"Rhubarb Renaissance" - Salted Caramel Rhubapple Pie (For Mother's Day)

Date I made this recipe:  May 13, 2012 (Mother’s Day)

Rhubarb Renaissance by Kim Ode

Published by:  Minnesota Historical Society Press

ISBN:  978-0-87351-851-2

Recipe:  Salted Caramel Rhubapple Pie – p. 62-63

Today is Mother’s Day and since my mother is no longer with us, I’m honoring someone else’s mother instead.

Mimi Danicic is the delightful daughter of my friend, Kim Ode.  I’ve mentioned Kim before in this blog but all good things bear repeating:  Kim is an accomplished journalist for the (Minneapolis) StarTribune, author of two cookbooks – Baking with the St. Paul Bread Club and this new one, Rhubarb Renaissance. Kim is also a member of and contributing writer to Facebook’s “Baking 101” group that is filled with very cool people who know their way around baking pans and hot ovens.  Kim is also one very cool bones player (trombone) in my community band, the Calhoun-Isles Community Band.  Kim’s husband, photographer John Danicic, plays trumpet and their daughter, Mimi, has done a few summer stints with the band in the percussion section.  (Mimi also plays a mean string bass!).

When I first met Mimi (and her parents), she was in high school or perhaps just going in to high school and now she has the audacity to being “this close” to graduating from college.  How did that happen?

Mimi apparently inherited her mom’s baking instincts as Kim credits her for coming up with today’s recipe.  This recipe, and Mimi and her very cool parents, rocks!

Now some of you may shy away from rhubarb (for no good reason, if you ask me) but this recipe should get you down off the ledge because the rhubarb is offset by apples and caramel.  Mama Kim did not raise a fool in Mimi as this was one excellent pie!

My mom, Rose Marie, processed a lot of rhubarb back in the day because it was abundant in our garden.  She made and then froze a rhubarb topping for ice cream (talk about delicious what with the tartness of the rhubarb offsetting the sweet taste of ice cream), made rhubarb jam, and rhubarb cookies, cakes and pies.  I think the only reason she didn’t use rhubarb in a savory way was because she didn’t have Kim’s cookbook.  Curses!

Now when it comes to my blog, I tend to err on the side of making a savory dish because typically that constitutes our main dish for Sunday dinner.  But this time around, this pie spoke to me and so I went the opposite route and for once decided to bake something as opposed to roasting something, sautéing something or even crock-potting something.  And this decision was potentially fraught with peril because I am not a baking type of gal.  That role, as well as the title “Pie Guy,” goes to my husband, Andy Martin.

Two things make my Pie Guy giddy these days:  baking a pie and riding a bike.  Neither one has anything to do with the other but so what?  Life is filled with odd couplings.  So for once in my life, I put on my big girl panties and not only decided to bake something but decided to bake a pie (a mile high).

First things first:  buy a frozen pie shell!  Kim’s ingredients list says “pastry for a single-pie crust,” surely intended to enlist all of us in the task of rolling out our own homemade pie dough.  When the Pie Guy is baking, this happens and happens in a good way.  When the Pie Gal is baking, this does not:  this is why my Rainbow grocery store was invented and this was why they had a sale – 2 pie shells for $2.99.  Step one complete!

Step two involved peeling, coring and thickly slicing Granny Smith apples.  “I got this,” I thought because I had an apple corer and slicer tool and how easy would that be?  Except I am sometimes too anal for my own good so I sliced the apples without peeling them first and then – duh – had to peel all the apple slices from the six apples Kim said I should use.  For the record, that is a lot of sliced apples!  But I soldiered on.

I also had to cut the rhubarb so that it yielded 2 cups of 1-inch pieces.  I hate math and I get irritable when I am told to cut things into “x”-size pieces (sorry, Kim) and so I just the pieces all willy-nilly and that worked for me.  (For the record, I can be kind of literal – and anal – about instructions and so oftentimes when it says “1-inch pieces I pull out the measuring tape I keep in my kitchen specifically for those type of instructions. Today was not one of those days.)

And now a word about instant tapioca – am I dreaming or once upon a time was this ingredient pretty inexpensive?  Not so today.  I checked three grocery stores and two of them wanted between $3.59 and $3.79 for the tapioca.  Rainbow came in at a cool $2.99.  You may find this cost-averaging ridiculous but people, the recipe called for a mere ¼ cup and so when I am likely to use up the remaining tapioca?  Besides, three bucks is three bucks but $2.99 is $2.99, right?  (It’s a cooking math thing…)

Okay, so with all my ingredients and instructions, I got to work.  Because I didn’t make the pie crust my counter was devoid of messy flour and whatnot until I got to the streusel and then it looked like a flour bin exploded.  At least I had the good sense to put another pan under the pie tin so my oven wouldn’t look like my countertop.  (And this is why I don’t bake.   Who wants to look like Casper the Ghost after finishing?).

After the required half an hour, I checked my pie and it still looked a little peaked so I left it in for 10 more minutes and then it was perfect.  I drizzled the caramel over the top like the pro I aspire (but fail) to be and proudly served it to my Pie Guy who was so busy inhaling this yummy concoction, he couldn’t come up with a compliment for about five minutes.  But when he did it was glowing and so hooray, we had liftoff!

So thank you Mimi and Kim for coming up with this dish and putting it in the cookbook and making me look like a bona-fide, if not flour-dusted, baker for one, brief moment known as Camelot.  And Happy Mother’s Day everyone! 

