250 Cookbooks: The Wide World of Fillo

Posted on October 10, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #84: The Wide World of Fillo, Athens Foods, Cleveland Ohio, 1980.

I shake my head at myself. Why did I call this little pamphlet a “cookbook”? It’s only 5.5x4x.12 inches. But I did, back when working on my cookbook database from 2006-2012, leading to my “250 Cookbooks”. So I have to stick with it. A bit obsessive. (I am reading 600 Hours of Edward. Edward is afflicted with OCD and each morning when he wakes up, he records the time [usually 7:38 am] and totals and writes down the number of days in that year that he has woken up at the same time. I totally get it. I get up each morning at exactly the same time. I am involved with databases.)

Small as it is, this pamphlet has about 50 recipes using fillo dough and helpful instructions for working with this thin pastry.

“Fillo” is usually spelled “phyllo” or “filo”. Phyllo is a wheat dough stretched into paper-thin sheets. Wikipedia: “The practice of stretching raw dough into paper-thin sheets probably evolved in the kitchens of the Topkapı Palace”. Hey, I’ve been there! The Topkapi Palace is in Istanbul, Turkey. We visited it in 2013. During our stay in Turkey, we often enjoyed phyllo savory entrees and sweet desserts.

I have stayed away from phyllo dough recipes, thinking them fraught with calories, because you brush butter between the layers of dough before you bake it. But the introduction to The Wide World of Fillo claims that only 2 tablespoons of butter is used per sheet of pastry, resulting in a dish that is “much lower in calories” than comparable fried dishes. I’m still not convinced that this is true. It’s hard to estimate how many calories are added when deep frying. But I don’t enjoy deep frying – too much splattering. An alternative is welcome.

Although phyllo is traditionally used in Mediterranean dishes, this cookbook shows how it can be used in Asian, Mexican, and American cooking. I decide to try a recipe for an Asian food that I usually deep fry: egg rolls. I have tried – with little success – baking egg rolls wrapped in traditional egg roll skins. I did successfully make egg roll crepes in this blog. Maybe phyllo egg rolls will be another alternative to deep frying. (Though it seems weird using an Ottoman cooking method to make a Chinese dish.)

Note that the directions in the above recipe do not tell you when to add the soy sauce. I’ll add at the very end of the stir-fry cooking.

The pamphlet gives the following instructions for forming rolls from a sheet of phyllo dough:

Egg Rolls in Phyllo Dough
makes about a dozen small rolls

Feel free to swap up any ingredients in this recipe. The amounts stated yield about a dozen rolls. You can use any vegetables you have on hand, and include pork or shrimp or any other meat. Consider the recipe below a rough guide.

1/2 cup finely chopped celery
3/4 cup shredded cabbage
1/4 cup shredded carrot
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms (shitake or button or whatever)
4 green onions, finely chopped
1/2 cup diced shrimp
1/2 cup cooked ground pork or diced cooked port
1/2 cup finely chopped water chestnuts
1/2 cup chopped bean sprouts
1 minced clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon sugar
about 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (you could use dried ginger instead)
2-4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch (optional)
about 4-6 phyllo single sheets
melted butter (start with half a cube)

Stir-fry the celery, cabbage, mushrooms, carrots, and green onions in a little hot oil for a minute or two. Add the shrimp and pork and stir-fry just until the shrimp is done. Add the water chestnuts, bean sprouts, ginger, garlic, and sugar. Add soy sauce to taste (and cornstarch if you want) and stir-fry until heated through. Cool to room temperature.

Lay out a sheet of phyllo pastry. I suggest laying the phyllo-sheet-rectangle out with a long side facing you, then making two vertical cuts to cut it into three pieces (see photos). Brush one of the third-sheets with butter, then place about a quarter cup of the filling just above the bottom edge, on the edge closest to you. Fold in the sides and roll up, or simply roll up. Place the roll on a parchment-lined half sheet pan and brush the top with butter.

I had a bit of trouble with the dough breaking, before and during the rolling process. The pamphlet suggests keeping the pastry sheets covered with a wet towel whenever you are not actively rolling it. That was hard to do! See my photos (below).

Bake at 375˚ for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown.

The egg rolls are golden brown and deliciously flaky. The filling is perfect. And those little rice covered balls? Those are my Pearl Balls.

Comments

These were delicious! They were still a pain to fill and roll up, though. That’s partly because I’m not real patient. As the book states, you should carefully remove a sheet and then constantly keep the dough covered with a wet paper towel. It dries out very quickly. And the dough sheets are so very delicate they want to tear if you just look at them.

I will advise you that it can take a while to gather and chop all the ingredients. Granted, I was making Pearl Balls at the same time, but you can see my efforts in the piles of ingredients below:

Here is the great stir-fried filling:

I was trying to take photos and butter dough sheets and fill pastries and deal with a couple total rolling failures all at once. I am sure I got a bit of butter on my camera. Anyway. In the photo below, I cut a piece of dough lengthwise into two pieces, then buttered them. Then I put about 4 tablespoons of filling above the bottom edge.

In the next photo, I have folded in the sides of one of the pastry strips and will next roll up the dough.

Failure! When I tried to roll up the left-hand one, above, it fell apart! The filling sogged out the bottom dough and it ended up a ball of pastry pieces and filling. What a mess. (Next time I’ll use a bit of cornstarch in the filling so it isn’t so wet.)

