"Joyce Lamont's Favorite Recipes" (Minneapolis radio reporter) - Chicken-Wild Rice Casserole Supreme

Joyce Lamont’s Favorite Recipes by Joyce Lamont; edited by Carol Jackson, Home Economist (Note: Joyce Lamont was a broadcaster with WCCO Radio, a local Minneapolis station)

Published by: Meyers Printing Company, Minneapolis, MN
©1979

Recipe: Chicken-Wild Rice Casserole Supreme – p. 64


When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When life hands you a catastrophe, make comfort food.

According to the newspapers, after 9/11 people wanted comfort food. If they couldn’t have mama, then they wanted the comfort of mama’s favorite recipes to soothe their tattered and shattered hearts.

After the I-35W Bridge fell last week in Minneapolis, I too, wanted comfort food.

My husband and I live a couple miles away from that bridge and while we didn’t drive over it too often, we did drive underneath it on the River Parkway at least a couple times a week. The parkway was our little shortcut from downtown Minneapolis to our home, just across the river in southeast Minneapolis. My husband also biked on a bike path on the opposite side of the river under the same bridge. It was unnerving, to say the least, to think that we could have been driving or riding along as sweet as you please, when the bridge came down.

And so to pull my rattled self back together, I pulled out my “Minnesota” cookbooks to find just the right thing to soothe the soul. And find it I did.

This recipe represents Minnesota comfort food at its best: a casserole, containing two cans of cream of “something” soup (like it matters what kind it is!), sausage and chicken (because why stop at one type of meat?) and Minnesota wild rice.

Although it’s called rice, wild rice is really a grass, not a grain. When it cooks, though, it looks like rice so that’s probably why it was named such. The Ojibway Indians (sometimes referred to as Chippewa) have harvested this product for centuries and it is a popular item on many a Minnesota menu. Minnesota wild rice is the main ingredient in Byerly’s Wild Rice Soup, a soup which Minnesotans gulp down by the gallon, spring, summer, winter, and fall.

Speaking of gallons, the first thing you do when making this recipe is to basically make a chicken soup and then use that broth to cook the wild rice. Even though three cups of broth were used to cook the rice, I had plenty left over for a couple of bowls of chicken soup in the future. The chicken is then used in the casserole itself. Nothing goes to waste in this town!

Thankfully, the day I made this dish, the temperature finally dropped to around 75, much more comfortable than the searing 90 degrees experienced the week before and so turning on the oven to cook the casserole wasn’t an exercise in torture. But I’m not sure it would have mattered—when life hands you a catastrophe, make a Minnesota casserole.

Chicken-Wild Rice Casserole Supreme – serves 8-10
For the chicken broth
1 3-to-4 pound broiler-fryer, cut up
1 carrot, sliced
1 cup celery, sliced including tops
1 small onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, mashed
6 peppercorns
2 teaspoons salt
For the casserole
1 cup wild rice
1 pound seasoned pork sausage
1 cup fresh or 1 cup drained canned mushrooms
1 cup diced onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 10 ¾ ounce can cream of chicken soup
1 10 ¾ ounce can condensed cream of celery soup
1/3 cup milk or 1/3 cup dry sherry
¼ cup diced pimiento
½ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon EACH oregano, thyme and marjoram
½ cup sliced almonds

Put chicken pieces in a heavy saucepan. Add water to cover, and the sliced carrot, celery, onion, garlic, peppercorns and salt. Bring to a boil; then reduce heat and let chicken simmer until it is tender. Drain, reserving stock.

A couple of notes: I did not add the 2 teaspoons salt this part of the recipe called for nor did I add a full ½ teaspoon of salt to the casserole because the soups contained a lot of salt and I didn’t feel the need for any more. Also, Joyce doesn’t say how long to cook the chicken but “until tender” seemed to take at least an hour, particularly since the chicken breasts I bought in a chicken packet were huge. You’ll have to keep checking to make sure all parts are done.

Let chicken pieces cool, the strip the cooked meat from the bones and cube it.

Grease a 2 ½ - 3 quart casserole. Set aside. Cook wild rice (according to the package), using chicken stock in place of water. Note that the rice I bought had instructions for how much broth and/or water to use – nice!

Brown pork sausage in a skillet.

In melted butter, sauté mushrooms and onion.

In the casserole, mix the soups, milk (or sherry), pimiento, salt and spices. Stir in the cubed chicken, browned sausage, cooked wild rice, sautéed mushrooms and onions. Top with almonds.

Cover the casserole. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the cover for the last 10 minutes of cooking time.