Salted Caramel Rhubapple Pie – serves 6 – 8

Pastry for single-crust pie (I bought a frozen pie shell)

½ cup walnut pieces

6 Granny Smith apples (about 2 ¼ pounds), peeled, cored, and thickly sliced

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

½ cup honey

½ cup packed brown sugar

2 cups rhubarb, cut in 1-inch pieces

¼ cup instant tapioca

½ teaspoon kosher or sea salt

For the streusel topping:

½ cup flour

½ cup packed brown sugar

4 tablespoons cold butter, cut in small cubes

Line a pie plate with the crust and place in refrigerator while you prepare the filling.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Spread walnuts on a baking sheet and toast in the oven about 5 minutes, until there’s a warm, nutty aroma.  Cool, then chop coarsely and set aside. (Ann’s Note:  I like walnuts but I did not like them toasted. My husband isn’t keen on nuts at all so next time around, I think I’d leave them off.).

Toss apples with lemon juice and cinnamon.  Set aside.

Melt 1 tablespoon butter with honey and ½ cup brown sugar in a large heavy saucepan and heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a rolling boil.  Add apples, stirring to coat them with caramel.  Reduce heat and cook uncovered no more than 5 minutes.  Do not overcook them to mushiness.  (I’m happy to report I did NOT overcook them.  Whew!)

Place rhubarb in a bowl.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer the hot apples into the bowl with the rhubarb.  Add tapioca and stir to combine.  Let sit for 15 minutes.  In the meantime, add salt to the caramel remaining in the pan and cook, stirring often, a few minutes more to reduce it to a thick syrup.  Do not let it scorch.  Remove from heat and set aside.  (Ann’s Note:  it took more than a few minutes to get this to thicken, probably because I was so afraid about scorching the mixture that I turned the flame down really low.  The result though, was perfect!)

Combine streusel ingredients (flour, sugar and butter), pinching the butter with your fingers until it’s evenly distributed.  Stir in the toasted walnuts. 

Scrape the apple-rhubarb mixture into the chilled pie shell and drizzle with 3 tablespoons of the caramel.  Spread the streusel mixture over pie and bake for 30 minutes.  Let cool on wire rack at least 30 minutes.

Just before serving, drizzle remaining caramel (reheating if necessary) over the pie.

"The High Performance Cookbook" - Power Pasta (Whole Wheat Pasta with Ground Turkey Tomato Sauace)

Date I made this recipe:  May 5, 2012

The High Performance Cookbook by Susan M. Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D. and KarenRae Friedman-Kester, M.S., R.D.

Published by:  Macmillan

ISBN:  0-02-860370-2

Recipe:  Power Pasta p. 64

Talk about a case of good timing!  A few weeks ago, I spied this book at the Paperback Exchange bookstore (50^th and Penn) and thought it would be perfect for my husband, Andy.  Andy has become quite the biking enthusiast (he did the RAGBRAI bike ride across Iowa last year) and has been in semi-training mode this spring for several bike rides including tomorrow’s Minnesota Ironman, a 100-mile (a/k/a “century ride”) bike ride through parts of the Twin Cities’ southwest metro.

As I posted on Facebook today, while Andy was out riding 100 miles, I completely overextended myself cleaning my downstairs bathroom.  True story. 

But I am nothing if not supportive so not only did I pick up this cookbook just for him but I also agreed to make this pasta recipe that he selected involving ground turkey.

As previously stated in this blog, I normally don’t have what other friends describe as a “textural problem” with any other meat except ground poultry.  But the very thought of ground or diced poultry just gives me shivers.  Of course, this recipe called for ground dark turkey meat and seriously, I felt ill at the very thought of it.  So poor Andy said that he would make it if I couldn’t bring myself to but I rallied because what kind of wife am I to send my man off on a 100 mile ride after making him prepare his own dinner? (In the end, we bought white meat ground turkey and that has less of an “ick” factor than dark meat.),

So I overcame this new idiosyncrasy and dumped the turkey meat into the pan as directed (and did not do anything with it for oh, quite some time until it practically incinerated itself) and got to it.

Truth be told, this recipe is so easy to make I almost feel guilty posting it.  I mean, come on, when it says to go out and buy a jar of spaghetti sauce and you do and you add garlic powder and pepper and serve, is that really considered cooking?  (Let’s not forget though, that I boiled the pasta!)

But I followed directions and heated the sauce thoroughly, almost over-boiled the whole wheat pasta and it was actually decent.  Actually, more than decent, it was pretty good.  And Andy wrapped up the 100 mile ride in about 6.5 hours so there you go—it worked!

But. I do feel a tad guilty using jarred sauce if only because the sodium content is so high but I didn’t have time to make my own sauce.  So perhaps Andy could have shaved off more time had he not been as bloated as a camel but such is life.

Power Pasta – serves 3

½ pound ground dark-meat turkey

½ teaspoon garlic powder

Pinch white pepper

12 ounces spaghetti sauce

½ pound whole wheat spaghetti

¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Brown the meat in a nonstick saucepan over medium heat with the garlic powder and pepper.  The meat should be thoroughly cooked.  Add the sauce and cook until the sauce is heated.

Cook the pasta according to package directions.  Poor the sauce over the pasta and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

For those needing to know the calorie-protein, etc. breakout, here you go:

For 2 servings each serving contains

688 Calories

31 g Protein

116 g Carbohydrates

15 g Fat

31 mg Cholesterol

1,147 mg Sodium

For 3 servings each serving contains:

458 Calories

21g Protein

77 g Carbohydrates

10 g Fat

20 mg Cholesterol

765 mg Sodium

"A Treasury of Great Recipes," Ragout of Chicken with Onions, Bacon and Mushrooms

Date I made this recipe:  April 30, 2012

A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary and Vincent Price

Published by:  Grosset & Dunlap

© 1965; 1974 edition

Recipe:  Ragout of Chicken with Onions, Bacon and Mushrooms – p. 54

Two weeks ago, actor Jonathan Frid, best known by me and many others as vampire Barnabas Collins on the TV show, Dark Shadows (aired from 1966 to 1971), died at the age of 87.  Movie director Tim Burton is releasing a “remake” of Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp, but this movie looks to be a spoof of the real deal and while I’m sure it will be entertaining, you youngsters out there have no idea what you missed.

