250 Cookbooks: Food Lover’s Companion

Posted on November 7, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #134: Food Lover’s Companion, 3rd ed., Sharon Tyler Herbst, Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., Hauppauge, NY, 2001.

Food Lover’s Companion is a dictionary of food, drink, and culinary terms. No, it’s not a “cookbook”, but it’s in my cookbook database, so one of my “250 Cookbooks”.

I bought this reference book on the recommendation of a fellow classmate at the Culinary School of the Rockies (now Escoffier’s) in Boulder. While flipping through Artichoke to Za’atar, I thought to look up some of the unfamiliar Middle Eastern terms in Food Lover’s Companion. All the terms I looked up were there! And I thought “aha, I’ll use this incidence to segue from a cookbook to a reference book in my blog”. So now I hold Food Lover’s Companion in hand to find something to cook for this blog, even though I’ll have to search for the recipe elsewhere.

There are almost 6000 entries in this book. One might ask: Why own a printed dictionary when you can search online? A few reasons. One, often I find something else interesting when searching for a specific term. Two, books are often more carefully edited and researched than internet sources. And – especially in my case – sometimes your internet service is slow and boggy and fails. (That’s one of the downsides of living out in the boonies.)

“Abalone” is the first entry in Food Lover’s Companion. I know that word, but the second entry I do not: “abbacchio, Italian for a very young lamb”. I once bought a “black radish” at Whole Foods, now I know that this large radish dates back to ancient Egypt, and can be used in salads or stir-fry dishes. “Hangtown Fry” consists of fried breaded oysters cooked together with eggs and fried bacon, and is named for a town known for its frequent hangings. “Mesclun” is a “potpourri of young, small salad greens” – essentially it is “salad mix”. “Pound cake” was originally “made with one pound each of flour, butter, sugar and eggs”. “Sémillon” is a white grape grown mostly in France. “Tsukemono” is a Japanese-style pickled vegetable. “Yuba” is the skin that forms when soymilk is heated; it is then removed and dried in sheets. “Zwieback”, oven-crisped bread, is the last entry in Companion. But this entry does not denote the end of the book: the appendices are helpful too, especially an extensive list of different types of pasta.

For this blog? I decide to make a rösti. In Switzerland, rösti means “crisp and golden”, like fried foods browned on both sides. Usually it refers to potatoes, as in, “Rösti Potatoes”. These are like potato latkes and common hashbrowns.

I search online for “rösti potatoes” and find many recipes for this dish. And all the recipes are different! The potatoes might be grated, julienned in a food processor, or sliced by hand; they might be fried in butter or oil or a mixture of both; a lot of fat might be used or very little. I choose a recipe for Pomme Rosti on ChefSteps, largely because the photos are so great.

In this ChefSteps recipe, the potatoes are sliced thin (1 mm) in a mandolin. Then, the slices are stacked and sliced thinly again into strips (see the photos on the website). I used a food processor to slice the potatoes, took them out and stacked them, and sliced the stacks into strips by hand. Mine were not as neat as theirs!

Next, the potatoes are rinsed in water, drained, and blotted dry. In a bowl, you add about a cube of melted unsalted butter and some salt to the potatoes, then pour the mass into a heated non-stick pan and lightly brown on one side by cooking for about 5 minutes. The pan is then put into a 375˚ oven for 10-15 minutes until the potatoes are well browned on the bottom. The pancake is turned to cook the other side for about 10-15 minutes. On the ChefSteps site, the potato pancake is actually flipped in the air above the pan! No way could I do that. I would have had potatoes all over the kitchen.

My rösti did not turn out as pretty as the ChefSteps one, but it tasted very good. We scarfed it all up.

Would I make it again? No, not this exact way. For one, it was way too rich with all the butter. Second, I need to use a different pan to brown them, either a non-stick or a cast iron pan (I used my newish and not well seasoned Matfer black steel frypan). I think I should have pressed the potatoes more firmly into the pan while they cooked. I feel that there was much water in the potatoes – they sputtered as they cooked. When I make potato pancakes, I spin them in a salad spinner to get rid of the excess water; this same technique could be applied to a rösti. And maybe the butter mixed in with the potato shreds prevented them from forming a solid mass. It’s back to google searches or searches in my own cookbook library for the next time I make rösti potatoes.

But I’ll keep this book! I highly recommend it.

Note: The latest edition of Food Lover’s Companion, the fifth, was published in 2013.

250 Cookbooks: Artichoke to Za’atar

Posted on November 1, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #133: Artichoke to Za’atar, Greg Malouf and Lucy Malouf, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA, 2008.

This is a beautiful cookbook. The photos are amazing. Pleasing designs and colors are carried throughout the pages. And – the Middle Eastern recipes are interesting and often enticing.

My daughter brought me this cookbook when she moved from Washington, DC to Togo, West Africa. She knows a lot more about Middle Eastern cooking than I do. I only took a class in it – she traveled to Morroco and stayed with families there. I do want to learn more about this cuisine, and Artichoke to Za’atar is great for reference and for recipes. I’m glad this blog got me to take this book off the shelf and spend some time with it.

