Posts Tagged ‘Comfort Food’

Larry’s Cabbage and Sausage Supper

Monday, March 1st, 2010
Larry gets read to eat.

Larry gets read to eat.

 
Happy March! We are now in Massachusetts Maple Month, according to the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association.
 
Regular readers of this blog will know that I LOVE maple syrup—not just on pancakes but as a sweetener for all sorts of dishes. It’s particularly useful in recipes like this one, sent in by Larry Fox, who lives in Eugene, Oregon.
 
I’ve known Larry almost all my life. In some ways he seems very grown up: he has a very responsible job and prematurely gray hair. When we get together, however, I always think the hair is a disguise–like the shoe polish we used to whiten our hair in high-school theatricals. He’s still fun and youthful at heart.
 
As you can see, Larry’s recipe only requires a tiny bit of maple syrup (and you may use sugar if you want to). The syrup enhances the sweet-and-sour appeal of this cabbage concoction.
 
Larry used some form of chicken sausage when he prepared it; I used turkey kielbasa. If you are near a German butcher, try a German sausage since the dish definitely has a German flavor.
 
Larry’s recipe also included a teaspoon of cracked mustard seeds, but I couldn’t find my mustard seeds so I left them out and it was still delicious—warm, flavorful, and hearty.
 
What’s YOUR favorite way to use maple syrup? Please leave a comment below to let me know….
 
Larry's dish web
 
 
Ingredients:
 
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 teaspoon peppercorns, cracked
1 large yellow onion, sliced
1 pound cabbage, roughly shredded
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons salt
freshly ground pepper to taste
2 firm apples, cored and cut into 1/4-inch wedges (Larry uses honey crisp; I used Gala apples from Apex Orchards, and I used Apex’s vinegar as well)
5 sprigs fresh thyme (you may use dried if you absolutely have to)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/4 cup apple-cider vinegar
1 pound sausage, sliced into bite-sized pieces
 
Instructions:
 
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a large pan over medium-high heat, heat the oil; then toss the spices in it for 1 minute. Add the onion, cabbage, garlic, salt, and pepper. Cook until they are nice and brown, stirring frequently.
 
Turn off the heat, and stir in the apples, thyme, sugar, and vinegar.
 
Transfer the mixture to a casserole dish, and place the sausage pieces on top. Place the dish, uncovered, in the oven, and bake for 10 minutes. Flip the sausages over and bake for another 10 to 12 minutes, until the sausage pieces are cooked through.
 
Serve with lots of German-style mustard and roasted small potatoes—not to mention a hearty beer. Serves 4.
 
  
Eating this dish may start you dancing like my neighbors' snowgirl.

Eating this dish may start you dancing like my neighbors' snowgirl.

 

 

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Thinking Ahead in 2010

Monday, January 4th, 2010

resolvedweb

 
New Year’s Resolutions can be tricky things. If we take them too seriously—try to turn our lives around completely—they can be dangerously difficult to maintain.
 
Instead of making impossible resolutions this January, therefore, I’m using the turn of the year for reflection and planning. Naturally, In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens is coming in for its share of both activities.
 
This weekend I looked over many of my posts from the past year or so in an effort to figure out where the blog goes from here. I have selected several types of post that have turned out to be very popular with readers, with me, or with both.
 
Here they are, in alphabetical order:
 
Characters I Have Known such as Florette Zuelke and Sylvia Hubbell;
 
Comfort Food like Faith’s Tunafish & Noodles or Irish Stew;
 
Contributions from Friends & Readers, such as Erin’s Pizza or Mike’s Louisiana Red Beans & Rice;
 
Historical Figures, Events, and Places, including Susan B. Anthony and George Washington’s Gristmill;
 
Holidays, from Mardi Gras to Oatmeal Month (I know oatmeal month isn’t technically a holiday, but we did celebrate it last year!);
 
Local and Seasonal Foods, from Rhubarb to Squash;
 
Songs and Music, including such popular standards as “September Song” and “Moon River”;
 
TV and Film Figures and Foods, featuring people like Vivian Vance and Harriet Nelson.
 
In the next year I hope to touch on each of these categories at least once a month (which probably means I’ll get to them once every other month; I AM a procrastinator!).
 
I’ll also be continuing my monthly Twelve Cookies of Christmas series.
 
And naturally I’ll frequently have to resort to posting a recipe for What We Just Ate.
 
Some people might argue that each of my categories could spark its own blog. It’s always been both a weakness and a strength of mine that I have many, many passions.
 
This scattered interest makes it hard for me to focus at times. I think it makes me a more interesting person, cook, and writer, however.
 
As the year goes by I hope regular readers—and even irregular readers—will help me build up the different categories. Please let me know which of them you favor.
 
And of course please tell me what I have left out that you’d like to read about.
 
Two of the categories—Contributions from Readers & Friends and The Twelve Cookies of Christmas—will depend on you in large part for contributions. The name of this blog is In OUR Grandmothers’ Kitchens, after all. Please consider submitting a recipe (with background information) to me in the next few months.
 
I hope together we’ll have a delicious new year!
 
Paula Rice, the Supreme Leader of the Meat Counter at Avery's, slices dried beef.
Paula Rice, the Senior Slicer at the Meat Counter at Avery’s, slices dried beef.

 
Frizzled Beef

 
Since I’ve spent so much time mulling over the past year recently today’s recipe naturally falls into the What We Just Ate category (although it’s also highly eligible for Comfort Food!).
 
My mother and I invited friends to supper Saturday night. What with snow falling outside and lots of work to do, we didn’t have much opportunity to shop or cook that day.
 