And frankly, if it was not for some sneakiness on my part, I wouldn’t know what I missed, either.  My mother forbade me from watching this show but hey, when you’re at a friend’s house and it’s on TV, what can you do?  So I watched and was hooked and then when my mom was out shopping, I turned on the set, practically punched my younger brother into secrecy, and watched it anyway.  As soon as I saw my mom coming down our driveway, I turned off the TV while at the same time pleading “Oh please, oh please” that the white dot, signaling that the TV had been turned off, would disappear before she got in the door. (Back in the day, when you turned off your TV, the picture would fade away until only a white dot was left and then the TV would go all black and the power would go off.)

As you might imagine, by the time she did get in the door, my brother and I were all “lalalalalalala” in the living room acting as if nothing had happened.

So back to the storyline, believe it or don’t, Dark Shadows was a Gothic soap opera, featuring all kinds of werewolves, witches, warlocks and of course, vampires.  The story was set in the town of Collinsworth, Maine, where young orphan, Victoria Winters, resided and tried to unravel her past.  (Does your past include vampires?  I didn’t think so.) At any rate, everything was creepy and spooky (and altogether “ooky”) and mesmerizing.  Unlike my mom’s standard soap opera lineup (As the World Turns, The Secret Storm and The Edge of Night), this one had a creep factor that was just too hard to turn away from.  And so I watched…secretly….sssh…..

Now if I had the Dark Shadows Cookbook (there is one but it costs $180.00 so it’s not in my collection), I would have made something from it in Jonathan’s honor but I don’t so the next best thing was to make a recipe from Mary and Vincent Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes.

In case you need reminding, the late actor, Vincent Price, was the master of horror movies.  He also had a pretty wicked laugh that was included in Michael Jackson’s Thriller recording.  But he and his wife were also world travelers and very good cooks, as evidenced by their two cookbooks, Come Into the Kitchen Cookbook and A Treasury of Great Recipes and as between the two, I decided on “A Treasury.”

While many used copies of Come Into the Kitchen Cookbook abound, it took me forever and a day to locate a copy of A Treasury of Great Recipes and when I finally did, it was in, of all places, a flea market in Chicago.  The year was 2007, many, many years after I started my cookbook collection, and the price was one that made me gulp a bit (I won’t tell you except it was way higher than most), but when you find the Holy Grail, you run with it. (Or, if you are the king in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you “run away, run away” with it!)

So all that was left was to find a recipe and this one did not disappoint:  “Le Poulet En Civet Au Vieux Bourgogne,” otherwise known as “Ragout of Chicken with Onions, Bacon and Mushrooms.”

I have to tell you that although I love drinking red wine with everything, I wasn’t sure I’d like to cook the chicken in a red wine sauce.  Silly me – it was delicious!  And unlike Bouef Bourguignon, which takes hours to make, this took 45 minutes to make.

Mary and Vincent did not recommend a side dish but I felt the need to make mashed potatoes and so I did and then it was really excellent.  You could do noodles or you could do nothing – your choice.

Ragout of Chicken with Onion, Bacon and Mushrooms – serves 4

7-8 strips of bacon

1 medium onion, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

3-pound chicken, quartered

¼ cup cognac

4 tablespoons flour

2 cups red wine (the recipe suggests Burgundy but I used 2 cups of my “Two-Buck Chuck” Merlot from Trader Joe’s)

1 cup chicken stock

1 teaspoon salt

2 cloves garlic, Minced

6 sprigs parsley

¼ teaspoon thyme

¼ teaspoon peppercorns

1 small bay leaf

8 small onions, peeled

4 large mushrooms

4 slices toast for garlic croutons (optional)

In braising kettle put 3 strips bacon, diced, onion, and carrot.  (Note:  I have never heard of a braising kettle so I used a large saucepan - worked fine.)  Cook over moderate heat until bacon is crisp and vegetables are lightly browned.

Add a 3-pound chicken, quartered, and cook until chicken is lightly browned on both sides.  (Note:  I used four large skin-on chicken breasts.) Then add the ¼ cup cognac, and ignite.  When the flame burns out, sprinkle with 4 tablespoons flour and stir until flour is well mixed with bacon drippings in pan.  (Okay, this part was a mess:  the cognac didn’t ignite so the hell with that and there was not enough in bacon drippings to mix well with the flour so what I got was almost one big ball of flour.  Luckily, this all evened out when I added the liquids.)

Next add 2 cups Burgundy, the chicken stock, salt, garlic, parsley (I used dried parsley), thyme, peppercorns and bay leaf.  Bring the liquid to a boil, cover, and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, sauté 4 strips of bacon until crisp.  Boil 8 small (peeled) onions until tender.  Then sauté 4 large mushrooms in 1 tablespoon butter until lightly browned.  Set aside and keep warm.  Toast 4 slices of bread, spread with garlic butter and cut into triangles to make garlic croutons.  (Note:  I used 4 cipollini onions instead of the small pearly white ones and when I was done cooking them, I sautéed them lightly in the leftover bacon fat.  I also sautéed the mushrooms (I sliced them instead of leaving them whole) in the bacon fat (reuse, recycle).  As to the bacon itself, although I quite enjoy the thicker strips of bacon I buy at Whole Foods, it does not crisp up well.)

