Feed A Cold...
The Dreaded Summer Cold.
It really is one of the worst (non-life-threatening) illnesses out there. Ya feel like crud, there's nothing you can take to make you actually feel better, you lose your sense of taste and smell... It is just no fun.
Mine has been lingering in the peripheral of life - just enough to feel headachy and out of sorts. It's hit Victor Full-Tilt-Boogie. Imagine hacking and coughing and mountains of Kleenex and you get the picture. I merely feel meh - he feels really rotten.
So we started the week with a thin-broth Chicken Soup. There are a score of studies out there that show the medicinal properties of chicken soup. It really is Jewish penicillin. It hasn't seemed to cure anything this time around, though, but I'm going to make another batch tonight.
I also made some Beer Bread because it's easy and can be on the table in an hour. The recipe is totally no-brainer and can be played with to your liking.
I used Guinness in this batch because it's what I had in the 'fridge.
Since man - or Nonna - cannot live by soup alone, I stayed with the chicken theme, but added a twist - pureed carrots and peach-pepper jam. Capsasin is also a miracle food. We had the carrot puree at my sister's house in Portland a few weeks back - under her famous crab cakes.
I grilled the chicken and topped it with the Peach-Pepper Jam.
For the carrot puree, I cooked carrots until they were really soft, and then blended them with salt, pepper, butter, and a bit of maple syrup. I saved a bit of the cooking water and used it to get the right consistency.I used my immersion blender but a regular blender will work just fine.
One of my favorite Lundgerg rice blends on the side...
Feeling the need for Comfort Food, I next made a beef pot pie with biscuit topping. And I used canned biscuits. Yes, it's true. I was sick. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
And while they weren't horrible, there really is a reason why I make my own. Homemade really are better. The big secret to making a biscuit top is to make sure the filling is REALLY hot before putting the biscuits on and placing everything into the oven. If the filling is cold, the biscuit will burn before the bottom cooks. Ask me how I know.
I made a pretty basic beef stew - another item I really don't have a recipe for - put too much into the casserole, and it bubbled over everything. I did place it on a sheetpan in the oven, so I spared us the billowing clouds of smoke I'm famous for.
Still looking for Comfort Food, I next went for Tortellini with sauce made from fresh tomatoes out of our garden.
Victor made the sauce. It's pretty much just throwing tomatoes in a skillet with some onion, garlic, red wine, some grated cheese, salt, pepper, and fresh herbs from the garden. Hit it with an immersion blender.
One of the bigger mistakes a lot of people do is try and replicate jarred sauces or flavors from packaged foods. Food manufactures are chemists who manipulate foods, ingredients, enhancers - you name it - to trick the brain into thinking it's good. Even All-Natural-Organic foods can contain ingredients like carrageenan that create an otherwise unnatural creaminess. It's like the biscuits I used. The ingredient list was a mile long - and they're "all-natural."
Real food tastes like real food. It's okay if your sauce doesn't taste like Ragu. in fact, it's better if it doesn't!
In the meantime, I'm off to make another pot of soup.
Chicken Pot Pie
It's March 25th. It's been snowing all day. It's definitely a chicken pot pie kinda day. I tell ya, the weather has been pretty ridiculous around here. I'm really ready for lighter fare but the weather is still saying soups and stews.
Maybe one of these days...
In the meantime, a pot pie ain't too bad. Especially since I make a damned good pie crust. No brag, just fact. I admit I have bought store-bought in the past, but I've had some sort of problem with every one of them. The ones folded in quarters always cracked no matter how long they sat out, and the ones that are rolled would do the same. The amount of time I spent putting the others back together could have been spent making a real one.
Besides. I make a damned good pie crust.
Pie Crust
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 4 oz butter, frozen
- 4 oz lard, frozen (or - 8 oz butter, but lard is better)
- pinch salt
- 6-8 tbsp ice water
Using a food processor, add flour, salt, and sugar. Pulse to mix.
Chop up frozen butter and lard and add. Pulse until they are incorporated and mixture looks grainy.
Slowly add ice water and pulse until mixed.
