by jphilo | Jul 2, 2009 | Recipes
About a week ago, I listened to a National Public Radio story about rhubarb’s renewed popularity. The report fascinated me since I was making a strawberry-rhubarb crisp at the time, and obviously wasn’t aware it had fallen from grace. In an effort to spur on rhubarb’s comeback, here’s my recipe for rhubarb-strawberry pie or crisp.
Filling:
2 cups sliced strawberries
2 cups sliced rhubarb
2 tablespoons Minute Tapioca
Topping:
1/4 cup softened butter
3/4 – 1 cup brown sugar (depending on your taste)
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine filling ingredients and pour into an unbaked, 9” pie shell. Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle on top of fruit mixture. Bake for 15 minute at 425, then turn heat to 400 and bake for 30-45 minutes more, until fruit is bubbly.
To make strawberry-rhubarb crisp, heat oven to 350 degrees. Omit the pie shell and put fruit mixture in a 9 x 9 Pyrex baking dish. Sprinkle on the topping and bake for 30-45 minutes. I usually double the recipe and bake it in a 9 x 13 Pyrex baking dish.
by jphilo | Jun 18, 2009 | Recipes
Isn’t this vegetable garden lovely? I’d love to take credit for it, but all credit goes to my neighbor who jogs while I walk and plies her green thumb while I think about plying mine. Thanks to her, our family will feast on Grandma Fern’s wilted lettuce tonight. G’ma Fern, my dad’d mother, passed the recipe on to my mom, who passed it on to me and my sibs.
For all you Tolkein and analogy buffs, the three of us are to wilted lettuce what hobbits are to mushrooms. There’s something about fresh lettuce and early onions mingling with the vinegary, salty tang of the dressing that makes my heart go pitter pat. So without any further ado, here is the recipe.
Grandma Fern’s Wilted Lettuce
10-12 cups garden lettuce (you can mix in fresh spinach, too)
4-6 slices of chopped bacon
1 bunch chopped green onions
1/3 cup vinegar
1/3 cup water
1 T sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
Wash lettuce thoroughly and drain it in colander. Put lettuce in a large salad bowl. Add chopped green onions and toss. Fry bacon in skillet until crisp. Drain bacon on a paper towel. Pour off the bacon grease and then return 2 tablespoons of melted grease to the skillet. Mix water, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper together and pour into skillet with the grease. Heat mixture until boiling and pour hot mixture over salad greens until the lettuce wilts. For a more wilted salad, drain the liquid off and reheat it. Pour it over the greens again. Toss the greens until coated with liquid. Garnish salad with bacon. Serve immediately.
I’m salivating already!
by jphilo | Jan 23, 2009 | Recipes
The women on Mom’s side of the family have a long, rich history as pie bakers. So when my cousin’s daughter, who’s a freshman at the nearby university, called to say she and her boyfriend could come for supper tonight, pie was the only possible choice for dessert.
Tessa offered to help cook, so we’ll make chicken tetrazzini when she gets here. But the casserole bakes at a lower temperature than the pie, so the pastry went into the oven this morning. It’s been sitting on the counter all morning, filling the kitchen with a fruity aroma that reminds me of the warm days last fall when Mom and I sliced and froze the apples.
On this cold day, the promise of an evening with loved ones just beginning their life adventures and homemade pie for dessert takes the bite out of winter. With the forecast calling for frigid temperatures again this weekend, maybe you could use an apple pie, too. Here’s my favorite recipe.
Crumbtop Apple Pie
6 cups apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Filling: Place apples in a large bowl. Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl until well-mixed. Stir into apples. Pour into an unbaked, 9 inch pie shell.
Topping: Mix together 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup flour, 3/4 cup oatmeal, and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon. Cut in 1/2 cup softened butter until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle over pie filling.
Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn oven down to 400 degrees and bake for 40 – 50 minutes until filling is bubbly. Place on a wire rack to cool.
by jphilo | Jan 7, 2009 | Recipes
This past month, one of our Christmas house guests (a.k.a. our son) is a former Orthodox monk and observed the Nativity fast: no meat, no milk or egg products. As a result, my cooking horizons widened and became very creative. Because fish and shell fish can be eaten during the fast, Chinese stir fry became a staple menu item.
To add some variety, I made egg rolls a couple times. The kids didn’t know that in my younger days when I had time for exotic cooking (i.e. before children), egg rolls frequently appeared at our table. They thought I was trying something new. The only thing I couldn’t remember was how to fold the wrap around the filling so the egg rolls were tight.
Since a few leftover wraps are still cluttering my refrigerator, we had egg rolls for supper again tonight. But before I started this time, I googled “egg roll wrapping.” The experts at the websites that popped up all said the secret is to lay the wraps horizontal and put the filling close to the bottom point, fold it over, and tuck the edges in tight before rolling it the rest of the way. I followed their advice, and the results are pictured above, still not as tight and firm as I’d like them. Maybe I need to call a Chinese restaurant and job shadow the appetizer chef.
Still, the egg roll filling was delicious. It consisted of 1/4 pound browned pork sausage (this is left out or replaced with shrimp during fasts), lots of chopped cabbage, a grated carrot, a couple tablespoons of soy sauce and a sprinkling of sesame seed, all stir-fried together in sesame oil. Messy to prepare, tasty to consume.
With the kids and the wraps all gone, I won’t make another batch for quite some time. since fried food is too hard on the waistline, the spattered oil is too hard to get off the stove, and our son’s Lenten fast is two months away. By then, I’ll be salivating for the floppy, crispy critters again.
by jphilo | Nov 26, 2008 | Recipes
For the past two days, Mom and I have been baking goodies to take to my sister’s for Thanksgiving. We love to make homemade pie with homemade crust. The fruits of our labors produced, from left to right, strawberry-rhubarb, mince, and apple crumbtop.
But the grandkids wait all year for Grandma’s signature Thanksgiving/Christmas treat: Chex Mix made with a recipe she got way back in the 1970s from a fellow teacher. Back then, Crispex hadn’t been invented yet, so the original recipe called for half a box (12 ounce) each of rice, corn and wheat Chex. Once Crispex came onto the scene, she switched to it, and it tastes good as ever because he secret ingredient isn’t the cereal. It’s the bacon grease. But don’t take my word for it. Make a batch for yourself and see what you think.
Franklin Teachers’ Chex Mix
Mix together in a large bowl:
1 box Crispex (17 ounce)
5 cups Cheerios
4 – 5 cups pretzels and mixed nuts (proportion as you like)
Mix together in a small bowl:
1/2 cup melted butter or margarine
1/2 cup melted bacon grease
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 1/2 tablespoons Worchestershire sauce
Divide mixed, dry ingredients amongst three or four large cake pans. Pour wet ingredients over cereal mix and stir well. Bake at 200 degrees for 2 hours. Stir and turn off the oven. Leave mix in oven until the oven cools. Cool Chex Mix. Store in airtight containers.
by jphilo | Sep 1, 2008 | Recipes
Whew, I meant to get to this entry last Friday, but the day got away from me as I packed and baked for our annual Labor Day Reunion. The reunion participants include my mom, her kids and their families, along with Mom’s sister and her husband, their kids and their families – usually somewhere between twenty and thirty people each year. The two older generations visit, play games and eat while the younger generation films their annual version of S.O. Weird Cousins TV. More on that production in another post.
We celebrate Mom’s birthday during the weekend as she was born on September 3, which was Labor Day the year she made her appearance. The birthday cake is always homemade German chocolate cake, which is only made at our house when requested by the birthday boy or girl. It makes a moist, rich, dense cake able to feed the masses when covered with coconut-pecan frosting.
The cake recipe is inside each box of Baker’s German sweet chocolate, along with one for the frosting. But years ago, Mom copied an easier, just as tasty recipe from a magazine. I’ve never seen it anywhere else, so here it is – in honor of Mom’s 80th birthday this coming Wednesday.
Easy Coconut-Pecan Filling and Frosting
3/4 cup evaporated milk 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla 3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 1/3 cups shredded coconut 1 cup chopped pecans
Combine milk, sugars, butter and vanilla in a sauce pan. Bring to a full boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. (Mixture may appear curdled.) Quickly stir a small amount of hot mixture into the egg yolks; then pour that mixture back into sauce pan. Return to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add coconut and pecans. Cool to spreading consistency, stirring occasionally.
*Cookbooks tell you to frost between the layers and on the top of a German chocolate cake, but not on its sides. Mom always frosted the sides (it’s a little tricky) to keep the cake moist.