How did I solve the problem and roll up the rest of the egg rolls? I cut the pastry into shorter strips (thirds, cut on the horizontal, see below) and did the rolling process as quickly as possible and eliminated the fold-in-the-sides step. Here is the pastry, buttered, with the filling on the bottom:

From here, I quickly rolled the filled sheet without folding in the sides. It wanted to soak through, but I kept rolling. When done, I cut off the ends.

egg rolls These baked up beautifully (the photo is up above). I would definitely make them again.

The original recipe said to use a pound of phyllo dough; I only used 4 sheets (plus the couple I ruined) which is only about a fifth of a pound. (I do like this larger filling-to-dough ratio.) I used about a quarter cup of butter, so that is about 400 calories total, or an addition of 35 calories per egg roll. I think if you are careful and neat, you could probably use even less butter. So maybe these are a lower-calorie alternative to deep-fried egg rolls. They sure are good.

Will I keep this tiny cookbook? I guess I will. It has good instructions for using phyllo dough and I might try another of the recipes someday.

250 Cookbooks: Healthy Home-Style Cooking

Posted on October 2, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #83: Healthy Home-Style Cooking, Classic Pillsbury Cookbook, The Pillsbury Company, 1989.

This pamphlet-cookbook offers “a contemporary healthful approach to light, sensible and delicious eating.” I can imagine myself 25 years ago, hungry, dieting, waiting in the supermarket check-out line, paging through this cookbook and seeing a few ideas for light meals or desserts.

Most recipes in this cookbook shave off calories by employing low-calorie butter or low-fat milk products. Portion sizes are very small. For instance, Choco-Lite Brownies are only 70 calories each, but that’s because an 8-inch square pan of brownies is cut into 24 pieces. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables are used in these recipes, as well as whole grains. That’s good.

Today I don’t find much inspiration in the recipes in this cookbook, so I will recycle it. For this blog, I decide to make the “Whole Grain Yeast Waffles” and “Strawberry Syrup”. Oddly enough, this recipe is in the Lively Main Dishes and Light Meals chapter. The lead-in to the recipe says “the batter can be made in advance to make hectic morning breakfasts a snap!” Guess since you make them at night, they are listed with main dishes. Hmm.

I have been making a similar yeast-leavened waffle for years; it differs a bit in that it uses fresh milk, no cinnamon, and only all-purpose flour. I like the idea of whole wheat flour in waffles, so I’ll try this new version. And strawberry syrup – I’ll make that too! What a treat this will be for a Wednesday morning.

Whole Grain Yeast Waffles
makes 8-12 waffles

1 tablespoon yeast
1 cup water
3 tablespoons sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup instant milk
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (I used a bit more)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs

Mix the yeast, water, and sugar and let stand a few minutes. Meanwhile, stir together the flours, instant milk, cinnamon, and salt. Beat the eggs lightly, add the oil and vanilla, then stir into the flour mixture along with the yeast-sugar-water mixture. Mix until well-blended.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Cook the next morning in a waffle iron. My batter was a bit thick for my waffle iron, so I thinned it with a bit of milk.

Strawberry Syrup
makes a little over a cup of syrup

16 ounce package frozen strawberries
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup

Put the frozen strawberries in a large bowl and microwave on high for about 10 minutes, stirring every few minutes. The strawberries will come to a boil and soften.

Let the berries cook a bit, then strain through cheese cloth or a chinois. Keep pressing the strawberries through the strainer with the back of a spoon. This takes awhile! You should get about a cup of juice.

Put the strawberry juice in a pan and add the sugar and corn syrup. Bring to a boil and boil one minute. If you prefer, you can put the berry-sugar-corn syrup mixture in a medium bowl and microwave about 4 minutes (until it comes to a boil) and then microwave one more minute.

Here’s my first waffle with strawberry syrup. I couldn’t wait – I took a bite before I crossed the kitchen to the table!
Comments

The waffles were very good, wheat-y and hearty. And they were easy: no mixing in the morning, just quick waffles. I made them a bit thicker, because the batter only yielded 8 waffles. That makes them 225 calories each.

The strawberry syrup – the strawberry syrup! My thick syrup tasted just like very good strawberry jam. It was great on waffles, and I would love it on ice cream.

A couple drawbacks to this syrup. It took some time to strain and made a total mess of a lot of utensils:

As I stated in my version of this recipe (above), I cooked the syrup in a pan instead of the microwave. Isn’t it lovely?

The other drawback to this syrup? It is high in calories. The nutrition information for this recipe states: “Variables in this recipe make it impossible to calculate nutrition information.” That’s weird. I went online to Nutrient Facts and found the calorie content of sugar and corn syrup, and used the calories on the bag of strawberries to calculate that the full batch of syrup has about 1200 calories, and considering my volume, that’s about 75 calories per tablespoon. And I used more than one tablespoon. It is so good I could lap this stuff up.

I haven’t used corn syrup in ages. I was a bit concerned that it contained high-fructose corn syrup, but no, it says right on the package, “no high-fructose corn syrup”.

So the waffles and the syrup are great, but that’s because they are not exactly low-calorie. The cookbook failed me as a low-calorie source, but did not fail to give me a tasty and nutritious meal.

250 Cookbooks: Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

Posted on September 26, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #82: Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, Meredith Press, NY, Des Moines, 1968.

This is one of my mother’s basic cookbooks. By “basic cookbook” I mean it is the type of cookbook that encompasses all types of recipes and can serve as one of a cook’s core references. For instance, if you want to know how long and hot to cook a roast, or a fruit pie, or a vegetable, the answer is in this book. Such cookbooks tend to be less trendy than what I think of as specialty cookbooks. And, these cookbooks tend to remain useful over the decades.

