Cookbook #232: Cuisinart Elite Collection, 14-cup Elite Collection, Cuisinart, Conair Corporation, NJ, circa 2010.

My current food processor is the 14-cup Elite (I covered my old one in this post). I give this Cuisinart permanent residence on the counter in my kitchen! I chose this 14-cup food processor for myself in 2010, when I retired from the University of Colorado. The folks in the Chem Dept took up a collection and gave me a gift card the night of my retirement celebration – and this Cuisinart Elite is what I chose to buy for myself. I look at it with fond memories.

The 14-cup Elite comes with 3 bowls: small, medium, and large; a blade for chopping and a blade for dough; and the usual slicing discs and grating discs. The blades and discs fit into a cute Barbie-style plastic storage box. I use the large bowl a lot, and the small one is especially nice when I am preparing food for the two of us.

How would I review this Cuisinart, after using it for 8 years? Well, no food processor is perfect. Liquid sometimes leaks from the top, because the rubber gasket does a poor job of sealing the connection between the bowl(s) and the top of the unit. It’s also tricky sometimes to get the lid and feeder in the proper position for the switch to work (sometimes I have to hold the lid down with my hand while chopping). Cheese, especially jack cheese, just doesn’t want to grate in it, it gobs up into chunks. When I grate carrots or any vegetable, big chunks are left on top of the shredding disc. Sure there are 3 bowls, supposedly so you can quickly move through different parts of a recipe, but the blades and discs and the processor lid always have to be rinsed inbetween. If I had a clean-up person following me around, I’d use my Cuisinart a lot more. Often it’s easier to just grab a good knife and chop.

But would I choose to live without it? Heck no. It’s my best tool for quantities of chopped vegetables, it’s what I use to make pie crusts, it’s what I use to make hummus, pesto, and salad dressings. As I said, I allow it permanent space on my kitchen counter, and that says a lot. It looks good too. Plus, Cuisinart has excellent support for their products. My food processor and I just have a sort of love-hate relationship.

I page through the recipes in this booklet. Yum, I want to make about every-other recipe! Just like my Cuisinart Prep 11 booklet, this is an excellent and enticing recipe resource. (A complete opposite from the Pressure Cooker, User’s Manual booklet that I covered a couple weeks ago.)

Here are all the recipes I’d like to try: Tartar Sauce, Spinach Pasta Dough, Classic Bruschetta, Caramelized Onion, Steak and Gruyere Quesadillas, Tomato Soup, Shredded Carrot Salad with Honey-Ginger Dressing, Spinach Ravioli, Classic Meatballs, Sweet Potato and Black Bean Empanadas, Stuffed Roasted Peppers, Cherry Crumb Muffins, Chocolate Chip Crumb Cake, and Pound Cake with Pine Nuts and Olive Oil.

For this blog, I will make the Roasted Red Pepper Sauce, scanned in below. Note how nicely this book is laid out – so much nicer than my other appliance recipe/instruction books:

I decided to make just a half recipe for the two of us.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
makes about 1 1/2 cups

• 4 medium to large red peppers (1 1/2 pounds)
• 8 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 1 shallot, about 1/2 ounce, chopped
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• optional: 1-2 tablespoons white wine or a few splashes of white vinegar
• 3/4 cup chicken stock
• dash of fresh lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oven to 425˚. Put half the red peppers and all of the garlic on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast it all in oven 20 minutes, remove and save the garlic, then continue roasting the red peppers for 30 more minutes. Turn the peppers occasionally so that they become evenly blackened. When they are charred all over, remove them and immediately seal them in a plastic bag. After about 30 minutes, the peppers will be cool and the skin easy to remove. Peel both the roasted peppers, removing the seeds, and also peel the garlic cloves. Store them together until you are ready to complete the sauce (I left mine overnight in the refrigerator).

Put the shallots in a food processor bowl fitted with a chopping blade. Pulse to chop, then remove them and set aside. By hand, chop the remaining 2 red peppers into 1-inch chunks and put these chunks in the food processor; pulse several times to roughly chop. Remove and set aside.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large sauté pan using medium heat. Cook the shallots a couple minutes to soften – don’t let them get brown. Stir in the chopped red peppers, then cover the pan and reduce the heat to low. After 30 minutes, the peppers will be soft and “sweated”. Remove the lid from the pan and increase the heat slightly. Add the white wine (if you are using it) and stir unti the liquid is mostly evaporated (2 minutes). Add the chicken stock and simmer until reduced by half, about 5 minutes.

Put all of this shallot-pepper-stock mixture into the work bowl of the food processor, add the lemon juice and salt and pepper, and add the reserved roasted red peppers and garlic. Process about 40 seconds, until the mixture is well blended. Taste and adjust seasonings accordingly.

This was a lot more work than I signed up for! I didn’t read the recipe carefully enough before I started. But it is a very, very good sauce. So far I’ve just eaten it on celery – it would also be good on sandwiches but we are on a two-week no-carb stint. But this sauce/relish should keep a week or so in the refrigerator, and I will look for a chicken dish to use it on.

Cookbook #198: The Heinz Book of Meat Cookery, H. J. Heinz Company, Pitsburgh, Penna., 1937.

Wow, this is another vintage booket! I didn’t have the publication date – 1937 – entered in my cookbook database so I thought it was one of my mother’s 50s-era booklets. And I thought it was missing the cover. But I found the publication date when I carefully searched the booklet, and by comparison with photos online, I find this booklet is not missing the cover. Here it is laid open, with both front and back covers showing:

Henry J. Heinz established the Heinz company in 1869. In 1937, 68 years later, this excerpt from The Heinz Book of Meat Cookery shows that the company is proud of its reputation:

Note: “Heinz Foods are Pure. Where sweetening in any one of the entire 57 varieties is required, only pure granulated sugar is employed – no substituties. Absolutely no artificial preservatives, in fact, are used in any Heinz Product.”

Sounds like today’s natural food claims. Let’s see, does the bottle of Heinz ketchup (I always choose Heinz ketchup!)  in my cupboard still lives up to this claim? Judge for yourself – here is the list of ingredients for Heinz Tomato Ketchup (“grown not made”): tomato concentrate from red ripe tomatoes, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, spice, onion powder, natural flavoring. No preservatives, but high fructose corn syrup instead of pure granulated sugar.

Heinz is one of the longest-running food companies in the US. (I’ve covered quite a few of the American brands because a large portion of my cookbook collection is manufacturer’s cookbooks.) Established in 1869, Heinz remained a company under that name until 2013, when it was purchased by Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, resulting in the Kraft Heinz Company. Accoding to Wikpedia, this company is currently one of the 5 largest food companies in the world.

Heinz brand products have a “57” on the label – the Heinz “57 Varieties” slogan. Excerpted from Wikipedia, accessed 2017: “Henry J. Heinz introduced the marketing slogan ’57 Varieties’ in 1869 [although over 60 varieties were offered at that time]. He later claimed he was inspired by an advertisement he saw while riding an elevated train in New York City (a shoe store boasting ’21 styles’). The reason for ’57’ is unclear. Heinz said he chose ‘5’ because it was his lucky number and the number ‘7’ was his wife’s lucky number. However, Heinz also said the number ‘7’ was selected specifically because of the ‘psychological influence of that figure and of its enduring significance to people of all ages’.” Now, “57 varieties” is a general term for a mixed bunch, like a mutt dog.

The Heinz Book of Meat Cookery, 1937, lists these 57 varieties:

A good proportion of the varieties are canned soups. The “cream of” varities are asparagus, celery, green pea, mushroom, oyster, spinach, and tomato soups. (I think their “cream of tomato” variety is what we now call canned “tomato soup”.) Other soups are chicken soups, clam chowder, turtle (!), onion, pepper pot, and vegatable beef. Only some of these soups are available today, and they are no longer Heinz brands.The above list also includes baked beans (several varieties), mincemeat, puddings, olives, cooked spaghetti and cooked macaroni, peanut butter, breakfast wheat, and jams. Most of items in the above list, except Heinz condiments: ketchup, chili sauce, steak sauce, mustard, and vinegar. (I only buy Heinz ketchup and chili sauce, and I keep them in my pantry at all times!)

What to cook from this book? The recipes are not my style of cooking. Here are some typical examples (the notes on these are my grandmother’s writing):

Note the “Left-Over Pork Roast with Spaghetti”. It calls for “Heinz cooked spaghetti in tomato sauce”. Even if I could find canned spaghetti, I would not make myself eat it.

Near the end of the book I find some sauce recipes:

I like the “Cocktail Sauce–No. 2”. This is how I usually make cocktail sauce, except I use lemon instead of vinegar (and I never measure anything!). I like to add a little Lea and Perkins Worcestershire sauce, a current Heinz brand, so I’ll add a few drops. I’m not sure “evaporated horseradish” is available; I’ll use prepared horseradish.

This is a good sauce for dipping shrimp. I don’t keep bottled cocktail sauce in my pantry, because it is so easy to make. In the below version, I’ve halved the above recipe, and it made enough to dip about 2 pounds of cooked shrimp.

Cocktail Sauce

• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 2 tablespoons chili sauce
• 1 tablespoon vinegar (or use lemon juice)
• a few drops of hot sauce (like Tobasco) or some cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon horseradish
• a few drops of Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients. Taste, and adjust seasonings if desired.

Yummy, as usual! Nice excuse to get some cooked shrimp from Whole Foods.

I’ll keep this cookbook, but this time I will shelve it with my other “vintage” cookbooks!

Cookbook #37: Salsas, Sambals, Chutneys and Chowchows. Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby, Hearst Books, 1993.

This is a great cookbook, one of my newish favorites. I was surprised that the publication date was 1993, since this is a very contemporary book. I bought it sometime in the 2000s for myself, probably at Peppercorn. It’s still for sale, new, on Amazon. Because of copyright issues, I’m just going to take a photo to show you the lovely layout of the book instead of scanning in a recipe.

All the recipes in this book are “little dishes of intense flavor”. I’ve used the salsa section more than any other section of this book. The authors define salsa as a Mexican/Latin American version of a little dish. Salsas are made from different combinations of a variety of ingredients, such as cilantro, oregano, cumin, chile powder, corn, tomatoes, jicamas, pineapples, mangoes, black beans, tomatillos, limes, and hot chile peppers. “The most important thing to remember about salsas is that, like the Latin dance that shares their name, the best ones are wild, loose, and loud.” “Just mix ’em up and enjoy the taste. In this case, everyone can dance.”

This book taught me to add fruit to a salsa. Or corn and avocado and black beans. I used to use only peppers, onions, and tomatoes. The authors remind me to toast cumin seeds before use to brighten their flavor. These tricks have given a new world of flavor to my salsas!

Chutneys are a bit harder to define. They originated in India and can be raw or cooked, chunky or grated, and can contain a variety of fruits, vegetables, and spices. Traditionally, they go with spicy foods (like curries). The chutney recipes in this book usually include a sweetener like molasses or sugar, a fruit and/or vegetable, ginger, garlic, and spices such as star anise, mace, coriander, or curry. I like that they cover spices, such as star anise, with a two-page layout of a description, tips, and photos. I’ve made a couple of the chutneys, but since my dining partner does not like curry, I don’t make them very often.

Blatjangs, atjars, and sambals are chutney-type dishes from Africa, East Indies, and Southeast Asia. Chowchows are pickled relishes – mixtures of vinegar, spices, and vegetables. The book includes recipes for chowchows of the American South, a light version of kimchi (Korean), and spicy pickled grapes. I probably won’t try too many of these, but the pictures are pretty and the ingredients always fresh and full of flavor.

The title of the book is misleading, because more than salsas, sambals, chutneys, and chowchows are covered in this book. There are also sections on relishes, catsups and other condiments. The final section is “pantry”, in which some of the more unusual ingredients are discussed (along with great photos).

Creativity is the theme of this book. In this spirit, I created a salsa based loosely on “Papaya Salsa”. I used cantaloupe and mango instead of papaya, green and red bell pepper instead of just red, and added enough red onion so that it “looked right”.

Fruit Salsa

• about a cup of chopped fruit – I used half cantaloupe and half mango, but use papaya, peaches, pineapple or any fruit you have around
• about a quarter of a red bell pepper, sliced into short, thin slices
• about a quarter of a green bell pepper, sliced into short, thin slices
• about half of a medium-sized red onion, sliced into long, thin slices
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 clove garlic, minced (more or less to taste)
• 1/4 cup pineapple juice (or orange or any other type of sweet juice)
• 1/4 cup of fresh lime juice (more or less to taste)
• 1/2 of a jalapeno pepper, very finely chopped (you can include the seeds)
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together well. Taste and adjust seasonings and/or amounts of onion and jalapenos. It keeps 3-4 days in the refrigerator.

Salsas are great in the summer. On a hot night, they perk up a taco, wrap, sandwich or grilled meat or fish. I used this Fruit Salsa on pulled pork, folded inside some thick pita breads from the Mediterranean Market in Boulder. Yum!

This photo is an example of the layout of this book.