A little about the authors. Greg Malouf is “modern Middle Eastern” grand chef. He lives in Australia but his heritage is Lebanese. On this site, you can see some of his handiwork (2015). I recommend his Facebook page too. Lucy Malouf, who is now his ex-wife, has had a “rich and varied career”. From her site, Lucy “. . . is regarded as one of the most experienced food editors in the publishing industry. She is also a member of that peculiar group of people who enjoy compiling indexes.” Ah, a woman after my own heart! I once indexed an organic chemistry laboratory text and thoroughly enjoyed that task!

Oh yes, I can learn a lot from Greg and Lucy Malouf.

Many recipes in Artichoke to Za’atar look exotic, but the directions seem clear and easy to follow. I think that my problem will be in finding some of the ingredients in local stores. Examples: amardine (apricot leather), orange blossom water, haloumi cheese, merguez sausages, white haricot beans, fresh fava beans, juniper berries, sumac, quinces, rose water, Vialone Nano rice, poussin (very young chicken), pigeon, rabbit. (Rabbit? We have tons of rabbits on our land this year, but I am not about to kill and dress one.)

I decide to make “Honey-Roasted Pear and Walnut Salad” for this blog:

The ingredients that might be hard to find are orange blossom water and haloumi cheese and frisee. I start in downtown Boulder with a visit to my favorite ingredient and spice shops. Got lucky on my first store, Peppercorn, and found the orange blossom water (with the help of a saleswoman).

Cypricot haloumi cheese? I know that Whole Foods has a good selection of cheese, so I started there. Couldn’t find it in the fancy cheeses, but a store helper led me to the area of fresh mozzarella, feta, quesa fresca – those sorts of cheeses – and there it was:

When I got to the check-out stand, they couldn’t find a price on this cheese, even sent the bagger back to look, so they gave it to me for free! The clerk raved about this cheese as a “grilling cheese”. I am looking forward to tasting it!

Frisee is a type of lettuce that is often in the “spring mix” packages, but I don’t recall seeing it sold separately. I was wrong! I found “endive frisee” sold by the head in the produce section of Whole Foods.

I have cardamom pods in my own spice cabinet. They smell wonderful! Cardamom comes in seeds, powder, or pods. Here is my jar of whole cardamom pods:

The cardamom seeds are inside the greenish pods. I cracked a pod and peeled it apart and found these black seeds:

If you have cardamom seeds or powder in your pantry, my guess is that you could substitute them for the pods.

The rest of the ingredients (even watercress) are easy to find. Pears especially are easy – it is fall and pears are in abundance. (Once I ordered “roasted pear salad” at a restaurant in Boulder, and they only put one measly pear in it! This time I will have a lot of pears.) The recipe does not say how many it serves. It looked like too much for the two of us, so I cut back the ingredients.

Aargh. As I prepared this salad, I took issue with many of the instructions. It said to use a “very hot oven” for the walnuts. To me, a “hot” oven is 475˚, the temperature I use to bake rustic breads. I chose 450˚ to roast the walnuts, and they were burnt after 4 minutes of cooking (I had to start over). It calls for the “juice of 2 lemons” but did not specifiy how much went for the cheese and how much for the dressing. I don’t think running the onion under water for 5 minutes is necessary. It says to “add the pears”, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to add just the pears, or the pears and their cooking liquid. (For that matter, I was disappointed that the pears were “roasted” by frying in a pan, not cooking in a hot oven.) The recipe lists frisee but does not specify when to add it to the salad. Whisk the oil and lemon juice “gently”? That’s odd, usually you want to whisk it to an emulsion.

Below is my version of this recipe.

Pear, Walnut, and Haloumi Cheese Salad

Pears

2 ripe pears, peeled and cut into quarters
2 1/2 tablespoons honey (about 50 grams)
3 cardamom pods, seeded (use the seeds only)
1 tablespoon orange-blossom water
1 tablespoon sherry
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil

Combine the honey, cardamom seeds, orange-blossom water, and sherry in a small pan and heat gently to combine. Save.

Heat the butter and 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil in a heavy fry pan. Keeping the heat at medium high to high heat, add the pear and sear the pears for 1 minute on each “side” (my pears had 3 sides). Add the saved honey mixture and cook for 2 more minutes, or until the liquid is a caramel color. Turn the pears carefuly a few times as the liquid is caramelizing.

Set the pears aside and save.

Walnuts

1/2 cup walnut haves

Roast the walnuts by placing in a pan in a 400˚ oven for about 5 minutes. Check during the cook time, as they can become black quite quickly.

Cheese

4 ounces Haloumi cheese, sliced 1/8-inch thick
1/4 cup flour
1-2 tablespoons olive oil (extra-virgin not necessary)
1 tablespoon lemon juice (juice one lemon and use 1 tablespoon here, the rest in the dressing)
thyme, about 1 fresh sprig chopped or about 1/4 teaspoon dried

Heat a fry pan over high heat and add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Dust the haloumi cheese in the flour and then cook the cheese slices until they are golden brown on each side. Remove the cheese from the pan and sprinkle with the 1 tablespoon lemon juice and the thyme.