1968: the publication date of Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I graduated from high school in 1967. Thus my mother did not use this cookbook as a reference when I was a young child at home. But, the recipes certainly reflect the type of cooking I grew up on in my mother’s kitchen. Casseroles and one-dish meals, including chili con carne, enchiladas, macaroni and cheese, chicken divan, tuna casserole, hamburger pie, and goulash. Salads for a group, including frosted cheese mold, waldorf salad, coleslaw, five-bean salad, potato salad, ambrosia, and cran-raspberry ring. Other chapters include appetizers, barbecues, breads, cakes, candies, canning, desserts, meats, poultry and fish, soups, and vegetables.

Mother marked several recipes in this book, including Potato Rolls (yeast rolls with mashed potatoes), Herbed Chicken Bake (wild rice, mushrooms, cream of chicken soup, pimientos), and Italian Salad Bowl (lettuce with raw vegetables, Italian dressing, and blue cheese). These recipes are similar to favorites of mine that I discovered on my own from other sources. But for me, the two treasures in this book are the peach and cherry pie recipes. These are her reference – her “work-in-progress” – recipes. On each she wrote notes as to how she made the pie and how to change it next time. What tickles me is that she and I both came up with the same baking method for a peach pie – 425˚ oven for 15 minutes and then 350˚ for 30 minutes – rather than the reference directions of 400˚ for 45-50 minutes. Guess I am my mother’s daughter!

Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book is a ring-bound cookbook: the pages are loose-leaf, it opens flat, and you can remove and add recipe pages to it. Indeed, my mother cut a few pre-punched recipes from the Better Homes and Gardens monthly magazine and added them to the appropriate chapters in this cookbook. A nice idea to keep a cookbook current, but in reality, it kind of makes it messy.

I decide to make “Deviled Swiss Steak”. Swiss steak and salisbury steaks were popular ways to cook beef when I was in elementary school.

Steak. And elementary school. That brings back a memory. I was in first grade, at Vinedale Elementary School in Sun Valley, California. The Art Linkletter Show “Kids Say the Darndest Things” chose me (me!) to go on TV. The show’s crew interviewed me and the other little kids for the episode just before we went on live TV. They asked us what our favorite food was, then we were supposed to combine that food with the name of our principal to re-name our elementary school. Well my favorite food was chicken. But some other little kid had already chosen chicken, so I had to choose steak (I didn’t like steak then, found it too chewy). The principal of our school was Mrs. Salisbury. So they had me say:

My school is “Mrs. Salisbury Steak School”.

I didn’t understand what I had said until years later. They tricked me into saying something I would never have come up with on my own. Ah, show business. So honest, so real.

Back to 2014 and the recipe for Deviled Swiss Steak. It calls for a thick round steak. In my opinion, it’s hard to find good recipes for round steak. It can be tough if cooked quick and to medium rare, and it can be dry and tasteless if braised for a long time. This recipe holds promise because of the flavorful mustard and Worcestershire (Yes! I can spell it), the pounding with a mallet, and the gravy that should result after a long cook time.

I decide to use my old cast iron pan to cook this Swiss steak recipe. It has a very heavy lid, and it’s hard to beat cast iron for braising. Cast iron pans are nearly indestructible (as opposed to my easy to clean but finicky non-stick cookware). I’ve had my cast iron pan since the 70s.

I made a couple changes in the Deviled Swiss Steak recipe as I went along; below is my version of Swiss Steak.

Swiss Steak
serves 3-4 but easily scales up

1 1/2 pound round steak, 1-1 1/2 inch thick
2 tablespoons flour
3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
salt and pepper
vegetable oil for frying
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
water (as needed, start with 1/2 cup)
mushrooms, about 1/2 cup sliced

Combine the flour and dry mustard. Salt and pepper the round steak, then sprinkle half the flour mixture on top and pound with a mallet; turn over and sprinkle the rest of the flour on the other side and pound again. (This is fun!)

Heat a big heavy pan (choose one that has a close-fitting lid) and add enough oil to coat the bottom. Brown the steak on both sides.

Combine the Worcestershire sauce with a half-cup water, pour carefully onto the steak, stir up a little, then cover and turn the burner to a low setting. Cook for 1 1/2 – 2 hours. Check occasionally and add water as necessary. It’s done when the meat is tender.

Remove the meat from the pan. Scrape the pan juices and heat, adding water until there is about a cup of gravy in the pan. I wanted the gravy thicker, so I rubbed a tablespoon flour into a tablespoon of butter, dropped it in small pieces into the pan gravy, and stirred while heating until it was the thickness I wanted. Add fresh (raw) sliced mushrooms to the gravy and heat just until the mushrooms are done.

Slice the meat and serve with the mushroom-pan gravy. I found there was not enough gravy to serve this dish over rice or noodles, so instead I made twice-baked potatoes.

Comments

This Swiss Steak was good, we both liked it. Not a “stellar” dinner, but a good, tasty, homey, and inexpensive weeknight meal.

Here are my ingredients:

My round steak has a lot less fat than the one in the photo printed in the cookbook. Look at my mallet! I was my mother’s and I think it’s cool. And I like my old cast iron pan too.

Below is the floured-pounded steak browning in the skillet.

The steak cooking (above) is not very pretty. But look at the mushrooms cooking in the gravy!

