250 Cookbooks: The Cooking of China

Posted on December 14, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #93: The Cooking of China, Emily Hahn and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Time-Life Books, NY, 1968. Foods of the World series; fifth printing, revised 1976.

Mickey was a young woman from Missouri living in Shanghai in the late 1930s. She had an affair with a Chinese poet, took her pet gibbon to dinner parties, became addicted to opium (“though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can’t claim that as the reason I went to China”), moved to Hong Kong in 1940 and had an affair with the local head of British Army Intelligence. Way before all those happenings, she was the first American woman to earn a degree in engineering, a pursuit she chose only after being refused permission to take a chemistry class. After college graduation she drove across the US with a woman friend, and they were both disguised as men. All during her adventures, she was writing: 52 books and nearly 200 articles and stories.

And who was Mickey? Emily Hahn, the author of this book! The statements above are all from an article about her on Wikipedia. I am so intrigued that I am going to search the University library for one of her books – China to Me: A Partial Autobiography.

The writing in The Cooking of China reads like a gathering of stories. It is fascinating. At the end of each chapter are recipes, written by Florence Lin and Grace Chu, teachers at the China Institute in New York. The Foods of the World series editor Michael Field was responsible for recipe and food presentation. Michael Rougier, a Life photographer, did the stunning photos in this cook book.

The main theme of this book is the Chinese people’s reverence for good food. “Food is not only pleasurable but a good deal more. It is a truism that food is life, but with the Chinese it is also health and a symbol of other good things such as luck and prosperity. Heaven loves the man who eats well. At each meal a Chinese adds to his virtue, strengthening resistance to the ills of body and mind, curing ailments or, possibly, rendering himself capable of better work. He is also, of course, staving off death, but so are we all.”

Emily Hahn covers the history of Chinese cuisine and the different cooking styles of the main four regions. She presents diverse cooking ingredients and methods, supported by photographs. Her opinion of the Red Guards who appeared in the late 1960s is quite clear. And she describes great dinner parties, ones she attended or imagined ones from the past.

I love this book. It’s been my reference for Chinese cooking for over thirty years. Granted, some of the recipes are just too much work to follow, and some of the ingredients are difficult to find (bird nests? shark fins?). But to me, it is the source for Chinese cuisine. Now that I discovered Emily Hahn’s personal story, I like the book even more.

The Cooking of China is actually a set of two books: the large hardcover book, and an accompanying spiral bound collection of the recipes. I counted these as one book in my database. The recipe that I have used the most is the one for Pearl Balls. For this blog, I decide to try Steamed Buns with Roast Pork Dumplings. I have wanted to make steamed buns ever since a graduate student from China brought them to a dinner party way back in the seventies. But: the work! Now I have the time and experience to try these. It involves making the roast pork, the yeast dough, and finally assembling the rolls and steaming them. And since it’s a Chinese meal, I will also be making pearl balls and egg rolls as well as a soup and rice. So it will be a project. I look forward to this adventure in my kitchen!

To make the dinner-day easier, I prepare the roast pork a couple days ahead. Here is the original recipe for Roast Pork Strips.

I don’t have brown bean sauce, only hot bean sauce (see my Asian ingredients reference). A trip to the Asian Seafood Market! I have to ask the lady in the market, and she assures me that “bean sauce” is what I want.

The marinade step is easy, but roasting? They direct me to hang thick pork slices off hooks in the oven above a pan of water. Well, I did that, using skewers, and it worked. But I think it could be cooked on a rack in any roasting pan instead. I’ll include both methods in my version of this recipe.

Roast Chinese Pork Strips

pork butt roast, boneless, 2-3 pounds
2 tablespoons chicken stock
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon bean sauce, mashed (substitute with a tablespoon of soy sauce or hoisin sauce if you don’t want to search the stores for bean sauce)
1 tablespoon dry sherry (use Chinese rice wine if you have it)
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon minced garlic
a few drops red food coloring

I gather my ingredients:

Cut the roast lengthwise into 3 or 4 thick slices (1 1/2-inch – 2-inch slices).

Then cut each slice in half lengthwise so that you have 6 or 8 long, thick slices.