When ready to serve, season with salt and pepper (to taste).  Arrange chicken pieces on a warm serving platter and strain the sauce over the chicken.  Garnish the platter with the onions, bacon, mushrooms and garlic croutons.  (Or, if you are me, don’t strain the sauce, and add the onions, bacon, and mushrooms – but not croutons (too much work) – onto the top of the chicken and sauce and mashed potatoes pyramid! Yum!).

"Beyond Burlap" - (Earth Day) Idaho-Iowa Corn and Potato Chowder

Date I made this recipe:  April 21, 2012 (Earth Day)

Beyond Burlap – Idaho’s Famous Potato Recipes by Junior League of Boise

Published by:  Favorite Recipes© Press

ISBN:  0-913743-97-6

Recipe:  Idaho-Iowa Corn and Potato Chowder – p. 83

Well Happy Earth Day, everyone!  Although I stand firmly by my life motto that “Nature is not your friend,” I am not so heartless that I can’t participate in “ED” nor wish you a happy one at that.

As to recipes, my first thought was something vegetarian since we were celebrating Mother Earth (not that meat isn’t important, it is) but I don’t have that many vegetarian cookbooks and the ones I do have didn’t send me flying with the recipe selection.  Besides, many vegetarian cookbooks use meat substitutes whereas I was looking for something from the earth. If one is going to participate in Earth Day, one must do it right!

So hooray for my Idaho potato recipe book because nothing says “earth” to me like a lovely potato.  Out of all the things my father grew in my garden growing up, naturally I loved potatoes, if only because going to the barrel (used as a root cellar) in the middle of winter to get one was so much fun.  Call it the culinary version of “dumpster diving!”

Now, I could have taken the easy way out of all of this by making something like a stuffed baked potato but come on, bacon bits do not exist in nature, am I right, and so that felt wrong to me.  And while there was a recipe for Cinnamon Rolls made with mashed potatoes, the guilt of making something so sinful on Earth Day would have kept me up at night.

In the end, it came down to a toss-up between potato leek soup and this recipe for corn and potato chowder, with the chowder winning out because it had chicken and bacon in it, something my husband would like.  (Well me too, now that you asked!).  Since whatever meal I make for the blog normally constitutes our Sunday dinner, I wanted it to be a little heartier than normal.

The other tipping point to making this chowder instead of the soup was that this recipe celebrates the best of Idaho and Iowa- potatoes and corn - and what could be wrong about that?!  Sure, it’s a little early in the season for fresh corn but fear not, shoppers!  My local Rainbow Foods had canned corn on sale for $.58 cents per can – score!!  Okay, it’s not as fresh but it’s not like it didn’t come originally from the ground so it works.

So before I provide you with the recipe for this yummy concoction, let me leave you with one of the potato tips that were scattered throughout the book, this one a Beauty Tip:  “To darken your hair; comb warm or cooled potato water from boiled potatoes through your hair.”  And here I was laying into bottles and bottles of Clairol….

Idaho-Iowa Corn and Potato Chowder – yield:  6 to 8 servings

3 slices bacon, diced

1 pound chicken (diced)

¾ cup chopped onion

¾ cup chopped celery

4 cups whole kernel corn

4 cups chicken broth

2 cups cubed potatoes

Salt to taste

1 cup whipping cream

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Pepper to taste

Brown the bacon in a heavy saucepan.  Remove the bacon to a paper towel and drain the saucepan, reserving 2 tablespoons drippings.  (Ann’s Note; is it me, or do others find it hard to come up with the required amount of drippings for many recipes these days due to lack of fat on meat?  Even this bacon failed to yield 2 tablespoons so I added butter!)

Cut the chicken into cubs.  Add the chicken, onion and celery to the drippings in the saucepan.  Cook for 10 to 15 minutes or until the chicken and vegetables are tender, stirring constantly.

Combine 2 cups of the corn and 1 cup of the chicken broth in a blender container; process until smooth.

Add the pureed corn, the remaining broth, the remaining corn, potatoes and salt to the chicken mixture.  Bring to a boil and reduce the heat.  Simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Stir in the cream and parsley.  Simmer for 5 minutes.  Add the bacon, salt and pepper.  Ladle into soup bowls.

"Egg Cookery" - (Easter) Meatballs with Lemon Sauce & Spinach and Feta Pie

Date I made these recipes: April 8, 2012 (Easter Sunday)

Egg Cookery by Lou Seibert Pappas
Published by: 101 Productions
ISBN: 0-912238-80-1; © 1976
Recipes: Meatballs with Lemon Sauce, p-114 and Spinach and Feta Pie, p-90

Well, by the time I got around to writing this, Easter came and went. But in what I consider a fluke, these recipes will get you primed for the Greek Orthodox Easter which is this coming Sunday, April 15. You’re welcome!

Given that I made ham and potatoes two weeks ago for the Mad Men premier, I was not inclined to make ham again. Well, this posed a problem because I don’t like lamb and that was the only alternative meat for Easter if ham was not on the table. Hahaha…get it? “On the table?”

At any rate, I was watching an episode of The Chew, a cooking/talk show and they were all coloring Easter eggs. Well duh, people. Eggs! That was it! I could make an egg dish for Easter!

So I pulled out my handy-dandy Egg Cookery book and found the recipe for Spinach and Feta Pie. And if it was just me who was eating it, that’s all I would have made but being somewhat of a typical guy, my husband wanted something else and so he selected the Meatballs with Lemon Sauce recipe. This came about because the suggested accompaniment for the pie was “kefthethes,” a vinegar-glazed Greek meatball. Since we didn’t have that recipe, we went for the meatballs with lemon sauce.

As between the pie and the meatballs, the spinach pie was the hands down winner. It was rich without being too overpowering and it was loaded with good-for-you ingredients like spinach and feta (goat cheese is a good thing!) and eggs (naturally—thus the name of the book).