Salad

1/4 of a red (purple) onion, thinly sliced
about 1/4 of a bunch of watercress, leaves only
about 1/2 cup endive frisee lettuce (if you can find it)
(use any lettuce combination you have on hand)
about 1/3 cup whole black olives, brined are especially good
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
juice of one lemon (well, what is left after taking out the 1 tablespoon for the cheese slices)
salt and pepper to taste

Put the pears (fish them out of their cooking liquid), the fried haloumi cheese, the watercress, frisee, olives, onion, and most of the walnuts in a bowl and mix gently. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the olive oil and lemon juice and salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix gently. Serve topped with the remaining walnuts.

My version of this salad was very flavorful, and quite pretty. In the cookbook they say to serve it as a “starter”. Since it is a fairly substantial salad, I decided to serve it plated with salmon and garlic bread as a complete meal.

I will make a version of this again, I’m sure. But next time I might try a couple variations. I would like to try the haloumi cheese grilled outside instead of fried in oil. For the pears, I want to try roasting them in the oven instead of frying in a syrupy sauce.

A small additional note. This cookbook is organized in alphabetical order by ingredient name. But, “artichoke” is not the first entry, “almond” is. And the last entry is “zucchini”. “Za’atar” is a thyme spice mixture, and does not have it’s own entry. I guess they did not want to call this book “Almond to Zucchini”!

250 Cookbooks: Forrest Gump™ My Favorite Chocolate Recipes

Posted on October 26, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #132: Forrest Gump™ My Favorite Chocolate Recipes, Oxmoor House, Inc., Birmingham, AL, 1995.

“Forrest Gump” was a cultural phenomenon in the 1990s. Probably most Americans of a certain age have seen the 1994 film, starred in by Tom Hanks as the slow but wise and likeable character Forrest Gump who bumbled through life with a Southern accent and a good attitude and lots of amazing adventures. I admit that it isn’t among my favorite flicks, so I am sort of surprised that I own this book. Maybe it was on sale? Dunno.

The book does not credit an author, but the copyright page credits Winston Groom as the author of the Southern-accented introductions to the recipes. Who is Winston Groom? Aha, the author of the novel, Forrest Gump. He also authored several other novels as well as history books.

The recipes are all chocolate and rich. I did use this book – chocolate stains on the pages! Chocolate, cream, butter, candy bars, nuts, sugar, ice cream, cream cheese . . . it’s hard not to make a good tasting dessert. But as I’ve stated before, these lovelies rarely fit into my diet plan. (Moderation, yes, is the answer, but it’s hard to adhere to.)

For this blog? I decide to make Triple-Decker Brownies. With a slight hint of nutrition from oatmeal and pecans, these will be a sweet treat for Halloween festivities, shared with my daughter’s family to spread the calories around. I am already looking forward to my first taste of these brownies!

Triple Decker Brownies, Forrest Gump™
makes 2 8×8-inch pans

Crust

1 1/2 cups toasted oatmeal (quick type; toast in dry pan on stovetop until fragrant)
1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, melted

Filling

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pecans, chopped

Frosting

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup butter
3 cups powdered sugar (sifted if it is clumpy)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup hot water

Crust: Combine oatmeal, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a bowl. Add the 3/4 cup melted butter and stir well. Press into two greased 8-inch square pans. Bake at 350˚ for 10 minutes.

Filling: Melt 2 ounces chocolate and 1/2 cup butter in a pan. Off heat, add sugar and eggs and mix well. Combine the 1 1/3 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt and add to the chocolate mixture alternately with milk. Stir in vanilla and pecans. Spread over the baked crust. Bake at 350˚ for 20-25 minutes. Cool.

Frosting: Melt 2 ounces chocolate and 1/4 cup butter in a pan. Off heat, stir in powdered sugar, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and 1 tablespoon water. Stir in an additional 3 to 3 tablespoons water until frosting is desired spreading consistency. Spread on cooled brownies.

These are sinfully good. I ate one and wanted more more more! Will I make them again? Only if I have help eating them!

250 Cookbooks: Cooking of Vienna’s Empire

Posted on October 17, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #131: Cooking of Vienna’s Empire, Joseph Wechsberg and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1968, 1974, reprinted 1977. Foods of the World series.

I looked forward to discovering another interesting author as I opened this cookbook, as I had discovered M. F. K. Fisher in the Cooking of Provinvial France and Emily Hahn in the Cooking of China. I wasn’t disappointed!

Joseph Wechsberg was born in Czechoslovakia in 1907. He took up the violin at age 7, studied music, and then law, worked as a musician on French ocean liners, played violin in Paris night clubs, was a reporter for a newspaper in Prague, and commanded a machine gun company on the Polish frontier. In 1938 he came to the US as a representative of the Czechoslovakian government; after the war broke out, he claimed assylum in the US and remained here until the 1970s. He passed away in Vienna in 1983.