I consider this meal a success. And I’ll keep the cookbook, not only for sentimentality, but because I marked several recipes to try.

250 Cookbooks: The Tassajara Bread Book

Posted on September 19, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #81: The Tassajara Bread Book, Edward Espe Brown, Time-Life Books Inc., Shambala Publications, Inc., Berkeley, CA, 1970.

“Bread makes itself, by your kindness, with your help, with imagination running through you, with dough under hand, you are breadmaking itself, which is why breadmaking is so fulfilling and rewarding.

“A recipe doesn’t belong to anyone. Given to me, I give it to you. Only a guide, only a skeletal framework. You must fill in the flesh according to your nature and desire. Your life, your love will bring these words into full creation. This cannot be taught. You already know. So please, cook, love, feel, create.”

-Edward Brown, preface to The Tassajara Bread Book.

A forgotten gem! The Tassajara Bread Book speaks more to me today than when I bought it (used) sometime in the 70s. I have made thousands of loaves of bread since I last looked at this book, have used countless other cookbooks, and still I can learn from Edward Brown’s recipes.

Or more appropriately, his “guidelines”. He offers a basic yeast bread recipe and then encourages the reader to improvise. This is right up my alley. I love to bake bread and I like to experiment with new ingredients. I believe that anyone who wants to make bread will become good at it. If you are new to breadmaking, get a book like The Tassajara Bread book, and go into your kitchen and settle in. Play with flours and grains and methods. Feel the dough beneath your hands. Experience the smell of fresh bread. Each loaf will be a new experiment, a unique creation, a learning experience. Yes you will have some failures. And yes, baking bread will tie you off and on to the kitchen for hours, mixing and kneading and waiting and punching down and waiting again and baking and smelling the aroma and taking a golden loaf out of the oven.

But it’s worth it. I agree with Tassajara, breadmaking is time well spent for your body and soul.

I admit that today I use shortcuts when I bake bread. I use a breadmaker to knead some doughs and I make no-knead breads that are simply mixed and left on the counter top overnight. Still, either way ii takes time to make bread and it takes some experience to know when a kneaded loaf is ready to bake. You have to get your hands in there and feel the dough to know when it’s right.

I shared the feel of kneaded dough with my 8 month old grandson last week, let him push all ten fingers into the dough, let him feel the sensation . . . his intense eyes on his hands . . . the imprint of his hands in the soft loaf.

Edward Espe Brown came to Tassajara, a resort in a valley in Monterey County, California, in 1966. At that time, Tassajara was a health spa, or as he describes it, an “exotic far-out place to imbibe liquor.” Brown washed dishes, learned to make bread and soups, and scrubbed the floors. When one of the cooks quit, he was offered the chef’s job, and in his words he “jumped right in over my head”. Later that year the resort was sold to the Zen Center of San Francisco and it became the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen center established outside Asia. Brown continued cooking at the Zen center and became a Zen priest in 1971. Later he helped found the Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, a landmark vegetarian restaurant. Today he lives in California and continues to teach baking and meditation to countless new students. He updated the Tassajara Bread Book in 2011 and according to Amazon reviews, this book is still highly popular.

Brown touts the benefits of the “sponge method” for preparing yeast breads. A sponge is a mixture of water, yeast, and sweetener to which is added enough flour to make a thick and wet dough. This sponge is left to rise about an hour. This helps form the gluten which gives bread its stretchability, its soft and pliable texture.

Why the sponge method? Because the very wet sponge-dough promotes the formation of gluten. The next step is to add more flour (and salt and oil) and knead it to a smooth loaf. The sponge step cuts down on the time the dough needs to be kneaded. I learned the technique of employing very wet doughs to develop the gluten when I learned how to make no-knead breads, but don’t normally combine wet-dough and kneading to form gluten.

About half the book covers yeast breads, with first a full explanation of the general method and then 17 variations. Included are yeast loaves, rolls, fruited breads, and pastries. Unyeasted breads, quick breads, muffins, pancakes, and desserts make up the rest of the book. Whole wheat flour is the main ingredient in most recipes. The ingredients rye, corn, millet, barley, rice, oats and buckwheat are also encouraged. Sweeteners range from sugar to molasses to honey.

I have always thought of my Tassajara cookbook as “one of those vegetarian cookbooks”, although it does not specifically promote a vegetarian diet. A web search reveals Edward Brown is, indeed, a vegetarian: he helped establish the vegetarian restaurant, Greens, and is a Buddhist priest (Buddhist cuisine is vegan or vegetarian). Thus I was curious to read the note on the recipe for “Apple Crisp” which reads “From the days of Tassajara barbecues – tossed salad, half chickens, pork ribs, French bread, baked potatoes, green beans, corn-on-the-cob, red and white wine.” Nice that he is not preachy.

The Tassajara Bread Book a delight to read. Just like my favorite food blogger Molly, Brown encourages the reader to do “whatever you like” and to enjoy. Throughout are comments like the one in the above paragraph that make the book friendly and personal. I smile with each turn of the page.

I decide to try Banana Sandwich Bread, one of the 17 variations of Tassajara yeasted bread.

This makes 4 large loaves, and it’s just my hubby and me again (they took that cute grandson away!) so I decide to bake a quarter of the recipe. I don’t have an orange in the house, so I’ll have to skip that ingredient. I meant – I MEANT! – to hand-knead this bread, but after a couple turns of the dough I tossed it into the breadmaker. I sort of skipped reading “unbleached flour” in the original recipe, and instead I used almost solely white whole wheat flour (plus a little vital wheat gluten flour). My version is below.