Combine the marinade ingredients in a bowl. Put the meat and marinade in a large ziplock-style bag and carefully close it, eliminating as much of the air as you can.

Set in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours. If you remember, turn it over from time to time.

To cook the roast strips, you can probably place them on a rack over a parchment or foil lined pan, or a pan with a couple inches of water in it, and bake first for 45 minutes at 350˚, then for 15 minutes at 450˚.

I cooked it more according to the original recipe. If you want to try my way, set a large flat pan of water, a couple inches deep, in a cold oven. Thread one end of a pork strip on a long metal skewer. Hold the skewer in the oven and put the pork strip through two rungs of your oven rack. Carefully thread another pork strip on the skewer and put the new strip through two different rungs of your oven rack (wherever it fits). Continue until all the pork strips are hung. Here, a photo will help:

Turn on the oven to 350˚ and bake 45 minutes, then increase the temperature to 450˚ and cook another 15 minutes. Carefully remove the skewers and pork from the oven and cool.

Store the pork in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook the rolls. Traditionally, these pork strips are sliced into paper-thin slices for serving as part of a meal.

Here is the original recipe for Steamed Buns with Roast Pork Dumplings.

I made a half-recipe and used my bread machine to prepare the dough. I steamed them in Chinese style bamboo steamers set in a pan of boiling water. I lined the steamer trays with parchment for easy cleaning.

My version of steamed buns follows.

Steamed Buns with Pork Filling
makes 12

for the dough:

1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
2 cups flour

for the filling:

1 pound roast Chinese pork strips, prepared as in the above recipe
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons corn starch dissolved in a little water

Put the dough ingredients in a breadmaker set to the dough cycle, or knead the dough by hand and let it rise until double.

Prepare the filling while you wait for the dough. First, chop the pork strips into small pieces. Cook in a small amount of hot oil for a minute or so, then add the sugar and soy sauce and stir for a minute. Add the corn starch mixture and stir for about 10 seconds, until the mixture thickens and the pork is covered with a clear glaze. Take it off the heat and transfer to a bowl to cool.

When the dough has risen, punch it down and roll into a long cylinder about 2 inches in diameter. Cut the cylinder into 12 sections. Roll each section into a circle about 4 inches in diameter.

Put the filling on the dough circles. Gather the sides of the dough up around the filling in loose folds meeting at the top. Then twist the top of the dough firmly closed.

Place the filled buns an inch apart in parchment-lined steamer trays and let rise about 30 minutes. (Those are my Pearl Balls in the front steamer.)

Steam the buns for 10 minutes.

The buns I made had more dough than I like. I followed the recipe in the book carefully, measuring the size of the dough cylinder and the size of each round. But, I only made 9 buns from all the dough. I should made 12! Next time I will make them as I wrote in the above recipe and I am sure they will be perfect.

I served these with egg rolls and pearl balls and fried rice and sour-and-hot soup. I had sweet and sour sauce on the table and also a bottle of “banana sauce” that I picked up at the Asian store. These sauces were good with the steamed buns.

Success! I finally made steamed pork buns and they are great. I now have another Chinese recipe to add to my repertoire.

250 Cookbooks: The Nutrition Bible

Posted on December 6, 2014 by admin

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!

250 Cookbooks: Eat, Drink and Be Healthy

Posted on November 29, 2014 by admin

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:

Look in the Classified pages of your telephone book for health food stores in your area; or consult the advertisements in health magazines.
Search the shelves of your local market for unsulphured molasses, spray-dried milk, unflavored gelatin, honey, herbs, spices, nuts, vegetable oils.
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.
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.
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.

250 Cookbooks: The Pizza Book

Posted on November 23, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #90: The Pizza Book, Evelyne Slomon, Times Books, NY, 1984.

I didn’t keep the book jacket, but here is what it looked like:

Picture this: Boulder, Colorado, sometime in the seventies. We are enjoying a pizza at Old Chicago Pizza, downtown. Wow, they used fresh mushrooms on this pizza! It was heavenly. I fell in love with pizzas at that point. But not the cheesy-greasy fast food pizzas, the good ones. I started making my own, and bought The Pizza Book in the eighties.