The pie was easy to prepare and once I got it in the oven, all I had to do was set the timer and file my fingernails.

Not so the meatballs and the lemon sauce. The meatballs were rather messy to make (“roll in flour” – what?) and didn’t bind together well. I had tons of “escaped” rice all over my pan such that it looked like I was making rice soup. For the record, I was not.

The lemon sauce was a nightmare to make. In the blink of an eye, it went from a runny, non-thickened sauce to a scrambled egg paste. My husband, “Iron Stomach Andy,” was game for eating it but I promptly threw it out and started over.

Alas, the second batch fared no better as the cornstarch started to form lumps too early on in the process. Lumps are fine for gravy, but not for a lemon sauce. The taste was fine, although a little light on the lemon but I used it sparingly. And that’s too bad because the meatballs were a little bland. I think a bit more oregano is in order.

I will say that this cookbook ran the gamut of recipes – from appetizers to soups to sweets so finding something to make from it wasn’t the problem. These recipes did not take too much time and that is critical to me on a Sunday afternoon (Easter or no Easter) when I need to get things ready to roll by the time the Good Wife and Mad Men come on. This Sunday, the Masters (golf tournament) wrapped up late throwing the entire CBS Sunday lineup a good hour behind schedule so it was a good thing that the Good Wife wasn’t on this week. (By the way, CBS, so far we Good Wife fans have had to endure late-running football games, basketball games and now golf tournaments. Can Greco-Roman wrestling be far behind?).

So enjoy the toggle between Easter and Greek Easter everyone!

Meatballs with Lemon Sauce – Makes 6 servings
1 pound lean ground beef
½ pound lean ground veal
2 tablespoons each chopped onion and parsley
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon crumbled dried oregano
Freshly ground pepper
¼ cup long-grain rice
2 cups rich beef stock
Flour
2 eggs
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Mix together the beef, veal, onion, parsley, garlic, salt, oregano, pepper and rice and ¼ cup of the beef stock. Shape mixture into 1-1/4-inch balls and roll in flour. Heat remaining broth to boiling, add meatballs, cover and simmer 35 minutes or until rice is tender. Beat eggs until blended, then beat in cornstarch and lemon juice. Pour some of the broth from the meat into the egg-lemon mixture, return to the pan and cook and stir until thickened. Serve accompanied with hot pita bread if desired.

Spinach and Feta Pie – makes 6 servings
Vinegar-Egg Pastry, page 85, or your favorite pastry (Note: I used a frozen pie shell)
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
½ cup plain yogurt
½ cup milk
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
½ teaspoon each salt and crumbled dried tarragon
Dash ground nutmeg
2 pounds spinach, chopped, cooked and drained
½ cup crumbled feta cheese
1 tablespoon butter, melted
Dijon-style mustard (to spread on pastry)

First prepare pastry-lined pan and spread with a thin coating of mustard.

Beat together eggs and egg yolks until blended and mix in yogurt, milk, parsley, salt, tarragon, nutmeg, spinach and feta. Spoon into the pastry-lined pan and drizzle top with melted butter. Bake in 400 degree oven for 10 minutes; reduce heat to 350 and bake 25 minutes longer or until set. Let pie cool 5 minutes before cutting.

"The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook" - Pineapple Glazed Ham & Potatoes Au Gratin

Date I made these recipes: March 25, 2012 (Mad Men Season 5 premier)

The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook by Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin
Published by: Smart Pop
ISBN: 978-193666141-1
Recipes: Pineapple-Glazed Ham in honor of Season 4, Episode 1 “Public Relations” and Julie Child’s Potatoes Au Gratin in honor of Season 1, Episode 2 “Ladies’ Room”

Finally, after 17 months off, Mad Men is back. It’s back! Oh how I have missed it. I mean, weren’t we all on the edge of our seats wondering about Joan’s baby and Don and Megan’s engagement and all kinds of various and sundry revolving stories? I know I was. Aside from a TV show here and there, I can’t think of any other show I have wanted to watch more than Mad Men.

This hero worship is probably due to the fact that I grew up in the 60’s. I was in Kindergarten when President Kennedy was shot (I called him President “Keninney”) and held on for the ride in 1968 when everything seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket. In between, I managed to somehow survive Catholic grade school and Vatican II, secondhand smoke, loud cocktail parties thrown by my parents (where I got to sip from my dad’s martini and please, spare me the lecture) and the gamut of 60’s fashion. In fact, one of the more hilarious scenes from Mad Men has Betty chastising Sally for running around with a dry-cleaning bag on her head because Betty didn’t want the clothing in them wrinkled. While I’m pretty sure my mother would have been more concerned than Betty about my potential death by asphyxiation, I also know my mom’s desire for smartly pressed clothes and so who’s to say I, too, wouldn’t have heard “Ann Marie Verme, you’re ruining the clothes!”

The thing I, and others, love about this show is the attention to detail. When I watch this production, I feel as if I was right back in the 60’s, girdles and all! Many women were horrified that pregnant women smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol but as my friend, Mary, said on many occasions “Oh my God, my mother smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish with all of us kids!” And that was absolutely true; the fact that you were pregnant was immaterial.

Smoking was allowed everywhere, and I mean everywhere, even hospitals (can you imagine?!) In fact, my favorite “toy” growing up was the huge ashtray in our local bank. It was filled with sand and my brother and I used to move the cigarette butts through the sand like we were driving a truck—at least until my mother said “Stop that!” Spoilsport.