Turn out onto counter. Press and form mixture into 2 disks - one slightly larger than than the other . Wrap in plastic and refrigerate about an hour to allow the flour to properly absorb the water and to relax the gluten.
Roll out crust and place in pie plate. Crimp edges and fill.
The secrets start with using the food processor. It cuts the fat quickly and neatly into the flour so it doesn't get overworked. Same with the water.
The other is wrapping the dough and letting it rest for an hour. It really does make a difference.
Lard has such a bad rap, but it's infinitely better than shortening, and if you're going to make something from scratch - make it right. I try to keep a couple of packs of lard in the freezer, but if and when I don't have it, I'll use all butter. I don't have shortening in the house. It's not like I'm making these daily...
The above is for a savory pie like the pot pie I made tonight. For a fruit or sweet pie, I add about a quarter-cup of sugar to the flour before adding the butter and lard.
The chicken filling was a throw-together from things in the 'fridge. I cooked a couple of chicken breasts, added celery and carrots, potatoes, frozen mixed vegetables, chicken broth, a bit of leftover chicken gravy, the last of the béchamel sauce Victor made on Friday, and thickened it a tad more with some cornstarch.
I put it into a pastry-lined casserole and then topped it with a second crust. Into a 425° oven for about 40 minutes.
It was good. But I'm ready for some barbecue!
Ham Chicken Mac & Cheese
The cleaning out of the freezer has come to an end. The Last Supper is a Ham and Chicken Macaroni and Cheese. One ham steak, one chicken breast, a half-bag of peas, and three different cheeses with bread crumbs made from a stale baguette. It's the ultimate leftover meal.
I opened the freezer this morning and was marveling at the spaciousness when the light bulb burned out. The poor thing was ashamed to be so empty. I put in a new bulb and promised it wouldn't be empty long - I was heading out to go shopping.
It's actually fun to figure out meals based on what's in the kitchen. It definitely makes for some one-of-a-kind creations. It's also good that neither of us are fussy eaters. We were both raised back in the day when you ate what was put in front of you. I'm still the same way - if you're cooking, I'm eating. There are foods I will not buy and there are plenty of things I avoid, but I'm an easy guest.
So... I made a meaty mac & cheese. The one food I have never - ever - purchased and have really only tasted a few times in my life is boxed mac & cheese. I would probably have to make an exception and feign illness if you were serving it to me for dinner. I don't think I could do it. But homemade mac and cheese?!? I'm there! It's just so easy to make! And dayum, is it good!
Tonight's batch started out with one ham steak and one chicken breast. I cut both into small pieces and tossed them into a skillet. I let the ham brown and the chicken cook and then added about 2 cups of chicken broth - also left over.
I brought it to a boil and let it reduce a bit. I then added about 2 cups of whole milk. I bought the whole milk for the rice cake, so it was also a leftover.
When it came to a boil, I added about a half-bag of frozen peas. I lowered the heat and added muenster cheese, Irish cheddar with porter, and some jack cheese - all shredded. Stirred it all in and then added a bit of cornstarch to thicken. The only seasoning was salt and pepper.
I stirred in the cooked elbow macaroni and topped it with bread crumbs mixed with butter, garlic, paprika, salt & pepper.
Into a 350° oven for 45 minutes.
It was creamy, crunchy, and rich with lots of flavors and textures going on. The cheeses all worked great together and the garlicky breadcrumbs were the perfect touch. Major comfort-food with a twist.
So I guess meals will be a bit more planned for a while, but give me a couple of months... I went shopping today and already started filling the shelves...
Stuff
Tonight's dinner is brought to you by Clean Out The Refrigerator.
We've been having good luck paring down the freezer and refrigerator this week, but we're now approaching the end - and that means the odds and ends of things. We still maintain the No Regrets rule. If we buy it, we eat it. It's not about saving the earth or starving children in [fill-in-the-blank]. It's about the fact that I'm just too damned cheap to throw away food.