Since we live too far from a town for pizza deliveries, and since I am a cook, it’s not a stretch that I began making my own pizzas. I make one about every other week. My favorite crusts have morphed over the years, from a thick whole wheat crust to a thinner beer-based crust to a non-kneaded thin crust. I have tried many toppings, but usually come back to a tomato and cheese based pizza with sausage or pepperoni, mushrooms (fresh!), onions, and black olives. (My Mexican pizza is one of my saved variations.) I have tried several baking methods: cookie sheet, perforated round pan, baking stone, and gas grill.

And you know what? All of the crust and ingredient and baking methods work. Each type of pizza has its place in a sensible pizza-eating plan!

Evelyn Slomon tells us that pizza came to America with Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century. Too poor to buy bread, the women would pay to bake their own dough in an oven at a bakery. They would often take a portion of the dough and flavor it with tomato sauce and bake it alongside their loaves. “In the old country it was called pizza” according to Slomon. This pizza was done before the loaves and it “appeased the appetites of hungry children.”

Slomon continues with the history of pizza in America, then presents a comprehensive guide on how to make pizza. It’s a great reference on different types of pizza doughs and the basic skills needed to prepare pizzas. And then there are about 200 recipes to choose from – enough ideas to keep any pizza cook happy. And of course, you are encouraged to come up with your own ideas. Most of Slomon’s recipes give a choice of different doughs and toppings and even baking methods.

Even though this book was published thirty years ago, it is still available either new or used. It has stood the test of time – this book is still all you need to make great pizza. I highly recommend The Pizza Book.

I decide to make “Chèvre Pizza”. I have the choice of 7 different crusts and 5 different toppings. I decide to use Sicilian-style dough (has a lot of olive oil) and Chèvre Pizza #2: “Herbed Goat Cheese and Fresh Tomatoes”. I am going to vary this further by adding prosciutto (from variation #3) and a few fresh basil leaves (from my garden). I’ll assemble it on a pizza peel and then bake it in a hot oven on a preheated baking stone.

My version is below.

Herbed Goat Cheese, Fresh Tomato, and Prosciutto Pizza
makes two 12-inch pizzas (approximately)

Besides the ingredients below, you will need semolina flour. For equipment, you need a pizza peel and a large baking stone.

Sicilian Style Pizza Dough

3/4 cup water
1 package (scant tablespoon) yeast
3 cups flour (I used bread flour)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put the dough ingredients in a breadmaker and set to the “dough” cycle (including a rising step). Or, mix and knead by hand or in a food processor, then let rise until double in bulk. During the mixing and kneading steps, you may need to add a little more flour to get a soft, smooth ball of dough. Prepare the pizza toppings while you wait for the dough to rise.

Oven

Place a baking stone in your oven 30 minutes before you want to start baking the pizzas. Turn it to 500˚, or as close to that as your oven will go.

Herbed Goat Cheese (etc.) topping

11 – 12 ounces plain goat cheese
2 minced garlic cloves
1 teaspoon dried or 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mixed herbs – I used fresh thyme and fresh oregano
8 ounces grated mozzarella cheese
fresh tomatoes, about 1 1/2 pounds
several thin slices of prosciutto, about 2-3 ounces
several fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil (approximate)

Mix the garlic and herbs with the goat cheese, using a fork to mash them together. My goat cheese mixture was pretty crumbly. Cut the prosciutto into strips.

Peel and core the tomatoes, then chop them into rough dice. Put them in a strainer and let them drain while you roll out the pizza dough.

Assemble and bake the pizza

Note: There are many ways to roll or stretch out a pizza dough. I usually use a rolling pin. But after re-reading Slomon’s pizza book, I decided to try chilling the dough briefly before stretching it out. So below is the method I used, but feel free to use another method.