"Lobster Rolls & Blueberry Pie" - Pearl Oyster Bar Lobster (or Shrimp) Roll

1. Date I made this recipe: July 29, 2007
   
   Lobster Rolls & Blueberry Pie – Three Generations of Recipes and Stories from Summers on the Coast of Maine by Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar and Deborah DiClementi
   Published by: ReganBooks
   ISBN: 0-06-051582-1
   © 2007
   
   http://www.pearloysterbar.com/
   
   Recipe: Pearl Oyster Bar Lobster (Shrimp) Roll – p. 209-10
   
   Well, let’s just get a few things out of the way right now:
   
   1. At $30.00 plus a pound, making the Pearl Oyster Bar’s famous lobster roll was clearly out of the question but hey, if you have the money for it, you go right ahead.
   2. Luckily, Rebecca Charles, co-author of this book, said you can use shrimp. But (and she is most generous on this) the recipe calls for 2 pounds of shrimp (or lobster) to make two rolls and that’s a lot of shrimp for two people. I used one pound of shrimp and lived to tell about it.
   3. In case you don’t know, lobster does not taste like shrimp and so while the shrimp roll was good, the lobster roll is even better. How do I know this?
   4. Because I’ve eaten at the Pearl Oyster Bar, located in New York’s Greenwich Village, and it was the best lobster roll I’ve ever had. And so before I even got started, I knew that no matter what I made, it would not even come close to Rebecca’s…and it didn’t. But I didn’t care because…
   5. The story of my afternoon at the Pearl Oyster Bar is far more interesting than this recipe. Here’s why….
   
   It was the first week of August 2004. I had just finished taking the bar exam at the end of July and as a treat, made my annual pilgrimage to visit my friend, Susan, and her husband, Bob. I usually don’t go in August as it tends to be a little hot, but I was so in need of a getaway, and believe it or not, going to NYC relaxes me.
   
   So Susan and I decided to go shopping and dining and when she asked where I wanted to go, I replied that I wanted to try the Pearl Oyster Bar as I had read the cookbook and thought it sounded fantastic. And so we went to the Village and into the place for a late lunch.
   
   We weren’t even in the door more than two seconds when all of a sudden we heard “Susan! Susan!!”
   
   Turns out the person trying to get Susan’s attention was Bob’s (Susan’s husband) cousin, Debbie. Debbie was there with her father, Bob’s uncle Frank. Turns out that Bob’s cousin Debbie is Deborah—as in Deborah DiClementi -co-author of this cookbook. “It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all….”
   
   But we did not know this until Debbie asked us what we were doing there and when Susan said we were there because of the book, Debbie shrieked and identified herself as the co-author. She said “Rebecca will just die when I tell her how you came here” but before we could get over to talk to Rebecca, Debbie “yoo hooed” a couple of gentlemen leaving the place.
   
   “Oh, it’s too bad they couldn’t stay longer. Those men are the producers of The Sopranos.”
   
   Well, folks, our jaws about crashed to the floor. And, of course, by the time we recovered from our near-meeting with them, they were out the door. Phooey. I mean, for one second, I had visions of stardom. After all, I am half-Sicilian and my dad is a New Jersey native and his parents were from the same town in Sicily as famous mobster Lucky Luciano so there just had to be a walk-on roll for me somewhere down the line. After all, I was practically family! (In an act of benevolence, I would have gotten non-Sicilian Susan in as well, seeing as how she knows Cousin Debbie and all).
   
   But alas, it was not to be and so we sat down, dejected but hungry and ready to eat. But first things first as cousin Debbie was still working the room and, of course, is soon “yoo hoo”ing someone else. And I love this—she so casually says “Oh that was Boz Scaggs’ son (Boz was a popular singer in the 70’s. He sang the Lido Shuffle, Harbor Lights to name a few.).”
   
   Were we driving these people away? I mean really, that was two sets of famous or near-famous people we didn’t get to meet. But then to lift our spirits, Debbie said “Boz is in here someplace…” before she left to meet and greet someone else.
   
   Well people Boz was indeed “someplace.” In fact, Boz was sitting right behind us. And just as I caught his profile out of the corner of my eye, Susan said, in what I feel was NOT her inside voice “NOW WHAT DID HE SING?” “For God’s sake, shhhhhsh!” So I told her (sotto voce) and just then, I caught what I’m sure was an amused smirk on Boz’s face. And don’t ask me why but I tried to signal to Susan that he was behind us and of course that didn’t work. I threw my head in his direction and out of the corner of my mouth said “He’s right behind us” but she didn’t get it and so, of course, turned and practically looked him right in the eye. It was not a good “We’re your biggest fans” moment.
   
