Cookbook #96: Sunset Recipe Annual, 1992 Edition, Sunset Publishing Corporation, Menlo Park, CA, 1992.

January 1, 2015. A new year! And what to cook? Something for New Year’s Day, something a little less calorie-laden than the last two weeks of slight overindulgence. I pull several cookbooks from the shelf, but as soon as I open Sunset Recipe Annual, I know I’ve found the book I want!

Southwestern accents, lots of vegetables and fruits, light and practical . . . hey, I’ve written about this cookbook before! A quick search of my own blog pulls up Sunset All-Time Favorite Recipes, an entry I made in 2012 for a quite-similar Sunset cookbook published in 1993. Like for that book, I want to try at least half of the recipes. Nuff said. I’ll keep this cookbook out for a while and sample some of its attractive recipes.

I settle on “Supper Nachos” for this blog. This recipe is in the “January” chapter, and quite appropriate for New Years Day, casual and tasty, great for serving while the football games play. And lower in fat than most nacho recipes.

This cookbook has a pleasing layout. Note the lengthy directions for Supper Nachos.

This recipe utilizes the technique of “braise-deglaze” to bump up the flavor while eliminating cooking oil (and associated calories). Briefly, the vegetables (onions in this case) are mixed with a little broth or water and cooked over high heat until the liquid evaporates and brown bits begin to stick to the pan. More liquid is added in small amounts and the process repeated until the vegetables have a rich brown color. I am familiar with this technique, but don’t use it a whole lot, and usually only with wine as the deglazing liquid.

Calories are reduced by using pork tenderloin and lean beef instead of store-purchased hamburger. These meats are mixed with the cooked onions and spices to make a chorizo-like mixture. (Chorizo is a Mexican sausage available nearly everywhere here in Colorado. I have found that each brand I purchase is different, but most are pretty fatty. Sometimes it is formed into sausages, sometimes sold in bulk.)

Calories are further reduced by substituting mashed, seasoned pinto beans for traditional refried beans. And, instead of bagged tortilla chips, I will be baking wedges cut from tortillas.

I changed a few things (beef broth instead of chicken, less cider vinegar, more spices); my version is below.

Light Nachos with Homemade Chorizo
serves about 4 as a meal

for the chorizo:

• 1/2 pound pork tenderloin (trim off any visible fat)
• 1/2 pound lean beef (trim off any visible fat)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 teaspoons chile powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons oregano (use Mexican oregano if you have it)
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon hot chile flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup chicken or beef broth
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar

for the beans:

• 2 cans pinto beans (15-16 oz.), drained
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 teaspoon oregano (Mexican if possible)
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 2 cups chicken or beef broth

for the chips:

• 12 corn tortillas

for putting the baked nachos together:

• 1 4-oz. can diced green chiles
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese

for toppings:

• avocado, chopped
• chopped green onion
• fresh cilantro
• black olives
• prepared salsa
• tomatoes
• low-fat sour cream or plain yogurt

Directions: chorizo

Chop the pork and beef into big chunks and process in a food processor until just minced. (Do not grind it to a pulp, you want some texture.) Set aside.

Combine the onion, spices, and broth in a pan. I suggest a stainless steel pan rather than a non-stick pan (see my discussion below). Stirring a lot, heat the onion mixture over fairly high heat, uncovered, until the liquid evaporates and brown bits stick in the pan. Then, add a couple tablespoons of water and cook until the mixture begins to brown again. Repeat adding water and boiling it off – “deglazing” – until the onions are a rich brown color.

Add the minced meat mixture and a couple tablespoons water and stir until the liquid is again evaporated and the meat is beginning to brown. Deglaze once with 2 tablespoons cider vinegar and then several times with water until the mixture is an “attractive brown color”.

Check the seasoning of the chorizo mixture, adding salt and/or additional seasonings to your own taste. Set aside. The chorizo mixture can be prepared ahead and stored refrigerated or frozen.

Directions: beans

Combine the onion, oregano, cumin, and 1 cup of broth and boil dry, brown, and deglaze as directed for the chorizo onion mixture until the onions are a light brown color. Add the pinto beans and another cup of broth to the onion mixture. Mash the beans in the pan, then stir and heat until the mixture is as thick as refried beans. Check the seasonings, add salt to taste. These beans can be prepared ahead and stored refrigerated or frozen.

Directions: chips

Dip each corn tortilla in water and drain briefly. Lay all the water-dipped tortillas out flat on your work surface and sprinkle the tops with salt. Cut each tortilla into 6 wedges.

Heat your oven to 500˚.

Lay the tortilla wedges on a half-sheet pan or cookie sheet. (I lined my pan with parchment for easy clean-up.) Put them in a single layer – you may need two pans to do this, or, bake in batches.

Bake the tortilla wedges for 3 minutes in a 500˚ oven. Turn with a spatula, then put them back in the oven for another 2-4 minutes, until the chips are “pale golden brown and crisp”. Watch carefully so that they don’t burn. (These will sit for about 15 minutes while the nachos bake. If you want to serve them warm, put them back in the oven with the nachos during the last minute or two of baking.)

Directions: baking the nachos

Turn the oven down to 400˚.

Put the beans on a large, ovenproof dish. Mound them a bit in the center. Top the beans with the chorizo mixture, then the green chiles and the cheese. Bake at 400˚ for 15-20 minutes, until the beans and meat are hot and the cheese melted.

Serving

Arrange the tortilla wedges around the baked nachos. Top the beans with avocado, green onions, tomatoes, salsa, olives, and sour cream. Feel free to experiment!

Comments

These took a lot of time to make. In the midst of all the preparation, I thought, what the heck did I get myself into so much work for! Well, the answer came when we ate them. They were yummy. Definitely. The meat mixture was especially good. And the chips.

I made a full recipe of the meat mixture for the two of us and I froze half of it for a future meal. I made a half recipe of the beans and the amount was perfect for two people as a meal.

The beans were good, but they really didn’t “stand out”. The main advantage to this bean recipe is the low-calorie aspect. To save time, I suggest canned low-fat refried beans. Don’t get me wrong, the beans in this recipe tasted fine, it’s just not really worth the time to make them unless you are in the mood.

The chips? They were very good. They taste better than any of the bagged “baked” tortilla chips that I have purchased. I will make them again!

In summary, the chorizo is the star of this dish. The finished nachos are excellent because they are baked in the oven; the presentation is special because I served them on a pretty platter with the chips and toppings.

A note on pan choice

I started cooking the onions for the chorizo in a non-stick pan, specifically, a Zwilling J.A. Henckels Sol Thermolon sauce pan. Total disaster. When the first broth boiled off, the onion-spice mixture stuck in a film to the bottom of the pan. It started to blacken to a dark tar and I quickly transferred the mixture to a stainless all-clad pan.

You could try the deglazing in a different type of non-stick pan, it might work. But the all-clad worked great, and clean-up was easy.

I love-hate the Henckels Thermolon pans. I had to send my first Thermolon frying pan back for replacement because after a year, everything stuck to it and it was impossible to clean. I do praise the customer service at Henckels. They responded quickly and told me that I should never have this pan at a temperature higher than medium. Well heck, it’s a frying pan! I often browned meats in this pan over medium-high heat.

Nothing sticks to my newly replaced Thermolon frying pan, but I treat it with the utmost care, never heating it on a burner that is set higher than medium. (I guard this pan!) My Thermolon sauce pan that I used briefly in this recipe needs to be replaced.)

Cookbook #92: The Nutrition Bible, Jean Anderson and Barbara Deskins, Quill, Willaim Morrow, NY, 1995.

“The Comprehensive, No-Nonsense Guide to Foods, Nutrients, Additives, Preservatives, Pollutants and Everything Else We Eat and Drink.” This is a large, thick book that pretty much lives up to its promise on the cover. And it does it with attitude, which makes it fun to read.

Why would anyone need a print book with all of this easy-to-look-up information about foods? You can always search the internet instead. Aha! But what about when you have an extended power outage, and no cell phone coverage, as we did during the Lyons flood last year? And some entries I would never even think of looking up: aldacarb, ketoacidosis, keratomalacia, furcelleran, efamol, weisswurst. Twiinkies! The Pritikin diet. Hunger. Fudge. These are all discussed in The Nutrition Bible. Here is an example of an entry with attitude:

As a retired semi-scientist, I get a kick out of reading this “bible”. Plus, it has good nutritional information for the foods. Here is an example:

The authors of this book both hold degrees in nutrition. Jean Anderson, who earned a B.S. in food and nutrition and an M.S. in journalism, is the author of numerous cookbooks, including The Food of Portugal and The Grass Roots Cookbook. Barbara Deskins, as an associate professor of clinical dietetics and nutrition, wrote Everyone’s Guide to Better Food and Nutrition. References for specific entries are not footnoted, but an extensive bibliography is included in the back pages. And the author of one of the books in the bibliography? An old favorite of mine, Jane Brody, whose nutrition book I covered in a blog post.

This book also contains some recipes, interspersed throughout the encyclopedia-type entries. For this blog, I choose to make Lamb with Green Beans, Chickpeas, and Tomatoes.

This recipe should be good for a cold winters day. Note that there are more vegetables in this dish than meat: the meat is more of a “seasoning” than a main ingredient. As we learned from our daughter who lives in Africa and from our own travels, in a large part of the world, meat is much less prevalent than in the US. And maybe that is a healthier way to eat. Anyway, I hope it tastes good. I made a few changes; my version is below.

Lamb Stew with Tomatoes and Vegetables
serves 4-6

• 9 ounces lamb (I used a single lamb steak-chop), cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
• rosemary, either 1 teaspoon dried or a couple sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup green beans, cut into about 2-inch lengths
• 1 cup garbanzos (chick peas)

In a stove-top-to-oven casserole (I used a LeCreuset), cook the onions in a little oil. Salt them a bit. When they are about done, add the garlic and stir for 30 seconds. Remove from the pan.

Brown the lamb cubes in a little oil. My lamb kept releasing water into the pan, so this took a little while.

Add the onions and garlic back to the casserole along with the tomatoes, rosemary, and parsley. Salt and pepper to your liking. Bring to a boil, then cover and place in a 350˚ oven.

Bake for 30 minutes. The lamb I used was really tender, so this was plenty of time. Add the green beans and garbanzos and put back in the oven for 15 minutes.

You can serve this lamb stew over bulgur, rice, potatoes, or couscous. I chose bulgur, a cracked wheat product that is common throughout the Middle East. We had it on our trip to Turkey. It is also spelled burghul, bulghur, burghul or bulgar. I bought some at the Mediterranean Market and Deli in Boulder. The package reads: Cracked Wheat Coarse Burghul #3. I recommend everyone try this sometime!

That’s the bulgur in the pan behind the stew. This stew was very good. I felt really healthy eating it – it’s low in fat and has lots of vegetables. Lamb is generally lower in fat than is beef. The lamb was good, and in fact, my husband didn’t even know it was lamb, he assumed it was beef.

I’ll keep the Nutrition Bible and I’ll make this lamb stew once in a while. Try it, it’s different!

Cookbook #91: Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, Agnes Toms, Pyramid Publications, NY, NY, 1971.

Eat, Drink and Be Healthy is one of the early “health food” cookbooks that fueled my generation of hippies. I probably bought it in a used book store when I was a poor graduate student – my guess is that the word “drink” in the title caught my eye as much as the promise of being healthy. I never used this book a lot and there are few food stains and no handwriting or paper notes in it. I should just toss it now. But . . . a closer look at the publication details reveals that the first printing of this book was in 1963, not 1971. I used to think that my generation invented the “health food” craze, but no, eating natural foods had its seeds in American culture “before the first young man grew his hair long, before the first young woman burned her bra”, as I wrote in my blog entry on The Soybean Cookbook. Maybe I should explore this book a bit more before tossing it in the recycling pile.

Searches reveal that the author, Agnes Toms, wrote several other books, including Delicious and Nutritious Cooking: A Book for Students and Others (1956), The Joy of Eating Natural Foods: The Complete Organic Cookbook (1962), and Natural Foods: Meals & Menus for All Seasons (1973).

“The Complete Organic Cookbook”! Toms published a book on organic cooking in 1962! I don’t remember hearing much about “organic foods” until maybe the early seventies. Whole grains and nuts and seeds and the like, but not organic.

In her forward to Eat, Drink and be Healthy, W. Coda Martin, M.D., writes “this is not just another cookbook. It is one that fulfills a specific need for all – a way to better health through good nutrition” and encourages “food unspoiled by sprays, additives, artificial coloring or flavoring”.

These are not new concepts to today’s food culture, but in the fifties and sixties, when home cooks were using a plethora of newly available canned and packaged products, convenience took precedence. Be in the kitchen for the hour it takes to cook brown rice? No, cooks were encouraged to use instant white rice. And so on.

Agnes Toms had a Masters in Home Economics and taught nutrition and prepared menus for a junior high. Her book outlines a nutrition plan that is still sound today. The recipes include ingredients like carob, unbleached white flour, whole wheat flour, a variety of whole grains, brewers yeast, honey, meat and game (even organ meats), sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, home-baked breads, garden fresh vegetables, fruits, sprouts, unsaturated oils, tahini, nuts, and food unspoiled by sprays, additives, artificial coloring or flavoring.