After the dough has risen, divide it into two portions. Flatten each into a disc and cover with plastic. I placed them in the refrigerator for 15 minutes or so. (This should make the dough easier to handle. It is an optional step that I might eliminate next time; see my comments below.) Next, remove from the fridge and work each disk on a breadboard, pushing and stretching into a circle. You can pick up the dough and play with letting it hang down over your knuckles to stretch it out, and even hold it by the edges and let gravity pull it down. The olive oil in this dough makes it easy to work with! I was able to get each portion stretched into a 12-inch circle.

(Is your oven hot? You need it hot before you assemble the pizza, or the dough might get soaked while you wait for the oven to heat.)

Put one of the discs onto a pizza peel that has semolina dough sprinkled on it. Sprinkle the herbed goat and mozzarella cheeses on first, then add the prosciutto and the basil leaves. Put on the tomatoes, then drop some olive oil on top of the tomatoes and on the rim of the dough.

Carefully slide the topped pizza onto the hot pizza stone, close the oven door, and bake for 15 minutes. Get the second half of the pizza dough topped while you wait for the oven, then bake it in the same manner.

I actually made one goat cheese pizza and one with prosciutto, black olive, onion, bell pepper, mozzarella, Parmesan, and fresh tomatoes. I had a feeling the goat cheese one would be “too much” for him, and I was right. I liked both toppings!

Comments

While my dough was rising, I gathered my ingredients. First, the goat cheese and herbs with the peeled tomatoes and prosciutto.

I was glad that I thought to drain the chopped tomatoes. I had some great roasted garlic from a stand in Lyons, so I used some of it on the pizza.

Below is half the dough on a pizza peel.

Here is the first pizza, ready for the oven.

Baked!

These pizzas were baked to perfection. I really, really like the simple “sauce” of just fresh, non-precooked tomatoes. It’s easy and fresh-tasting. Putting the cheese on first keeps the crust from sogging. The prosciutto tucked under the tomatoes keeps it from burning in the very hot oven. The very hot oven makes the crust crisp.

Both of us thought the crust tasted a bit like a big “cracker”. This is good or not, it depends on your preference. I will probably use less olive oil in the dough next time and eliminate the chilling step. I think the yeast in the dough didn’t have time to warm up and work its magic in rising the baking dough, or perhaps the olive oil inhibited the rising. The recipe is good as written, but . . . tweaking is part of the experiment, and that’s what cooking is about!

250 Cookbooks: Zestful Recipes for Every Meal

Posted on November 12, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #89: Zestful Recipes for Every Meal, Mutual Orange Distributors, Bruce McDaniel, Gen. Mgr., Redlands, CA, 19?? (see below).

A colorful booklet catches my eye. Bright oranges, lemons and grapefruits adorn the cover.

Because California Citrus Fruits are so luscious, so healthful, and so adaptable to all branches of cookery, it is with utmost confidence that we present this little booklet.

My mind drifts back to the 1950s. A little blond girl runs out to the trees in her backyard and picks a few lemons. Into the kitchen to hand-squeeze them and add sugar and water and ice for the best lemonade ever. Yup, that was me! Both my parents were born in citrus-kissed Southern California, and I was too. My mother grew up on a ranch where my grandfather grew oranges.

You can be refreshed on the hottest summer day with a good, tart, icy drink, and for this purpose California citrus fruits are necessary additions to the larder. With plenty of oranges, lemons and grapefruit on hand, a jar of sugar syrup waiting the the refrigerator, and perhaps half a dozen bottles of carbonated water and ginger ale, stored in a cold place, you’re all ready for the mid-afternoon “lift” that comes with a glass of iced citrus beverage. And for those suppers-out-of-doors which every family enjoys, these delicious drinks are important.

I find no handwritten notes in Zestful Recipes, and just a few stains. I noted in my database that it came from my Mother. It’s just 3.5×6-inches, and quite obviously it was an advertising-recipe booklet. Shall I just toss it? Explore some more?

I can’t find a publication date in Zestful Recipes. I google Amazon and find an entry’s photo that looks just like my booklet. It costs $10 and was published in 1940, according to the website (accessed November 2014). Hmmm.

A little more searching. Wow, this is cool. I find the entire Zestful Recipes booklet, scanned to a digital image and available to the public! Check this out on the Hathi Trust website: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005601173. Go down to “viewability” and click on “full view”. That’s exactly the same booklet! Cute, its owner had written a recipe for meat loaf on the first page. My Zestful copy is a lot cleaner.