   But just when we thought we might want to jungle-crawl out of there, Rebecca Charles came over to meet us. I felt like an idiot as I just gushed at how I loved the cookbook and I was just so thrilled to meet her, yada, yada, yada but to my relief, she took it all in stride. After we ate her famous lobster roll, I really should have kissed her ring but that might have been taking things just a bit too far. Might.
   
   So anyway, after all the yoo hooing and fawning and whatnot, we rolled ourselves out of there and went shopping. Given the size of the lobster roll and the shoestring potatoes that came with it, we were not hungry until much later that night. Not really in the mood to go too far (Bob was babysitting but we still wanted to stay close by), we decided to go to a favorite neighborhood place, Gennaro’s, on the Upper West Side on Amsterdam between 92nd and 93rd.
   
   Now, as God is my witness, I am not making this up. We no sooner sat down when this woman with very unusual hair walked right by us.
   
   “Is that Cyndi Lauper?” I queried our server. (Cyndi is most famous for her song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun)
   
   Indeed, it was her, in the flesh…and the interesting-colored hair.
   
   Now, I have several theories for how it is that we had so many brushes with fame that day and the reason, I think is that I (and okay, I’ll include Susan as well) attract the rich and famous. Gotta be. Now if we could only work on that timing thing so that somewhere down the line these near-connections result in something. My latest fantasy is that I tell Cyndi that I’m a singer as well and am thinking we could do a great duet and I know she just finished a tour but if she could see her way to including me next time…….
   
   Pearl Oyster Bar Lobster (or Shrimp) Roll – serves 2
   2 pounds cooked lobster meat, chopped roughly into ½ and ¾-inch pieces (If using shrimp, substitute 2 pounds of shrimp, cooked, peeled, and sliced in half lengthwise)
   ½ celery rib, finely chopped
   ¼ cup Hellmann’s mayonnaise
   Squeeze of lemon
   Pinch of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
   2 teaspoons unsalted butter
   2 Pepperidge Farm top-loading hot dog buns (I couldn’t find these so used Pepperidge farm side-loading instead)
   Chopped chives for garnish
   
   To make the lobster salad, in a large bowl, combine the lobster meat, celery, mayonnaise, lemon, and salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Cover the mixture and store it in the refrigerator until ready to serve. It will last up to 2 days.
   
   To prepare the buns, in a small sauté pan over low to medium heat, melt the butter. Place the hot dog buns on their sides in the butter. Flip the buns a couple of times so that both sides soak up an equal amount of butter and brown evenly. Remove the buns from the pan and place them on a large plate.
   
   Fill the toasted buns with the lobster salad. Sprinkle with chives and serve with a salad, slaw, or shoestring potatoes.
   

"Culinary Concertos" by the Long Beach Symphony Association" - O'Henry Bars

Date I made this recipe: July 15, 2007

Culinary Concertos by the Long Beach Symphony Association
Published by: The Long Beach Symphony Association
© 1977

Recipe: O’Henry Bars – p. 119 (submitted by Maxine Foster)

Like everyone, I’ve been busy running around like a madwoman this summer. For some reason, I thought I made something in between my last posting at the end of June and no, but sadly, no.

Part of the reason I’ve been so busy is because my community band, The Calhoun-Isles Community Band, plays several outdoor concerts in the summer and last week, I had concerts on Monday, Tuesday and then Sunday. Whew!

Our band has always thrown a pot-luck picnic on one of the nights that we have a concert, and this year, it was on Sunday, July 15th, right before we played a concert at Centennial Lakes in Edina, MN. This year’s picnic actually morphed into a baby shower; one of our members adopted a baby boy named Henry from Ethiopia. Henry shows great musical promise already and we hope that when he grows up, he’ll become a full-fledged member!

So anyway…I wanted to find something from a “musical” cookbook to bring to the party but alas, there are no community band cookbooks in my collection. I did have, however, this Long Beach Symphony Association cookbook that was given to me by a CICB member so I think that counts.

And wouldn’t you know, as I was leafing through the book, I came across this recipe for O’Henry Bars. Well, people, I just had to make these in honor of little Henry (who is absolutely adorable, by the way). It's like the recipe was just calling to me....

Many of you might remember the O’Henry candy bar. I knew that the bar contained peanuts and chocolate but I remember the peanuts being rather chunky. But this recipe calls for peanut butter, not whole peanuts, and the peanut butter gets mixed in with the chocolate making it much easier to assemble.

I thought that the base of the bar might be kind of sweet given that the recipe calls for ½ cup light syrup and 3 teaspoons vanilla, but the bar was just right—and the hit of the picnic. I think even (O) Henry enjoyed them. Hope you will, too.