One more quick comment. Brown describes how to make yeast breads on pages 19-35 of The Tassajara Bread Book. I highly recommend novices and experts alike to read or re-read this section. Forty years old, but this cook book is still current because the basics of making yeast bread never change.

Banana Whole Wheat Yeast Loaf
makes one 9×5-inch loaf

Sponge:

one egg, one banana, then enough water to make the volume 1 1/2 cups
1/2 tablespoon yeast
2 tablespoons honey (1 1/2 ounces)
1/2 cup dry milk
1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
1/4 cup gluten flour

Put the egg, banana, and a little water in a blender or food processor until the banana is mashed; then pour into a measuring cup and make the volume 1 1/2 cups with water. Pour into a large bowl and add the yeast, honey, and dry milk. Begin adding the flours, a little at at time, with stirring. When all of the flour has been added, the mixture will be thick but still beatable, kind of like mud. Continue to beat about 100 times until the batter is very smooth. Cover the bowl lightly and let rise about an hour.

Bread:

sponge (above)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons oil (1 ounce)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/4 – 1 1/2 cup white wheat flour

Fold the salt, cinnamon and oil into the sponge, then add the all purpose flour and mix in. Add the white wheat flour a little at a time, folding in until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.

At this point, hand-knead until the loaf is smooth, probably 10-15 minutes. Set in a greased bowl, covered, in a warm place until double in bulk.

Or, put it in a breadmaker set to a dough cycle that both kneads and rises the dough.

Punch down the risen dough and form into a loaf that will fit into a 9×5-inch loaf pan. Let it rise just until it’s a good half-inch above the sides of the pan.

Bake at 385˚ for 30 minutes.

Isn’t it a gorgeous brown color? That’s largely due to the honey. This loaf is not as dense as most nearly 100% whole wheat breads. I like to think that the sponge method helped give it a good density and texture (or was it the banana?).

I was kind of disappointed that this bread did not have a huge banana flavor. Still, I would make it again! It made great toast and peanut butter sandwiches!

250 Cookbooks: Mrs. Fields Cookie Book

Posted on August 25, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #80: Mrs. Fields Cookie Book, Debbi Fields, Time-Life Books Inc., Alexandria, Virginia, 1992.

I went through a Mrs. Fields® cookie phase, like many Americans! I got this cookbook for myself, and have often drooled over the recipes.

Debbi Fields opened her first cookie store in Palo Alto in 1977. A store just for cookies was a new concept at the time. And it took off, as today there are many Mrs. Fields® franchises, and you can purchase them online.

The recipes are all excellent, the photos and layout great, and Debbi Fields presents a friendly introduction. I tried several of the recipes over the years, but kept the cookbook nice and clean.

I had no trouble finding a recipe to try. I note that most of the drop cookies are baked at 300˚ for about 20 minutes. Most of my personal cookie recipes call for a 375˚ oven for about 10 minutes. Mrs. Fields® recipes call for butter (not margarine) and are all from-scratch. In the introduction, Debbi states that the recipes call for “ingredients you have on hand.” Yeah, if you keep lots of different kinds of chocolate and vanilla chips on hand!

I decided to try “Sweetie Pies”.

I made them pretty much like the above recipe, just changing the ratios of the different types of chocolate chips and adding a bit more flour.

Sweetie Pies, a Mrs. Fields® cookie recipe, with slight variations

2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup salted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour (plus 2 tablespoons if necessary)
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

Melt the unsweetened chocolate with 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, either in a double boiler or in the microwave.

Beat the butter with the melted chocolate, then add the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Beat until well blended.

Add the flour and the three types of chocolate chips. Mix at low speed just until combined.

At this point, the original recipe says to “roll a heaping tablespoon of dough into a ball, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.” Well, my dough was wet and sticky, so I added another 2 tablespoons flour and tried again. Still too sticky. So, I just dropped the dough onto parchment-lined half-sheet pans, then slightly flattened each cookie.

Bake at 375˚ for 10 minutes.

These were delicious! It made almost exactly 2 1/2 dozen, as stated in the original recipe. But if I had made them using 1 1/2 inch balls of dough, my guess is that it would have made a lot less.

The reason I used more milk chocolate chips than called for is because I wanted more of a milk chocolate taste. I had to purchase these (and the white chocolate chips) specifically for this recipe and now I am left with partial bags of all three types of chips. Guess I’ll have to make these cookies again!

250 Cookbooks: All-Time Favorite Pies

Posted on August 19, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #79: All-Time Favorite Pies, Better Homes and Gardens, Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, Iowa, 1983.

Pies. I love pies but rarely make them because of the calories – I take my baking urges and use them to make breads instead. When I do make a pie, it’s usually a fruit pie made sans recipe, or a pie from the large collection of pie recipes on my mother’s index cards.

This cookbook has no markings in it, and I don’t know how it came to be on my bookshelves. Perhaps I bought it for myself in a moment of pie-longing. A whole clump of pages has come loose from the binding, but there are no food stains in this cookbook.

This week, though, I have and excuse to make a pie. My daughter and her family are visiting!

I open All-Time Favorite Pies and page through. The first recipe I see is the one I want to make! “Apple Crumble Pie” is sort of a French-style pie with a pastry crust, lots of apples, and then a seasoned crumb topping instead of a top pastry crust. I’ve never made an apple pie exactly like this, and it’s my choice for this blog.