So we ended up with Frizzled Beef (a.k.a. chipped beef, a.k.a. S.O.S. or Same Old … um … Stuff).
 
Our local general store, Avery’s, stocks lovely dried beef at this time of year. The nice folks behind the meat counter will slice as much or as little as one likes.
 
The beef saves for weeks so it’s a great fallback food on snowy days. And it cooks up in minutes.
 
The recipe I used for the beef came from Gam, our neighborhood matriarch, as did Saturday’s oyster recipe. (I used to stay at her house a lot at this time of year so I guess I’m thinking of her!)
 
If you want to vary it, you may sauté a little onion and/or celery in butter in your frying pan before you add more butter and the dried beef.
 
You may also throw cooked peas and/or a pinch of thyme into the final product.
 
Frizzled beef may be eaten over biscuits, puff pastry, cornbread, or a baked potato. My mother and I had just baked some fresh oatmeal bread the other evening so we served it on toast. A salad and brownies completed our supper.
 
The guests didn’t complain about the simplicity of the meal. It was warm and tasty. And it was enhanced by candlelight and conversation. (Don’t forget those important ingredients when you serve it yourself.)
 
Ingredients:
 
1/2 pound dried beef
a pat of butter the size of an egg
flour as needed
1 egg yolk beaten into 1 cup milk (plus a little more if needed) and 3/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
freshly ground pepper to taste
 
Instructions:
 
If you are averse to a lot of salt, rinse the beef carefully and pat it dry. Dried beef is heavily cured (that’s why it lasts so long) so it can be very salty.
 
Melt the butter in a medium frying pan. When it is hot, add the beef and toss it around to coat it in the butter.
 
Dust the warm beef with flour and toss it around for a minute or two. Pour in the egg mixture. Bring the mixture just to the boil, adding a bit more milk if it looks very thick; then dish it up.
 
Serves 4.
 
frizzleweb

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A Hug in a Bowl: Faith’s Tunafish and Noodles

Friday, March 6th, 2009

tncweb

 

Today I have a guest blogger, my friend Faith Montgomery Paul. As kids Faith and I spent summers together at Singing Brook Farm in Hawley, Massachusetts. She’s probably the first person apart from my family I ever cooked with. We made a ton of fudge and cookies to share with our friends as teenagers! Along the way we cooked up a friendship that has lasted for decades.

Faith returns to Hawley every summer with her husband Arnold and her son Ian, one of my all-time favorite kids. We only see each other a few days a year, but we’re in touch by e-mail all the time, and it feels as though we’re still just around the corner. She wrote me a few weeks back and said she was in the mood for tuna-noodle casserole, and I said that sounded like a blog post to me!

When I made the casserole (the photo is of my version; I’m sure Faith’s looks neater!) I didn’t have any canned mushrooms so I sautéed a few fresh ones and popped them in. I also threw a little paprika on top because I just love paprika. And I mixed the salt, pepper, and onion granules into the sauce so they would spread out (sorry, Faith; I just can’t help messing with recipes a teensy bit).

Anyone else who would like to share thoughts and recipes is very welcome to do so; after all, the name of this blog is “In OUR Grandmothers’ Kitchens.”

Meanwhile, here’s Faith……… 
Faith

Faith

Comfort Food

 

Everyone has his or her own definition of comfort food, and I would be hard put to define it conclusively. But I know it when I eat it. It can take the sting out of winter, or heartbreak, or too much STRESS, at least temporarily. It’s warming and sustaining and non-threatening (no exotic ingredients here!). It’s like eating a hug in a bowl. Usually, it’s something that my mother Jane made when we were growing up. Sometimes it involves noodles, sometimes cheese sometimes both!

 

Winter is my prime time for comfort food, because I really don’t like winter very much. Yeah, the snow is nice when everything looks impossibly like a postcard. Yeah, it’s great that my son gets to ski (every Tuesday, all day, with his school — great school — but that’s another story). Yeah, I know we only get the other three seasons because we have winter. I get all that. I still don’t like wearing all these clothes and having my hands cold from November to April. I don’t like days with more darkness than sunshine. Really, I’d just like to eat my weight in chocolate around Thanksgiving (possibly Veterans Day) and then sleep until Memorial Day.

 

So, along about now, when it seems as if winter might not end, I dig into my memories of childhood and produce: tunafish and noodles. Other people might call it tuna noodle casserole, but in my family it’s “tunafish and noodles.” And here’s how my mother made it.

 

Ingredients:

 

about 1/3 of a 1-pound bag of medium-width egg noodles

2 cans tuna packed in water

2 ribs celery, chopped (more if you’re a celery fan)

1 can mushrooms, optional

1 can cream of celery soup

1 soup can of milk

onion powder (about 1/4 teaspoon, or more to taste)

salt and pepper to taste

several slices American cheese

 

Instructions:

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cook and drain the noodles according to package directions. While they are cooking, drain the tuna and canned mushrooms (if using) and chop the celery. In a 3-quart casserole, combine the drained tuna, drained mushrooms, and celery, making sure to break up the big chunks of tuna. Add the noodles and mix well. Add the cream of celery soup and milk. Mix very well. Sprinkle with onion powder. Taste for seasoning and add more onion powder and/or salt and pepper until it is pleasing. Top the casserole with cheese. Bake, covered, for about 45 minutes. If you like the cheese a little brown, remove the cover near the end. Serves 6 to 8.

 

Note: My mother always puts butter and salt and pepper on the noodles before she puts them in the casserole, but in a nod to my cholesterol level I don’t. I also use one-percent milk, and we don’t notice the difference. Of course, I do put cheese on top, but you have to draw the line somewhere.