O’Henry Bars (no yield given but I’d say it made about 3 dozen small squares)
4 cups oatmeal
½ cup light syrup
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup melted butter
3 teaspoons vanilla

Topping
1 6 oz. package chocolate chips, melted
2/3 cup peanut butter (I used smooth)

Mix together the oatmeal, syrup, brown sugar, melted butter and vanilla. Pat down flat on cookie sheet or jelly roll pan. Bake 12 minutes at 350.

Combine the chocolate chips and peanut butter and spread on top of baked cookie dough after bars are slightly cool (just until firm). Cut into bars after chilled. Store in the refrigerator.

"Home Cookin' with Dave's (Letterman) Mom" & "June Roth's Let's Have A Brunch Cookbook" - breakfast items

Date I made these recipes: June 30, 2007

Home Cookin’ with Dave’s Mom by Dave’s (Letterman) Mom, Dorothy with Jess Cagle. Foreword by David Letterman
Published by: Pocket Books
ISBN: 0-671-00060-8
© 1996
Recipe: Judy’s Breakfast Casserole – p. 134

June Roth’s Let’s Have A Brunch Cookbook by June Roth
Published by: Essandess Special Edition
© 1971
Recipe: Cinnamon-Raisin Brunch Bread – p. 101

The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham
Published by: Wings Books
ISBN: 0-517-18726-4
© 1987
Recipe: Baked Pineapple – p. 176

This past weekend, I invited a friend and her husband over for brunch. Initially, I was going to make all my recipes from Marion Cunningham’s book, but then with days to go, I changed my mind (and as it’s a woman’s prerogative to do so, that’s how I ended up with three recipes).

Marion’s book was great but it didn’t include a recipe for a strata and once I decided that I wanted something like a strata to “anchor” the brunch, I was on a new hunt for a dish and a new cookbook.

Home Cookin’ with Dave's Mom seemed to be a good place to find a strata-type recipe for my brunch and it did not disappoint. Within seconds, I located the breakfast casserole and actually, it worked out even better than a strata. It didn’t need to be made 24 hours in advance and it included all my favorite breakfast items – sausage, hash browns, eggs and cheese, into one dish. Perfect!

Also perfect was the witty writing by Dave’s mom, Dorothy Letterman. If any of you caught her broadcasts from Lillehammer, Norway during the 1994 Olympics, you’ll know that she is quite hilarious herself, almost funnier at times than son, Dave. One night, she quite effectively put David (always David, never Dave) in his place; when Letterman kept asking his mom about one of the star athletes at the Olympics (it might have been speed skater, Dan Jansen), Dorothy smiled at David and said in a somewhat exasperated voice “There are other athletes, David.” And that was that!

Although that story is not in the book, I think you’ll have fun reading about Dave, his siblings and his adorable mother. Oh, and the recipe really rocks as well!


The next cookbook I used was June Roth’s Let’s Have A Brunch Cookbook. I acquired this book a few years ago, put it away, and almost forgot about it until this past weekend when I spotted it on the shelf above my computer. That would have been a tragedy as I completely forgot about the note written inside the cover, under the price, that said “Good Lord, What is that on the cover?”

Once I saw that, it all came rushing back to me. I bought this book from a little retro store on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, and happened to go into the store just as the owner was putting it out for display. I should add that the owner was also gasping (or maybe it was gagging) about the photo on the front cover and that’s what prompted her to write the note inside the book. I hated to tell her, but that photo, that “what is that thing?” is what drew me to the book in the first place. I mean, anyone can have a brunch book, but a brunch book with a “that” on the front cover? Well, that was something else entirely.

Lucky for us, “that” was explained on the dust cover: “Pictured on the cover is June’s Seagoing Shrimp Salad from the Bon Voyage Brunch in the Special Occasion section. A true work of art (a less elaborate version is pictured with the brunch on page 88), this is just one of the many beautiful, as well as appetizing, dishes offered in this volume.”

Okay, you will likely not be able to tell this from the teeny photo included on this blog but the phrase “true work of art” does not go with the cover photo, not at all. Instead, the front cover looks like two layers of canned ham with shrimp serving as ears and a nose, sort of resembling Neptune only done by some contemporary artist with a vision that none of us could quite see.

To satisfy my curiosity of what a “less elaborate” version looks like, I turned to page 88 and have to admit that the less elaborate version is far less scary than the front cover, possibly because it’s in black and white. That being said, black and white did not reduce the terror I experienced at seeing a Ham Mousse mould on page 66, nor did it in any way, shape or form, help me with the photo of Chicken n’ Ham “Birthday Cake” (complete with candles, I kid you not) on page 54.