For many women of the 60’s, the “available” positions were teachers, nurses, secretaries or stay-at-home housewives. My mother stayed at home (because my dad wanted her to) and hosted coffee klatches with her female friends, grocery shopped, cleaned the house, took care of me and my brother and countless other things and was still expected to have dinner ready and on the table by 6. And it wasn’t that my dad was a hard-ass, far from it. It’s just that more women stayed home because it was expected of them and that was that. Dinner was, of course, preceded with my dad’s wind-down-from-a-tough-day martini.

So speaking of cocktails, this cookbook has a ton of popular 60’s cocktail recipes, many of which I have sampled in bars and restaurants over the past few decades, but I decided to pay homage by making a couple of food recipes instead. Besides, at precisely 8 bells Central Standard Time, I had my own cocktail of choice, a martini, at hand, ready for the start of our two-hour adventure. (By the way, the authors suggest adding 1/8 ounce of vermouth to the gin. Nonsense! That’s overkill.)

As to the food, the recipes all sounded delicious but I just had to make the ham recipe in honor of the hilarious episode from last season, Season 4, where Pete and Peggy have to come up with an advertisement for the fictitious Sugarberry canned ham. (That said the recipe for “Trudy’s Flying Roast Chicken with Stuffing” recipe came in a close second—talk about another hilarious moment in Mad Men history when Peter sent his wife Trudy’s roast chicken over the balcony in a fit of pique!)

Okay, back to the ham, in this episode, Pete and Peggy struggle to make their ham client happy. After much consideration, they come up with a “sure-fired” way to get their female grocery-buying public’s attention and that is to stage an in-store fight where two women argue over who is going home with a Sugarberry ham. The idea was, of course, to make Sugarberry ham the only ham that women would want to make. But naturally, the two “housewives” hired for the promotion get into a major fight, all hell breaks loose and that pretty much put the kibosh on that! Tell you what though I can’t look at a canned ham anymore without cracking up laughing. (And for the record, of course the ham I made today is a canned ham. If Matthew Weiner can pay attention to details, so can I!).

As to the potatoes, well, ham and potatoes just go together, right, so I broke my own little rule of only making one recipe per cookbook and made the au gratin potatoes as well. This was the first time I’ve ever seen them made with Swiss cheese but then again, this is an adaptation of a Julie Child recipe so that made sense. The texture of this is more like an omelet due to the addition of eggs, but I found myself really liking it. Still, Julia Child aside, I’m really more of a cheddar cheese gal myself when it comes to au gratin potatoes.

So there we were – martinis in hand, ham on the plate, potatoes nearby, and Mad Men commenced. Ah, life is good!

Pineapple-Glazed Ham (adapted from The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook (Hearst 1963)) – Yield: 1 ham
1 ham (in keeping with the episode, canned ham is best!)
1 cup pineapple juice, or reserved juice from pineapple can
¾ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 15-ounce can pineapple slices
Maraschino cherries, optional

Cook ham according to instructions on the package. Remove ham from oven 45 minutes before it is done cooking and remove rind. Score ham, if you wish, by cutting it in long diagonal slashes in one direction and then crossing those cuts with diagonal slashes in the opposite direction to create a diamond pattern. Increase oven temperature to 400F.

Combine pineapple juice, brown sugar, and mustard in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat until thickened and clear. Spread on ham. Use toothpicks to fasten pineapple slices to ham and place maraschino cherries inside the pineapple rings. Return to oven for 20 minutes or until pineapple is glazed.

Place fully cooked ham on a serving platter and let rest for 15 minutes before carving into thin slices.

Ann’s Notes: My canned ham only took an hour to cook but I was still in a burning hurry to get done in time for Mad Men’s 8:00 (CST) start so….I didn’t wait until the pineapple juice, brown sugar and mustard became a paste but instead just poured it over the ham and shoved it in the oven. But I did take a moment to arrange the pineapple slices on top of my perfectly flat canned ham! Needless to say, I didn’t bother to score the ham since there was nothing to score—no rind, no fuss, no muss, no bother!

Potatoes au Gratin (adapted from Gratin De Pommes De Terre Aux Anchois – Gratin of Potatoes, Onions and Anchovies), Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child (Knopf, 1961))

2 tablespoons butter; plus 1 tablespoon for top
1 cup minced onions
½ pound raw potatoes (about 2-3 large potatoes) (Ann’s note: today’s baking potatoes are HUGE so weigh them in the grocery store if at all possible lest you end up with more potatoes than needed like I did.). Peel and dice the potatoes into 1/2-inch cubes
3 eggs
1 ½ cups whipping cream, half-and-half, cream or milk
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup grated Swiss cheese

Place butter in a skillet and melt over low heat. Cook onions slowly in butter for 5 minutes or so, until tender but not browned.

Preheat oven to 375F. Drop potatoes in boiling salted water and cook for 6-8 minutes, or until barely cooked. Drain thoroughly.

Butter a 3-4 cup baking dish. Spread half of the potatoes in the bottom and then the cooked onion and, finally, the remaining potatoes.

Beat eggs with whipping cream, and add salt and pepper. Stir. Pour eggs and cream over the potatoes and shake the dish to send the liquid to the bottom.

*May be cook in individual serving crocks if desired.

"Barbecuing the Weber Covered Way" & "The Book of Salads" - California Burgers & Hearts of Palm and Avocado Salad

Date I made these recipes: March 14, 2012

Barbecuing the Weber® Covered Way, edited by Carol D. Brent and Betty A. Huges
Published for the Weber-Stephen Products Company by trp (Tested Recipes Publishers, Inc.)
© 1972
Recipe: California Burgers – p. 33

The Book of Salads by Sonia Uvezian
Published by: 101 Productions
© 1977 – ISBN: 0-89286-126-6 495
Recipe: Hearts of Palm and Avocado Salad – p. 39 with Garlic French Dressing – p. 138

Kids, we are living in an alternate weather universe. At this time of year, the general weather “MO” is snow (and more snow), or snow and slush, or snow and ice but most certainly not sun and 68 degree temperatures! Not that I’m complaining but this blast of weather good fortune means that I had to put away my usual and customary soup, stew and crockpot cookbooks and start digging for springtime and summertime fun recipes.