The Hathi Trust site gives the publication date of Zestful Recipes as probably 1931. That means: This book is a Treasure! It is quite likely that my grandfather’s oranges were distributed by “Mutual Orange Distributors” (publishers of Zestful Recipes), way back in the first half of the twentieth century. His ranch was in the vicinity of Covina, near the cities of Glendora, San Dimas, Pomona, Claremont, and not too far from Redlands. That whole area was covered with orange groves when I was a child, and Orange County still had tons of groves when I was in college. I go back now and it’s mostly freeways and houses and strip malls.

If you are interested, here are a couple links to more information on Mutual Orange Distributors and the history of the citrus business in Southern California.

So it looks like my copy of Zestful Recipes could once have belonged to my grandparents, acquired somehow through their orange-growing business. My mother kept hold of it for decades, and now it is in my hands. I will keep it.

I decide to make “Citrus Fruit Syrup” on page 3 of Zestful Recipes.

This is just a basic simple syrup, often used in beverages, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Like flavored oils and vinegars (see my entry for Michael Chiarello’s book), simple syrups are “pantry basics” that you can make for yourself. And if you are an ex-chemist (me!), you just might want to do so!

Lemon Simple Syrup

1 cup sugar
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Combine the sugar and the juice in a pan on the stove. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Watch carefully! Mine foamed up and boiled over when my back was turned. But it still turned out beautifully.

What to do with this syrup? We made some delicious Lemon and Vodka Martinis, recipe courtesy of Giada De Laurentiis. (Oh my, those were too good, made with my lemon sugar syrup and Greygoose.)

Here are some photos taken at Grandpa and Grandma Burch’s ranch, from 1947-1950.

My sister at the ranch. That’s an orange in her hand!

My brother “helping out” at the ranch.

Mother and I at the ranch. I’m sure she made our dresses.

250 Cookbooks: Bread Machine Recipes

Posted on November 7, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #88: Bread Machine Recipes, Favorite Brand-Name Recipes, Vol. 6, March 23, 1999, No. 31, © Publications International, Ltd., 1999. I like this little recipe magazine cookbook! I bought it for myself back in 1999, and I know I have tried at least one recipe from it. Lots of fun ideas. Now that I am retired, I have more time to play with different recipes. In case you are new to my blog, I’ll tell you: I love to bake bread! This post explains my history with yeast bread.

There are so many recipes I want to try in this cookbook that I will just keep it next to my bread machine for awhile. All the recipes are from scratch, and very few “brand names” are even mentioned. Rye breads, corn breads, breads with fruits and carrots, breads cooked in muffin pans, cinnamon rolls, chocolate rolls, and pizzas galore. I like the recipe for “Savory Pull-Apart Loaves”. You make the dough, then divide it into 16 pieces, flatten them and coat with olive oil and herbs, then layer it all back together into a 9×5-inch loaf pan. Be great with a good soup or stew.

I choose to make “Jamaican Cherry Bread” for this blog. It has fresh limes and fresh ginger and tart cherries (a super food!) and coconut (I love coconut!). I like fruited yeast breads toasted for breakfast or used in peanut butter sandwiches. Here is their recipe:

The Cherry Marketing Institute, the brand name noted at the bottom of the above recipe, has more tart cherry recipes on its website.

My version of this recipe is below. I used all-purpose flour and gluten flour instead of bread flour, I used fresh ginger, and I used purchased toasted coconut chips. I baked it in the oven in a loaf pan instead of in the breadmaker.

Ginger-Cherry-Coconut Bread

3 1/4 cups flour (17 ounces): I used 1 1/4 ounce gluten flour and added all-purpose flour to 17 ounces; 17 ounces of bread flour would work well too
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
1 cup milk
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks (substitute vegetable oil if you prefer)
2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger root
grated peel of one lime
juice of one lime
1/2 cup dried tart cherries
2/3 cup coconut (use toasted shredded coconut or coconut chips)

Place all ingredients EXCEPT the cherries and coconut in your breadmaker. Set to a dough cycle, preferably one with a rise cycle. If your breadmaker has an option (a beep or an automatic feeder) to add the cherries and coconut near the end of the kneading cycle, use it. If not, you can add these ingredients at the time you form it into a loaf. Briefly, if you add the cherries and coconut too soon, the breadmaker will grind them up into tiny pieces.

When the dough/rising cycle is complete, remove the dough from the breadmaker. Add the cherries and coconut if you have not already done so. Fold over a few times and form into a loaf then place in a 9×5-inch loaf pan. Bake for 30 minutes at 385˚.

Comments

Great bread!

Below is the bread dough about 10 minutes into the kneading cycle. To me, it looked like it needed a bit more flour, but I let it go and after another 10 minutes the dough was smooth and perfect.

My breadmaker goes “beep” when it’s time to add raisins, nuts, cherries, etc. You can see it doesn’t do a great job of incorporating all of the cherries. Those ones that are poking out will just burn in the oven. I tried to get them all poked back in but it was impossible.

The photo below illustrates when it is time to put the risen loaf into the oven.

Here is the baked ginger-cherry-coconut bread:It tastes great. I like it with cream cheese and I like it with peanut butter – as toast and in a sandwich. Butter and jam would be great too. Why just eat boring store-bought toast in the morning, when you can have something really different?!

I’m kind of iffy on the use of coconut chips (big and made for granola or snacking), rather than flakes (the kind sold for baking). The chips gave a subtle crunch to the bread, but their coconut flavor was kind of washed out by the time the bread was baked. Next time I think I’ll use coconut flakes. The coconut-toasting step suggested in the original recipe might help bring out their color and flavor.

I plan to make this bread again!

250 Cookbooks: Pillsbury’s 36th Bake-Off Cookbook

Posted on November 1, 2014 by admin

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!

250 Cookbooks: New Slow Cooker Meals

Posted on October 28, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #86: New Slow Cooker Meals, Betty Crocker, General Mills, Inc., Minneapolis, MN, 2001.

I remember there was a time that I searched my house but couldn’t find any of my slow cooker cookbooks. That’s probably when I picked up this small cookbook at a supermarket. Today, I don’t find any of the recipes in New Slow Cooker Meals inspiring. In my opinion, most of the recipes would be better cooked in a pot on the stove for an hour than dragging out a big crockpot and having it cook all day. But then again, I am retired. (See my first crock pot entry for my opinions on crock pot cooking in general.)

Betty Crocker’s New Slow Cooker Meals is 5×8-inches and 96 pages. You could subscribe to Betty Crocker cookbooks, and this cookbook has a url printed in it: www.bettycrocker.com. On the current website, these small printed cookbooks are called “Recipe Magazines from Betty Crocker”, and you can still subscribe to them. The website has a section on slow cooker recipes.

I do have a task this week that I can tie into this cooking blog. The Lyons Garden Club is having a chile cookoff, and I want to contribute a crockpot of chile, albeit not one to enter into the contest (since I am a member). So, I will make the Family-Favorite Chili on page 19 of this Betty Crocker recipe magazine. Family-Favorite Chili is made with hamburger, spices, tomatoes, and beans.

(I find myself typing “chili” and “chile” interchangeably. Which is correct? A web search reveals much controversy. I kind of like the answer at MJ’s Kitchen: a chili is a pepper and a chile is a dish cooked with a chili pepper. Don’t sweat it.)

Here is Betty Crocker’s recipe for Family-Favorite Chile.

I will of course make some changes. I like to wilt onions a few minutes before adding them to a dish. (And I find it odd that step 3 says to cook until the onions are tender: 3-4 hours.) I like to use a seasoning packet like Two Alarm Chili or Carroll Shelby’s Chili Kit. Boring, but consistent. I have some dry pinto beans and a new pressure cooker, so I will cook my own beans instead of using canned beans. Below is my version.