In fact, dear reader, most of June’s Brunch Book was pretty scary and most of the recipes are not what we would ever consider serving for a brunch. But hey, this book was written in those wild 70’s when anything is possible.

Lucky for June and the book, I found the recipe for Cinnamon-Raisin Brunch Bread which was not scary in the least and was actually pretty tasty. All I can say is – Whew!”

Finally, the third recipe book I used, The Breakfast Book, included the simplest recipe of them all – Baked Pineapple, requiring only one pineapple and a half cup of brown sugar. Nothing scary about that, thank God. After my June experience, I was not sure I ever wanted to cook again. This restored my faith in humanity…and pineapple.

Judy’s Breakfast Casserole – makes 10 servings
1 2-pound bag Ore-Ida hash brown potatoes, thawed
½ teaspoon salt
½ pound mild sausage (I used bulk breakfast sausage from Whole Foods)
1 small onion, chopped
½ pound shredded Swiss cheese
5 eggs
1 13-ounce can evaporated milk
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish. Press potatoes in the bottom and on sides. Sprinkle with salt and brown lightly in the oven. In a medium skillet, brown sausage and onion and drain. Spread over potato crust. Sprinkle with cheese. In another bowl, beat together remaining ingredients and pour onto the crust. Bake at 425 degrees (400 degrees if using a glass dish) for 20-25 minutes.

Cinnamon-Raisin Brunch Bread – makes 8-10 servings
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup whole bran cereal
¾ cup milk
½ cup soft shortening
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup seedless raisins
½ cup chopped nuts
2 tablespoons sugar (for topping)
¼ teaspoon cinnamon (for topping)

Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and 1 teaspoon cinnamon; set aside. (NOTE: do not do as I did the first time I made this which is to misread baking “powder” for baking “soda.” That batch ended up in the garbage. Measure twice, cut once; read twice, use correct ingredient once.

Combine cereal and milk; let stand until most of the moisture is absorbed. Measure shortening, ½ cup sugar, and eggs into a mixing bowl. Beat until light and fluffy. Stir in cereal mixture, raisins, and nuts. Add sifted dry ingredients, stirring until combined. Spread in greased 9-inch layer cake pan. Mix 2 tablespoons sugar and ¼ teaspoon cinnamon for topping; sprinkle evenly over brunch bread. (Note: 2 tablespoons of sugar seemed awfully excessive; try half the sugar instead)

Bake in 375 oven for 30 minutes, or until lightly browned. Serve warm, cut in wedges.

Baked Pineapple – 10 servings
1 fresh medium pineapple
½ cup brown sugar

Remove the rind and eyes from the pineapple. Cut the fruit into quarters lengthwise and remove the core from each wedge. Cut each quarter in half lengthwise. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon brown sugar over each slice. Place the slices on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes in a preheated 325 degree oven. Serve warm.

Note: Since I didn’t know how many pineapple pieces I’d have after my cutting, it seemed silly to sprinkle 1 tablespoon over each slice so instead, I sprinkled the brown sugar over the entire baking sheet. Seemed to work out just fine.

"My Mother's Southern Desserts" by James Villas and Martha Pearl Villas - Snowflake Coconut Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting

From the “vault”

My Mother’s Southern Desserts by James Villas with Martha Pearl Villas (authors of My Mother’s Southern Kitchen)
Published by: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
ISBN: 0688156959
© 1998

Recipe: Snowflake Coconut Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting – p. 106-07


My girlfriend, Mar, sent me an email today just cracking up over my rather lengthy story about how I decided to make Scenic Salisbury Steak from a Route 66 cookbook. Little did she know I had another one of those connect-the-dots moments this past weekend. It goes like this:

My husband and I took a road trip to Kansas City (where, according to the musical, Oklahoma, “everything’s up to date.” My husband sadly did not get that connection), driving south through Minnesota, into Iowa, and then into Missouri.

Now, I do not have any cookbooks as of yet on Kansas City Barbeque (likely because I’m thinking an itty bitty gas grill isn’t going to cut it with KC pit masters, although I could be wrong) and until Tuesday of this week, I didn’t have any cookbooks from Iowa (a friend passed on most of her mom’s collection to me). And so cooking a “memorial” recipe from those places was out at least for the time being.

So instead, I’m giving you a recipe from North Carolina. Why? Well, stay with me on this: just outside Des Moines, we stopped at a Popeye’s fast food place and I ordered the chicken tenders with a side of rice and beans. I’d never been to a Popeye’s but had heard the rice and beans were good. I should have stuck with that. Instead, I ate the gut-bomb chicken tenders and the gut-bomb biscuit (or something resembling a biscuit) and lived to regret it.