Wechsberg worked at the New Yorker for decades, and contributed to numerous other magazines, including Gourmet Magazine. He was proficient in four languages, and authored many books of fiction and non-fiction. According to the Joseph Wechsberg website, he had some “raffish” occupations as a young man, and:

“He could scarcely have avoided becoming a reporter: he had an intense curiosity about how things worked and how people behaved; he was a natural absorber of sounds and sights and facts; he took nothing for granted; detail enchanted him. His private pleasures and his journalism largely overlapped.”

He had a love of good food. I can see that clearly as I read The Cooking of Vienna’s Empire. In chapter five, “The Influence of Czechoslovakia”, he writes of Marie, the cook in his family’s home: “She was born to cook as other people are born to write or paint. She was an instinctive cook. I never saw her read a cookbook, but her recipes had become part of her life, closely guarded from the curious and envious.”

Wechsberg’s Definition of a ‘Serious Eater’ (the New Yorker, 1949):

“My friends were ‘serious eaters’; they loved truly good food and scorned the snobbism of self-appointed ‘gourmets‘ and one-dish amateur cooks. They didn’t consider themselves gourmets, but they would confide to each other, with the air of brokers divulging something hot in the market, the addresses of good restaurants.” (Aaron Mattis)

Happily, I have discovered another interesting culinary writer of the twentieth century. I plan to look up a few of his books. In the meantime, I am enjoy reading The Cooking of Vienna’s Empire. It is called a “coffee table book” (can’t help but think of Kramer of Seinfeld fame!). Alongside full page color photographs, Wechsberg describes the cooking of the Old Empire, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia (note the names/borders of these countries have changed). A whole chapter is devoted to the “Pastry Paradise”.

Searching for a recipe to cook for this blog, I know I would love to cook just about any recipe from this book – but they are pretty heavily laden with cream and butter and dumplings and sausages and . . . calories. Some recipes include fish or game that is not available here.

Then – “paprika” and “onions” and “lard” catch my eye:

“The foundation of modern Hungarian cooking is the use of lard, onions and paprika . . . Perhaps the most critical thing in Hungarian cooking, according to experienced cooks I have talked with, is the frying of onions. On this process depends the subtlety of color and flavor that lovers of such food expect. The onions are fried in lard – slowly and with great care. Paprika . . . Hungarian cooking is famous for it – but it is nonsense to believe that any dish containing a handful of this strong red spice is good Hungarian food. Good cooks agreee that it should be used sparingly.”

I know that cooking and seasoning onions properly is the basis of a lot of dishes that I make, and I enjoy the process. I am interested in following this cookbook’s suggestions on preparing an onion-lard-paprika dish, so I choose to cook “Potato Paprika” for this blog.

I made this pretty much as the recipe above.

Potato Paprika
serves 2-3

1 1/2 pounds potatoes (I used russets but I suggest red or yukon potatoes)
2 tablespoons lard
1/2 cup finely chopped onions
1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon sweet Spanish or Hungarian paprika
1 to 1 1/2 cups chicken or beef stock (or use water)
1/8 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/2 of a green bellpepper, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes, then cool, peel, and cut into 1/4-inch slices. (They will not be totally cooked at this point.)

Heat the lard “until a light haze forms over it”, then add the onions and garlic. Cook over medium heat for 8-10 minutes, or until lightly colored. Off the heat, stir in the paprika. Stir until the onions are well coated. Return the pan to the heat, add 1 cup of stock (or water), and bring to a boil. Add the caraway seeds, potatoes, tomato, green pepper, salt, and a few grinds of black pepper. Simmer about 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender and the liquid evaporated. If the liquid evaporates before the potatoes are done, add more stock or water as necessary.

Here is my Potato Paprika, during the cooking. By the time I served this dish, most of the liquid had evaporated.

These were good. To me, they had a hint of Middle Eastern flavors. I had a problem with my potatoes, since I chose big russets and the initial 10-minute cooking left them raw in the middle (as in, very hard). I had to cook my Potatoes Paprika a long time, almost an hour. I have changed my version of the recipe to reflect this suggestion.

Would I make these again? Yes. They are very flavorful and different from all my other recipes for potatoes. And I think they would be really good with sausages added, as the original recipe suggests.

250 Cookbooks: George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Grilling Machine

Posted on October 11, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #130: George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Grilling Machine, Salton, Inc., 2000.
This is the instruction booklet for my George Forman “grilling machine”. I re-discovered this appliance in another blog post: George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine Cookbook. There is a just a handful of recipes in this instruction booklet. But, since it has instructions ffor the grill’s use (including a cooking chart), I will keep it as a reference.

I decide to try “Mustard Lemon Chicken Breasts” for this blog.
These are really simple! If they work, should be nice for a quick meal.

Mustard Lemon Balsamic Chicen Breasts
serves 2-3

2 tablespoons mustard
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cloves minced garlic
1 teaspoon paprika
12 ounces boneless chicken breast (I used chicken breast cutlets)

Mix the mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, and paprika. Add the chicken breasts and let marinade at least 30 minutes.