It's been going so well, that the cabinets were looking a bit sparse. This week I bought more black lentils, lentils du puy from Bob's Red Mill, and some really excellent yellow grits from my friends down in Columbia, South Carolina. You've never had stone-ground grits as good as from Adluh Flour. They seriously are the real thing - and, to paraphrase Shakespeare, one man's grits are another man's polenta. Love 'em.
So tonight's dinner was what we fondly refer to as stuff.
Victor asks "What's for dinner?" My response is "Stuff." Stuff is whatever. It's something that doesn't have a name - or if I gave it a name, it would be too unwieldy to use. Stuff works.
Tonight's Stuff worked. It was a concoction of a chicken breast, a link of andouille sausage, a half-dozen brussels sprouts, a rapidly-wilting broccoli crown, a bell pepper, a few carrots, some celery, and some garlic.
I sauteed all of it in a bit of olive oil, and then added a cup of French lentils to the pot. Next went two cups of chicken broth, some French herbs, and a bit of salt and pepper. I covered it and let it simmer for 30 minutes.
The result was a mighty-tasty conglomeration of flavors that all worked really well together.
It's one of those meals that will never be replicated exactly, but the concept will be there the next time there are things needing to be used up.
And around here, that's fairly often.
Beef Pot Pie
I mentally planned this meal yesterday. I knew it was going to be cold and I knew it would be the perfect dinner. I also wanted to use up the last bit of sauce I had from the veal. I am king of the leftovers and love figuring out ways to weave little bits of this-and-that into another meal. It's rather simple to do when it's a soup or stew - ya just dump it into the pot.
Tonight was a basic beef stew that started with beef cubes and onions, four fresh tomatoes that needed using, and a carton of mushrooms that were a day or two from no longer being mushrooms. And red wine. And beef broth. And potatoes, celery, carrots, and frozen mixed vegetables. And about 2 cups of that sauce.
I did a double crust that was perfectly buttery and flaky.
Pie Crust
- 2 1/2 cup flour
- 2 sticks butter, frozen
- pinch salt
- 1/2 cup ice water
Using a food processor, add flour and salt. Pulse to mix.
Chop up frozen butter and add. Pulse until butter is incorporated and mixture looks grainy.
Slowly add ice water and pulse until mixed.
Turn out onto counter. Press and form mixture into disks - one larger to fit the entire container and and smaller just for the top. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate about an hour to allow the flour to properly absorb the water and to relax the gluten.
I always start with a very hot filling and ladle it into the crust and then carefully top and bake. At this point I really just want to cook the crust and it will cook and brown much quicker and easier if the filling is hot - and you won't burn the crust trying to get the filling hot.
Naturally, I made enough stew for several pot pies - large pot pies - so tomorrow Victor will bring some over to his mom and we shall have a few lunches, as well.
"Tis the season...
Chicken and Drop-Biscuits
Cooking and taking pictures of dinner is fun, but it generally doesn't tell the whole story.
Food blogs are supposed to entice you to read and cook, just as our demo days years ago were designed to get the customer to buy and cook by making it all look incredibly easy to do. I always said it was hard work making it look effortless. But like the Food Channel or any cooking show, what you see on the screen isn't necessarily what's going on behind the scene.
Take last nights dinner, for example. Chicken with drop biscuits baked in the oven. Totally fantastic and absolutely delicious. And relatively easy to make, considering I had fresh broth and a chicken carcass to work with. The picture above shows what it looked like right before going on the table. Light, fluffy, garlicky-cheesy biscuits atop steaming chicken stew. Just what I needed since I was coming down with a sore throat and beginning to feel like hell.
The next picture shows the actual casserole.
Biscuits scooped atop hot stew and then baked in a hot oven for 20 minutes. It just doesn't get any better. But it doesn't show you what it looked like coming out of the oven. Or the clouds of smoke in the kitchen that had me in a coughing fit that only exacerbated an already-sore throat.
Yes. That is one dirty oven. My oven messes are legendary, but this one was over the top even for me.
The oven was already dirty and I knew it needed cleaning so I eschewed a pan underneath. I figured it would bubble over a bit. It bubbled over more than a bit. More than a lot of bits.
Victor patiently threw me out of the room. Fortunately I was actually looking ill by that point and he took pity on me.