My Basic Red Chile with Hamburger and Beans
makes a big crockpot’s worth of chile

2 pounds ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
a chili kit (Carroll Shelby’s or Two-Alarm or your favorite) or chili powder to taste
1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
2 cups (more or less) cooked or canned kidney or pinto beans (I used pintos that I soaked then pressure cooked for 20 minutes; I added dried hot peppers and salt before cooking)

Brown the ground beef, then drain off any fat and put it in a crock pot. Heat some olive oil in a small pan and cook the onion (salt it) until it wilts; add the garlic and stir 30 seconds. Add the onion-garlic mixture to the crock pot.

Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, and seasonings to the crock pot and give the mixture a good stir. Cover and cook on low about 6 hours. Add the beans and check the seasoning, adding more spice or salt to your personal taste. Cook until the chile-bean mixture is heated through.

This chile will hold well on low for another hour or more but you might have to add a little water if it gets too thick.

This chile is always good! Not different and unusual, but always welcome for a comfort-food dinner. We usually put cheese and onions on it and serve it with warmed flour tortillas.

I added some Mexican oregano and some of these dried chiles to this pot of chile:

And here are the Chili Queens at the Chili Cookoff!

Photo credit to J. O’Brien, downloaded from Facebook.

250 Cookbooks: Hershey’s Chocolate Recipe Collection

Posted on October 23, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #85: Hershey’s Chocolate Recipe Collection, Hershey Foods Corporation, USA, 1989.

This is a pamphlet with 96 chocolate recipes, each on a “card” that can be torn out of the book along the perforations. The booklet doesn’t have an introduction; the last page gives some tips for handling chocolate. This was one of my Mother’s cookbooklets. She didn’t mark any recipe, nor did she tear one out.

That’s it, short and simple.

I love chocolate and though I have decided to recycle this cookbooklet, some of the recipes do tempt me. But not the ones that rely on cake or muffin mixes or purchased pie shells, just the from-scratch recipes. I note a couple recipes that incorporate ideas I came up with on my own over the years, like putting chocolate chips in muffins and quick breads. Yum, this one sounds good: Mini Chips Blueberry Bread. Chocolate Cherry Upside-down Cake would be lovely. Marble Cheesecake, a delicious combination of chocolate and cheesecake. And Chocolate Mousse Pie (with rum cream topping). And the chocolate waffles.

Sigh. If calories were not an issue . . .

Ah, but I have a solution! Lately I have started baking mini-desserts for the two of us. That way, no leftovers! Serendipity brought me to this innovation. First, the Lyons flood in September 2013. I became involved with Lyons recovery efforts, including shopping support at our local businesses, and I discovered Lyons Buttonrock Bakery. I took to buying one of their small fancy desserts – tiramisu, tarts, flourless chocolate cake, eclairs – to split with my husband for Saturday night desserts. One of our favorites is their cheesecake. Ever the cook, I then wanted to make my own two-person cheesecakes.

I found a couple small springform pans in a local store and went in search of a recipe. Online I found a recipe for a 4.5-inch cheesecake on this great site: Dessert For Two. Her Cheesecake with Honey-ed Peaches is fantastic!

So I decide to make Marble Cheesecake from the Hershey’s Chocolate Recipe Collection, downsizing the recipe to 4.5-inch pans to make “dessert for two”. I’ll need to modify both the batter amount and the baking time – I’ll use the Cheesecake with Honey-ed Peaches recipe as a guideline.

Below is my modified version. I have two 4.5-inch springform pans, so I plan make two small cheesecakes, one for Saturday and one for Sunday.

Marble Cheesecakes in Mini-pans
this recipe makes enough dessert for two people for two nights

Chocolate Crumb Crust (recipe follows)
12 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar, divided
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla, divided
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil

Chocolate Crumb Crust

1/2 cup crushed vanilla wafers (about 15 cookies)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons butter, melted (1 ounce)

First, make the crust, since it needs to bake and cool before you fill it. Heat the oven to 450˚. Crush the vanilla wafers and combine with the sugar, cocoa, and butter. Press the mixture firmly onto the bottom and a little up the sides of 2 (or 3, see my notes below) of 4.5-inch springform pans. Bake for 8 minutes and then let them cool.

Lower the oven to 300˚.