So I started thinking about true southern fried chicken, which I’ve maybe had once in my life, and then I started thinking about all the southern cookbooks on my shelf at home which led me to think about two of my favorite cookbook authors, James Villas and his mother, Martha Pearl Villas, and then I thought about the hilarious description he wrote in one of their joint cookbooks, My Mother’s Southern Kitchen, about how to make a proper southern biscuit (let's just say Mother knows best) and from there I totally segued into thinking about this fabulous coconut cake I made for my 10th wedding anniversary party that I found in the cookbook I've featured here, My Mother’s Southern Desserts and that’s how that recipe came to be presented to you today! (That wasn’t so bad, was it? You try sitting in a car for 4 hours after eating a totally depressing “southern” meal and tell me your mind wouldn’t go down the same culinary highway that mine did!)

This cake is beyond delicious. It was the hit of the anniversary party (we had desserts, cordials and other after dinner drinks). I also made a couple other recipes from this book for the party, all good. (“Daddy’s Chocolate-Almond Charlotte Rousse” and “Emergency Lemon Buttermilk Wedding Cake”) But this one stood out mainly because of the note included with the recipe:
“Just the mention of ordinary coconut cakes made with canned flaked coconut and frosted with a heavy, overly sweet, innocuous white icing makes Mother cringe. ‘They’re dry as a bone, tasteless, just awful,’ she says with a scowl, ‘so if you’re not willing to deal with fresh coconut and produce a nice, light frosting in a double boiler, you’d be better of making another cake.’ And that’s that!”

Well, people, I hate to say but that was almost was “that” and I contemplated making another cake. The thought of working with a fresh coconut was rather intimidating and I thought to myself “Why bother? I don’t need her stinkin’ coconut cake!”

Well, I was wrong. I did need her cake. And so I went to the grocery store, bought a coconut, took it home, “tapped” the eye of the coconut with an ice pick so as to remove the coconut “milk” that is used in the cake, duly baked the coconut as directed, and “shaved” it so as to put fresh coconut on top of the cake. I admit it was a little bit of work but man, oh man, oh man, it was worth it. People still talk about “THAT CAKE” and every single morsel was gone, baby, gone within minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something inhaled so quickly.

So if you make this cake for family and friends, be sure to get your slice while the slicing is still good. And by all means, don’t make Martha Pearl mad by substituting fake coconut for the real thing. Mothers, even if they are not yours, have a way of finding out these things.

Snowflake Coconut Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting – yields one 3-layer 8-inch cake; 10 to 12 servings.

I medium-size coconut
2 ¼ cups granulated sugar
3 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 large egg whites
Seven-Minute frosting

Pierce the eyes of the coconut with an ice pick or small screwdriver, strain the milk into a container, add enough water to measure 1 cup, and pour into a small saucepan. (By the way, coconut milk looks more like white water than regular milk…just so you know). Add ¼ cup of the sugar, bring to boil over moderate heat, stirring, and set aside to cool. Crack the coconut with a hammer and remove the meat from the shell. Trim off the brown skin with a sharp pairing knife and discard, grate the coconut onto a plate and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease and flour three 8-inch round cake pans, tapping out any excess flour, and set aside.

In a medium-size mixing bowl, combine the flour and baking powder and mix well. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and the remaining 2 cups sugar together with an electric mixer till light and fluffy. Beat the dry mixture alternatively with the milk and vanilla into the creamed mixture till well blended, ending with the dry mixture.

Wash and dry the mixer beaters, then, in another large mixing bowl, beat the egg whites till stiff but not dry peaks form. With a rubber spatula, gently fold them into the creamed mixture. Scrape the batter evenly into the prepared pans and bake till a cake tester or straw inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool the cakes in the pans for about 10 minutes, then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Place a cake layer on a cake plate, drizzle about one quarter of the coconut mixture over the top, spread about ¾ cup of the frosting over the top, and sprinkle about one quarter of the grated coconut over the frosting. Repeat with the second layer, then top with the third and spread the remaining frosting over the top and around the sides of the cake and press the remaining grated coconut into the top and sides. Drizzle the remaining coconut milk over the top, cover the cake with plastic wrap and chill for at least 24 hours before serving.

Notes from Martha Pearl regarding the cake that were listed elsewhere in the book:

Coconut: To remove fresh coconut meat easily from the shell after draining the milk (using an ice pick or screwdriver), preheat the oven to 400F and bake the shell for about 15 minutes. While it is still hot, split the shell with a hammer. The meat should come out easily and cleanly, but if it doesn’t, pry it from the shell with a small, heavy knife and remove any brown skin with a vegetable peeler.

