almost too true to be funny

All The Comments on Every Food Blog...so glad the Yahtzee dice substitution worked out.

vote for cake

On this Election Day, one more recipe from 1915's The Suffrage Cookbook seems like an informed political decision, and since it's been a devilish campaign season, this old school Devil's Food Cake can maybe sweeten the outcome:



Devil's Food

2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup grated chocolate
1 1/2 teaspoons soda

Dissolve soda in boiling water and pour over chocolate and let cool. Beat butter and sugar to a cream, add the eggs and other things. Bake in layers.

amy vanderbilt's chocolate oatmeal bars

With yesterday being National Chocolate Day and today National Oatmeal Day, this recipe for Chocolate Oatmeal Bars from the 1961 Amy Vanderbilt Complete Cookbook seems like a time-tested combination of the two, and surprisingly without the use of any eggs:

Chocolate Oatmeal Bars

1/3 cup melted butter or margarine
2 cups uncooked oatmeal
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 (6 oz) package semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup chopped nuts

Start oven at hot (450 deg.).  Grease 7 x 11 inch pan.

Pour melted butter or margarine over oats in mixing bowl.  Stir well.  Add brown sugar, syrup, salt, and vanilla.  Mix thoroughly.  Pack firmly into prepared pan.

Bake 12 minutes, or until rich brown color.  Let cool in pan.  Remove from pan when cooled, then melt chocolate, spread over bars, and sprinkle with nuts.  Let stand until chocolate is set. Makes 2 dozen.  

anna olson's butternut squash and cheddar cheese souffles

Canadian chef Anna Olson is one of my favorite TV food personalities, currently hosting Bake with Anna Olson on Food Network Canada, but also showing up in reruns of Fresh with Anna Olson on the ION Life channel.  She always seems so calm and easygoing while she's making wonderful recipes yet she's clearly passionate about food and how it brings people together.  Here's Anna whipping up some individual butternut squash and cheddar cheese soufflés, which seem quite ideal for this time of year.

the quest for russian vegetable pie

Way back in the late 20th century, I was at a dinner party where a dish called Russian Vegetable Pie was served.  It was zero degrees out so it felt like Siberia, and we had the pie with beet salad and iced glasses of vodka. Great meal!  I loved the pie and got the recipe, but then I lost it.  So I tried to recreate the pie myself, with varying degrees of success.  The recipes I found online were close, but seemed to be either overladen with potatoes or missing something integral (it was the cream cheese).  Then I was looking at a cookbook called The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas at a thrift store, and I opened it right up to a recipe for Russian Vegetable Pie.  And it was suddenly like I heard balalaika music...because there was the elusive combo of ingredients to make the elusive Russian Vegetable Pie.

The Vegetarian Epicure also offers a really nice collection of other recipes, like Gazpacho Salad, Potatoes Gruyere en Casserole, Minestrone Alla Milanese, Iced Cucumber Soup (with cream and chervil), and Ginger Cheesecake.  As well as a range of homemade breads and recipes for sauces and vinaigrettes.  The publication date on my copy is 1972 (though the book has been reprinted), with this paragraph from the original introduction:  

In these strange 1970's, ominous and dramatic new reasons are compelling people to reexamine their eating habits.  More and more foods are being "processed," becoming the products of factories rather than farms.  Chemical nonfood "additives" alter the look of foods and prevent visible spoilage, but the nutritive value of treated foods is hugely diminished...[c]attle and poultry are treated with silbesterol (a sex hormone) to promote growth--and profit--resulting in unknown danger to human consumers, including the possibility of various types of cancer.