Preheat a Foreman Grill for 5 minutes. Place the marinated chicken on the grill and close the lid. Let cook for 3-4 minutes. (Thick chicken breasts will take a little longer.)

Serve.
I liked these. I put them inside toasted french rolls and added jack cheese, tomatoes, sliced red onion, lettuce and avocado. The chicken was so tasty on its own that I didn’t bother adding mustard or mayonnaise to the rolls. Once again, I am reminded to keep using my Forman Grill!

250 Cookbooks: Mexican Cooking

Posted on September 18, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #129: Mexican Cooking, The Pillsbury Company, 1995.

This is one of the series of “Classic Pillsbury Cookbooks” – I discussed their history in a previous post. This cookbook must have caught my eye enough to purchase it at the check-out stand back in 1995.

And I can see why it called to me then – the recipes are kind of the way I make Mexican food. Trouble is, I rarely follow a recipe for this type of cooking, I just toss it together. It’s hard to go wrong when you start with things like salsa and beans and tortillas and cheese and some sort of meat. I’m sure I got a couple good ideas from this book twenty years ago, but I didn’t mark any recipes. And today, I was able to find a recipe for this blog, but I will recycle the cookbook.

I decide to make “Chicken and Corn Tortilla Casserole”. It’s similar to Mexican Chicken Casserole, except it does not call for canned chicken soup and it does include pimientos and sour cream. Plus, the assembly method is different: instead of layering, you cut the tortillas in quarters and mix the chicken mixture together in a bowl before placing it in the casserole. Halfway through the cooking, you stir the casserole. My issue with most chicken/tortilla casseroles is that the tortillas turn to mush after cooking. Maybe this method will keep the tortilla texture better.

Here is the original recipe:

Of course I made a few changes. I didn’t have cooked chicken on hand, so I boiled two boneless chicken breasts to use in this casserole, then used 1 1/2 of them (1 1/2 cups). I used the cooking broth instead of store-bought broth. I didn’t have sour cream, so I used Austrailian-type full fat plain yogurt. I used more green chiles than called for and they were “hot green chiles”. I added a little chile powder and cumin to the chicken-tortilla mixture.

Mexican Chicken Casserole 2
serves 3-4

1 1/2 cups cubed cooked chicken
1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 4-oz. can chopped green chiles (mild or hot)
pimientos: I found them in a 4-oz. can and used half the can; can substitute red or green bell peppers
1/2 teaspoon chile powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
6 or 7 corn tortillas, cut into quarters
sour cream or plain yogurt, enough to cover top of casserole, about 1/2 – 3/4 cup
green bell pepper strips

Combine the chicken, half the cheese, and the onion, broth, green chiles, pimientos, chile powder, cumin, and tortillas in a large bowl. Stir together. Pour the mixture into a 1 1/2 – 2 quart greased casserole.

Cover the casserole and bake at 350˚ for 30 minutes, stirring once during this baking time. After the 30 minutes, spread the sour cream over the top, sprinkle on the remaining cheese, and lay the bell pepper strips on top. Bake, uncovered, 5 minutes, until the cheese is melted. Let the casserole stand 5 minutes before serving.

Doesn’t it look pretty? I served it with some black beans mixed with freshly cooked corn off the cob and salsa, a lettuce salad with avocado, and heated corn tortillas. The taste of this casserole is very good, much like Mexican Chicken Casserole 1 but I liked the sour cream on top. (And I liked not having to use canned chicken soup.) The tortillas were once again mushy, but I guess that’s just the way these casserole are. The taste was great and it was a hit!

250 Cookbooks: Diet for a Small Planet

Posted on September 13, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #128: Diet for a Small Planet, Frances Moore Lappé, Ballantine Books, NY, NY, 1971.

I bought Diet for a Small Planet in the 1970s when it was a popular book in the health food movement. In this book, Lappé encourages everyone to become vegetarians (or at least eat less meat), because raising meat requires a lot more resources than does growing crops meant for direct human consumption. One drawback to becoming a vegetarian can be a lack of protein in the diet. Lappé has a solution for that: the quality of protein found in meat could be had for vegetarians if they combined specific vegetable groups to obtain “complete proteins”.

What is a “complete protein”? Here goes. Proteins are made up of chains of amino acids (trust me, this is true, I am a chemist!). According to Lappé, a complete protein contains the eight amino acids that our bodies cannot make: tryptophan, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, valine, threonine, the sulfur containing amino acids, and the aromatic amino acids. These are the essential amino acids, or EAAs. These EAAs must not only be present in our foods, they must be present in the right proportions. And you need to eat the complementary foods in the same meal.

For instance. Nuts like sunflower seeds are high in the amino acid tryptophan and low in lysine, while legumes like black beans are high in the amino acid lysine and low in tryptophan. Toss some sunflower seeds on top of black beans and you consume a complete protein. Examples of other combinations are grains and milk products, seeds and legumes, and grains and legumes. (Note the milk products: this is not a vegan diet.) Often the traditional dishes of cultures exemplify Lappé’s theory: Cajun red beans and rice, India’s dal and flat wheat bread, Mexican beans and corn.