Cake flour: Cake flour gives cakes such as angel food a lighter texture than all-purpose flour, but if a recipe calls for cake flour and you don’t have any, you can sift and resift all-purpose flour eight to ten times and get the same result. (Ann’s note—and I thought working with fresh coconut was time-consuming!)

Seven Minute Frosting – Yields 3 cups frosting; enough for the top and sides of a 3-layer 9- or 10-inch cake.

5 large egg whites
2 ½ cups granulated sugar
½ cup water
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In the top of a double boiler, combine the egg whites, sugar and water and beat slowly with an electric mixer until well blended. Over boiling water, beat the mixture briskly till stiff peaks form, about 7 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and beat in the vanilla. Continue beating until the frosting is thick and smooth, then use immediately. (Ann’s note: This will be hard, but try to save some frosting for the cake as it is just bowl-liking good!)

"The Melting Pot - The Variety of American Ethnic Cooking" - Chicken A L'Orange

From the “vault”

The Melting Pot - The Variety of American Ethnic Cooking by Maria Gitin
Published by: The Crossing Press, Trumansburg, New York
© 1977
Recipe: Chicken A L’Orange – p. 239

Well reader, the last few weeks have been busy with no time to cook so I’m providing you with the recipe and review of one of my favorites – Chicken A L’Orange.

I hate to admit this, but in all the years I’ve had this book (it was given to me by a friend, circa 1981 or so), I’ve only tried one recipe. This recipe is so good and so easy that for many years, it was the standard fare for dinner parties until I eventually “oranged” out on the thing and had to give it a rest.

For those of you daring kitchen cooks, check out the recipe for Maria’s Famous Brownies, “famous” because there’s a tiny bit of, oh, shall we say a “controlled substance,” popular in brownie recipes in ‘70’s that is on the ingredient list. As God is my witness I have never tried making or eating these “famous” brownies although I’m pretty sure I could leave out said substance and they would be just fine. That being said, I have other mind-blowing (pun intended) brownie recipes that I’d rather make than this one but it does crack me up to no end every time I look at this cookbook.

As to the chicken recipe (boring now that we’ve discussed marijuana, isn’t it?), I’ve also made this recipe in appetizer proportions in the past and while it worked well, I think making the dish as directed is the way to go.

Chicken A L’Orange – serves 3 to 4

2 fresh, large juice oranges
2 fresh lemons
2 T A-1 Sauce
1 T garlic salt
2 T Worcestershire Sauce
1 cup (or less) brown sugar
½ cup butter or margarine
¼ tsp Chinese 5-spice (optional)
1 fryer, cut up, 3 lbs or more

Squeeze juice from oranges and lemons. Discard seeds and peels. Simmer the juice with spices and butter in saucepan 5 minutes.

Pat chicken pieces dry. Lay them in baking dish. Pour orange sauce over and bake in 325 degree oven 1 to 1 ¼ hours or til tender. Spoon glaze over chicken frequently to baste. Serve garnished with orange slices. Ridiculously simple and so good.

As a note, the author wrote this recipe at a time when Chinese 5-spice was hard to find and so she talked about getting it directly from your Chinese grocer. It might be just me but at that time, I didn’t have access to a Chinese grocer; I was lucky to have access to any grocer! If I recall, the first few times I made this recipe I wasn’t able to locate the spice and the dish was just as delicious without it.

Most grocery stores these days carry Chinese 5-spice but just in case they don’t, the spice is a mixture of Chinese star anise, cloves, fennel, anise pepper and cinnamon.

"Keep It Simple - 30 Minute Meals from Scratch" by Marian Burros - Chicken and sweet peppers with hoisin

Date I made this recipe: June 10, 2007

Keep It Simple – 30 Minute Meals from Scratch by Marian Burros
Published by: William Morrow & Company, Inc.
© 1981
Recipe: Chicken and sweet peppers with hoisin – p. 98

If you’re a faithful reader of The New York Times’ Dining & Wine section like I am, then you’ll be familiar with Marian Burros.

Marian Burros has been a mainstay at the Times for over 20 years but this book was written when she was food editor of The Washington Post. Of the dozen or so cookbooks she’s written, four have a place of honor in my collection: Cooking for Comfort; Keep It Simple; The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook and Come for Cocktails, Stay for Supper (I adore that title!). Two of the books were autographed by Marian when she came to Minneapolis (actually, St. Paul) for book tours several years ago. Naturally, I found Keep It Simple about a week after she was in town. Oh well, Marian, you’ll just have to come back!