Much has changed since then, but much has stayed the same.  Above all, Anna advocates that good food "is a celebration of life, and it seems absurd...that in celebrating life we should take life."  If you'd like to see Anna's more recent work, click here for The Vegetarian Epicure II, published in 2014.  All that said, this is her simple but delicious Russian Vegetable Pie:

Pastry

1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
4 oz softened cream cheese
3 tbs butter

Filling

1 small head cabbage (about 3 cups shredded)
1/2 lb mushrooms
1 yellow onion
to taste:  basil, marjoram, tarragon, salt and fresh ground pepper
3 tbs butter
4 oz softened cream cheese
4 to 5 hard cooked eggs
dill

Make a pastry by sifting together the dry ingredients, cutting in the butter, and working it together with the cream cheese.  Roll out 2/3 of the pasty and line a 9 inch pie dish.  Roll out the remaining pastry and make a circle large enough to cover the dish.  Put it away to chill.

Shred a small head of cabbage coarsely.  Wash the mushrooms and slice them.  Peel and chop the onion.

In a large skillet, melt about 2 tablespoons butter.  Add the onion and cabbage, and saute for several minutes, stirring constantly.  Add at least 1/8 teaspoon each of marjoram, tarragon, and basil (all crushed), and some salt and fresh-ground pepper.  Stirring often, allow the mixture to cook until the cabbage is wilted and the onions soft. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add another tablespoon of butter to the pan and saute the mushrooms lightly for about 5 to 6 minutes, stirring constantly.

Spread the softened cream cheese on the bottom of the pie shell. Slice the eggs and arrange the slices in a layer over the cheese. Sprinkle them with a little chopped dill, then cover them with the cabbage. Make a final layer of the sauteed mushrooms and cover with the circle of pastry.  

Press the pastry together tightly at the edges, and flute them. With a sharp knife, cut a few short slashes through the top crust.

Bake in a 400-degree oven for 15 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 350 degrees and continue baking for another 20 to 25 minutes, or until the crust is light brown.

Serves 4 to 6.

national olive month

One more day until National Olive Month officially ends, but if you love olives, it's quite obvious that every month should celebrate their awesomeness.  Click here for Lindsay Olives' delicious Olive and Brie Pizza, or for many other great recipes featuring superstar olives and/or equally super wonderful olive oil.

step-by-step asian

Step-by-Step Asian (2011) is part of Parragon Books' LOVE FOOD series, giving you easy-to-follow written and visual guides for a nice assortment of Asian recipes (appetizers and soups, noodles and rice, main meals and desserts).  In the intro, basic equipment is detailed, with strong suggestions to use a bamboo steamer rather than a traditional stainless steel version, along with a carbon steel wok vs. stainless steel or non-stick.  Of course if you don't have a carbon steel wok, you can always use a large sauté pan for stir frying -- and if you're just purchasing a new wok and need to season it, here's a good guide on how to start the whole process.  

Beyond all that, Step-by-Step Asian has the usual appealing photography that Parragon is known for, and the recipes include Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian offerings.  Standards include Spring Rolls, Hot and Sour Soup, Teriyaki Chicken, Green Chicken Curry and Vegetable Tempura, while standouts feature a Chicken Noodle Soup (the broth spiced with garlic, ginger, peppercorns, cloves and star anise), Vietnamese-Style Vegetable Wraps, Sesame Noodles with Shrimp, Sliced Beef in Black Bean Sauce, Gado Gado and Honey-Glazed Roast Pork.

Difficulty ranges from the quick and easy Fried Tofu with Lemongrass and Egg-Fried Rice, to the more complicated but surely worthwhile Tea-Smoked Duck with Jasmine Rice or the Thai Fish Cakes with cucumber chili sauce.  And there are excellent desserts, like Green Tea Ice Cream, Coconut Pancakes with Pineapple, Sweet Wontons (filled with bananas, dates, almonds and cinnamon), Fried Banana Dumplings, the classic Almond Cookies and a Fruit Salad made with lime, lemongrass, watermelon, dragon fruit, star fruit and mint.  Also a Burmese Semolina Cake which I haven't tried but find kind of intriguing -- Burmese food isn't as well-known as Chinese or Indian cuisine but is influenced by both in its own unique way.

beet it

French chef Jacques Pépin is a living legend, with decades of cooking excellence to his credit, a long-running PBS series and numerous acclaimed cookbooks.  And now he has an exclusive collection at Sur La Table, including this colorful, whimsical, hand-crafted and hand-painted Beet Bowl and accompanying serving plate.  Very much love them both, and speaking of beets, I also love Chef Pépin's recipe for chilled Vegetarian Borscht (click for link) which might be served up nicely at this time of year.

Photo from Sur La Table

I

cooking japanese style

Cooking Japanese Style is another little booklet from The International Recipe Series published in 1979 (Cooking French Style already had a recipe featured on here), with this excerpt from the intro:

Amid the misty mountains of Japan the plexiglass and steel of futuristic architecture complete with bamboo and paper of a more gentle and mysterious past...[r]ice is the basis for almost every meal.  Vegetables are cooked very little.  This way they retain their food value and flavor.  Seasonings play an important part in all dishes.  Soy sauce is used constantly.  Food is served in small delicate portions arranged to please the eye as much as the taste.

I love that first sentence but I'm wondering if they meant compete with instead of complete.  This is the booklet's sweetly tangy Mustard Pickled Eggplant -- the original recipe calls for half a teaspoon of MSG, but I just use half to a full teaspoon of ginger instead.  

Mustard Pickled Eggplant (from Cooking Japanese Style, The International Recipe Series)

1 medium eggplant

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon dry mustard (you can also use 1 generous tablespoon of actual wet mustard if you prefer)

3 tablespoons sweet sake

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger or 1 teaspoon finely minced ginger 

Wash unpeeled eggplant and slice in 1/8 inch slices.  Soak in salted water for 1 hour.  Drain and arrange in a glass or china bowl.  Combine mustard with enough water to make a paste (if using dry powder).  Add to remaining ingredients and blend thoroughly.  Pour over eggplant.  Chill for 2 hours and serve.

fast, fresh & green

Susie Middleton's Fast, Fresh & Green (Chronicle Books, 2010) features 90-plus fairly easy to prepare recipes for those who love vegetables, and for those who'd probably love vegetables more if they knew how versatile and delicious they can be.  But Fast, Fresh & Green is not, as Middleton explains, a wholly vegetarian cookbook, so there will be occasional ingredients that involve meat or poultry or fish. She notes that her palate tends toward the Mediterranean from her years working at Al Forno Restaurant in Providence, and while a number of the dishes do have a Mediterranean flair, there are also other flavors to balance things out.

Fast, Fresh & Green has an enjoyably holistic yet relaxed approach towards preparing food, with advice as to how to get into the cooking "zone" and a general sense of openness where recipes are concerned, working with what vegetables (preferably local and fresh) happen to be available or in season, and personal preferences for spices and combinations.  And what kind of mood you're in when you start to put together a meal, such as being more inclined toward no-cook recipes, regular or "walk-away" sautéing, grilling, braising, or the more in-depth "Slower But Worth It" gratins category.

Explanations of basic techniques and how to stock a good-and-ready pantry make Fast, Fresh & Green a nice option for novice cooks, but the recipes themselves are creative enough to intrigue those who already know their way around the kitchen.  Such as Caramelized Plum Tomatoes in an Olive Oil Bath (so simple but so good), Smoky Spanish Carrots and Fennel with Toasted Hazelnuts, Double Lemon Ginger Carrot Salad, Heirloom Tomato, Summer Peach and Fresh Herb Gazpacho Salad, Colorful Chinese Kick-Slaw, Southwestern Butternut Squash Sauté, and Golden Mushroom and Potato Gratin. And plenty more, including an awesome citrusy Japanese Dipping Sauce for broccoli and/or shrimp, and the savory Thyme-Dijon Butter (for grilled green beans).  All in all making vegetables definite standouts at the table -- and maybe even  able to totally steal the show.

cooking with myrtle

Chicago writer Myrtle Reed (1874-1911) crafted more than a dozen novels in her day, along with several cookbooks under the tasty-sounding pseudonym of Olive Green.  Though she seemed to have a happy marriage and successful career, her suicide note and overdose on sleeping powders claimed otherwise.

Before her unfortunate death, Myrtle/Olive and husband Jack McCullough hosted many a memorable dinner party at their home, and surely quite a few of Myrtle's time-tested recipes were served.   The Myrtle Reed Cookbook was published posthumously in 1916 and seems to combine all the Olive Green books into one volume.  It's an old school cookbook, so many of the recipes may look familiar, but there is a passion for food and humor to the narrative that makes the thought of Myrtle's suicide even sadder. The cookbook is available for free on Kindle and Project Gutenberg, or you can buy a print copy for about $10, depending on the edition.  Here's Myrtle's excellent and classic Fruit Cobbler, as we start getting into summer peaches, plums, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb, etc., season:

Fill a deep buttered baking-dish with fresh or stewed fruit— apples, peaches, apricots, rhubarb, plums, or gooseberries being commonly used— and cover with a crust made as follows: Sift together two cupfuls of flour and two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Rub into it half a cupful of butter and add one egg beaten with a cupful of milk. Spread over the fruit which has been previously sweetened to taste and bake until the crust is done. Serve either hot or cold with cream or any preferred sauce.

Cheap tea contains sawdust, dried and powdered hay, grass-seed, and departed but unlamented insects. 

Moral—buy good tea, or go without.

*******

The breakfast selected as a type consists of fruit, a cereal, salt fish, or salt meat, or eggs, or omelets, hot bread of some kind, and pancakes or waffles, or coffee cake, one dish from each group, and coffee. Six dishes in all, which may be less if desired, but never more. All six form a breakfast sufficiently hearty for a stone mason or a piano mover; one or two give a breakfast light enough to tempt those who eat no breakfast at all.

Myrtle Reed

cooking french style

April in Paris...it's a song, it's a special feeling, and with a few days left to April, it's time to make some French food. Part of International Publishing's International Recipe Series, the little booklet Cooking French Style was published in 1979 but is still available on Amazon.  As the preface notes: "The important thing to remember is that the French take advantage of whatever is available and make the most of it. Each meal is treated as a celebration, and even the simplest food should be served with flourish." The booklet of course has recipes for the traditionally well-known French Onion Soup and Cheese Soufflé, Coq au Vin, Cassoulet, Crêpes Suzette and the mother sauces, but these Mushrooms à la Provençale are absolutely delicious, especially when paired with French bread rounds sprinkled with grated Fontina cheese, then toasted until brown.

1 pound fresh mushrooms
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons water
1 large clove garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup dry white wine

Wash the mushrooms.  If they are large, cut in pieces.  If small, leave whole.  Heat the oil in a frying pan.  Add mushrooms, salt, pepper, parsley, and garlic and fry gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Sprinkle with flour and stir in gently.  Add water and wine and stir until well-blended.  Simmer 10 minutes and serve very hot.

*************

Serving the rest of the dry (icy chilled) white wine with the mushrooms and French bread rounds is also an excellent option.

the heart of the plate

Mollie Katzen is definitely a recognized name in the realm of vegetarian cuisine, with her Moosewood Cookbook (first published in the 70s, followed by anniversary re-editions) high up on the list of vegetarian cookbook classics.  So many Moosewood recipes have been loved for decades by both vegetarians and meat-eaters, but then we come to Katzen's 2013's The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation.  I'm a Moosewood Cookbook fan for sure, but The Heart of the Plate intrigues me because it seems to take some of the key Moosewood ideas to a different level. Plate's recipes come across as a bit more sophisticated, or as Katzen writes, reflective of her years of experience as a vegetarian chef, with a lightening of ingredients and/or intriguing variations on classic themes.  There's "a stronger sense of aesthetic economy" and less dependence on eggs and cheese, which, as Katzen also notes, allows quite a few of The Heart of the Plate's recipes to be vegan-adapted.

Among Katzen's creative offerings are Mushroom Popover Pie, Hazelnut-Wilted Frisée Salad with Sliced Pear, Ruby Gazpacho (blending watermelon, strawberries, tomatoes, pickled onions and ginger), Scattered Sushi-Style Rice Salad, Chocolate Cream Pie with Vegan Whipped Cream and Cranapple Walnut Cake.  Lemony Caramelized Onion Mac and Gorgonzola sounds just about exciting (yes, exciting is the word) as the Spinach-Mushroom Mac and Cheese, with the latter's heady notes of white cheddar, spinach, mushrooms, beer, Dijon mustard and walnuts.  There are also lasagna recipes for all seasons -- literally (Indian Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring).  And nicely colorful, elegant photos and illustrations, which it should be pointed out are by the author herself.  The recipes are not all standardly easy to prepare or in the category of quick and easy vegetarian food, but if you enjoy the process of cooking while exploring new vegetarian/fruit combinations and concepts, The Heart of the Plate will offer plenty of fun challenges and fine meals.

custardly delicious

Custard: 
A detestable substance produced by a 
malevolent conspiracy 
of the hen, the cow, and the cook. 

Ambrose Bierce

Somehow I don't think Mr. Bierce ever had the following Cointreau-enhanced recipe for Custard Royale, from Frederique Fredge's 1965 Cooking Round the World with a Wooden Spoon:

Egg Custard Royale (serves 6 to 8)

1 quart skim milk
Grated rind of 1 orange
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Cointreau (plus 3 more for peach topping)
6 fresh peaches

Place milk in a saucepan and heat to scalding point.  Remove from heat.  Put orange rind into a bowl with egg yolks.  Add sugar, cornstarch, salt, stir until it is completely blended; add Cointreau bit by bit.  Keep stirring.  Pour this slowly into hot milk.  Use a rotary beater for uniform blending.  When the eggs are fully blended with the milk, place back on low heat; keep stirring until the custard thickens.  Remove from heat and pour into sherbet glasses.  Chill in refrigerator.  Peel peaches and slice them into a bowl.  Add 2 additional tablespoons of sugar and 3 tablespoons of Cointreau; let stand in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve the custard. Top each glass with slices of royal peaches.  

the art of simple food II

Spring is coming eventually...the Groundhog told us that it was and so does the little bit of extra light pushing back sunset every day. If you're ready for warmer weather and contemplating a garden, Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food II:  Recipes, Flavor, and Inspiration from the New Kitchen Garden is a lovely book to read now to get yourself into the growing mindset.  Because it's not really about vast plots of land, it's about the appropriate attitude of cultivating and preparing food in a more personal and organic manner.  From herbs to lettuce, garlic, onions, vegetables, berries, melons and citrus, Waters details the bounty of the seasons along with wonderful recipes like Golden Jubilee Tomato Soup with Spiced Yogurt, Julienned Gypsy Pepper Salad, Wild Plum Jam Turnovers and Blackberry Souffle.  To preserve your harvest, recipes and guidance for home canning and making your own liqueurs are also featured.  Namely Vin d'Orange, Crab Apple Liqueur and Hazelnut Liqueur....please pass the bottle, thank you.

As a well-known cookbook author, chef and owner of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, Alice Waters has long been taking the basic concept of food and giving it new breadth and life.  She advises first-time gardeners to start small -- that the new kitchen garden can be "as simple as putting a seed in the ground and watching it grow." Whether you work with a pot of basil on the windowsill, heirloom tomatoes on the fire escape, zucchini on an apartment rooftop, or a suburban sprawl of romaine, eggplant and sweet potatoes (and/or your own personal cornfield or orchard), the main idea as Chef Waters explains is to nurture "the vital link between taste, cooking, and gardening".  She offers resources for seed "lending libraries" and urban gardening networks, as well as information on techniques like double-digging and crop diversity. And if you find that you don't have a green thumb, try your local farmers' markets and turn their harvest into a summer of culinary adventures -- just as long as we celebrate the earth and how to use it best for our health and enjoyment.

the mendelssohn club cookbook

German composer and pianist Felix Mendelssohn's birthday was February 3, 1809 once upon a time, and then a century later in 1909, The Mendelssohn Club of Rockford, Illinois published a cookbook (also still in print and available on Amazon and Alibris, et al).  The ladies of the club wanted to raise funds for Rockford's then-new Mendelssohn Hall, so they put together a collection of favorite recipes and spirited interludes, with everything from tea sandwiches and teas, punches, salads and salad dressings, sauces, soups, chowders, cakes, pies, cookies, breads, muffins, meats, fish, vegetables, souffles, dumplings, puddings, canning, preserves and pickles, homemade beer, ciders and wines -- and let's not forget the general household hints and etiquette advice.

As the introduction states, the Club was troubled by the myth that "the artistic temperament and the domestic sciences have little in common; that they blend about as harmoniously as the proverbial oil and water." The cookbook preface also made sure to let us know that despite their love of music and the arts, these ladies hadn't neglected their domestic lives, and this all-purpose cookbook with its wealth of knowledge from how to clean and gut fish to planning a many-course wedding supper is surely proof of that.

I haven't tried this Mendelssohn Club recipe for Baked Pears but it does sound kind of intriguing:

Core and pare nice large pears.  Stuff with sliced candied ginger. Bake slowly in the oven with only enough water to keep from burning.  When done, place in a dish on ice.  Cut marshmallows up in small pieces, soak in sweetened cream for several hours.  When ready to serve, pour cream mixture over the pears.

Also despite there being plenty of labor-intensive dishes, this one sounds like a quick and elegant dessert for Valentine's Day, substituting those pre-made sponge cake shells they usually sell in the produce section near the fresh berries for the angel food individual cakes:

Use angel food individual cakes...[f]ill with a chocolate custard to which has been added sliced blanched almonds.  Pour over all stiffly whipped cream.  Put a Maraschino cherry on top and a row of chocolate almonds around the edge of each cake.

All in all, it looks like the work of the Mendelssohn Club, which was already 25 years old in 1909, continues on impressively today with Rockford's Mendelssohn Performing Arts Center.

the new mayo clinic cookbook

I was at Five Below the other day and spotted The New Mayo Clinic Cookbook's Second Edition for sale and snatched it up, since I'm always looking for healthier recipes to pique my Dad's appetite.  He has heart issues and is supposed to be on a restricted fat and sodium diet, but he's also rail-thin and can be somewhat finicky.  But essentially this is a great cookbook to focus on healthier eating for anyone, restricted diet or not, with a wide range of offerings from vegetable side dishes, fruits, salads, soups, pasta, beans and legumes, fish/shellfish, poultry and meat, as well as desserts and beverages. The book combines creative cuisine with nutrition, keeping true to its intro text statement of how "[f]lavor comes first" and the "new approach to eating well is full of enjoyment and satisfaction."

If you enjoy trying international recipes like Moroccan Butternut Soup, Seared Salmon with Cilantro-Cucumber Salsa, Yucatecan Rice Salad, Thai Crab Cakes, Salade Nicoise with Tapenade, Fattoush, West African Peanut Stew and Tropical Fruits with Mint and Spices -- go to.  In the case of more conservative appetites, there's a more conventional range of fare like Greek-Style Shrimp Saute, Split Pea Soup, Turkey-Cranberry Salad, Grilled Flank Steak Salad with Roasted Corn Vinaigrette, Yogurt Almond Ice Cream or Warm Chocolate Souffles.  And the Sweet Ginger Tisane is a delicious and wise thing to be drinking this winter to help fight off any cold or flu.

The New Mayo Clinic Cookbook also suggests healthier eating habits and each recipe page has an easy-to-read breakdown of calories, sodium, fat (saturated and monounsatured) and cholesterol on the sidelines, plus info on how this particular dish works into the daily pyramid of nutrition (vegetables, fruit, carbs, protein and fat).   I do love it and it's a particularly ideal new year/new diet cookbook, although my edition was published in 2012 so it's not exactly new (which is why it was at Five Below).  But it's definitely still relevant, with plenty of glossy color food photos and presently available on Amazon.