Below is a scan from the book that illustrates the complementary protein scheme:

The first part of Diet for a Small Planet contains a ton of charts and tables to support Lappé’s hypothesis: Amino Acid Content of Foods and Biological Data on Proteins, Food Values of Portions Commonly Used, Composition of Foods, Amino Acid Content of Foods, Protein Requirements, Calorie Cost per Gram of Usable Protein, and more. The data in these tables is supported by bibliographical references. The second half gives recipes for twenty different vegetable combinations.

I swallowed the “complete protein” theory totally, and although I never became a vegetarian, I believed the theory after reading this book. I do remember hearing that you no longer had to eat the combinations in the same meal, only the same day or so. Imagine my surprise when I went online today and found that the complete protein method is no longer held as true!

In this 2013 article, Jeff Novick writes that Lappé’s hypothesis is based on a 1952 article by William Rose that reported minimum daily requirements of the eight EAAs. Rose then doubled the minimum and claimed it as the recommended daily requirement. Novick states: “Modern researchers know that it is virtually impossible to design a calorie-sufficient diet based on unprocessed whole natural plant foods that is deficient in any of the amino acids.” Setting the Record Straight, by Michael Bluejay (2013), is another good article that refutes the complementary protein theory. Interestingly, Wikipedia’s article on Complete Protein does not address the controversy.

Back to cooking. I decide to make Tabouli, or “Zesty Lebanese Salad”. It incorporates the “complementary protein foods” wheat (bulghur) and legumes (garbanzo beans). Bulghur (or bulgur) is a wheat product, kind of like a cereal. (We enjoyed a related wheat product called burghul or cracked wheat in Turkey. Bulgur is fine-grained and quick-cooking, while burghul takes a long time to cook and is big and chewy.)

Tabouli, or Tabbouleh, is an Arabian dish. It usually doesn’t contain garbanzos (chick peas), although these beans are quite common in Middle Eastern cooking. Lappé’s version of tabouli calls for dried garbanzos and I wanted to use canned ones, so I just sort of guessed at the amount of beans to use. Also, I often make myself a bulghur salad, and usually just toss it together sans recipe, so I again strayed from the book’s version of tabouli.

Tabouli
serves 3-4

1/2 cup bulgur wheat, uncooked
1 1/4 cups water
1 can garbanzo beans
1/2 cup chopped parsley (or to taste)
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint (no substitutes!)
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1 tomato, chopped
juice of 1 lemon
2-4 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
freshly ground pepper

Boil the water in a pan, then add the bulgur. Leave it on the burner for a minute or two, then remove from the heat and let stand at least 10 minutes. Put in a strainer to drain off all the water, then put it in a bowl.

Add all of the remaining ingredients and mix. Refrigerate until cold. Taste the salad and adjust the seasonings if you want to. Serve as a side dish or over greens.

I really liked this salad, especially with some feta cheese mixed in. And the cookbook, Diet for a Small Planet? I will keep it, for nostalgia rather than the recipes.

250 Cookbooks: Cookies

Posted on September 6, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #127: Cookies, Natalie Hartanov Haughton, HPBooks, Inc., Tucson, AZ, 1983.

Cookies. One of my favorite foods in the world. Homemade, of course!

Cookies was a birthday gift from my mother to me in 1987. My mother was a master cookie baker, as I’ve probably mentioned quite a few times in this blog. Looking through this cookbook today, I realize she put a lot of thought into the choice of this particular book. The recipes are definitely her type of cookie, and the collection reflects her entire repertoire – especially the drop, bar, and rolled cookies.

I have totally under-used this cookbook. There is a coffee-cup stain on one page and I see a couple wrinkled pages here and there, but I didn’t mark any recipes as “tried”. I guess there are huge swaths of my life when I just didn’t make cookies because of the calories. Or, I just baked a handful of same-old-recipes when we all needed a cookie fix.

This will change: today I well reshelve this cookbook with my very-favorites! There are lots of recipes I want to try in this book and all are from-scratch. The photos are great too.

Cookies begins with a few pages of cookie basics. “Successful Cookie Baking” reiterates the way my mother taught me to bake cookies – and the way I continue to bake them to this day. I actually wrote down some important cookie-baking points in 1993 when I made a bound “Cookie Book” as a present for a friend:

“I always measure flour by dipping a measuring cup into a large canister of flour; I almost never sift before (or after) measuring. I always use unbleached flour. I use margarine (the cheap, stick kind) but you are welcome to substitute butter – I’m sure it would make everything better. Do use real chocolate chips and real vanilla.

“I always beat the shortening, sugar, and egg mixture extremely well, until quite fluffy. Then, add the combined dry ingredients and mix only until they are all mixed in.”

I have switched to butter rather than margarine in most of my cooking. It used to be that we were told margarine was healthier (and cheaper) than butter, so I used margarine a lot. Health advisories have changed, so it’s butter for me these days whenever I try a new recipe. But: many cookie recipes bake up differently with butter than margarine. I remember an Alton Brown episode of Good Eats wherein he made chocolate chip cookies three ways – with butter, with margarine, and with shortening – and each turned out different. And that is my experience too. (When I was still living at home, a girlfriend came over and we made chocolate chip cookies. She pulled butter out of the refrigerator instead of the margarine the recipe called for, and those cookies spread way out on baking. Wow! A first experience with experiments in baking. (Mother always – always! – followed a recipe to a “T”. I hardly ever do that these days.)

Anyway. I am only gradually changing my older margarine-based recipes to butter-based, making sure each time that adjustments do not need to be made to have them turn out the way I like.

I pick up this cookbook on a morning when my day’s plans include something very special: I am going to spend the afternoon with my 20 month old grandson. Thought I: “Ah, I know what I’ll do! I’ll whip up a cookie batter at home and take some to bake with him!”

Grandmothers and cookies, YES!

Which recipe to bake? I choose “Zucchini Drops”. I think they will pass the strict codes of “natural and healthy” foods that my daughter wants for her child. Except the sugar: I’ll have to play that down. “Just a little sugar in these, honest! A ton of zucchini and walnuts – good foods!”

Zucchini Drops
makes about 6 dozen small cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup grated unpeeled raw zucchini
2 – 2 1/4 cups flour (use some whole wheat flour if you want to)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
some salt – only if you are using unsalted butter
1 cup flaked cocout
1 cup chopped walnuts

Using a mixer, beat together the butter, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Stir in the zucchini. Add 2 cups of the flour along with the baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, (and salt), and beat just until thoroughly blended. If the batter is pretty wet, add up to 1/4 cup more flour. Stir in the coconut and walnuts.

(The wetness of zucchini varies. Basically, you want the batter to be stiff enough to drop onto baking pan – my batter needed the extra 1/4 cup flour. If your first batch of cookies flattens out too much, add a bit more flour.)

Drop by teaspoonfulls onto a baking sheet. Bake at 375˚ for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned. (I first tried these at 350˚ for 15 minutes, but I like them a little better baked at the higher temperature.)

These were a big success! They are very soft and moist and flavorful. And a little healthy. They don’t taste real sweet, actually, my husband calls them “muffin tops” instead of cookies. (Go ahead and eat them for breakfast!)

My little cookie eater takes his cookies very seriously! He ate two and wanted more. They put him in a very good mood!

250 Cookbooks: 500 Snacks – Bright Ideas for Entertaining

Posted on August 30, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #126: 500 Snacks – Bright Ideas for Entertaining, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer, Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago, Illinois, 1940. I’d call this a “vintage” cook book. That’s my polite way of saying I think most of the recipes are not appetizing. Rounds of bread topped with cream cheese, eggs, and anchovy filling; olives lined neatly over cream cheese on squares of bread; toast topped with ground boiled ham, cheese, horseradish and condensed tomato soup; celery stuffed with tangy cheese spread; bananas rolled in cereal crumbs and deep fried; sausages baked in bananas; anchovy paste mixed with eggs and formed into balls and served on toothpicks; sardines on toast covered with melted American cheese; tomato juice and ground ham and cream cheese and mayonnaise in a molded salad loaf. (Actually those deep fried bananas sound kind of good . . . ) I was ready to recycle this book, but I checked my database and found that it was my mother’s. There is some handwriting in this book, not sure it is hers, perhaps my grandmother’s? Maybe she gave it to my mother, that’s about the time my parents were married (1940). This book is for sale online, for about $10. Guess I’ll keep my copy because it is so old. And 500 Snacks is kind of fun to leaf through. Brings back memories of the adult cocktail hour and the hors d’oeuvres always served at family gatherings. I especially remember smoked oysters on toothpicks in a special serving dish (I’ll put a photo on the bottom of this blog entry) and the family story from when I was a little girl – once my cat got up and ate the little oysters off the toothpicks. I like the introduction to 500 Snacks: “The Smorgasbord”. I decide to make “California Chicken Salad” for this blog. It actually sounds good – a mixture of chicken, apples, olives, and celery, bound together with mayonnaise and sour cream. Should be good over lettuce or with crackers, or maybe in a sandwich. California Chicken Salad

1/2 cup lemon juice
2 cups diced cooked chicken
1 cup finely diced apple
1 cup chopped ripe olives
1 cup diced celery
salt to taste
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream

Combine the chicken, apple, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients and stir. Add a little more sour cream or mayonnaise if the mixture is not moist. Success! The apples and olives really perked up an ordinary chicken salad. We all made sandwiches for lunch on toasted wheat or sourdough bread with some good crunchy romaine. I put provolone cheese on mine. And now for the promised photo of smoked oysters on toothpicks. I have this ceramic chicken with holes for toothpicks in it. In fact, I have a gang of these chickens. They are all family hand-me-downs. Here is one of the meanest-looking chickens with some smoked oysters stuck in it:

250 Cookbooks: Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Volume 6

Posted on August 27, 2015 by admin

Cookbook #125: Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 6, Had-Kid. Woman’s Day, Fawcett Publications, NY, 1966.

Cookbook number 125, halfway through my 250 Cookbooks! Coincidentally, I picked up this volume of Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery to do this week, and it’s Volume 6 of the 12 volume set – halfway through. Perfect for this week.

I tuck happily into this cookbook, remembering the unexpected treats I found in the first 5 Encyclopedias of Cookery. This one begins with haddock, hake, and halibut. Next is a “ham cook book”, then a “hamburger cook book”. My mother liked the chili meatballs in the hamburger cook book. Herbs – a great section that includes a several-page chart with drawings, descriptions, and culinary uses of over forty herbs, and a section on how to build your own herb garden.

Hermit: a dark spice cookie filled with fruits and nuts. Hominy, honey, horehound (an herb used to make horehound candy), hors-d’oeuvre, hot cakes. Hungarian Cookery: a great section with goulashes and stews and strudels.

Ice: a good read on the history of the household use of ice. Ice cream cookbook. India’s Cookery. Irish Cookery. Italian.

Jam. Jamaican soups. Jambalaya. Japanese Cookery. Jellies. Jewish Cookery.

“Lokshen Kugl” in the Jewish Cookery section: This is my real find in this volume of Encyclopedia of Cookery. I’ve been looking for this recipe since college. From my previous post mentioning kugel: “Way back in college, a friend brought a traditional Jewish kugel to a party. It had noodles and was sweet: I had never had anything like it before and loved it. To this day, I have never made a sweet kugel for myself, but just the mention of ‘kugel’ gets pings of longing zooming around my brain.” In that crazy brain of mine, I thought the dish was named “luchen-kugel”. I googled but did not find any recipe similar to the kugel my friend brought to that long-ago party. Now I see “Lokshen Kugl” in this cookbook and know it is exactly what I was looking for.

Back to the rest of the encyclopedia entries. Julienne, juniper berry, kabob (kebab), kale (pre-famous), ketchup, kid (as in the meat of a young goat slaughtered before being weaned).

Shall I make the Lokshen Kugl for this blog? Hmm, think I’ll wait for later, when I have someone other than my husband to share this discovery with. Instead, I decide to make “Hungarian Goulash” from the Hungarian Cookery section. Usually when I make a paprika-laden meat goulash, I start with a tender cut of meat like pork tenderloin or beef sirloin sliced very thin. I like my quick version so much that I added it to this blog as Pork with Paprika and Mushrooms. Now, I want to try the “Hungarian Goulash” recipe in this cookbook to compare and contrast a traditional recipe with my current one. Here is the original recipe:

I bought two pounds of beef chuck and cut it into 1 1/2-inch cubes, trimming off the fat as I did so. And then, over a pound of onions! I would never use that many if I were doing this recipe-less. I weighed the sliced onions to get the proper amount and the pile of onions was about the same size as the pile of meat! The meat is browned in lard – and yes, I have some. I simmered the meat and onions and paprika for at least a couple hours.

Below is my version of “Hungarian Goulash”. I’ll let you know if I like it as much as my quick version.

Hungarian Goulash
serves about 4

2 pounds beef roast, cut into 1-inch chunks (or, use stew meat)
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons lard
1 to 1/2 pounds sliced onions
2 tablespoons sweet paprika or 1 tablespoon hot paprika
1 tablespoon flour
water (or white wine or a combination thereof) to cover the meat
1 cup sour cream

Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper to taste. Heat the lard in a heavy pan of appropriate size, then add the meat and brown on all sides. Add the onions and cook just until the onions begin to wilt. Stir in the paprika – the meat and onions should be a reddish brown (so add more paprika if necessary). Cook and stir until most of the pan juices are absorbed or evaporated. Stir in the flour and cook a minute or two. Then, add water/wine to cover the meat (I used water).

Cover the pan and simmer over low heat for 1-2 hours. The onions will cook down to a “pulp” and the meat should become very tender. Check during the cooking time and add more liquid as necessary. ( kept my goulash at a fairly fast simmer and checked quite a few times; it took at least 2 hours for the meat to be tender and the onions pulpy.)

Stir in the sour cream and heat through but do not boil. Serve with noodles sprinkled with caraway seeds.

The sauce in this goulash is wonderful! The onions really were “melted” into it. I found the meat a little chewy, so next time I’d choose a better cut of meat (I used beef chuck and it was pretty fatty) or I would cut the meat into smaller chunks (I did 1 1/2-inch pieces). (I included these changes in my version of the recipe, above.) The caraway seeds mixed into the noodles were a great touch.

Do I like it better than my quick version? Not really, but I like it equally as much. The sauce and the meat have better flavor, but the beef was a bit tough and the goulash took a long time on the stove. This would work well in a crock pot or a pressure cooker, or, save it for a long and chilly winter day when you want the aromas of a great stew wafting from your kitchen for hours.

Note: This is the sixth in a series of 12 food encyclopedia volumes. I discussed the first five volumes here: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4. aand Volume 5.

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