Enter Barbecuing the Weber® Covered Way and the succinctly named The Book of Salads, because if anything signals the arrival of warm weather it is barbecuing and fresh vegetables. (That said, just because it’s “Springtime in the Rockies” doesn’t mean that truly fresh vegetables are forthcoming but you get my drift).

Now, truth be told, we don’t have a Weber® Kettle grill, covered or otherwise, but the book is nice enough to tell us how to grill with gas. Of course, the intention was that we would use a Webe®r Kettle gas grill but details, details. (By the way, the current equivalent of a gas round-top Weber® Kettle – the Q 300 Series – kind of resembles Rosie the robot from the TV show, The Jetsons. Just put an apron on that puppy and….)

Since my man is the grill-master in this house, I handed him the cookbook and told him to have at it with the recipe selection. He wisely chose the California Burgers, topped with fresh guacamole. Both recipes were easy to make and fun to eat! Note that we could have made an entire roast suckling pig, but oh darn, our grill isn’t big enough to hold such a thing and so we downgraded to burgers.

As to the salad selection, this book is pretty comprehensive with recipes for green salads, vegetable salads (including potato salad and cole slaw), fruit salads, meat salads and even – be still my heart – molded salads. But I was stuck on making a green salad and the one that I liked the best used avocados and so why not kill two birds with one stone?

So burgers and salad it was and we enjoyed munching on both on a spectacular sunny and warm day in March. This gives new meaning to the term “March Madness,” no?

By the way, both of today’s cookbooks were purchased from one of my favorite stores in the Twin Cities – Arc’s Value Village (in four locations!). Arc Greater Twin Cities is an organization that provides advocacy and support for individuals with developmental disabilities and the Value Village thrift stores generate much-needed revenue to support programs and services for these individuals. And woo-hoo for me, their stores consistently stock cool and inexpensive cookbooks to add to my collection. The last time I went to a store, it was a 50% off day and yours truly walked about with 12 cookbooks. Score!

California burgers – Yield: 6 to 8 burgers
2 pounds ground sirloin or ground beef (I bought just over a pound and it made 4 burgers)
1 avocado
¼ cup finely diced fresh tomato
2 tablespoons finely chopped green onion
2 teaspoons lemon juice (I used a little less)
Salt and pepper to taste

Prepare burgers. The authors suggested using their basic recipe for either Steak Burgers or Budget Burgers (p. 32). The Steak Burger recipe calls for 2 pounds ground chuck, round or sirloin tip, 3 tablespoons finely chopped onion, 2 teaspoons salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. The Budget burgers recipe calls for all of the above plus ¾ cup uncooked rolled oats and ½ cup tomato juice or milk. We decided to keep it simple and just season our burgers with salt and pepper.

Cook burgers to desire doneness; suggested times are 3 minutes per side for rare, 4 minutes per side for medium and 5 minutes per side for well done.

In the meantime, peel and mash ½ avocado; fold in ¼ cup finely diced fresh tomato, 2 tablespoons finely chopped green onion, 2 teaspoons lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. (Ann’s note: I recommend adding the lemon juice to taste as well.). Slice remaining avocado crosswise. Place patties on bottoms of toasted buns; top with avocado mixture. Garnish each burger with an avocado slice; cover with bun top.

Hearts of Palm and Avocado Salad with Garlic French Dressing – serves 6
½ head romaine lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
½ head escarole, torn into bite-size pieces
1 16-ounce can hearts of palm, drained and cut crosswise into thin slices
2 avocados, peeled, pitted and sliced
3 scallions, thinly sliced, including 2 inches of the green tops
¼ cup pimiento-stuffed olives
Pimiento strips
Hard-cooked egg slices (optional)
½ cup Garlic French Dressing, page 138
¼ teaspoon crushed dried tarragon

Garlic French Dressing (Vinaigrette) – makes about ½ cup
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
¼ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
6 to 8 tablespoons olive oil
1 small clove garlic, crushed

For the salad:
Place the greens in a salad bowl and toss together. Arrange all the remaining ingredients except the dressing and tarragon in a decorative pattern over the greens. (Ann’s note: Yeah, right.) Combine the dressing and tarragon and pour over the salad. Toss at table.

To make the dressing:
Place all the ingredients in a covered jar and shake vigorously until blended. Or combine the vinegar, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Stir well to dissolve the salt, then gradually beat in the oil. Add the crushed garlic clove (if desired – I didn’t).

"Chicken and Egg" - Chicken Udon Noodle Soup

Date I made this recipe: March 4, 2012

Chicken and Egg by Janice Cole
Published by: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 978-0-8118-7045-0
Recipe: Chicken Udon Noodle Soup – p. 227

My husband has often amused me by saying he can always tell the very second he catches a cold. He said it just “hits him” and then he is off and running toward the drug store. Just call me “Doubting Thomas” (check your Bible) because I always replied that he was being ridiculous. Clearly then, I am a supportive wife.

Yes, well. So there I was, running errands on Saturday when all of a sudden, I just felt a chill come on and within seconds, my throat was scratchy and I was miserable for the rest of the day. I just couldn’t get warm and by the time I went to bed, I had gargled several times with Listerine. You should know that I almost never (knock wood) get sick so this was especially irritating, particularly since it hit me just like it always hits him. I hate it when that happens.

On Sunday, I was feeling slightly better but was in the mood for chicken soup and so went looking for recipes; that turned out to be easier said than done. Why is it every time I get a craving for something like tuna casserole or tater tot casserole is takes me days to find something?