In a mixer, combine the cream cheese, 3/8 cup sugar, sour cream, and 1 teaspoon vanilla, beat until smooth. Add the flour and eggs and beat well, but don’t go crazy and overbeat it because that can cause the cheesecake to crack when it bakes.

Remove about 3/4 cup of the batter to a small bowl. Mix the 2 tablespoons cocoa with 2 tablespoons sugar, then add to the batter in the small bowl along with the oil and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla.

Spoon dollops of the plain and chocolate batters alternately into the pie crusts, ending with the chocolate batter. Swirl gently with a knife to marble the batters. Swirl enough to get any bubbles out of the batter, but do not overswirl or it will not be marbled.

Place the cheesecake pans on a baking sheet and bake at 300˚ for 40 minutes, until the center is “slightly jiggly but not wet when you lightly touch it.” Leave the cheesecake in the oven after the 40 minute baking period, but turn the oven off and prop open the door. After 30 minutes, move the cheesecake to a wire rack on the countertop and let cool another 30 minutes. Then, run a knife around the edges of the pans, loosen and remove the outside rings of the pans, cover the cheesecakes with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 5 hours.

Comments

Here are my crust ingredients. The melted butter is in the red bowl. I used real Hershey’s cocoa, although I usually keep a fancier version in my pantry as well.

The next photo is a few steps later, after the crust is baked and the filling loaded into the springform pans. The two pans already look too full, in my judgement, and I still have more batter left. I put the extra batter in a small ramekin and baked it along with the filled springform pans. From my calculations, it shouldn’t have been too much batter, but it was.

I was not at all surprised to find that the cheesecakes had cracked when I peeked at them after the 40 minute baking period. At first they were really tall; by the time they had cooled, they had fallen a bit. But you can still see the cracks clearly in the photo below.

In spite of the cracks, these taste delicious! Yum and yum again! Half of one of these left me wanting more – more! I dripped a small amount of chocolate sauce and put a couple halved-raspberries on each to dress them up a bit. My husband’s comment: “These could have come from Buttonrock!”

I definitely will make these again. To keep them from cracking, I will try a couple things next time. Obviously – despite my calculations – there was too much batter to fit into two small pans. Next time I will use three 4.5-inch pans. Also, I forgot to put the springform pans on a baking sheet in the oven. Maybe that will help. I look forward to experimenting again with Marble Cheesecakes in Mini-pans.

Favorites: Pearl Balls

Posted on October 15, 2014 by admin

“Pearl Balls” are pork meat balls, seasoned with ginger and soy sauce, rolled in soaked rice, and then steamed. I forget when I first discovered these treats, but I always go back to my 1968 The Cooking of China Time-Life Books cookbook when I get a hankering for these. (I have admitted here before that I love meat balls so my current hankering isn’t out of character.)

The recipe below is adapted for my tastes. I believe the fresh ginger and water chestnuts to be essential in Pearl Balls, and I buy the best quality ground pork that I can find. These can be used as appetizers or to round out a Chinese-style meal.

Pearl Balls
serves about 4 as part of a Chinese-style meal

1/2 cup rice, preferably a glutinous or starchy rice like a sushi rice
1 pound ground pork
1/2 cup finely chopped water chestnuts
1 green onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped mushrooms (use fresh white or shitake mushrooms, or reconstituted dried shitake mushrooms)
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1-2 tablespoons soy sauce
3/4 teaspoon salt (adjust this amount to your own taste)
1 lightly beaten egg

Start the rice soaking in a cup of water before you begin the Pearl Balls. About an hour’s soak is enough.

Combine the pork with the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Form the mixture into 1-inch meat balls.

Drain the soaked rice through a strainer and lay it out on a paper towel. Roll one pork ball at a time in the rice, pressing down gently but firmly as you roll so that the rice grains adhere to the meat.

Steam the pork balls for about 30 minutes. I use an electric steamer; a bamboo steamer set in a wok also works.

Serve at once! (Although, I enjoyed one of these cold out of the refrigerator the next day.)

Preparing the Pearl Balls:

Cooked Pearl Balls along with Egg Rolls in Phyllo Dough: