1990s blog: Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies

Hoo-boy, these are the ultimate cookies. My signature cookies, I would say. I always made these for Christmas. I even wrote about them in my “other” blog, the one I began in 2005, and where I still discuss other-than-food matters (unless a food matter just can’t be resisted). If you go to that old entry, be sure to click on the photo to enlarge it.

1990s note:
I clipped this recipe from a magazine years ago. Since then, they have become my “trademark” cookie. I have never seen this recipe anywhere else — and it is excellent! Lotsa chocolate and cherries — they even freeze well and are even good and soft eaten frozen. The version below reflects years of tweaking from the original magazine recipe.

2015 note:
I found the original of this recipe in the “Best You Can Bake” Chocolate Desserts cookbook.

Batter:

  • 1 1/2 cup margarine
  • 3 C sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla
  • scant 4 cups flour (about a tablespoon less than 4 full cups)
  • 1 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda

Goodies:

  • 28 ounce jar maraschino cherries. This will probably be more cherries than you need. And just get the non-health-food-store type of maraschino cherries. Eating these once in a while isn’t a death sentence. You need some of the cherry juice for the frosting.

Frosting:

  • 36 ounces chocolate chips
  • 3 cups sweetened condensed milk. One 14-ounce can has 20 tablespoons; you need about 2 1/2 cans.
  • 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon cherry juice (from the drained maraschino cherries)

Begin by draining the maraschino cherries through a colander, reserving the juice. After you drain them, place them on a double layer of paper towels and roll them around until most of the juice is gone. This is a really important step. Let them continue drying as you prepare the batter.

Cream the margarine and sugar, the add the eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients and stir to combine. With the mixer on a low speed, add the dry ingredient mixture to the creamed mixture in portions (so as not to make a big mess). Mix just until all of the dry ingredients are incorporated.

Place a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet or half-sheet pan. Heat the oven to 350˚.

Shape the dough into 1″ balls and place on the prepared cookie sheet. Push down the center of each ball with your thumb, then place 1 cherry in the indentation.

Bake 10 minutes at 350°. Do not overcook!

To make the frosting, put the chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk and cook on high in the microwave until chocolate melts.This takes several minutes; check the melting process by stirring. When all of the chocolate is melted, stir in the cherry juice. Add a little more cherry juice if the frosting is too thick.

When the cookies are cool, you can start frosting them. I always lay them out on the counter on sheets of wax paper. Then, I pick up a cookie, hold it over the bowl of frosting, and completely cover the cookie with frosting, and place it back on the wax paper to cool.

Chocolate Covered Cherry CookiesLet the cookies stand in a single layer over night to let the frosting set completely before you pack them into containers. This recipe makes about 6 dozen cookies. They are great fresh, and they also freeze well. You can eat them frozen!

Please refer to my Cookie Recipe Basics to make sure your cookies turn out!
Read the introduction to my 1990s cooking blog for background information.

1990s blog: Marbled Chocolate and Cream Cheese Brownies

cookies graphic2012 note: Above is the graphic I used for cookie recipes in my original 1990s blog recipe. I had purchased a package of gif images to illustrate my old site. I’m not an artist! And I didn’t have a DSLR camera to play with then. I also had a rather bright green background color to each page. (It glares at me now.)

These are great brownies. For years, they were a favorite choice to take to TA meetings at the end of each semester. They are moist and chocolatey. I usually double the recipe and bake in a 10×15″ pan.

Marbled Chocolate and Cream Cheese Brownies

Chocolate Batter:

  • 1/2 cup margarine
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 3 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream Cheese Batter:

  • 3 ounces cream cheese, softened
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 tablespoons margarine, softened
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons flour

Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 9″ square baking pan (glass is preferred).

Prepare chocolate batter: Melt butter and chocolate, stir in sugar and vanilla. Add eggs; stir until well blended. In small bowl combine 1/2 cup flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into chocolate mixture until smooth. Set aside.

Prepare cream cheese batter: In small bowl, beat cream cheese, butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla until smooth. Blend in flour.

Alternately add spoonfuls of chocolate and cream cheese batter to prepared pan. Using a thin metal spatula, gently twist through batter to create marbled effect. Bake 25-30 minutes until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack.

If you double this recipe, use a 10×15″ glass pan, and bake 30-35 min.

Please refer to my Cookie Recipe Basics to make sure your cookies turn out!
Read the introduction to my 1990s cooking blog for background information.

1990s blog: Introduction

I first put some recipes on the web in about 1997. In that year, I created and maintained a website (and server) for students of organic chemistry teaching labs. I tucked a personal website on the same server, and then uploaded my favorite recipes. It wasn’t a true blog – but that’s only because the word blog was not coined until 1999.

I still like the content of my first website, so I am going to pull it into this current WordPress blog. Below is my old site introduction. Hey, I haven’t changed much!

Date written: circa 1997
I have been collecting and cataloguing recipes for many, many years. The Net allows me to share them with all you Web Crawlers looking for something new to cook!

[I then listed my recipe categories in this order: cookies, desserts, yeast breads, muffins, quick breads, main dishes]

Think the order’s backwards? I don’t. That’s part of my philosophy of cooking: always think of dessert first. You just eat the rest so you can eat dessert, anyway. Which brings us to …

My Philosophy of Cooking

Each person develops their own cooking “style”. Many factors determine how you cook: what you like, what your spouse likes, what your kids like, how weight-conscious you are, what part of the world you are from, how your family cooked while you were young, how much a part of your life food is, how much you like to cook, whether or not you like to follow recipes to a “t”, how much you like to experiment . . . on and on. Each cook has a unique cooking personality. It follows that each person’s recipe collection reflects their cooking personality.

My cooking personality? I began cooking only desiring to bake cookies, cakes, and pies. But, the old family metabolism kicked in, and I had to watch those calories. So, I began baking breads. Since I liked to cook but couldn’t survive on dessert and bread alone, I looked to main dishes. I enjoy spending time in the kitchen, pots a-bubbling and bread a-baking, so some of my recipes take a lot of time. But, some don’t, since I work full time, and refuse to eat food from a fast food restaurant or a package. You won’t find any vegetable or salad recipes in my collections, because we like our vegetables as close to raw as possible, untainted by cooking or heavy dressings. We eat a salad each night with dinner, consisting of a variety of lettuces and raw vegetables. Cooked vegetables? Steamed lightly, only, with a sprinkling of almonds or lemon, perhaps. Soups? I just throw anything I feel like into the pot, rarely following a recipe. Traveling through the late sixties and the seventies, I picked up many ideas from natural, “health food” cooking. These ideas tamed down a bit with the years, trading health food ideas for what my family would actually eat, and then expanding to include the low-fat nutrition ideas which are currently so popular.

My collection includes only recipes that I really like and that I make frequently. I didn’t just gather the recipes from cookbooks and throw them into a database: it’s a very personal collection. Each recipe is prepared several times and modified if necessary before I deem it good enough to be made a permanent part of my collection.

I hope that a few of my recipes will overlap with your own cooking personality and that you will enjoy them as much as I do!

…Never Trust a Skinny Cook….

250 Cookbooks: The New Pasta Cookbook

Cookbook #13: The New Pasta Cookbook. Joanne Glynn, Tormont Publications, Montreal, Canada, 1993.

New Pasta Cookbook

Pasta is one of my favorite foods. Sometime in the early 1980s I bought a manual pasta maker, and sometime in the 1990s I received as a gift an electric pasta machine. I must have picked up The New Pasta Cookbook around the time I got the electric pasta machine. I don’t think I’ve ever made any recipe from this book, it’s clean and has no notes written in it.

This is a glossy cookbook with lots of photos, including pretty pictures of many different types of pasta. Some recipes use ready-made pasta, others include instructions for making the pasta from scratch. Lots of interesting variations on pasta sauces and pasta dishes are included. But for some reason, I just don’t “bond” with this book. The author doesn’t write personal notes, either in a foreword or with the individual recipes. Many recipes seem high calorie, although no nutrition information is included. I don’t like the layout of the recipes.The recipes have long names: “Fresh Carrot Pasta with Cream and Mint”, “Spicy Ricotta Agnolotti in Herb Leaf Pasta”, “Sauce of Leeks, Gruyere, and Cream”. Why do I mention this? A pet peeve. Long recipe names are distracting and pretentious, in my opinion.

It took me several times of going through this book to find a recipe I wanted to try. I chose one of the long-name recipes: “Seafood Agnolotti with Coriander and Zucchini”. Agnolotti is a filled pasta, similar to ravioli, but these are folded-over circles instead of filled squares. The recipe calls for preparing the pasta from scratch. The filling is a mixture of fish, shrimp, ricotta, spinach, fontina cheese, and coriander (cilantro). The sauce is light, just zucchini and butter: sounds good, but my eating partner likes heavy sauces and he is not a fan of zucchini. I will make a regular tomato sauce to sauce the agnolotti, and I will also prepare a variation on the zucchini sauce.

I have set myself up for a long task: pasta from scratch, a filling, and two sauces to prepare. I will have to focus carefully on the sauces, since I will be going off-recipe so that I can create something both of us will enjoy. Here is what lies ahead for me:

Agnolotti Rec1Agnolotti Rec2

It’s a Wednesday afternoon. I find my old manual pasta maker, dust off the cobwebs (literally). I used to use it a lot!  I remember making pasta at least once a month when the kids were little. I’d make a full batch and freeze extra noodles for quick mid-week meals. Where did I find the time, raising kids and working full time? And why did I stop making fresh pasta? I think I stopped because stores now offer fresh pastas that are almost as good. I also use no-bake lasagne noodles (Barilla); soaked in hot water, these make a quick lasagne or can be rolled to make manicotti.

But I seem to recall that homemade, fresh pasta just can’t be beat. And now I have the time to see if my memory is correct.

The Project

I am first going to describe how I prepared this dish, and then I will write down the recipe as I revised it.

Freshly mixed pasta dough needs to rest 30 minutes to an hour before it can be rolled out. So the first thing I do is prepare the pasta dough. I use the recipe that I was given at a cooking demonstration when I first bought my manual pasta maker:

Pasta Recipe

I like semolina flour in my pasta dough, and I know this recipe works. I’m not going to all this work using an untried dough recipe. I put the flours, salt, eggs, olive oil, and a couple tablespoons of water in my big stand mixer, and start it mixing on a low speed. Then I add more water in small portions until the dough almost holds together. This is a judgement call, and I was pleased that it all came back to me, I just “knew” when it was right. This day, I added 3 tablespoons of water.

I took the dough out of the mixer and pressed it into a big ball. Then I covered it with plastic wrap and set it on the counter to rest. In the photo, you can see how the dough “almost” holds together.

Agnolotti 2

Time to start the filling. Note that the New Pasta Cookbook’s recipe calls for poached fish and cooked shrimp, but gives no instructions for either task. I decide to poach the seafoods in hot water seasoned with lemon, cilantro, wine, and salt. I brought this mixture to a boil:

Agnolotti 1

I added the fish to the pot and covered it, then removed it from the heat. After two minutes, I added the shrimp (shrimp should never be overcooked). I waited another two minutes, then strained the mixture through a colander. When cool enough to handle, I picked out the fish and the shrimp, chopped them into small pieces, and put them in a bowl.

Next, I cooked the spinach. Spinach really cooks down. I put half of a 5-ounce package of fresh spinach in a pot and added a little water, brought it to a bowl, then turned off the heat. In a few minutes it was done. I drained it through a colander, squeezed out most of the liquid, and chopped the spinach (it measured about 1/4 cup). I added it to the bowl with the fish and shrimp, then I added the remaining filling ingredients.

By this time, at least 30 minutes had passed, so it’s time to roll the pasta. Boy, this all comes back to me! This is fun, pushing the dough through the pasta roller. My pasta maker has six settings. I started on setting 1 (thickest) and pushed one-quarter of the dough through, turning the crank. Then I folded that piece in two and rolled it through once more. Next I changed to setting 2 and rolled it through once, setting 3 once, and so on all the way to setting 5. By this time, the sheet of dough was quite large, so I chopped it in half and put each piece through setting 6. After I rolled all the dough in this manner, I had 8 thin sheets of dough. I covered them with plastic wrap to keep them from drying out too much.

Agnolotti 3

Time to fill and cook the agnolottis. I start a pot of water boiling as I lay the first sheet of pasta out on my counter. I take my very ancient biscuit cutter and start cutting out circles. I have to push down very hard because it’s not very sharp!

Agnolotti 4

I use my fingers to spread an egg wash on each circle, then add a small amount of filling, then fold the agnolottis over and crimp with a fork.

Agnolotti 5Agnolotti 6

I quickly learned that I couldn’t use too much filling or the dough would crack when folded. I also learned that the agnolottis like to stick to the bread board, so I transferred them to a lightly floured parchment paper.

Once I had about a dozen agnolottis formed, I put them in boiling, salted water. They took about 4 minutes to cook.

I just had to try one! I carefully removed one with a slotted spoon and when it was still almost too hot, I put it in my mouth. Agnolotti 8

Absolutely heavenly! Perfect perfect perfect! The photo doesn’t do them justice, though.

Okay! Time to cook the rest of the little pastas. Now I can rest easy, I know they will make a great meal.

What happened, though, is that I cooked a lot of them, then got tired. I had enough for about three people when I stopped cooking the agnolottis. I had thought I’d make extra for another meal, but I had been in the kitchen for three hours and enough is enough. I froze about half the dough sheets for a future meal. I did a calculation, and I figure that if I had made the recipe according to the one in the cookbook, I would have enough for 8 people, not 4 as stated in the recipe. I had a lot of filling left over, but oh well. There is also a lot of wasted dough, since cutting circles leaves a lot of unusable dough pieces. (Square raviolis make better use of a sheet of dough. Ravioli is more environmentally proper. Ha.)

While I was making the agnolottis, I also prepared a baked tomato sauce. The New Pasta Cookbook has a recipe for this, and it appealed to me because I could just pop it in the oven and forget about it.

Baked Tomato SauceI followed this recipe almost as written. I didn’t drain the tomatoes; I used an immersion blender to crush them; I chopped the onion, garlic, and basil in a mini-chopper. It turned out great:

Baked Tomato SauceI finished the pasta and the tomato sauce about an hour before meal time. Just before we ate, I quickly sauted julienned zucchini and a mixture of mushrooms in a little butter.

To serve, I lay the agnolotti on each plate, then put a little sauce and zucchini-mushroom mixture on and around the pastas.

When I sat down to eat, I shoveled in about three pastas and then stopped to breathe. They were that good. Delicate, bursting with flavor, and perfectly complemented with my two sauces.

These were so successful that I will keep this cookbook, try more recipes, while aware that the recipe might take a long time to prepare. I read the back of the book and learned that in 1985 the author opened a fresh pasta business, supplying a chain of retail shops. I’m sure that she has a lot of help when she prepares her recipes. I need a sous chef!

The Recipe: Seafood Agnolotti

This recipe makes enough for 2-4 people, depending on appetites. It makes extra pasta dough, which can be frozen, uncooked, for later use.

Pasta:

  • 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup semolina flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2-4 tablespoons water

Put the flours and salt in an electric mixer bowl, then add the eggs and oil. Turn the mixer to a low speed and mix until the eggs are incorporated. Continue mixing while adding water, one tablespoon at a time, just until the dough holds together. Remove the dough and push it into a large ball, cover with plastic wrap, and let stand at least 30 minutes.

Divide the dough into four pieces. Use a manual pasta maker to roll each portion into a long thin sheet, going sequentially through the settings on the roller from 1 (thick) to 6 (thin). If a sheet gets too unwieldy, cut it in half. Cover the sheets of dough with plastic wrap or damp towels.

Filling

  • 2 ounces white fish, uncooked (cod, sole, halibut, haddock, etc.)
  • 2 ounces raw shrimp, shell removed
  • lemon, cilantro, and wine for poaching fish
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro (this is fresh coriander)
  • 1/4 cup fine bread crumbs
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons grated fontina cheese
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • about 1/2 ounce fresh spinach
  • 1/3 cup ricotta cheese

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, then add lemon wedges, a few sprigs of cilantro, and a dash of white wine. Add the fish and cover the pot and remove from the heat. Let stand 2 minutes. Add the shrimp and let stand an additional 2 minutes. Drain through a colander. Pick out the fish and shrimp and place in separate piles; chop each finely (especially the shrimp, or it will poke through the agnolotti), then place in a bowl.

Put the fresh spinach in a pot – a half ounce is probably about a cup. The amount of spinach is not critical, since about all it brings to this dish is a bit of color (well, a few nutrients too). Add about a half cup of water to the pot, cover, and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, and when cool enough to handle, put the spinach through a colander and squeeze out all the moisture. Chop it finely and add to the fish and shrimp.

If necessary, make fresh bread crumbs in a food processor, or use packaged bread crumbs. Add these to the other filling ingredients along with the fontina and ricotta cheeses, a little salt, and a tablespoon of chopped cilantro.

Making the agnolotti

Beat an egg in a small bowl – it is used to seal the pasta. Set a pot of salted water over high heat to bring it to a boil.

Place a sheet of dough on your working surface. Use a cookie cutter or the rim of a glass (about 2 inches in diameter) to cut out circles of dough. Use a brush or your fingers to paint the beaten egg around the rim of each circle. (I used my fingers and I got the entire circle “painted” but hey, I’m a messy cook.)

Put a little filling in the center of each circle, then fold over to form a half-moon shape. (You will learn that you cannot fill these too full, or they will burst through the dough when you fold them over.) Press the sides of the circle together and go around the cut edges with a fork, or a zigzag pastry wheel or a crimper cutter if you own such a tool.

As the agnolotti are filled, place them on a lightly dusted piece of parchment. When you have enough to fill a pot (about 10-12), put them in to cook for about 4 minutes. Meanwhile, go back to making more agnolotti.

Remove cooked agnolotti with a slotted spoon and place them in a colander. Make agnolotti and cook agnolotti until you have used all the filling, or until you think you have enough to serve as many people as you have for dinner.

As the agnolotti cool in a colander, they probably won’t stick together, but watch them. I didn’t rinse them. When completely cool, you can put them on a large dish or in a bowl.

At serving time, these are tricky to heat back up. I microwaved them briefly, but a couple burst and made a mess in the microwave. The best way is probably to run hot water over them, or put them into a simmering sauce just before serving.

Wrap and freeze any unused pasta dough. If you have extra cooked agnolotti, you can freeze them.

Sauce 1: Baked Tomato Sauce

This makes more sauce than you will need for 2-4 people; any extra can be frozen.

  • 28 ounce can of whole, peeled tomatoes (undrained)
  • 2 cloves garlic (or more)
  • 1 small onion, cut in chunks
  • lots of fresh basil (at least a couple tablespoons when chopped)
  • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • chili flakes
  • 1/3 cup fine bread crumbs (fresh if possible)
  • 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese (fresh if possible)

Put the tomatoes in a deep baking dish. Use an immersion blender in pulses to break up the tomatoes a little, without turning them into a puree. Alternatively, mash them with a fork.

Put the garlic, onion, and basil in a food processor and pulse a few times. You want these finely chopped, but not pureed. Stir the mixture into the tomatoes along with the olive oil, then sprinkle with a few chili flakes.

Mix the bread crumbs and the Parmesan cheese, then sprinkle over the top of the tomato mixture. Bake – uncovered – in a 400˚ oven for 45 minutes.

Don’t break the crust until the sauce is being tossed through the pasta; large crunchy bits should remain.

Sauce 2: Zucchini and mushrooms

  • 1/2 of a zucchini
  • 2-4 ounces mushrooms (plain old white ones, or see if you can a mixture of interesting-looking types at your local store)
  • olive oil to taste

Slice the zucchini into thin strips, julienne-style. Chop the mushrooms. Heat the oil in a pan and cook the zucchini for a minute or two, then add the mushrooms and cook a few more minutes, until the mushrooms are cooked. Drizzle with olive oil. Feel free to add garlic, basil, or Parmesan cheese, or even some cilantro.

Put it all together

Warm the agnolotti (if necessary) by running some hot water over them. Place them on a warm serving plate, if possible. Arrange, to taste, the tomato and zucchini-mushroom sauces around and on top of the agnolotti.

Serve! Enjoy!

250 Cookbooks: 1000 Vegetarian Recipes

Cookbook #12: 1000 Vegetarian Recipes. Carol Gelles, Hungry Minds, Inc., NY, 1996.

1000 Vegetarian Recipes

My daughter went through a vegetarian phase, and I believe that’s when I acquired this cookbook. She or I bought it and it ended up on my bookshelf. I remember having to search for vegetarian entrees to serve when she came home to visit.

This is a good cookbook, a keeper. It is an ambitious work, one thousand recipes! But each recipe has a personal touch, none feel forced into being just because the author was trying to get to the designated number. Eggs and cheese are included in many but not all recipes. Appetizers, soups, entrees, side dishes, salads, breads, and desserts are all covered. These recipes incorporate a wide variety of grains and vegetables, and encourage me to branch out of my food comfort zone.

I decided not to choose an entree recipe to try for this blog. I cook for two, and my partner in eating likes his meat and potatoes. “Cabbage and Mushroom Curry”? No way. I have to save my favorite curry dishes for times when I have only myself to cook for. Would he eat “Szechuan Shredded Vegetables with Pressed Tofu”? No way. “Spinach and Dill Savory Bread Pudding”? No.

So I turned my focus to the side dish section of this cookbook. I found that it has an excellent section on whole and processed grains. Barley, kamut, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, rye, spelt, wheat, wild rice, bulgur, couscous, grits, cornmeal, buckwheat, and kasha are discussed, along with handy cooking tables. The recipes including these grains look tasty and interesting. Grains are among my favorite foods, and if I serve them with a serving of meat, I might get my dining partner to eat them too.

Although I’m choosing a side dish, I was tempted by many of the bread and muffin recipes. I plan to keep this book downstairs a while and explore it some more!

The recipe I am trying is “Quinoa with Shredded Vegetables”. I keep quinoa on hand, but haven’t cooked it very often. The vegetables are carrots, zucchini, and rutabaga. I haven’t cooked a rutabaga in . . . well, maybe never! I have snuck parsnips into soups, but never rutabagas. I even had to look them up before I went to the store, so that I’d know what they look like. I’ll just not mention to my husband what’s in the dish. Shredded, who will be able to tell?

Here is the original recipe:

quinoa recipeI made it just like the recipe. I used vegetable broth, but I didn’t have any fresh or boxed on hand, so I dissolved a vegetable bouillon cube in a cup of water. This brought a lot of flavor to the dish, so I don’t suggest using just water. And do use a rutabaga, it added a subtle, earthy flavor. I liked it more than my dinner partner, but since I served it with Fish Cakes, I was able to serve this interesting side dish and have a successful dinner.

Quinoa with Shredded Vegetables

  • 1/2 cup quinoa
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1/2 cup chopped onions
  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 3/4 cup coarsely grated carrots
  • 3/4 cup coarsely grated rutabaga
  • 3/4 cup coarsely grated zucchini
  • salt to taste

Put the quinoa in a bowl and cover with water, mix, then drain through a fine strainer. Do this about 4 times, or until the water no longer looks soapy.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until they are soft. (I always salt onions a little at this point, to sweat them.) This takes just a few minutes. Then add the quinoa and heat “until it makes popping sounds.” [This may or may not happen. I’ve had dry quinoa pop, but cooked in butter just after rinsing, it is reluctant to give off any good “pops”. Just stir the butter, onion, and quinoa mixture a few minutes, even if it doesn’t pop.] Add the broth and bring it to a boil.

Add the grated vegetables, lower the heat and cover and simmer 15-30 minutes, until all the liquid is adsorbed and the quinoa is done (soft). You might need to add more broth if the liquid is adsorbed but the quinoa is not yet done (I needed to).

The grated vegetables are pretty:

grated vegetablesAnd here is the completed dish:

Quinoa with Shredded VegetablesI liked this, and will make it again!

Favorites: Fish Cakes with Sauce

This recipe is based on one I clipped from a printed BonAppetit magazine, date unknown. I first tried these fish cakes in 2009, and modified the recipe several times to settle on the version below. What’s kind of nice about this entree is that you can use frozen fish. I choose frozen mahi mahi, simply because I can always find it as a wild caught product in our local stores. Cooked as is from the package, it can be tough. But chopped up in these dill-seasoned fish cakes, it is a yummy delicacy.

I state to use “12 ounces” of fish because that’s the size package it’s sold in. Any fish will probably work. I’ve been successful with tuna, mahi mahi, and cod. If you don’t have quite 12 ounces of a fish filet, add a few scallops to make up the weight.

If you don’t have fresh dill, use any fresh herbs you have, like oregano and basil.

The recipe makes 4 fish cakes. It will serve 2-4 people, depending on appetites. For the two of us, I usually have a leftover fish cake that tastes good the next day!

Sauce:

  • 1/4 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/4 cup yogurt (substitute the yogurt with mayonnaise if you prefer)
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh) (go ahead and squeeze 3 tablespoons, since you will need 1 tablespoon for the fish cakes)
  • 1 tablespoon lemon zest
  • 2 tablespoons pickle relish
  • 1-2 tablespoons horseradish (this depends on how hot your horseradish is and how much you like the taste of horseradish)
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (go ahead and chop 3 tablespoons, since you will need a tablespoon for the fish cakes)
  • 1/4 cup chopped green onions (go ahead and chop 1/2 cup, since you will need 1/4 cup for the fish cakes)

Fish cakes:

  • 2 cups fine bread crumbs, divided (process about 3 slices of sandwich bread in a food processor)
  • 1/4 cup chopped green onions
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 12 ounces mahi mahi, or other boneless, darkish fish (this is a good time to use economical frozen fish)
  • olive oil

Mix the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Put 1 cup crumbs in a large bowl (for the fish cakes), and place about a cup in a dish (for coating fish cakes).

Cut the fish into large chunks and put it in a food processor. Using very short on/off pulses, very coarsely chop it (do not form a paste).

Add the processed fish to the breadcrumbs in the bowl; then gently mix in the egg, 1 tablespoon of the sauce, 1/4 cup green onion, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 1 tablespoon chopped dill, and a little salt.

At this point, you can let the mixture stand for an hour or so, covered in the refrigerator. The original recipe did not say to do this, but I did it and it worked.

Shape the fish mixture into 4 – 3 1/2″ round cakes. Thickly coat both sides with the breadcrumbs in the dish.

Heat a large non-stick pan over medium high heat. (I always hold my hand an inch above the pan and when I can feel a good heat coming off the pan, I know it’s ready. Don’t heat it to the smoking stage.) When the pan is hot, add enough olive oil to lightly cover the bottom of the pan. As soon as the oil is shimmering, carefully add the fish cakes. Cook until cooked through and nice and brown and crispy, about 4-5 minutes per side.

Serve immediately, with the sauce and fresh lemon wedges.

Fish Cakes

250 Cookbooks: Sunset All-Time Favorite Recipes

Cookbook #11: Sunset All-Time Favorite Recipes, Readers’ Choices. Sunset Publishing, 1993.

Sunset All Time Favorite Recipes

This one is going to be easy! I opened this volume of over 500 recipes and wanted to try at least half of them. I don’t have to write about how much I dislike a cookbook!

This is a cookbook I bought for myself. The recipes work right into my type of cooking. I’d say they lean towards Southwestern cooking, with lots of chiles and spices, fresh vegetables and fruits, light and practical recipes, as well as comfort foods. I went to the current Sunset Magazine website, and they still focus on “How to Live in the West” (US). That’s where I was born and raised—no wonder this cookbook “fits” me.

I have several pieces of paper marking pages in this book, and even a letter from my daughter. I’ve spent a lot of quality time with this cookbook. The book is well laid out with pleasing illustrations and rough-paper pages. I never wrote in this book, guess I felt it would be a shame to ruin the pages with my unreadable scrawl. There are not even any cooking stains in it. But I’ve used this cookbook a lot. Mostly as a reference for ideas, but a few of the recipes have become a part of my repertoire.

Special features that I have used as references include fish-cooking tips, sizzling stir-frys, and non-preachy lightening-up tips. The recipe content covers the gamut of appetizers to soups to poultry to vegetables to breads to desserts. Throughout, small insets offer historical tidbits and cooking insights. Nutritional information is given for each recipe.

One day a few years ago I re-shelved this cookbook and forgot about it. Well, I’m bringing it back downstairs and putting it within easy reach. It’s like finding an old friend.

For this blog, I chose the recipe “Sesame Chicken”. It uses boneless chicken breasts, a marvelous, low-fat convenience food. Grilled, baked, stuffed, sauted and sauced . . . chicken breasts lend themselves to so many different meals. Years ago we had to bone our own chicken breasts; later, as a working mom, I felt it was worth the money to buy them already boned. In the last decades of the twentieth century, these became available individually frozen in freezer bags. They are a staple in my freezer!

Here is the entire page that has the Sesame Chicken recipe. It’s a good example of the nice layout and illustrations in this cookbook.

Sesame Chicken Recipe from book

Sesame Chicken


I made this recipe for two people, with two chicken breasts. I made the original amount of marinade, though, as reflected in my recipe entry below. The chicken is baked really hot, for only 15 minutes. On busy work days, I’m sure you could start the chicken marinading in the morning. In fact, you could probably take frozen breasts out of the bag in the morning, rinse quickly with hot water, put in a ziplock bag with the marinade, set the bag in the refrigerator for the day, and the chicken would be ready to cook for dinner.

  • 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (12-14 ounces)
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon sherry
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger (a rasper-grater works well)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons flour
  • 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil (about)

Mix the soy sauce, sugar, sherry, ginger, and garlic. Marinate the chicken breasts in this marinade for 1 to 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Preheat your oven to 500˚ (this might take awhile!). Place a baking pan (such as a 10×15-inch half sheet pan) in the oven to preheat the pan, too.

Put 1 tablespoon of the marinade in a shallow bowl; add egg and beat lightly to blend. In another shallow bowl, mix flour and sesame seeds. One at a time, remove the chicken breasts from the marinade and coat with the egg mixture; let excess drip off. Then coat chicken with flour mixture; shake off excess.

Add butter and oil to the hot baking pan and swirl to melt butter. Add chicken and turn to coat lightly with butter and oil.

Bake for 7 minutes. Then turn pieces over and continue to bake until meat in thickest part is no longer pink, about 3-5 more minutes. (Cut to test or use an instant read thermometer, 165˚ is good.)

I served the Sesame Chicken next to homemade fried rice. We liked it, and I’ll make it again!

Sesame Chicken

 

250 Cookbooks: Bake-Off Recipes 1959

Cookbook #10: Pillsbury’s Best 10th Grand National Bake-Off Cookbook, 1959. From Pillsbury.

Bake Off 1959

This Bake-Off cookbook is in the same series as my Cookbook #4, so I’m not going to repeat the Bake-Off Cookbook background information. That was a 1964 cookbook, this one is five years older. You can see inflation in the price: this older one only cost 25¢, 10¢ less.

I like the nostalgic photos. Look at this woman’s hairdo:

hairdo

The cookbook has desserts, cookies, cakes, pies, breads, and main dishes. What impresses me about these early Bake-Off Cookbooks is that everything is made from scratch. Later ones rely on products like biscuit mix and packaged crescent rolls. The recipes highlight scratch (albeit brand name) ingredients: “Pillsbury’s Best All Purpose Flour”, “Morton Salt”, “French’s Vanilla Extract, “French’s Cinnamon”. I noted several cookie, dessert, and main dish recipes that I might try at a later date.

For this blog, I decided to try a cookie recipe. Mother marked several cookie recipes with her rating system, and I chose one of them. I love baking cookies, and used to make them weekly when the kids were little. There was a long stretch of years when I’d bake tons of Christmas cookies and send them to relatives. And at the end of each university semester I’d bake several kinds of cookies and take them to the Teaching Assistants that I supervised (I was the director of the Organic Chemistry Teaching Labs at CU Boulder).

Lately I’ve denied myself the simple pleasure of cookie-baking. In spite of our active retiree lifestyle, we just don’t need the extra, usually empty calories in cookies. But life is to be enjoyed whenever possible, and I’ve decided that cookies in moderation can fit into our eating plan. Cookies are small little parcels that can be enjoyed one at a time. Extras from a large batch can spend some time in the freezer before being savored. Even better, give some away to friends and relatives!

So, cookie time! Here is the original recipe for Cherry-Chocolate Honeys:

Cherry-Chocolate Honeys

My mother had tried these and marked the recipe Delicious. I smile at the cooking stains on the recipe. There is oatmeal and honey and filberts in them: semi-healthy ingredients. I started mixing them together and then did a double-take: There are no eggs! That’s unusual for a cookie recipe.

Filberts are now usually called hazelnuts. I found some at our local natural grocery, Steamboat Mountain. They had been refrigerated, so I decided to perk up their flavor with a roast in the oven. Fifteen minutes in a 350˚ oven made them golden brown, with the added benefit of making it easy to remove the dark brown husks.

hazelnuts

For the honey, I chose a flavorful local Colorado honey. The maraschino cherries were purchased from Whole Foods, and have no red dye, are preservative free, and have pure cane sugar. The vanilla I used is Madagascar Vanilla from the Savory Spice Shop in Boulder. I like using parchment-lined baking sheets – a new technique I incorporated into my cooking methods a couple years ago.

Cherry-Chocolate Honeys

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup vegetable shortening
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 cup quick-cooking oatmeal
  • 1/2 cup filberts (hazelnuts), roasted at 350˚ for 15 minutes, then husked and chopped
  • 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1/4 cup chopped maraschino cherries

Cream together the shortening, honey, and vanilla. Blend in the dry ingredients and the oatmeal. Stir in the nuts, chocolate chips, and maraschino cherries.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets (or a parchment-lined half sheet pan). Bake at 375˚ for 10-12 minutes.

Cherry-Chocolate cookies before bakingAren’t these lovely?

Cherry-Chocolate Honey Cookies

And they taste great, too!

250 Cookbooks: Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 1

Cookbook #9: Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 1, A-Bea. Woman’s Day, Fawcett Publications, NY, 1966.

Encyclopedia of Cookery

This is the first in a series of 12 food encyclopedia volumes. They were my mother’s, so I will not part with them. But that’s not the sole reason that I now want to keep them.

Printed encyclopedias. Outdated tools? Today my first impulse when I have a question about (for instance) different types of apples, I open a web browser and enter my search terms. A plethora of links appears almost instantly, and I quickly scan the information that random people have uploaded to the internet. I have a (probably correct) answer, and then I jump to another website, or another task. That tidbit of information was fleeting. I probably will never see it again.

The web gives us quick answers, but we miss something, we miss the permanence of the written page. Print-published authors take a lot of time gathering their information, checking their facts, editing the text, polishing their photos. The next time I open this particular encyclopedia, the same information will be there, in my hands.

And when I took some time with this encyclopedia, which by definition gives “information on many subjects”, I found it full of not only information, but unexpected treats.

Let’s start with abalone, the first entry. This mollusk is described, including availability, calorie content, and basic preparation. Then several recipes are listed. This is the basic layout throughout the volume. Some information is dated, e.g., for abalone: “In the US, the fresh shellfish is limited to California. The law prohibits its shipment fresh to other parts of the country.” Interesting! It’s no longer true, but years ago, you could only have fresh abalone in California. The next entry is acorn squash, again with description and recipes. I learned that aioli is a thick sauce flavored with garlic. Definitions of the cooking terms “a la carte” and “a la grecque” and “a la king” are given, along with related recipes.

Then I came to a section titled “American Cooks are Good Cooks”. This section takes up a full third of the volume! I began reading the three page introduction to this section, written by a woman named Sophie Kerr. I’m sharing a few parts of this article so you, too, can enjoy it.

“A lot of talk goes round now and then to the effect that American cooks are way behind cooks of other lands when it comes to producing a first-rate meal, and that American food in general lacks the elegant subtlety of foreign dishes. I don’t know who started this nonsense, but nonsense it is, and it should be labeled so in large black letters. Actually, there is a great tradition in American cooking, and thousands of women have come to respect and perpetuate it.”

“. . . every housewife had her treasured recipes, which she wouldn’t give away even to her dearest friends. Those were the days of bake sales for church and charity, when the knowing ones lined up early to get some of Mrs. S-and-So’s pocketbook rolls, or Mrs. Whosis’ white cake with almond frosting, or Mrs. Query’s green-apple custard pie, and if the supply was gone when they got there, they screamed like Indians.”

Screamed like Indians! Boy, no one would write that today.

“Early in the 1900’s there appeared a new school of thought among American cooks. This was the era when careers for women were opening up in business and in the professions and arts, so certain groups, perhaps a little oversold on career stuff, proclaimed that it was menial to cook and that women now, for the first time, had their chance to come out of the kitchen. These groups made a noise considerably larger than their numbers warranted; but they did effect a slight hush-hush about recipes and good eating in general and particular. They said it wasn’t intellectual to be interested in food, and, of course, no woman likes to be publicly labeled as unintellectual. American cooking took something of a beating during this dark period; but it is cheering to remember that, in spite of all the shouting against them, there were plenty of sensible women who simply laid low and cooked better and better, confident that the tide would eventually turn.”

Enchanting. Sophie Kerr’s essay is followed by a collection of recipes from all fifty states. None of them caught my eye to try—Denver Sandwiches, Squaw Corn, Campfire Trout, Topeka Fried Chicken, Iowa Farm Ice Cream—but it’s interesting reading and has lots of photos. In fact, the entire volume is illustrated with full- and half-page photos, as well as drawings and decorative page borders.

I am going to remember this encyclopedia the next time I want to look up information about a particular food item or term. I know I’ll not only find the information I need, but also a history lesson, and maybe a chuckle or two. It’s an excellent source of historical recipes from the first half of the twentieth century in the US. However, I don’t find the cookbook very useful when searching for a recipe, because of the organization. Who would think to look for a recipe for green beans in the “A” section, under “Sauce Amandine”, in the almond section? (In the encyclopedia’s defense, though, a detailed index at the back of the last volume helps.) Another drawback is that the recipes were written before the invention of modern kitchen conveniences: immersion blenders, food processors, and microwave ovens to name a few.

beans amandine

I decided to cook a recipe from the “Apple” section. I chose Apple Butter. Why? Well, as often happens, what I cook is determined by what needs to be used in my freezer or on my shelves. A couple months ago we were leaving for vacation and I had a lot of apples that wouldn’t keep until our return. So I cored them and cut them in chunks and froze them, thinking I’d make applesauce someday. Combined with a few aging apples on my counter, they would be great for apple butter.

I modified the recipe from the Encyclopedia of Cookery (below) quite a bit.

Apple Butter

I wanted to use my slow cooker, and I didn’t want to strain the apple mixture. Instead, I chose to blend the cooked mixture, so that I could incorporate all the flavor and fiber of the apple skins. I added ginger and nutmeg because I like apple butter spicy. Consulting one of my crockpot books and a couple online recipes to determine cooking times, I came up with a more or less original recipe, entered below.

Apple Butter


If possible, use a mixture of sweet and tart apples. This recipe makes 12 4-ounce jars.

  • 4-5 pounds unpeeled apples (about 10-12 apples), stemmed and chopped roughly
  • 2 cups apple cider
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon allspice* (see note below)
  • 3/4 teaspoon cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • juice of 1/2 lemon

Combine all of the above ingredients (except the lemon) in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for about 10 hours. (This is convenient to do overnight.) At this point, you can let the mixture cool and process in batches in a food processor. Or, you can use an immersion blender to puree it right in the slow cooker.

Apple Butter in Crockpot

(At this point I feel like a witch stirring her brew. Witchery, cookery . . . why is this cookbook series the encyclopedia of cookery? No wonder I feel so at home. Here is my blog entry from five years ago, back when I was a practicing witch . . . ahem, chemist . . . )

With the lid off, turn to temperature to high and cook for 1-3 hours, stopping when the apple butter is the thickness you prefer. And taste it, adding more spices if you like. I added the juice of half a lemon to lend it a little zip. It took 2 hours for my apple butter to come to the thick spreading consistency that I like.

The apple butter will keep in your refrigerator for up to a month. I decided to can it in small 4 ounce jars to keep and to give away.

jarsI sterilized 12 of these cute little jars in boiling water, then filled them with the hot apple butter. Then I closed them with hot canning lids and set them upside down on the counter to cool.

apple butter cooling

The whole process took awhile and it really made the house smell like apples and cinnamon, especially during the overnight cook. It was all worth it! This apple butter turned out very good, and we are still enjoying it, on toast, peanut butter sandwiches, and sweet potato biscuits (cooked as per this recipe but with half the baking powder).

Note: Allspice’s definition is conveniently in the same encyclopedia volume:

allspice

Favorites: Chicken Casserole

Sometimes I just have to share a weekday favorite. As I wrote to myself in my personal “recipes” document: “I make this a lot! It’s one of our comfort foods.” This recipe graduated from a little handwritten index card to permanent status on my computer(s). It’s Thanksgiving-timely since you can use leftover turkey instead of chicken. I can’t remember where I got the recipe; all I know is that I took the time to put write it on a recipe card sometime in the 80s. I liked it enough that I included it on the short list of main dishes in my 1990s blog.

This is a casserole that I know will taste good. I can make it and feel no pressure at all whether or not dinner will be a success. I like to make it in a deep, round casserole rather than a short square or rectangular dish. When I make it for the two of us, I use a little less than a can of soup, and nudge the amounts of the other ingredients down a bit.

Enjoy.

Chicken Casserole

Serves 3-4.

  • about 1-2 cups cooked rice, I often use a mixture of wild rice and brown rice
  • 2 cups cooked chicken (or leftover turkey)
  • 1/4 pound cooked fresh mushrooms (don’t use canned unless you have to)
  • 1 10 3/4 ounce can cream of mushroom soup mixed with 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 small can sliced black olives
  • 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds

Use a 3 quart casserole. Put in rice, then chicken, then mushrooms, pour soup mixture over top. Add olives, then cheese, then almonds. Bake at 350 degrees 45 minutes or until hot.