But that’s not the only recipe I like in this cookbook. Cherry-Almond Tarts, Coconut Cream Pie, Fresh Fruit Tarts, Layered Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, and Fudge Chiffon Pie all look fun to try. All the recipes in this cookbook are they are from-scratch, always my preference. A few recipes call for canned fruits or a flavored jello, but that’s the furthest they get from “scratch”. This cookbook even includes a recipe for homemade mincemeat!

For the Apple Crumble Pie, I will need to make a pie crust. All-Time Favorite Pies offers a flour-shortening crust recipe, which is almost exactly the recipe I learned make in my mother’s kitchen. But I recently adopted a new pie crust recipe. That’s the one I’ll use in my version of Apple Crumble Pie. I also upped the amounts of cinnamon and ginger and substituted nutmeg for mace (because my little tin of mace was at least 10 years old!).

Below is my version of Apple Crumble Pie.

Apple Crumble Pie

pastry for single-crust pie (use your own, or use mine)
1 cup sugar, divided (1/2 cup for apples, 1/2 cup for crumble)
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 cups peeled and thinly sliced apples – I weighed out 2 pounds of whole apples and after peeling and slicing, it was indeed 6 cups
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, divided (3/4 teaspoon for apples, 3/4 teaspoon for crumble)
3/4 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (preferably freshly grated)
1/4 cup butter

Roll out the pie crust pastry and fit it into a 9-inch pie pan. Trim and flute the edges.

Combine the apples with 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, grated lemon peel, lemon juice, and 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon. Let the mixture stand in a bowl for a few minutes to macerate the apples.

Combine the 1/2 cup flour with 1/2 cup sugar and 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon and the ginger and nutmeg. Using a pastry cutter or even a food processor, cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly.

Put the apples in the pie crust, then sprinkle the crumb mixture over the top.

Bake at 375˚ about an hour, until it is nice and brown.

Verdict: This pie is a hit! I served it with homemade vanilla custard ice cream. I loved the hint of lemon in the pie. This apple pie is absolutely yummy.

I did not cover the edge of the pie to prevent the crust from over-browning, as suggested in the original recipe. You can see in the photo that it is not too brown. Whew, I was glad I didn’t have to go to that extra step.

Favorites: Pie Crust

Posted on August 19, 2014 by admin

The pie crust recipe that I used for years came from my mother. Hers was always perfect. Mine always tasted great, but was always difficult for me to roll out without tearing. I just lack a certain patience, I guess (well, I know). I kept using her recipe out of – well, maybe a bit of loyalty, or an acceptance that they did taste very good in spite of their looks, or maybe a laziness to find a new recipe that worked for me.

My mother’s recipe for a single pie crust is:

1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup Crisco
2 tablespoons water

You mix the flour and salt then cut in the shortening using a pastry blender, sprinkle in enough water so that the dough just holds together, form into a ball, and roll out on a floured cloth. For a double crust, you mix the water with some of the flour first instead of sprinkling it in.

My well-used recipe card. I typed the crust recipe onto a 3×5 rectangle of colored paper when I left my parent’s home.

The above recipe is almost exactly the same as the recipe in All-Time Favorite Pies. That one uses a bit more flour and water, but is still a flour-salt-shortening-water pie crust recipe.

I never looked forward to making pie crust, it was more like planning for an upcoming battle.

Finally, I decided to take on the project of finding a new pie crust recipe. I searched the web for recipes and advice, and tried several different recipes, came on one that worked for me, then nudged the method until I was satisfied with the results. I make about 4 pies a year, so it took me a few years to come up with my final version!

My recipe is heavily based on one I found on Cook’s Illustrated, under the auspices of America’s Test Kitchen (and Christopher Kimball). Their recipe title is “Foolproof Pie Dough for a Single-Crust Pie” (dated 2007). I don’t want to step on any copyright toes, and give full credit for the development of this crust to Cook’s Illustrated! My version below just gives a couple nudges that help me make this dough perfect each and every time I use it.

The trick to this recipe is: Vodka!

Pie Crust
makes more than enough for a 9-inch crust

Note: this recipe can be doubled or fractionated – I have tried both variations with success. The amounts below make more than enough dough for a single crust, but that’s kind of nice because it gives some leeway for impatient dough-rollers. Or, take the extra dough, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, roll up, and bake 10 minutes at 375˚ for little treats. (That’s what my mother always let us do!)

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt (warning! if you do not use unsalted butter, you must use less salt!)
1 tablespoon sugar
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1/4 cup cold Crisco (aka vegetable shortening), cut into 2-4 pieces (it’s gooey even cold, so “cutting” isn’t really the proper term here)
2 tablespoons cold vodka (hey, just store some vodka in the freezer at all times!)
2 tablespoons cold water (I put a few ice cubes in water for a few minutes, then measure the 2 tablespoons)

Get out your food processor. If you don’t have one, use a pastry blender or two knives instead. But the food processor really, really helps. I have never tried this crust without using a food processor.

Put 3/4 cup of the flour and all of the salt and sugar in in food processor and pulse a couple times just to mix.

Add all of the butter and vegetable shortening. Process for 10 seconds and check. It should look like “cottage cheese curds” and there should be “no uncoated flour”. If it is not yet to the cottage cheese point, pulse one or two times and re-check. In my experience, largish chunks of butter remaining in this dough are okay. It’s better to under-process than to over-process.

