Simply Cooking Simply recommends that you look at recipes as simply an outline, a recommendation. For example, don’t let yourself believe for a moment that you must use gruyere cheese in your French onion soup. Substitute Swiss cheese that you get on sale at the market, and maybe add a little parmesan cheese for a sharp bite.

Here is a recipe for French Onion Soup from Melissa d’Arabian that is simple and really inexpensive to make. If you don’t have fresh thyme (or have reason to buy any besides this recipe), either use dried thyme, or leave it out altogether. The key to making this recipe work is to have your burner on a low temperature and carmelize (which just means cook them until they are a carmel color) for a very long time. She recommends an hour-and-a-half. Low and slow.

As an aside, remember when you substitute dried herbs for fresh, use a LOT less. As herbs are dried, their flavor is concentrated. Using the same amount would be overpowering.

Serve your soup with a fresh vinaigrette salad, and you have a fancy French dinner for not much money.

By the way, I’ll try to answer some of those other questions in future blogs.