As promised, this meal was indeed simple and came in at 30 minutes (prep time included) which is a good thing because it was a hot day when I made it and I didn’t want to spend any more time in the kitchen than necessary. The dish was also tasty although I’m guessing that it is even better the next day when the flavors have had a chance to settle in.

Speaking of flavors, I added the Chinese vermicelli noodles (our local Rainbow grocery store carried them) to the pan so as to mix the toppings and noodles together for maximum flavor and for ease in serving. I also bought chicken tenders rather than full breasts but cut them into smaller pieces before serving. Okay, so maybe that meant that dinner was actually served in 31 minutes; just don’t tell Marian!

Chicken and sweet peppers with hoisin – serves 3
12 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons dry sherry or apple juice
1 large onion
1 large clove garlic
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 red or green bell peppers
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
4 or 5 ounces Chinese vermicelli (or regular vermicelli)

Slice chicken on diagonal into thin slices, less then ¼ inch wide. Mix the soy and sherry and marinate the chicken in that mixture. Chop onion coarsely; mince ginger and put garlic through press. Heat the oil in a heavy skillet or wok. Add onion, garlic and ginger and cook over medium heat about 2 minutes, until onion begins to soften. Seed peppers and cut into strips less than ¼ inch wide. Add to skillet and cook about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Push peppers and onions to the side; add chicken, without marinade and cook quickly until chicken loses pink color, about 3 minutes. Add water, remaining marinade, and hoisin. Reduce heat and cook a minute or two, until peppers are crisp-tender.

Note: Instead of following Marian’s instructions on how to cook the noodles, I followed the recipe on the back and let me tell you, they were way, way off! The instructions said to cook the noodles for 3-5 minutes until tender. Uh, no. The noodles were definitely not done in that amount of time. I think I cooked them for about 10 minutes or so.

Marian’s method sounds better to me (would that I would have followed it): Bring 3 quarts hot water to boil. In a heatproof bowl pour water over vermicelli and allow to sit 15 minutes, until noodles are tender. Drain and serve.

"The Best in American Cooking - Recipes Collected by Clementine Paddleford" - Citrus Spareribs

Date I made this recipe: June 2, 2007

The Best In American Cooking – Recipes Collected by Clementine Paddleford
Published by: Charles Scribner’s Sons
©1970
Recipe: Citrus Spareribs (submitted by Mrs. John Powell, Calif.) – p. 132

Had you been cooking in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, you likely would have been familiar with the name Clementine Paddleford. Born in 1900, Clementine became one of the country’s leading food editors. To this date, I can’t recall how I came to know of her but I do have a couple of her books in my collection, including perhaps her most well-known book, How America Eats. This one, The Best In American Cooking, was published in 1970 a few years after her death. I found it interesting that the copyright is held by The Chase Manhattan Bank, Executors of the Estate of Clementine Paddleford. Imagine; the same people who once held my mortgage helped get her cookbook published!

Ever since we rounded the corner on summer (last weekend being Memorial Day), I’ve had this jag to cook from my vast collection of “American” cookbooks. This one jumped out at me as did the spareribs recipe.

This recipe is very easy (and believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve made ribs). Since we are a family of two, I only made 2 pounds of ribs and since I only made half the ribs, I reasoned I should only make half the sauce. Big mistake. The sauce was pretty tasty and I didn’t have near enough to baste as required. But that’s the only thing I’d change.

I served this with some baked potatoes and a vegetable, just like mom would have done, and it worked for us.

Some of the recipes in this book are from restaurants, some long-gone, others still thriving and so it was fun to read through the collection to see who submitted what. Other recipes, like the recipe I made, were gathered from American housewives across the country, back in the day when women were known by their husband’s name (Mrs. John Smith), when ingredients were simple and the recipes, basic. And so some days, when life is a whirlwind, it’s nice just to pop back in time to make something as simple and tasty as citrus spareribs.

Citrus Spareribs – Mrs. John Powell, Calif. – serves 4 to 6
4 pounds spareribs
1 large lemon
1 large orange
1 large onion
1 cup catsup
2 cups water
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 dashes Tabasco

Cut ribs into serving size pieces (ours were precut). Place in a shallow roasting pan, meaty side up. On each piece arrange a slice of unpeeled lemon, unpeeled orange and onion. Bake at 450F for 20 minutes. Combine remaining ingredients, bring to a boiling point and pour over ribs. Continue baking at 350F until tender, about 1 hour, basting twice.

Note: half the recipe fed the two of us just fine.