Open the food processor and scrape down the sides of the processor bowl. Add the remaining 1/2 cup flour and quickly pulse 4-6 times.

Remove the dough from the food processor and dump it into a regular bowl.

Mix the vodka and water. (Keep in mind that you might not need all of this vodka-water mixture.)

Sprinkle most of the vodka-water mixture over the dough. Using a rubber spatula, press the dough together until it sticks together and is “tacky”.

The exact amount of “tackiness” after the vodka/water is added isn’t terribly precise. The times I’ve tried this, it definitely wasn’t sloppy, and each time had a different degree of “holding together” when pressed against the sides of the bowl. Somewhere between sloppy and falling apart is best. Add the vodka/water slowly and if you add it all and still need more wetness, go with straight vodka. You want it to hold together so it will roll out easily, but too sloppy a dough creates a less-tender crust.

If you are a seasoned pie crust maker and the tacky mixture just seems too wet, know (from this chemist) that the vodka will evaporate and by the time you roll it out, it will no longer be tacky.

After mixing in the water/vodka, flatten the dough into a 4-inch disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate before rolling.

In my experience, this crust recipe works mixing together the night before, but take it out of the refrigerator an hour before rolling. It also works mixing the day-of, but make sure you put it in the refrigerator a couple hours before rolling.

Roll out on a lightly-floured cloth (like a flour sack cloth). When the crust is large enough to fit the pan, fold the cloth over to fold the dough, then gently transfer to the pie pan and fit and flute. Bake as directed in your pie recipe.

It rolls like a dream! Even I can do it!

I wrote myself a note on my final version of the new recipe: “And so with this, I leave behind Mother’s recipe for Crisco-flour-water-salt crust. That one was always flaky and wonderful, but this one rolls out in a manner more suited to my patience. It looks good, and tastes good. And, can be made ahead of time. And it means I now keep vodka in the freezer!”

Favorites: Beer Can Chicken

Posted on August 13, 2014 by admin

“We are having Beer Can Chicken for dinner.” “What’s that?” my daughter [who has been living abroad] asked.” “Well, you take a whole chicken and put it on a beer can and grill it.” “Do you . . . open the beer can?” “Yes!”

Beer can chicken recipes have been circulating amongst my Colorado friends for several years now. My recipe is based on one posted by the Culinary School of the Rockies (now Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, Boulder) in 2009. I tweaked it a bit, and have made it a lot!

I highly recommend Oskar Blues Old Chub as the beer for this recipe. I’m kind of partial to Oskar Blues, since this brewery started out in my town of Lyons. During the September floods in 2013, Oskar Blues helped our community with grants to businesses and individuals.

Oskar Blues was one of the first breweries to sell their microbrew in cans. Old Chub is a very hoppy IPA, and works great in this recipe.

Beer Can Chicken
serves about 4

1 whole roasting chicken
1 open 12-ounce can of beer, preferably a flavorful microbrew
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon each: garlic powder, onion powder, ground mustard powder, and chili powder
1 teaspoon paprika – use smoked paprika if you have it
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
a couple tablespoons fresh herbs, if you have them on hand; I have used thyme, mint, basil, and oregano
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Rinse the chicken and pat it dry.

Mix the brown sugar with all the spices and herbs. Rub the chicken with some olive oil, then rub in the spices. Rub them in the cavity, under the skin that covers the breast, and on the outside of the chicken.

Preheat a gas grill to 350˚. The chicken needs to be cooked over indirect heat. My grill has 3 burners, so I set the first and third burners to medium high, and leave the middle burner off. Then the chicken has room in the middle to stand up without touching the gas grill cover when it is closed.

Hold the chicken upright (legs down) and place it on top of the beer can so that the can easily slides into the cavity. Use the legs to balance the chicken upright on the grill. (Yes, this can be a bit tricky the first time you do it!)

Close the lid. Grill the chicken at 350˚ for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. With my grill, I find that I need to check every 15 minutes or so to make sure that the grill is still at 350˚. The chicken is done when it is golden and at least 165 degrees.

Transfer the chicken (minus the beer can!) to a platter and serve!

250 Cookbooks: Recipes for Healthy Living

Posted on August 9, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #78: Recipes for Healthy Living, Miriam B. Loo, Current, Inc., Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1980.

Pretty cover on this cookbook! I probably picked it up at a local book or gift store, since it was published in Colorado. I don’t think I have ever tried any of the recipes!

The book begins with several hints for healthy eating. Miriam Loo recommends using fructose instead of regular table sugar because it has fewer calories and tastes sweeter. Miriam likes tamari sauce instead of regular soy sauce because it has a stronger flavor. She also recommends triticale flour. This is a high protein, low gluten flour that was popular in the 80s. It is still available today from companies like Bob’s Red Mill, but I haven’t seen it called for in a bread/baking recipe in ages. And I read a lot of bread recipes!

Another of Miriam’s hints for healthy eating is safflower oil. According to Recipes for Healthy Eating, safflower oil “is the most polyunsaturated of the vegetable oils. Next in diminishing value are soybean, sunflower, corn, cottonseed, and sesame seed. The more polyunsaturated the oil, the better the cholesterol-lowering properties.” Safflower oil is still available, but it is no longer the darling of healthy eating enthusiasts, perhaps because canola oil has entered the food scene. Canola oil has less saturated fat than safflower oil, although canola (rapeseed) oil has had its own bad press. This Wikipedia article has a nice table of the saturated/polyunsaturated content of cooking oils.