Today we have no problem finding these food items in our huge “health food” stores. But in 1963? No, they were hard to find. I remember those days. Toms addresses this issue in her introductory pages:

“I know it is a real problem for many people to find the food products mentioned in this book. To them, may I suggest some ways to deal with this problem:

1. Look in the Classified pages of your telephone book for health food stores in your area; or consult the advertisements in health magazines.
2. Search the shelves of your local market for unsulphured molasses, spray-dried milk, unflavored gelatin, honey, herbs, spices, nuts, vegetable oils.
3. Look for milling companies in your area and ask them about wheat germ, whole-grain flour, buckwheat, peanut, rice, and other flours. See if they have brown rice and whole soybeans.
4. Look for a hatchery near you for fertile eggs, or scour the neighborhood for some one who has a flock of chickens on the ground, with a rooster.
5. Get the health-minded women in your neighborhood together and demand that the local dairy produce raw certified milk; and be sure to ask your dairy where you can procure natural cheeses.”

We are fortunate to have such variety in our markets today!

For this blog, I decide to make “Chow Mein”.

I bought noodles labeled “chow mein”  for this recipe. That’s the dry, crunchy noodles sold ready to eat in a plastic bag or in a can. I plan to serve the dish directly over these noodles.

I have always served whet I call “chow mein” directly over these noodles. But when I look up chow mein recipes today, they use fresh egg-wheat noodles, not the packaged crunchy ones. Wikipedia’s entry on chow mein states that for crispy chow mein, fresh noodles are stir fried for the dish. AboutFood.com explains the difference between chow mein and lo mein; they too state that chow mein is made from fresh noodles. Even the La Choy website – La Choy is the brand name of the chow mein noodles that I bought – doesn’t have a recipe for a chow mein served directly over the crunchy, packaged noodles. They do have the recipe for Haystacks, that classic recipe for cookies made from the crisp noodles.

Consensus? In today’s American cooking culture, crunchy packaged chow mein noodles are added to salads, vegetables, stir-fries, and even desserts to give a boost of crunch, but not as the sole noodle ingredient in a dish.

Toms’ recipe including the basic ingredients of onions, thinly sliced meat, and bean sprouts in a brown sauce are consistent with traditional chow meins (according to Wikipedia). Here is the version of chow mein that I made.

Pork Chow Mein
serves 2-3 people

• 1/2 cup sliced onions
• 8-10 ounces pork, sliced thinly (shrimp or chicken could be substituted)
• about 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
• 1 cup celery, sliced
• 5-6 mushrooms, sliced
• 2 tablespoons corn starch
• 4 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water or broth (more if necessary)
• 1-2 cups fresh mung bean sprouts
• chow mein noodles

Cook the onions in hot oil until soft; remove from pan. In the same pan, stir-fry the pork until it loses its pink color; add the ginger to the pork while it cooks. Remove the pork from the pan, then stir fry the celery and mushrooms just until the celery is a little softened. Add back the onions and meat and stir to combine.

Stir together the corn starch and soy sauce and water and add to the pork-vegetable mixture. Heat and stir until it thickens; if it gets too thick, add some water or broth. Add the bean sprouts just a few minutes before you serve the dish.

Serve directly over packaged crunchy chow mein noodles, or over cooked egg-wheat noodles or rice. Your choice.

Comments

This was good. I would make it again. But next time I’ll serve it over noodles or rice and just sprinkle with the crunchy noodles.

If you read the original recipe, you will note that I changed the instructions a bit. Her version says to use two pans, an unnecessary step, IMHO. The sauce ingredients were not listed with the other ingredients; I put them in the list with the others.

If you make this, feel free to add any vegetables you like. I think some carrots and red bell peppers would make it prettier. As Agnes Toms states in the directions: “Vegetables must be crisp”, so don’t overcook them. This chow mein goes together fast, yielding a tasty nutritious meal in minutes.

Cookbook #87: Pillsbury’s 36th Bake-Off, The Pillsbury Company, Minneapolis, MN, 1994.

The earliest Bake-Off cookbook I covered in this blog was published in 1959; I discuss these cookbooks/recipe magazines more thoroughly in my blog post covering the 1964 Bake-Off Cookbook.

I recorded in my database that this cookbook was my mother’s. She did not mark any of the recipes, but I find some main dishes that sound interesting: Garden Vegetable Feta Pizza, Spicy Broccoli Aioli Pizza, Tuscan Spinach Torta, Confetti Corn and Bulgur Salad, West African Chicken and Groundnut Stew, and Chicken Vegetable Stir-Fry Salad. I am sort of surprised to find this trendy recipes in this old cooking magazine. I didn’t discover feta cheese until the late 90s. I learned about aioli in a cooking class sometime in the 2000s. Bulgur? Late 90s too. We had “groundnuts” in Ghana on our first trip to West Africa in 2011. In the US,  groundnuts are called “peanut butter”.

The cookbook also has recipes for salads and soups and sandwiches, and of course, cookies and cakes and pies. Only about a quarter of the recipes are for sweets – an unusual stat for Bake-Off Cookbooks – and yes, I would love to make any of them, but I will restrain myself! It’s nice that most of the main dishes in this bake-off cookbook dial in at a little under 500 calories.

My only complaint is a general one: many recipes include pre-made doughs, such as pie crusts, refrigerated biscuits or crescent rolls, or mixes, such as corn muffin or yellow cake mix. Pillsbury brand name canned vegetables are always specified but hey, it’s their cookbook.

The cover recipe, “Pepper Jack Chicken with Calico Corn Saute”, sounds excellent! That’s what I will make for this blog. I decide to hang onto this cookbook for awhile and try several of the recipes.

This recipe calls “3 whole chicken breasts” and infers that the cook will bone them. A whole chicken breast is the two halves together. Today boneless chicken breasts are usually sold as half-pieces. And they are fairly cheap, so you don’t save a lot by boning them yourself. Since chicken breasts range in size from small to large, I find it best to weigh out 9-10 ounces for a meal for the two of us.

I plan to make this Pepper Jack chicken pretty much as written. I happen to have my own black beans, so I will use them instead of the canned ones. I don’t have fresh jalapenos, but I have some great dried ones. I wonder if I will get away with the spinach, plated under the “calico corn saute”. My dining partner does not like cooked spinach . . .

Pepper Jack Chicken with Corn Saute
serves about 2, depending on appetites

Feel free to change up the vegetables in this recipe. Or if you like following a recipe, do so. Whatever!

• 2 boneless chicken breast halves; about 9-10 ounces
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon chile powder
• salt and pepper
• 2-3 ounces Jack cheese with jalapenos (“Pepper Jack”), grated
• flour (to coat the chicken)
• zucchini, about a third of a medium one, sliced or diced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• jalapeno pepper, about 1 teaspoon fresh or dried
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 of an 11-ounce can of canned corn, or use fresh or frozen corn, about 1/2 – 1 cup
• 1/2 of a can of plain or seasoned black beans; about 1/2 – 1 cup
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 1/2 of a small can of black olives, sliced
• 1 green onion, chopped
• chopped fresh cilantro to taste
• 5 ounces of fresh spinach (optional)

Pound the chicken until it’s thin. I like to put it on a ziplock bag and pound with the flat side of a mallet. Others advise to work from the center and gently press it thin. I like to pound. And it worked.

(One of my chicken breasts was huge, so I cut it in half. I proceeded with three rectangles of flattened chicken breasts.)

Sprinkle both sides of the chicken breasts with the cumin, chile powder, and salt and pepper. Lay them out on your work surface and top with the grated cheese.

Roll up as tightly as you can and use a couple toothpicks to secure the rolls. Sprinkle with flour on all sides.

Heat a skillet using medium heat, then add a little oil (and a little butter if you want). Add the chicken rolls and cook until browned on all sides. Continue cooking until they are done. It’s hard to tell when these are “no longer pink”, but 15-20 minutes is probably how long they will take. You can check the temperature with a thermometer; you can cover them if you think they need more cooking. When cooked, remove the toothpicks.

Meanwhile, make the “corn saute” in another pot or skillet. First, cook the zucchini, garlic, jalapeno pepper, cumin, and salt and pepper in a small amount of olive oil a couple minutes until everything softens. Add the corn, black beans, tomato, olives, green onions, and cilantro and cook a couple minutes until everything is hot. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.

If you are using spinach, get it ready too. I usually put the fresh spinach in a big pot, add about a tablespoon of water, cover the pot, and turn to high until it boils. Then I remove it from the heat, allow to cool, and drain. Feel free to cook it using your own favorite method.

Plate the spinach topped with the corn saute, then put the chicken breasts on top.

This was soooo good! I love meals with lots of vegetables. It was good and spicy and the cheese melted into the chicken, keeping it moist and giving it a lot of flavor. I think this might become one of our favorites.

And the spinach? Didn’t get away with it. It was left behind on my husband’s plate. But he liked the rest of it!