I finally found a few recipes but none that floated my boat and was almost going to hang it up when I saw my recently-purchased Chicken and Egg book and there was much rejoicing.

Author Janice Cole, is a local gal who writes about raising chickens in her backyard in St. Paul, MN. I quite enjoyed reading about the adventures of her three favorite chickens, Lulu, Cleo, and Roxanne, and just had to set aside the images of those little darlings while reading her delicious-sounding recipes.

Cole’s book comes at a time when urban chicken-raising is gaining in popularity. A neighbor of ours, three houses down, has a couple of hens in the backyard. We’ve heard them exactly once in all the time they’ve been there while we were out in the alley and that’s a good thing. Another friend writes about her adventures in chicken-raising on Facebook. By the way, in case you didn’t know, most cities have ordinances disallowing the keeping of roosters for good reason – they crow. A friend of mine who lives in St. Paul complained one year about hearing a rooster crowing at dawn-o-clock in the morning. Turns out a neighbor kept a rooster in a dog crate in their back yard; Animal Control removed said rooster from the premises and the neighborhood finally got a good night’s sleep.

When my dad was three years old his family moved from lower Manhattan to a chicken farm in rural New Jersey. We often talked about how my grandmother rued the day that she told my grandfather about this property since all her family lived in the city and she was stuck cleaning chicken coops on a daily basis. I agree that this was not a fair trade.

I don’t have many memories of the farm since it was sold just after my grandpa died when I was pretty young, but I do remember going into the chicken coops with my grandma to get the eggs. Oddly enough, I managed to do okay with the smell although how I would have fared when I was older was anyone’s guess. Let’s just say I’m a city gal at heart. But I am intrigued by the desire to return to simpler times when people grew their own food and raised their own meat and dairy.

Although I thought it would be hard to select a recipe from Cole’s cookbook as they all looked good, my overwhelming need for chicken noodle soup or some sort made it quite simple – it was Udon noodle soup or bust!

I love all types of Asian noodles, especially the thicker Udon noodles, and so we hightailed it to Asian Noodles in South Minneapolis to pick up what we needed for the recipe. They remodeled since we were last there and so dumb me was walking around the Chinese noodle aisle forever until a clerk showed me that the Japanese noodles were moved to a different section. There had to be eight different kinds of Udon noodles alone and so I selected the package size closest to what I needed for the recipe (6 ounces). Most of the package directions were in Japanese and so it was great that Cole gave a cooking time. (I accessed the website address written on the package (in English) only to find the website was “Japanese only.” This was not helpful. A friend suggested I should have tried a translation program as who knows what I would have come up with for instructions: “Take wheelbarrow and put on top of iron. Add one ton of grass seed….”)

And so I set about making this soup and had to chuckle because what seemed so easy to make turned out to take way more time than I intended. First I had to poach the chicken and that took a while (she said 8-10 minutes but it was more like 20), then I had to heat the broth and then add ingredients to it in increments. Then I had to cook the noodles. And just as I got the thing all set and ready to go, my brother and sister-in-law called and the next thing you know, “old Jed’s a millionaire” and I missed the entire episode of The Amazing Race and half of The Good Wife. (NOTE: DVR’s are a good thing.)

But folks, trust me when I tell you that when I finally got around to eating this soup, it was delicious and felt instantly restorative. That “cold” may have hit me within seconds but it went out just as fast. And the best benefit is that I have yummy leftovers! An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure during cold and flu season and maybe that’s what the author had in mind when she included this recipe in the “Late Winter” section of her book.

Chicken Udon Noodle Soup - serves 4

4 eggs (hardboiled, for garnish)
6 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 ½ tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons mirin (Mirin is similar to a rice wine and can be found in Asian markets and in some grocery stores)
½ cup finely diced carrot
1 ¾ cups shredded poached chicken
1 cup sliced napa cabbage (1/2 inch thick)
8 shiitake mushroom caps, sliced
½ cup diagonally sliced green onions (green part only)
6 ounces udon noodles (The author notes that this recipe is based on dried noodles although fresh noodles can be substituted. Udon noodles are thick noodles made from wheat.)

Notes: I didn’t use the hardboiled eggs as my husband doesn’t like them. And in the interest of full disclosure, rather than buy the huge napa cabbage found in my grocery stores, I pulled a few leaves off until I had enough from the recipe. And I couldn’t find shitake mushrooms at a price I was comfortable with so I went with canned instead and that worked for us.

To make the eggs, put the eggs in a small saucepan and add enough hot water to just cover. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low and gently boil for 6 minutes, reducing the heat if necessary to maintain a very gentle boil. Put the eggs in a bowl of ice water until cool enough to handle. Peel under running water and quarter the eggs.

To poach the chicken (p. 33), fill a medium skillet with water. Add a couple of onion slices, 1 bay leaf, ¼ teaspoon of dried thyme, and 5 dill stems, if available. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, add 1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast half (about 10 ounces), reduce the heat, and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes until no longer pink in the center. Remove from the liquid and cool completely. Shred into bite-sized pieces. If you’re poaching chicken breast for another recipe, omit the dill. (Ann’s note, I wasn’t sure how the spices would work in the recipe so I omitted them all and just poached the chicken all by itself.)

Pour the broth into a large saucepan, add the ginger, soy sauce, and mirin and bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 3 minutes. Add the carrot and simmer for 3 minutes. Add the chicken, cabbage and mushrooms. Return to a simmer and gently simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the green onions.

Meanwhile, cook the noodles in a large pot of boiling salted water for 8 minutes or until al dente and drain.

To serve, pile the noodles in a mound in the center of each bowl. Pour the soup over the noodles and arrange the eggs around the noodles.