I turn the pages of Recipes for Healthy Eating. Recipes for “Whole Breakfast Drink” and “Yogurt-Fruit Shake” resemble today’s smoothies. “Almond Crunch Cereal” is essentially granola. Recipes for “Crispy Oat Thins” and “Graham Crackers” look interesting, but even I am not ready to put in that amount of work just for crackers. Today’s supermarkets carry a good variety of whole grain, additive-free crackers.

Miriam’s hints for healthy eating continue throughout the book. She also has hints for saving money. “In mid-winter when milk prices soar, pull the zucchini milk from the freezer and laugh at the high prices as you substitute this milk in your baking.” Zucchini Milk! You take zucchini (from your garden, if you have one), pare them, then blend them and store in the freezer to use instead of milk in recipes. Talk about pinching pennies!

“Mock” cream cheese and sour cream dressings call for low-fat cottage cheese, buttermilk, and/or skim milk. A nice idea, but low-fat cream cheese and dressings are now available in the markets.

The recipes for lean-meat main dishes do not spark any enthusiasm on my part. In the vegetable section, mushrooms are touted as “calorie bargains in vegetables” because they only contain 64 calories per pound as opposed to one calorie apiece for sugar peas. Talk about pinching calories!

The quick breads and pie crust recipes are whole grain and low-fat. Nothing sparks my interest. “Zucchini-Lemon Pie”? Hmm.

I probably picked up this cookbook because I used to be obsessive about counting calories, and in the 80s, many low-fat and whole grain prepared foods (salad dressings, crackers, cereals) were not readily available in local markets. I am not that obsessive any more, I just get lots of exercise and keep (what I consider) healthy foods in the house.

I will recycle this cookbook, but I need to cook a recipe for this blog. On this particular day, I plan to make beer can grilled chicken and I need a side dish to go with it. So I choose to try “Hot Broccoli-New Potato Salad”.

I don’t have new potatoes and it’s not worth the gas money to drive the 12 mile round trip to the nearest store, so I will use russets (and peel them). I don’t have safflower oil, so I’ll use canola. Dried basil? I have fresh basil in my newly-established garden! I didn’t keep the broccoli and potatoes really hot before serving, they were more like room temperature and it tasted fine that way. The following is my version of this recipe.

Broccoli and Potato Salad
serves about 6

3-6 potatoes, any variety, I used about 1 1/2 pounds
broccoli, about 1 pound
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons wine vinegar
3 tablespoons orange juice
1 clove garlic, minced
salt to taste
1 teaspoon dried basil, or fresh basil to taste
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
hot pepper sauce, a few drops
1/4 cup chopped green onions

Scrub the potatoes, and peel them if you like. Cut them into bite-sized chunks and cook until just tender.

Cut the broccoli into bite-sized pieces and cook until just tender. You can boil or steam the broccoli – your preference. I just got a microwave steamer so I used that.

Combine the oils, vinegar, orange juice, garlic, salt, basil, parsley, and pepper sauce in a saucepan and heat until just boiling.

Combine the potatoes, broccoli, green onions, and the heated sauce and toss. Serve!

Here are my ingredients for the sauce.

And here is the completed salad. At least part of it – I tossed in some steamed asparagus after I took this photo!

This was good, and I am likely to make it again. We all liked the flavor of the dressing/sauce. I’m not sure it’s really important to heat the sauce, next time I might mix it like a vinaigrette. And feel free to add any vegetables besides just the broccoli!

250 Cookbooks: Feed Me! I’m Yours

Posted on July 30, 2014 by admin

Cookbook #77: Feed Me! I’m Yours, Vicki Lansky, Bantam Books, 1979.

This is one of my cookbooks – I bought it new, for me, for advice on feeding my son, who was born in 1980. I was so scared at first to let him eat anything but breast milk! it seemed odd to feed him solids for that first time. Of course I got over that pretty fast, but that’s why I got this cookbook, I wanted help!

Now it’s 2014 my 7 month old grandson is visiting. My daughter is determined to get this kid eating solids! I pulled Feed Me! I’m Yours from the shelf, and we both pored over this decades-old book.

This is a friendly and helpful book. In the first chapter: “Are you a bit nervous about making your own baby food?” Yeah! Lots of suggestions to get a young mother going along a path of homemade foods for her baby. The content was reviewed by a pediatric nurse – this is a sensible as well as friendly book.

Most of the nutrition information agrees with what my daughter has learned from the Internet and current baby care books. One big change is that honey used to be okay for babies, but now is a big taboo. Some of the recipes and food suggestions in Feed Me! I’m Yours have more sugar in them than my daughter wants her son to have.

So what foods do we try on our little . . . test child? Sweet potatoes, potatoes, bananas, oatmeal, pureed fruits, and almond butter.

Ahem. These foods do not simply go into my grandson’s mouth . . . they are gooed all over his face, his arms, his tummy, they go in his mouth and out, they get under his feet and smooshed on the chair. Since he is still in the cereals-and-mashed-fruits-and-vegetables stage, and since most Feed Me! I’m Yours cracker recipes have sugar in them, I decide to go online and see what young moms are cooking for their babies these days. Wow, what an amazing wealth of information is at the fingertips of today’s moms! I found this cute cracker and daughter-approved recipe:

This recipe is from the Super Healthy Kids website. They have whole wheat flour, oatmeal, wheat germ, olive oil, and cheese in them. Grandma got to make Jo his first homemade “cookies”!