Victor has the oven cleaning down to a science, nowadays. 18 years of living with me and my kitchen messes has honed some serious survival instincts in him. He opens windows, turns on fans, and hangs a sheet between the kitchen and dining room closing off that part of the house. The billowing clouds of smoke are gone within the first hour, and even the neighbors now know not to call the fire department.
It's a win-win for all involved. There were leftovers for today's lunch and Victor is making me chicken soup for dinner because I still feel like crap.
I'm probably going to be watching baseball from bed. No fun.
Oh well... at least the oven is cleaned. As soon as I'm feeling better I'll have to get in there and do something about that.
Beef Pot Pie
Last week or the week before, I broke down and bought a frozen pie crust. I know, I know... I rant about them all the time and always say how quick and easy it is to make one. I bought one. And, it reinforced my low opinion of them.
Once upon a time, frozen pie crusts were folded in quarters, so when you thawed and unfolded them you had four pieces to put back together. The new, improved version is now rolled. So when you unroll it it breaks into hundreds of little pieces that have to be put back together. So much for new, improved, even more effective. And yes, I let the crusts thaw completely and come to full room temperature before I attempted my unrolling. It's one of those things that looks good on a drawing board but fails in practice. I shan't buy another. What a pain in the ass. It actually would have been quicker to make one from scratch.
I really was going to make pie crust tonight, but I had one pie crust and one sheet of puff pastry in the freezer taking up room. And yes, I buy puff pastry - it's going to be a really, really, really special occasion to get me to make it. Really special occasion.. We do clean out the refrigerator and clean out the freezer on a fairly regular basis because I really see no reason to buy food just to throw it away. I'm cheap like that. So even when I buy things I know I shouldn't have bought - like frozen pie crusts - I have to use them. It's rough being me sometimes...
So I make a great beef stew and roll out the puff pastry to fit the 8"x8"' pan and up the sides. In another place and time the puff pastry probably would have gone on top, but that damned crust wouldn't cooperate. I pieced it back together, got it semi-formed into a semi-square and it went on top.
425° for 30 minutes.
I don't have a recipe for stew. It's one of those things ya just make.
I brown off the onions and beef in bacon fat and like to add a cup of coffee to the mix along with a goodly splash of red wine - depending on how much I'm making. The coffee is the secret ingredient that adds a rich undertone without ever tasting like coffee. It's something my mom always did and back in my recipe-creating days, was always an unexpected ingredient that always elicited raves.
And garlic, celery, carrots, a frozen mixed vegetable blend... maybe a tomato or tomato paste - maybe not. Cubed potatoes - or sometimes egg noodles - and a pinch of French herbs or herbs d'Provence. Thickened with flour and water. Or - if I'm feeling fancy, a beurre manie - equal parts of softened butter and flour. It's the best.
So... off to the kitchen. I hear cookies in there calling my name...
Mother's Day and Birthdays
Mother's Day is a bit different when your mom's no longer around. It's even more so when Mother's Day and Mom's Birthday fall on the same day.
Mother's Day and Mom's Birthday were always the start of the month-long May Birthday Celebration in our house. All four of my sisters are May-Babies, as well. Yes, it was a crazy time. But none of those birthdays topped Moms. She was the Queen Bee. And even though they were often just days apart - when they didn't fall on the same day - they were two separate occasions.
My father set the mood by having stacks of presents on the table when she got up. He had a great eye and bought a good portion of her clothes. He knew what she looked good in and she loved what he bought. She very rarely returned anything. And shoes... Her father and brother both sold high-end women's shoes. Back in the day she had every matching shoe/bag/belt/hat-combo there was. Imelda Marcos sought advice from her.
Mama had six kids but Mama had style.
And while she ooed and awed over her gifts, she spent extra-special attention on the things we made her. Every picture was a Michelangelo original. Every card, every 29¢ bottle of perfume, every inedible cake we baked, was greeted with praise worthy of an Old Master or chef de pâtisserie. And she saved every one of those scribbled cards.
Victor's mom and my mom were born 2 days apart, on opposite coasts, in 1926. Friday we took his mom out for dinner at the local diner - her choice - and yesterday we had his family over for a combo Birthday Mother's Day dinner. Since I've been doing through Mom's recipes for our Mad Men Mondays I've kept eying her Chinese Casserole. It's a dish she made up back in the '60s and feeds an army. I haven't made it in years and years - because it feeds an army. I decided her birthday was the perfect excuse to introduce it to the east coast family.
My mom never really followed recipes and never really quite had her measurements down. It's a trait I totally understand, so I never have a problem following them. You can go with them as written or play around a bit. They always come out great. For the casserole, the only things I changed were the soups and the mushrooms. I used organic cream of soups - I just couldn't do the national brand and she probably used Lady Lee brand from Lucky Market, anyway... and I added a package of exotic mushroom blend to the mushroom mix. As I said, mom would experiment all the time and as new things caught her eye she would include them when she could.
The Rice-A-Roni Wid Rice mix was a bit different, as well. It's now labelled "Nature's Way" and calls itself "all natural." Strange... But it worked.
In fact, all of it worked quite well. It was Mom's Chinese Casserole. No doubt about it. The only things missing were her - and the huge Corning Ware casserole she made it in.
And then we had the rest of the meal...
I made a huge lasagne. And I do mean huge.
Lasagne is something I have never used a recipe for. I simply worked in too many Italian restaurants and made too many of them to ever think I needed one. And I don't use no-boil noodles. I think they make a gummy lasagne and you can't encapsulate the filling with them. Lasagne is a wrapped package of goodness - not a semi-layered gooey mess. Spend the extra ten minutes cooking your noodles.
The filling for this lasagne included cooked ground beef, hard cooked eggs, porchetta, speck, prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella, ricotta, and lots of shredded cheeses - mozzarella, fontina, asiago...
I baked it covered Saturday night for 1 1/2 hours at 350° and then re-baked - also covered - it Sunday for 2 hours at 300°.
For the last 30 minutes I raised the temperature to 350°, uncovered it, and added shredded cheese to the top.
It made much more than we needed. Even with doggie bags leaving, I froze a goodly amount for another day.
The meal didn't stop there... We also had Chicken cutlets.
I breaded them with panko breadcrumbs and corn meal. It gave them a nice crunch.
We also had another huge fruit salad - in Mom's 1960s Salad Bowl...
And the pièce de résistance was a Coconut Cake!
This was a much simpler cake than the monstrosity I made last year. Last year was good, but it was really a one-time cake. I don't see another one of those in my future.
This cake was much lighter and actually more enjoyable because of it.
I made a lightly-flavored coconut whipped cream for the filling and top and sprinkled shredded coconut on top.
The recipe will make either three 8" layers or 2 10" layers. I chose width over height and used 2 10" springform pans.
Coconut Cake
All ingredients should be at room temperature.
- 1 cup butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ cup whole milk
- ½ cup unsweetened coconut milk
- ¼ cup Coco Lopez or other coconut cream
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 8 large egg whites
Preheat oven to 350°. Butter two 10" or three 8" pans. Line with parchment, and butter parchment. Flour pans and set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir together the milk, coconut milk, vanilla, and coconut cream. Add the dry and wet ingredients to the butter mixture in three increments, starting and ending with the dry.
Whip the egg whites on high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter until evenly blended. Divide the cake batter evenly among the two or three prepared cake pans.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes for 8" cakes or 40-45 minutes for 10" cakes - or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cool in pans about 15 minutes, remove from pans and set on racks until completely cool.
For Whipped Cream Icing:
Whip 1 1/2 cups whipping cream with 1/4 cup Coco Lopez. Place about 1/3 whipped cream on first layer. Top with second layer and spread remaining 2/3 cream on top. Generously top with shredded coconut.
This was an easy one to make and really took no time at all. I can see it - and a few variations - becoming a part of the repertoire.
All-in-all It was a good day with a lot of good food and fond memories.
And Mad Men Monday?!? There's a 1960s Chinese Casserole in the 'fridge right now.
Leftovers. What a concept!
Mad Men Monday
So... Are ya watching Mad Men on TV?!?
It is pretty much the only show I am watching. I don't care about Real Housewives of anywhere, I haven't seen Dancing With The Stars since Victor's cousin Kelly won the first season, and the rest of it really is a vast wasteland...
But Mad Men?!? Brilliant. I get to relive my childhood every week. It's a lot of fun.
So... I thought another bit of fun would be to dust off my Mom's Cook Books from the '60s and see about recreating some of those fun and fabulous meals from yesteryear. Oh my goodness gracious some of the recipes she collected!
It's really been a hoot going through them. I have quite a few I want to make, but tonight I thought I'd start off with something really simple. It was a chicken pie with a rice crust. With turmeric. How exotic! I really resisted adding things to this and switching things around. The only real change I did do was to saute the onions, celery, and bell pepper before stirring it into the sauce. I just had to. Otherwise, it was made as written!
I tried to make it look just like Mom would have...
And it really did look great just before going into the oven...
Alas... It did not slice into neat and lovely slices. It completely fell apart.
But it really did taste good. The predominant flavor was the turmeric from the rice. I really would have jazzed up the filling and definitely would have added cheese to the filling. But... It was fun the way it was.
And then we had dessert!
My mom was Queen of Desserts.
We had dessert every single night. Sometimes it was just cookies, often cake, but she also did lots of bars and other things she could make a lot of and cut up for six kids.
These were the Chocolate Chip Coconut Bars. I think at some point I have had all of the various bars pictured. These just called my name, today.
Very simple to pull together. And what's really nice is they're not overly-sweet. A nice balance.
The recipe called for chocolate chips and - OMG - I was out! I had white chocolate chips, but that just wouldn't do. I chopped up a bit of semi-sweet chocolate bar. Mom would understand.
We also ate them from glass plates - unheard of in the '60s in our house. Melmac reigned supreme back in those days.
We did have glass in the house, though... Like Mama's salad bowl with matching cruets...
We used it for our fruit salad...
On Sunday - Mother's Day - I'm making her famous Chinese Casserole. Besides Mother's Day, it is also her Birthday. She would have been 86...
I think it's a fitting tribute...
Super Bowl Chili
I would love to know how many vats of chili are being made today. Chili and Super Bowl just seem to go together - even if you're not feeding a crowd.
And we're definitely not feeding a crowd today. The game just starts too damned late on the east coast for me to even think about a party. By 7:00pm on a Sunday night, I want everyone going home. I probably would be feeling a bit differently if San Francisco had made it, but a 7:00pm kick-off is still too late even for a game I'd be excited about.
My vote is for a 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern start. But that ain't happening this year.
And while I'm totally ho-hum on the two teams playing, I'm even more down on Indianapolis. I can't stand the place. I opened the Westin Hotel there circa 1989 and I tell ya, the city was one of the most racist, bigoted, and intolerant places I have ever lived. It just sucked. It's the kind of place that promotes "Family Values" while having skanky strip clubs on every other corner. Not to mention the anti-gay married politicians getting caught in their pay-for-gay trysts... (ooops!)
But I digress...
Chili. I love it. I even like canned chili. I tend to live on chili dogs and chili burgers when Victor has to travel for business. (My otherwise relatively-good eating habits go straight down the tube when I'm left on my own...) I figured if I made a huge vat o'chili today, I could freeze some and live off it when he travels to Dallas in a couple of weeks.
I don't use a recipe when making chili - I just make chili. This batch started off with a pound of small red beans that I soaked overnight and cooked this morning.
Into another pot went 2 chopped onions, 1 yellow bell pepper, 3 chopped jalapeño peppers, and 2 cloves of minced garlic. Then went in cumin and chili powder. Cumin and chili powder both really need to be cooked to get rid of the otherwise "raw" flavor they can impart.
Next went in the ground beef. When it was cooked, I added 1 jar of Sofrito sauce, 2 large cans of tomato sauce, 1 can of diced tomatoes with green chilis and a small can of green chilis. I added some chipotle powder, salt and pepper, and Mexican oregano and let it all simmer. When the beans were cooked, I added them to the pot and let everything simmer for about an hour.
Heaping bowls were topped with shredded cheddar and dollops of sour cream.
We have chips and dips and other junky foods for later today.
Not to mention more chili, of course!
And, if the game is boring, there's always 31 Days of Oscar on TCM...
Sausage, Peppers, and Raclette
I first had Raclette cheese when I lived at Lake Tahoe in the '70s.
There was a bar in Incline Village called the Gasthaus zum Jägermeister that was a bit of an employee hangout after work. It was where I first had raclette - and the infamous Jägermeister. I may have had more than that, but to be perfectly honest, my memory is shaky about the place. I don't even remember exactly where it was. But I do remember ooey, gooey cheese atop potatoes and more ooey, gooey cheese and french bread. It's surprising I remember anything, considering the copious amounts of Jägermeister and the German beers that were consumed.
I have a hangover just thinking about it.
But massive quantities of alcohol aside, the Raclette was really good. I think.
Raclette is an alpine cheese made from cows milk that hails from Switzerland and is also made in France. Raclette, itself, is a French word that means "to scrape" because the traditional serving of raclette is to have it sitting by a fire and scraping off the cheese from the wheel as it melts. Raclette is also a dish of boiled potatoes, pickled onions, vegetables, and the like that is topped with the melted cheese. One of the Hyatt's I worked in served a raclette in one of the bars... I don't remember which one - I worked in too many of them - but they had a gizmo that held a quarter-wheel of raclette and an electric heating element that could quickly melt the ooey goodness.
An interesting note about raclette cheese is that it really is only good melted. It is not the type of cheese one would put on a cheese tray. It wants to be melted.
So I melted it.
Tonight I cooked up a batch of Italian sausage, peppers, onions, garlic, and potatoes. When everything was properly browned and cooked through, I placed it all in a casserole dish and topped it with slices of raclette. Into the oven it went until the cheese melted.
It was good enough to bring forward a lot of (vague) memories from 35 or so years ago, so I think I will call dinner a success!
Canned Cream of Chicken Soup
My mom used to make a dish she called her "Chinese Casserole." It was a chicken and rice casserole with Wild Rice Rice-A-Roni, green onions, mushrooms, chow mein noodles... It was about as authentically-Chinese as I am, but damn! It was good. It made a lot, so she only made it on those occasions where massive quantities of food were needed - and in our family, that could be fairly often!
Back in October when we were approaching the 10th Anniversary of her passing, I was playing with several of her recipes and thought I might make the Chinese Casserole as a bit of a tribute to her. During one of my weekly shopping treks, I picked up two main ingredients - Campbell's Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup and Campbell's Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup. Neither item is on my weekly shopping list. In fact, I really don't know the last time I bought any condensed soups. Only because I can be such an idiot sometimes, I actually toyed at one point with the idea of making my own soups, but quickly realized that even I couldn't be that stupid. Besides, this was supposed to be about Mom's Chinese Casserole, not some Cooking Light Makeover. I bought the soups.
And then they sat on the shelf because, after looking at the recipe, I just didn't have an occasion coming up where I needed a casserole for 16 people. There's really not an easy way to make it smaller (although, I suppose I could freeze it....) But I digress...
I didn't make it and those two cans of soup have been sitting in the cupboard mocking me since October.
Tonight I decided to take control!
I sauteed a bit of onion and celery, added a bit of minced garlic, and then added sliced chicken breasts. And then I pulled the pop-top off the can of Cream of Chicken Soup. A pop-top! How convenient! Staring back at me was a mass of silk-smooth pudding-like substance. It looked like banana pudding. Really.
I broke out a bottle of sherry...
I added about a quarter-cup of sherry and let it cook down a bit before adding the gelatinous mass from the can. Into the pan and then - because it seriously needed something - I added about a cup of homemade chicken stock from the other day. I let it simmer away a bit and then added fresh asparagus. When the asparagus was juuuuust about done, I pulled it from the heat, added a bit of salt and pepper -yes, it needed salt! - and over rice, it went.
All-in-all, it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad.