250 Cookbooks: The New 365 Ways to Cook Hamburger and Other Ground Meat

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Cookbook #8: The New 365 Ways to Cook Hamburger and Other Ground Meat. By Doyne and Dorothy Nickerson, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1983.

365 Ways to Cook HamburgerI think this book used to have a cover leaf, without it it looks so plain. But it is a plain little book. There aren’t any photos inside, although there are some pleasant drawn illustrations. The recipes are pretty plain too. Why did I buy it? Dunno. Guess I wanted hamburger ideas.

I don’t think I ever cooked anything from this book, although I had marked several pages. Those pages were for . . . meatballs! I am a huge fan of meatballs. I could eat meatballs once a week. They are right up there among my top comfort foods. I guess I already hinted at that when I chose to make the Pork Balls from cookbook #6. I like mushing the meat with the spices and egg, I like forming the meatballs, I love the aroma as they sizzle and cook in the pan. And I like the convenience of making extra, freezing them, and popping them into a sauce later for a quick meal. Oh, and I like stealing one as they sit on the counter to cool—hey, it’s important to taste them to make sure they are good!

The only recipe in this book I marked besides the ones for meatballs is one for gnocchi. I’ve tried several times in my life to make gnocchi from scratch, but nowadays I use the shelf-packaged product that you can find in most grocery stores.

Do I like this cookbook? It’s okay, but doesn’t have very many innovative ideas, nor are there commentaries to personalize the 365 recipes. The original publication date was 1958 and today, the recipes seem tired. Grilled hamburgers, skillet dishes, baked casseroles, soups, spaghetti meat sauce, tacos (with no seasoning other than salt), meat pies. If you have a hankering for a nostalgic hamburger pie with crescent rolls on top, this is your cookbook. It’s mostly basic hamburger cooking, the kind of cooking that doesn’t require a recipe. I could give this cookbook away and never miss it.

I chose German Meatballs, one of the recipes that I had marked years ago. I’m not sure if I tried this recipe before, but I doubt it because the cookbook is free of food stains and I didn’t write anything on the recipe. This recipe interests me because the onion is cooked before it’s added to the hamburger, there is white wine in the meatballs, the eggs are separated and the whites stiffly beaten. (I doubt that this will make the meatballs much different from ones made with whole, non-beaten eggs, but it’s worth a try.) I like the accompanying sauce, with beer, potatoes and carrots. I don’t have a recipe in my repertoire that is anything like this one. Sounds good for a winter dinner, as I watch the snow fall on a November day in Colorado.

German Meatballs

I had some problems cooking these meatballs. I could tell that the uncooked meatball mixture was much more liquid-y than I would normally choose, and sure enough, when I dropped the first couple meatballs into the hot pan, they flattened out like pancakes. Well, the dogs will like those! I added another generous half-cup of breadcrumbs to the meat mixture and that did the trick.

I tasted one of the cooked meatballs and said “yum!” As I had predicted, the high moisture content and egg whites in the meatballs made them light and almost delicate.

For the sauce, I recalled my Beer and Cheese Soup disaster, and substituted half of the beer with beef broth. As the sauce and meatballs and potatoes and carrots simmered together, I added more broth so that they would be covered.

When the vegetables were done, I didn’t know quite how to serve the dish, since the sauce was thin. As written in the cookbook, there is no way this dish could be served over pasta or rice, nor could it be lain on a flat plate, because the “sauce” was just a runny liquid. So I thickened it with a little cornstarch and called it a “soup-stew”. I served it in big bowls with slices of My Daily Bread and cheese. It was really good! The broth suffused the potatoes and carrots with a hint of beer, marjoram, and bay leaf, and the meatballs were just about perfect.

Below is my revised version.

German Meatballs


Serves 3-4.

Meatballs:

  • 1/4 cup finely diced onion
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 pound hamburger (I used 90% lean)
  • 1 cup soft bread crumbs soaked in 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/3 cup white wine
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt (or to personal taste)
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 2 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Sauce and vegetables:

  • 1 cup beer
  • 1 cup beef stock
  • 1/4 teaspoon marjoram
  • 1 large bay leaf
  • 4 medium potatoes, cubed (gauge the amount of potatoes and carrots to your diner’s appetites)
  • 4 medium carrots, cubed
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with a little water or broth

Heat a small amount of oil (olive or vegetable) in a pan and saute the onion, sweating with a little salt, until soft. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds more. Combine with the hamburger, bread-crumb-and-milk mixture, wine, egg yolks, and seasonings. Mix lightly but well. Fold in egg whites.

Form into 1-inch balls and brown in a small amount of hot oil. These burn more easily than most meatballs, so watch the heat of the pan and turn the meatballs often. When they are all browned, drain off any fat.

Add the sauce/vegetable ingredients—except the cornstarch mixture—to the meatballs and bring to a boil. Cover, and reduce heat to simmer for 20-30 minutes. If you like, add more broth so that the meat and vegetables stay down in the liquid. This will make it more soup-like.

When the vegetables are tender, slowly and with stirring, add the cornstarch mixture to thicken the sauce. (You can add more cornstarch if you like it thicker.) Taste and adjust salt and pepper to your taste.

German MeatballsWe each finished our German Meatballs and wiped the bowls clean with bread!

My Daily Bread

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slice of bread

This is the bread I make every week for my sandwiches. Whole wheat and hearty but soft and pliable.

I am not going to try to teach you guys how to make yeast bread. Lessons for that skill are covered by a multitude of books, or passed on by family members or friends, or learned in a cooking class. But I will share my own methods and tips as I go along in this cooking blog. And a little philosophy.

I learned how to make bread soon after I was out on my own. I wanted to make cookies, pies and cakes, but couldn’t afford the calories. So I turned my love of baking to yeast breads. I remember when I was twenty-one and living in Huntington Beach, California. I was in the kitchen of a funky old house, kneading bread. Someone knocked at the door, and I went to answer with whole-wheat-dough-messy hands. It was Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they started giving me advice on how to make bread!

It was the 1970s, and I of course was bra-less, wearing beat-up jeans. Hippie time. My first loaves made from heavy wheat flour were dense and heavy and flat. But the smell, the smell! Freshly baked bread, even heavy bread, smells wonderful.

I grew up a little and moved to Colorado and got a real job. I continued to hone my bread making skills, gleaning knowledge from books and magazine articles and later, online communities. Like those Jehovah Witnesses, everyone had their opinions on how to make the best bread.

I learned how to combine flours to make a healthy and light loaf of bread. At first, I hand-kneaded my breads. Yes, there is a sense of accomplishment in this task, and the elastic, perfectly kneaded loaf feels good under your hands. But I’m not the most patient person. My results were inconsistent, but I kept going, I still kept baking.

I received as a gift a KitchenAid mixer in the 80s, and soon I employed it to knead bread. That made a huge difference in the consistent outcome of my bread loaves. I watched the bread as it kneaded and adjusted the flour and liquid as necessary to get a smooth, elastic loaf.

That went on for a decade or so. Then I was given a bread machine, and wow, was I hooked. Today I use a bread machine to knead most of my loaves of bread (there are no-knead breads too, but that’s another post). The machine controls kneading as well as rising factors; you can plan your time because you know exactly when it will be read to bake. I’m a chemist, and the more factors you can control in an experiment, the more you are able to play around with ingredients. I prefer to bake my loaves in a conventional oven, though. I just don’t like taking a loaf out of a bread machine and having to take out the little mixing paddles from the bottom of the loaf. Currently I am on my third bread machine, I wore out one, and I keep an older one in case I want to knead two kinds of bread at the same time!

Again bringing in my chemist-background lab experience, I weigh my flours and carefully measure the liquids. There is no better way to consistently get the proper liquid/flour proportions in a loaf. I also  watch a loaf as it kneads in the bread machine and add more flour or liquid as necessary. I still have occasional failures, when I experiment a little too much! But “My Daily Bread”, the recipe below, works for me week after week.

I am not going to force my method of bread making on anyone. I’ll give you tips, but no more. Take them or leave them. You can only learn how to make yeast bread by many tries, many failures, many successes. With practice, each person figures out their own way to make perfect bread. Each person works with currently available ingredients and equipment, societal fads, and their own preferences. Each person finds their own way, and their way is as good as any other, as long as it’s enjoyable.

Bread making is a journey, like life.

Here is my daily bread, my staple for sandwiches and toast. It is high in fiber, while still making a bread that slices for sandwiches and toast. I know my ingredients, so I am assured that there are no preservatives or excess sugars or fats. I trust this bread to keep me healthy, as well as provide great taste!

My Daily Bread

Two thin slices of this bread (60 grams) have about 100 calories.

  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 12 ounces flour (see below)
  • 1 tablespoon active dry yeast

Each week, I vary the types of flours that I use. I always use about 1/3 cup gluten flour, a half-cup of all purpose flour, and a large amount of white wheat flour (King Arthur Flour). Sometimes I include about a half-cup of oat or other whole grain flour, and a few tablespoons wheat germ, hi-maize high fiber flour, or flax seed meal. What is important is that the weight of the flours is 12 ounces. (If you add too much whole grain flour other than white wheat flour, the bread will not rise well and the cooked loaf will be dense.)

If I have leftover cooked hot cereal, barley, or rice, I sometimes add it too (about a half cup). But if I do, then I’ll watch closely as the bread kneads, and add a bit more flour if necessary.

Put all the ingredients in a bread machine and set to the dough cycle. Watch the dough as the machine kneads it. Sometimes a paddle will not rotate and needs some fixing. Sometimes the flours are too dry, and you see just lots of clumps instead of a ball of dough. If this happens, add more liquid by the tablespoon until it forms a ball. Sometimes the dough is too sticky; if this happens, add more flour by the tablespoon until the dough looks smooth and elastic. Most machines will knead and rise a loaf of bread in about 1 1/2 hours.

When the bread machine signals that it is done, remove the dough from the machine.

dough

Next, fold in thirds and push it around a little to re-distribute the yeast, then form it into an oblong that will fit into an 8 1/2 x 4″ loaf pan.

into pan

Place it in the loaf pan and set it in a warm and non-windy part of your kitchen. I usually put it on the top of the stove. Start preheating your oven to 385˚.

before rising

Let the loaf rise until it’s double in bulk, or until it has risen above the edges of the loaf pan. In the summer, this might take only 20 minutes. When my kitchen is cool in the fall or winter, it might take 45 minutes. Here’s a well-risen loaf:

risen

Bake at 385˚ for 20 minutes. Take it out and let it cool. It’s tempting, but if you cut it now and eat a hot slice, it really messes up the loaf for later neat-slicing. (I don’t always follow this rule <grin>)

baked loaf

Here’s a close-up of the great crumb and texture of this bread. Click on this photo and it will get even larger:

slice of bread

I do love my bread! It’s great for sandwiches, and great for toast!

250 Cookbooks: Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking

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Cookbook #7: Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking. By Elena Zelayeta, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1958. “Authentic Mexican cooking based on ingredients from your nearest supermarket.”

Elenas Secrets of Mexican CookingI have been cooking “Mexican” food as long as I can remember. I grew up in Southern California in the 50s, and my mother made tacos, enchiladas, and miscellaneous Mexican-style casseroles quite often. Today I’d classify these as “Tex-Mex” or “Southwestern” cooking rather than true Mexican cooking. They relied heavily on chile powder, green chiles, salsa, taco seasoning packets, onions, bell peppers, sour cream, and lots of jack or cheddar cheese. My own Tex-Mex cooking today is usually put together recipe-free, using past experience to free-form a meal.

Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking is likely the first cookbook that I purchased that talked seriously about the roots of Mexican cooking. It’s a wonderful and friendly book. In her preface, she discusses the influence of the Aztecs, Spanish conquerors, the European Emperor of Mexico in the 1860s (Maximilian) on the food of Mexico. She talks about different regional cooking in Mexico, and how Mexican dishes common in the southwestern US are little known in Mexico.

Elena herself was born in Mexico, but immigrated to San Francisco as a young girl, where she learned more about the cooking of Mexico from the cooks at her family’s inn. Quote: “Because of my many years in this country, I have learned what Americans like to eat. These recipes have been adapted to suit the palates of my American friends.”

In the introduction to this book, written by her friend, you find out that Elena became blind when her sons were young. That did not stop her from cooking: she learned how to use knives, blenders, bone chicken, make pastry, and even fry food in hot oil! Amazing, and inspiring.

I’m sure that I purchased this book because I wanted to expand my knowledge of Mexican cooking. And it did just that! Several pages are dirty and it is well-worn. I made notes on the tamales recipe, and tucked the recipe off the back of a Masa Harina package in the book. I also tucked a newspaper page of Mexican recipes in the book, including one for sopaillas.

Today, in 2012, I find this 1958 book useful (and I marked several more recipes to try), but a lot of the recipes use sort of unusual ingredients (pig’s head and feet, rabbit), or ingredients I’d rather purchase fresh (canned milk rather than fresh, canned tomatoes and canned tomatillos). One recipe calls for you to cook a bone-in chicken breast, and then bone it. Definitely not something I would do, with today’s abundance of boneless chicken breasts. Sliced cooked eggs are added to many dishes. Romano or Parmesan cheese is used often, while cheddar cheese is rarely used. Many recipes call for canned pimento—large red sweet pepper similar to red bell peppers—but I haven’t used these in years and don’t know if they are still readily available. Happily, taco seasoning packets are never called for. But where is the cilantro, Mexican oregano, fresh garlic, queso fresco, the black beans? Today, that’s the sort of ingredients I like in my Mexican-style food.

Today, many, many Mexican ingredients are available in our supermarkets. In 1958, Elena had to direct readers to some substitutions—this is a slight drawback because these substitutions are no longer necessary.

In conclusion, this book is still a pretty good reference for Mexican dishes. And it’s delightful reading, so I will keep this book!

I chose to cook “Tamale Pie with Red Chile Sauce”. This recipe uses masa, while my old standby tamale pie recipe uses cornmeal. Should be interesting. It also calls for lard. Lard has come back into some favor these days, since it is high in monosaturated fats that some believe have health benefits (google “lard nutrition” for current discussions). Finally, I have some cooked chicken that I need to use.

I know that I stated in my first 250 Cookbooks post that I would follow the recipes I found exactly as written. I realize now that was a bad idea. There is no sense tossing out my years of experience just to follow a recipe as written. So from now on, I’ll scan in the original recipe, and then type in the recipe as I actually made it. That way, if I feel that a recipe needs more flavor or whatever, I will do what I think should be done to make the it better. After all, each recipe is not only an experiment, it’s the meal I have planned that day for dinner! No sense eating something awful, or tossing it down the garbage disposal. If a recipe totally bombs, I will not type it in, and not include it in my recipe index.

Recipe: Tamale Pie with Red Chile Sauce

The original recipe is below. The “enchilada sauce on page 150” is: Wilt one chopped onion and 1/4 cup chopped green pepper in 1 tablespoon oil, then add 3 cups tomato sauce, 2 teaspoons chile powder, and salt to taste. (I had really hoped that this cookbook would give a recipe for an enchilada sauce that tasted really special. I’ll keep looking.)

Tamale Pie

Results

Sadly, this recipe was a bust. I was so hoping it would work! The photo doesn’t look so bad, and we were able to eat our meal, but we didn’t go back for seconds, savor leftovers, nor will I make it again. The fault is largely my own. The big issue is that the recipe really called for fresh masa, not masa flour.

Elena's Recipe

Re-reading Elena’s book, I realize that fresh masa is a moist product. I have never seen it in a market. Right in the above recipe, she suggested grinding hominy to make it if it’s unavailable. My own notes in her book tell me that I tried making tamales from masa flour using another of Elena’s recipes calling for fresh masa, and that I had to add a lot more liquid than called for. I should have read all that before jumping into the recipe!

When I prepared Tamale Pie with Red Chile Sauce as above, I did add twice as much chicken broth to the dough as called for, because it looked dry. I should have added four times as much! The crust tasted okay, but it was heavy and dry. The filling was great, although I strayed from the recipe, adding corn, olives, a fresh tomato, and oregano, cumin, and fresh cilantro.

“I like your regular Tamale Pie a lot better!” said my husband. Me too. Here, I’ll share it with you. I’ve made it many, many times. You could easily substitute cooked chicken or pork for the ground meat.

Tamale Pie

  • 1/4 cup chopped onion
  • 1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon oregano, preferably Mexican oregano
  • 1 teaspoon basil
  • 2 teaspoons chile powder
  • fresh cilantro to taste
  • 1 15 oz. can (chopped) tomatoes (use fresh tomatoes if you have them)
  • about 3/4 cup corn, canned or frozen or even fresh
  • 1 small can whole olives (about 1 cup)
  • 1/2 to 1 cup tomato sauce
  • 1/2 cup cornmeal
  • 1 1/4 cup water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Cook the onion and green pepper until slightly soft, adding a little salt to help sweat the onions. Remove them from the pan and save. Brown the meat and drain any fat, then add the cooked onions/bell pepper back to the pan, along with the spices, tomatoes, corn, and olives. Add tomato sauce to your own taste. Simmer for about 10 minutes, and of course, taste it and adjust the seasonings! Feel free to be creative. When it suits your own tastes, spread it in a 1 quart casserole.

Combine the cornmeal, salt, and cold water in a saucepan. Cook and stir until thick, just a few minutes. Spread the cornmeal mixture evenly over beef. (For convenience, as a working person I used to freeze the casserole at this point for baking later in the week.)

Bake at 350° for 40 minutes. Sprinkle cheese over top and bake 5 minutes longer. Serves 3-4.

Flours and yeast

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On this page:

Gluten flour


Vital wheat gluten, or what I usually call simply “gluten flour”, is a product made from the protein found in wheat. It improves yeast loaves by adding elasticity to the dough and bulk to the loaves. It looks like flour and is sold by companies like Arrowhead Mills, Bob’s Red Mill, and King Arthur Flour. Currently (2012), I find it in the bulk section of Safeway but not at Whole Foods. I found this bag at our local natural grocery store, Steamboat Mountain, in Lyons, Colorado. This great small store is packed with a great variety of natural foods.

wheat gluten packageIf you are using white flour sold as “bread flour”, it will already have a high gluten content and you do not need to use wheat gluten in a recipe. But if you are using whole grain flour, I strongly suggest adding gluten flour to the loaf. I’ve mixed some wheat gluten in all of my yeast loaves since the 1970s. Back then, I could not find unbleached bread flour, so I used unbleached all-purpose flour and substituted some of the flour with vital wheat gluten. Today I include a third of a cup of wheat gluten per standard loaf of any yeast bread. It looks like any type of white flour, but it sure adds a lot to a loaf.

gluten flour

If you have never kneaded a loaf of bread, I suggest you start with making a loaf from vital wheat gluten. It quickly forms a springy and elastic dough! The loaf bakes up pretty bland, but it’s good kneading practice. It’s like doing a laboratory experiment. And the result is low-carb/high-protein.

Gluten Bread

From Beard on Bread.

  • 1 pkg yeast
  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water
  • 2 1/3 cups vital wheat gluten
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Dissolve the yeast in the 2 tablespoons warm water. When it starts to bubble (“proof”), combine it with the additional cup of water. Stir in the flour and salt and knead thoroughly for 10-15 minutes. Roll the dough out and form into a loaf. Place in a greased or buttered 8x4x2-inch loaf pan and allow it to rise until doubled in bulk. This is a great low-carb/high protein bread. If you make 10 slices from a loaf, each slice has 110 calories, 20 g protein/slice, 6 g carb/slice. The recipe for gluten bred is below.

Bake at 350˚ for 50-60 minutes, until the loaf is nicely browned. Cool before slicing.

White whole wheat flour

White whole wheat flour is a product offered by King Arthur Flours. I’m not sure any other company sells this particular type of whole wheat flour. They claim that it is 100% whole wheat, just a different variety of wheat that is lighter in color and flavor than traditional whole wheat. I have found that it bakes up into a great, light-textured wheat loaf, even if you use it as the sole source of flour in the recipe (including the 1/3 cup gluten flour, of course).

white whole wheat flourIn general, whole grains make a loaf of yeast bread heavy and dense. The “whole” little grains are sharp particles that cut into and burst the bubbles that yeast forms in a rising loaf of bread. White whole wheat flour is great in that it doesn’t seem to pop as many of the bubbles as traditional whole wheat flour, thus lending to a light loaf of bread.

Yeast


It is important that you know how your yeast will work in a recipe. This is especially important if you use a bread machine to knead and bake your loaves—something I rarely do, but still, I like to know my yeast. In my opinion, it’s best to buy a large quantity of yeast and “get to know it”. That is one reason not to purchase yeast in those little packets.

Another reason for me not to buy yeast in packets cost. I use a lot of yeast, and those packets get pretty pricey. Even by the jar, yeast is expensive. Over the years, the price kept creeping up, then one day I discovered that they sold yeast in one pound packages. I heard from someone that you could freeze yeast. So now, I buy a large package, put some in a small jar that I keep in the refrigerator, then I store the rest in a ziplock-type bag in the freezer. There came a time when I could no longer find the large packages in my local stores, so now I purchase 2-pound packages online for about $10.

yeast

Note: Each packet of yeast is about 2 1/2 teaspoons, or a little under a tablespoon.

Favorites: Tortilla Flat breads

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tortilla flat breads

Several years ago I ran across an interesting recipe in a King Arthur Flour catalog for yeast-dough tortillas. At the time, I had just taken a class in Middle Eastern cooking where I had learned a great way to make flat bread pizzas by cooking them on an indoor grill pan. The King Arthur recipe could be adapted to grill pan cooking, I thought. I just had to try it!

Now, a little bit about King Arthur Flour. This is a company that specializes in ingredients for baking. I learned about them through a “user group” in the late 90s. User groups preceded listserves and I guess, now, Facebook as a way of people with like interests to share ideas. Anyway, the consensus at that time was that King Arthur flours are the best for baking. I ordered them through the catalog, liked them, and eventually found that this brand of flour is sold at Whole Foods and now even Safeway. Today I only buy this brand of flour.

There are drawbacks to King Arthur flour recipes, though. This a company that sells baking ingredients (and related cookware), so their recipes often have a long list of different types of flours. They are, after all, trying to sell their products. I can forgive them for that. The take-home lesson is: Substitute when necessary. Feel free to use all-purpose flour for any of the specialized flours called for in a recipe.

Some of the specialized King Arthur flours or ingredients I have tried and now keep on hand. For instance, I like their “Hi-maize® Natural Fiber” because it adds fiber and lightness to loaves. In the recipe below, free to substitute it with all-purpose flour. I am a huge fan of gluten flour, but you can use all-purpose flour. I also have their Salsa Seasoning.

Cooked on a grill pan, these tortilla flat breads come out thick, unlike any tortillas that you find in stores. They are more like pita or naan bread. But the mixture of cornmeal, all purpose and whole grain flours, dry milk, and seasoning make these into a sensory sensation. They do take a bit of time to prepare, but if you are cooking for two you will have extras to freeze away, or if you have company you could make them ahead of time.

I usually serve them topped with beans and taco meat and cheese, popped into the microwave for a minute. Then lettuce and tomatoes and salsa. You can pick them up like a little pizza, or roll them like a taco, but they are soft so they are also cut-able with a fork.

This recipe makes 10 flat breads. They freeze wonderfully, and you can pull out a few for a very quick and impressive meal.

Tortilla Flat breads

This recipe is based heavily on the King Arthur Flour recipe for tortillas. I’ve written this for the bread machine; if you don’t have one, refer to the original recipe for kneading and rising instructions.

  • 1/2 cup cornmeal
  • 1 1/2 cups boiling water
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose or white whole wheat flour (or a mixture)
  • 1/2 cup barley flour or oat flour (I rarely keep oat flour around, so I process oatmeal in the food processor and measure a half cup)
  • 1/2 cup Hi-maize® Natural Fiber (from King Arthur Flour)
  • 2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten (I swear by this, but use all-purpose if you have to)
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1/3 cup dry milk
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salsa seasoning, optional (from King Arthur Flour)

A good substitute for the salsa seasoning:

  • 1 teaspoon oregano (preferably Mexican oregano)
  • 1/2 teaspoon basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
  • a few shakes of garlic and onion powders, maybe a few shakes of cumin

Place the cornmeal in the bucket of a bread machine. Pour the boiling water over it and stir a little. Let it cool for about 10 minutes.

Add the remaining ingredients and set the bread machine to the dough cycle (this should include both kneading and rising). Peek a few times as the bread is kneaded, and add a little flour if it is too sticky (looks wet), or a little water if it is too dry (if it is just a bunch of unconnected bread clumps). The dough should become elastic, but stay quite soft.

When the bread machine cycle is finished, take the dough out onto a floured bread board. Divide it into 10 balls.

Heat a grill pan to medium-high heat. While it heats, start rolling the balls of dough into rough circles about 7-8″ in diameter. I usually start cooking the tortillas as soon as I have a couple rolled, then work rolling and cooking at the same time. If you want to roll them all out before you start cooking, you should cover the rolled ones to keep them from drying out.

roll out the tortillas

Your grill pan is ready when you hold your palm an inch above its surface and feel the heat coming off it. Don’t heat it until it smokes. Drop a little oil on the surface (I prefer olive oil) and brush it across the surface. Then put a tortilla on it and let the first side cook about a minute. The first side is done when you peek and see nice grill marks.

cooking the first side of the tortillaFlip the tortilla and cook the other side. Note the great grill marks!

cooking the second sideContinue rolling and cooking until all the tortillas are cooked.

Used these topped with beans, spicy meats, cheese, lettuce, and salsa, like a tostada. Or wherever your imagination takes you!

250 Cookbooks: The Complete Oriental Cookbook

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Cookbook #6: The Complete Oriental Cookbook. Edited by Isabel Moore and Jonnie Godfrey. Published by Marshall Cavendish Books Limited, London, 1979.

Complete Oriental Cookbook

This is a large book with full page photos of many of the dishes. The cuisines of China, India, Japan, and Southeast Asia are each presented first with several pages of introduction, and then with many recipes. Since I threw away the book cover and thus the book looks pretty plain, I’ll share one of the pretty inside photos:

Complete Oriental Cooking

I think that this book was a gift to me, since I had an interest in Chinese cooking in the 1970s and some long-lost friend thought I would like it. I don’t think I tried a single recipe from this book in all these years! No recipes are dirty or written on, no scraps of paper mark any pages. Going through the book now, I can see why. The pictures are pretty, but the recipes don’t perk my interest. It’s like the editors gathered recipes, but never actually tried them.

This is a “coffee table book” and I think I’ll let someone else put it on their coffee table!

For the sake of this blog, I picked the following recipe titled “Pork Balls with Ginger”. I love meat balls, and especially pork meat balls made from well-raised pork. The water chestnuts and fresh ginger in the meatballs should perk up the texture and taste, and rolling the meatballs in cornstarch before frying should make them nice and crispy.

Recipe: Pork Balls with Ginger
2 stars


The recipe from this book is just too darned long to type into this blog. Plus you will note from my rating that it wasn’t that good and I don’t plan to make it again. So I scanned in the page. In fact, I might start doing this more often!Pork Balls with Ginger

What’s wrong with this recipe? The sauce and the vegetables. The sauce had too much sherry and when I tasted it before serving, it was yucky. To make it palatable (we needed to be able to eat the meal!) I poured some of the sauce down the drain and diluted it with soy sauce and water. I should have used fresh shitaki mushrooms — I used some dried ones that I found at the Asian Seafood Market and they tasted terrible. For the “bamboo shoot”, I found a can of whole bamboo shoots at the same market. I tried this because the sliced bamboo shoots that stores carry are pretty tasteless. The whole ones had more flavor, but still didn’t taste good. (They looked interesting, though.) Fresh vegetables are so much better, and I suggest substituting celery or carrots for canned bamboo shoots.Pork Balls with Ginger

The pork meatballs were very good, though. Here is a recipe for enough meatballs for two people. When I make them again, I’ll use the Sweet and Sour Sauce from my own tried-and-true repertoire.

Pork Balls with Sweet and Sour Sauce
4 stars
(serves 2)

  • 3/4 pound ground pork, preferably from a store like Whole Foods
  • 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, chopped into fine dice
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons canned water chestnuts, chopped into fine dice
  • half of a whisked egg, or use 1 egg white
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • Sweet and Sour Sauce (see below)

Combine all the above ingredients and make meatballs about the size of an in-shell walnut. Heat a non-stick pan and put maybe a quarter cup of oil into it. (That’s kind of a lot of calories, but you want the meatballs crispy, and when you are done frying, the oil is left in the pan.) Once the oil is hot, set the temperature at about medium to medium-high.

Put a couple tablespoons of cornstarch on a dish. Roll each meatball in the cornstarch, then add to the hot pan. Fry the meatballs for about 15 minutes, turning frequently. You want them “cooked through and crisp”. Remove with a slotted spoon to paper towels.

Pork Balls with Ginger

Sweet and Sour Sauce
(serves 2)

Here’s a sweet and sour sauce that I use a lot, albeit usually with a chicken dish. I’m sure it would work great with the Pork Balls with Ginger.

  • 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 small can pineapple chunks in juice, drain and save the juice
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons ketchup
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • vegetable oil
  • 1/4 of an onion, cut into largish chunks
  • red and/or green bell pepper chunks, to taste
  • (any other fresh veggie you like!)
  • 2 cloves minced garlic
  • 1/2 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

Whisk vinegar, reserved pineapple juice, sugar, ketchup, and cornstarch in bowl.

Wipe the oil from the pan that you used to cook the pork balls (or use a different pan). Add a little oil and the vegetables cook until softened, 4 to 6 minutes. Add pineapple chunks, garlic, and ginger and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add vinegar mixture  and simmer until sauce is thickened, about 2 minutes. Serve over the hot Pork Balls with Ginger.

250 Cookbooks: Beard on Bread

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Cookbook #5: Beard on Bread, James Beard, 1974. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, NY.

Beard on Bread

I pulled this book off the shelf and happily tucked into it. Bread is my passion. I have baked at least a loaf a week for twenty-five years. My bread-making techniques have changed over the years, and I have learned from both successes and failures. I am still learning, and am always willing to try something new. But when I try a new yeast bread recipe from one of my 250 Cookbooks, I will not follow the recipe exactly as printed in the book. Instead I will incorporate my hard-earned bread-making knowledge.

Let me explain. First, I include “gluten flour” in all my loaves. This is a high-protein flour that gives a loaf its stretchiness as you knead it, and that gives a cooked loaf the structure to stay together rather than crumble apart. Gluten flour helps tremendously when you want to include whole grain flours in a recipe.

Second, I use a bread machine set on the “dough” cycle to knead my breads and take them through the first rise step. The machine does a great job of kneading, and I can go off and do other things. Maybe this is “cheating” in some people’s opinions, but in my years as a working mom, the bread just wouldn’t have been made if not for the bread machine. And the machine keeps the temperature perfect for the rising step, so I’ll know exactly when to come back and get the loaf ready to bake in my oven.

Reading James Beard’s introduction, I don’t think he would pooh-pooh bread machines (he wrote it before home bread machines were available). For instance, he writes that using a mixer with a dough hook is okay. I heartily agree with Beard’s love of bread: “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” He enjoys “. . . the sensual pleasure in smelling a yeasty loaf baking in the oven, the sense of accomplishment in offering a real bread at a meal – to say nothing of the knowledge that each loaf is full of goodness instead of being just a starchy filler.” He writes that including multiple flours and meals just to make a bread more nutritious fails if you end up with a loaf that has a terrible texture. I agree with this too.

I enjoyed re-reading his discussions of flours, kneading, and baking methods. Beard on Bread was one of the books I studied as I developed my own yeast bread techniques in the 70s and 80s. Making bread is an ancient art and most of his information is timeless.

The recipes in Beard on Bread begin with a basic white bread with his observations and notes. If you have never made a yeast bread from scratch, you could learn how to make bread from this book alone. I scanned this book cover-to-cover, lingering on many recipes. I like his historical notes on each type of bread. I noted about ten recipes for my own personal “to try” list. I was pleasantly surprised to find a section of quick breads; I had never thought to look in this book for that type of recipe. This book is a keeper!

I decided to make Sourdough Rye bread. It’s a little “out there” from my usual style of bread, so I might learn something. I’ve made sourdough bread in the past, from home-passed or purchased starter, but it’s kind of hard to keep a sourdough starter fed and growing, and eventually I always forget them and they dry up and die. This recipe calls for a simple starter that you begin from ingredients on hand 4 days before you make the bread. I can manage that – and it should be enough to add a touch of sourness to the bread. I also like the good proportion of rye flour in the recipe, and I like the addition of poppy as well as caraway seeds.

Recipe: Sourdough Rye
five stars


“This sourdough rye appeared in the columns of The New York Times several years ago. I tried it, made some changes in it, and discovered that it was one of the best recipes I have ever used. The bread has a nice crumb, slices well, and keeps extremely well. I enjoy it for sandwiches and find that, thinly sliced and well buttered, it’s delicious served with smoked fish and oysters or other shellfish.” [James Beard’s note.]

My note: The recipe below is for half the original recipe: it makes one loaf instead of two. Other changes from the original are the inclusion of gluten flour and the use of a bread machine.

  • 1 package active dry yeast (1 tablespoon)
  • 1 1/2 cups plus 1/4 cup warm water
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour, approximately
  • 1 cup rye flour
  • 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds
  • 3/4 teaspoon poppy seeds
  • 1 tablespoon melted butter
  • 1 1/2 tablespoon sugar
  • Cornmeal
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water

Four days ahead of breadmaking, prepare the “starter”. Combine 1 1/2 teaspoon yeast, 1 cup warm water, and 1 cup all-purpose flour in a plastic bowl or container. Cover tightly and let stand at room temperature for 2 days.

Note: I put it in a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap like this:

sourdough rye starter

After the 2 days at room temperature, put the starter in the refrigerator for at least another day.

The day before preparing the dough, combine 1/2 cup of starter, the rye flour, and 1 cup warm water in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature overnight. (Note: You will have more starter than you need for this recipe. If you want to keep it going, replenish with equal parts of warm water and flour, let stand again at room temperature, and then refrigerate. Continue the process each time you use some of it.)

Here’s how it looked the next day, just before I stirred it down:

sourdough rye overnight

The next day stir down the dough, then put it in a bread machine* and add rest of the yeast (1 1/2 teaspoons), dissolved in 2 tablespoons water, salt, caraway seeds, poppy seeds, butter, and sugar. Add 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. Set the bread machine to the “dough” cycle. Watch it as it kneads and add more all-purpose flour as necessary to keep the dough from being too sticky. You want it to form a nice, round ball of dough. I added enough flour so that it was still “tacky” feeling but not “sticky”. Leave the dough in the bread machine through the rise cycle.

*Hand kneading directions: Add the flour a little at a time, to make a stiff but workable dough. Knead for 10 to 12 minutes, then shape into a ball. Place in a buttered bwol, turning to coat the dough with the butter. Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 2 hours.

Take the risen dough out of the bread machine (or bowl, if you hand kneaded) and punch it down. Shape into a round loaf and place on a buttered baking sheet generously sprinkled with cornmeal.

formed loaf

Cover and let rise again until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour (mine rose in 30 minutes in a 73˚ kitchen).

Here’s the risen loaf. You can see how much bigger it is compared to the last picture (above).risen loafBrush with the egg wash, and bake in a preheated 375˚ oven for 30 minutes, or until lightly browned and the loaves sound hollow when rapped with the knuckles. Cool, covered with towels to prevent the crust from hardening.

Here’s the baked loaf. I wish you could smell it too!

baked loaf

Next time I’ll be a little more careful when I form the loaf, you can see that it did not bake perfectly round. If I had been more careful, I would have had a prettier picture! Plus I cut the loaf when it was still kind of hot. But let me tell you, it tasted wonderful. We had it with a good homemade beef barley soup, and slices of cheese that melted into the warm bread.

Classic favorites: Angel Squares

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My mother made these for us when we were kids and I loved them. This is one of the fifty or so very special recipes that I took with me when I moved out on my own.

I’m not sure I made these myself, ever. I’ve thought about them, and looked at the recipe card in my recipe file box. But on close inspection, I made several crucial typos, so I doubt I’ve made them.

Then I ran across the very original of the recipe in one of my 250 cookbooks (1964 Pillsbury’s Bake-Off). It is noted with my mother’s “Good” written next to it. I think it’s time to make them again!

The recipe below has two options for serving: the original, and an updated, lighter option. For us, I’ll make the light version. But I guarantee that the original recipe is very, very good!

Recipe: Angel Squares
three and a half stars

You can bake a half-recipe in an 8″x8″ pan for 35 minutes. Use 4 egg whites in a half-recipe.

Stir together:

  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Blend in:

  • 1 cup hot milk (hot milk helps dissolve the sugar faster)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat 2 minutes at medium speed (or 300 strokes with a spoon).

Beat:

  • 7 egg whites (1 cup)
  • 1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter

Beat until soft peaks form. Fold into batter, gently but thoroughly.

Turn into 13″x9″ inch pan, greased and floured on bottom. (I lined the bottom of the pan with parchment, sprayed with Pam, and dusted with flour.)

Bake for 35-40 minutes, until cake springs back when touched lightly in center. Cool.

Two options for serving:

Original: Cut the cake into 3×2-inch rectangles. Frost top and sides. Roll in 1 1/2 to 2 cups cashews or salted peanuts, finely chopped. (Peanuts were what my mother used.) Drizzle with chocolate glaze.

  • Butter frosting: In mixer, beat 1/4 cup butter, about 4 cups powdered sugar (1 pound), and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Blend in 5-6 tablespoons milk until spreadable. Add more powdered sugar if you get it too thin.
  • Chocolate glaze: Melt 2 5¢ Nestle’s Milk Chocolate Candy Bars, 2 tablespoons milk and 1 tablespoon butter over hot water. (I have no idea how big a 5¢ chocolate bar is compared to today’s chocolate bars. Sorry.)

Light version: Cut the cake into serving-size portions, and split in half through the middle. Top with softened frozen yogurt and fruit (such as sliced strawberries or peaches, or blueberries). Drizzle with a tiny bit of your favorite chocolate sauce if you want. Or use fruit and lite frozen topping (like Cool Whip). One-eighth of an 8″x8″ cake has about 200 calories and essentially no fat.

Recipe Comments

This is good for a non-fat cake. It tastes, predictably, quite sweet. I remember it as being a lighter, fluffier cake. That may be because I didn’t make any adjustments for high-altitude (we live at 5000 feet), or it may just be that I remember wrong. We had it both with strawberries and the next night, with sliced bananas and chocolate. Great!

250 Cookbooks: Bake-Off Recipes 1964

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Cookbook #4: 100 New Bake-Off Recipes, from Pillsbury’s 15th Grand National. From Pillsbury, 1964.

Bake Off 1964

Now we come to one of the cookbooks that I treasure. This small cookbook/booklet was my mother’s, and has her notes written on many pages. The booklet is falling apart and food-stained. I turn the pages carefully. Look at the cover: it cost 35¢! I had to search to find the keyboard symbol for this almost-outdated money distinction. Cents!

A lot of my cookbooks were produced by Pillsbury’s. A quick search of my database tells me that they make up almost 10 percent of my collection. Most of these Pillsbury cookbooks are these small “Bake-Off” booklets that both I and my Mother collected. Every year home cooks were encouraged to send their favorite Pillsbury flour recipe to the contest, then the finalists gathered to cook and present their dishes. (In 1964, the Grand Prize of $25,000 was presented at an Awards Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, announced by Art Linkletter and presented by Mrs. Edmund G. Brown, wife of California’s governor at the time.) Flour is in every recipe in this 1964 Bake Off booklet, and thus most are desserts.

What recipe shall I make from this treasure? My dilemma in finding recipes in this and a lot of my cookbooks will be one of calories: I usually forbid myself from baking sweets or cooking with large amounts of oil or butter. And my mother’s forte was sweets, from pies to cakes to cookies. She was the best baker I’ve ever known. Her main dishes were often casseroles, and those did not skimp on butter either. And somehow she managed to keep her weight down in spite of her liberal use of sugar and butter. But not me. I decided in my twenties that I would have to direct my baking to yeast breads, and my main dish recipes to low-fat options. (And that I would have to take up an exercise program so I could eat even that type of food.)

The recipe I would most like to make is “Raspberry Continental”. Mother wrote “delicious!” on this one, so I know it would be very good. But I cook for two people, and we just shouldn’t eat this. But you can make it:

raspberry continental

Other recipes Mother notes in this booklet are: Easy Hawaiian Torte (“good but nothing special”), Orange Dream Pie (“delicious”), Macaroonies (“good“), Lemon-y Layers (“good“), Macaroon Polka Dots (“very good”), and Cherry Marble Cake (“delicious“). Oh, and Angel Squares! I remember having these at home! This is an old favorite of mine. In fact, I typed the recipe onto an index card before I left home to go out on my own. So this cookbook is where it originated! Today Angel Squares even fit into my healthy eating plan, because they are basically an angel food cake baked in a 9″x13″ pan. (Of course you are supposed to cut it into squares and frost each square with butter frosting and roll in chopped peanuts and drizzle with chocolate. But that can be skipped for the calorie-conscious.)

My mother’s recipes have this curious “rating” system that my sister and I know without thinking. On her recipe index cards and in her books, when she tried a recipe that was worth keeping, she wrote a rating-comment on it. It goes like this, from least favorite to most favorite: good, good, very good, very good!, very good, delicious, delicious, delicious! (Sometimes she would toss in a “swell” or a “yummy” too, when she was having fun.)  It’s kind of like one-star to five-stars, in her quite individual way. Makes me smile.

I was going to try one of the main dishes from this cookbook, I even typed it into a draft. But I thought about it overnight, and no, it was a bad decision. That recipe just looked wrong. I don’t want another Beer and Cheese Soup entry, if I can help it. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and make cookies. Cookies! We can just eat a couple a night. It’s fitting and proper to choose a recipe that my mother tried and liked. I love coconut, so I chose this macaroon-type cookie.

Recipe: Macaroonies
four and a half stars


Junior Third Prize Winner by Judith Ann Carlson, Amery, Wisconsin.

Beat 2 eggs with 1/8 teaspoons salt until foamy. Gradually add 3/4 cup sugar; continue beating until thick and ivory colored, 5 to 7 minutes.

Fold in 1/2 cup Pillsbury’s Best All Purpose Flour and 1 tablespoon Land O’Lakes Butter, melted.

Stir in 2 cups flaked coconut [I used sweetened coconut], 1 cup (6 oz. pkg.) [they don’t sell this size package anymore] Nestle’s Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels, 1 teaspoon grated lemon or orange rind [I used orange rind] and 1 teaspoon Burnett’s Pure Vanilla.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto lightly greased and floured cookie sheets. Or do as I did: use a parchment-lined half-sheet pan without any oil or flour. (It’s easier and it works.)

Bake at 325˚ for 12-16 minutes until delicately browned. (I found that they needed the 16 minutes in my oven.) Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet.

Recipe Comments

These turned out great, yummy and chewy and sweet. They were almost crispy the first day, and were softer and more like a macaroon the second day. I had half-a-one for breakfast-dessert!

Macaroonies

The following is a scan of the inside-front-cover of the booklet. This is how women dressed in the fifties and the sixties, the cute little shirtwaist dress, the white tennis shoes. I remember those days.

BakeOff64page

 

 

A trip to the Asian market.

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I know better. But when I visit my favorite Asian market in Boulder I usually end up walking out with a few odd and unplanned items tucked in the plastic bag. I call it a “what the heck?” moment. Here we go:

pickled daikon containerIt cost all of 2 dollars for this large container of pickled daikon and carrots! How could I resist?

In my defense (this time), I once was searching high and low for pickled daikon. That was several years ago when I took a home cook class from the Culinary School of the Rockies (now Escoffier Boulder) on Thai cooking. We were given a great recipe for Pad Thai that called for this unusual ingredient (among a lot of other things). I found fresh daikon in stores, but not pickled. So when I saw the container of pickled daikon (and carrots) next to the check-out stand, I couldn’t resist it. Even though long ago I had stopped searching for it. Even though I had no plans to make Pad Thai in the near future.

It does look pretty:

pickled daikon

That’s a little Thai basil next to the pickled daikon and carrots. It too is a deal, it only cost about $2.50 for a huge bag, about 4 ounces. That’s what local regular markets charge for 2/3 ounce of fresh herbs.

What is daikon? It’s a large Asian radish. What is Thai basil? Thai basil is similar to sweet basil, but it has a strong kick of a licorice-flavor aroma, sort of like fresh fennel leaves. It’s great in Asian cooking. For instance: I did a quick fry of chicken tenders, added red curry paste and coconut milk, and topped it off with some chopped Thai basil and lime. Perfect.

The Asian market that I like is called the “Asian Seafood Market”. It’s in Boulder, Colorado, on 28th Street, just north of Valmont. The lady who runs the store is always watching TV, often Korean soap operas. She always berates me about something. This time I had two limes in my basket. She said “Two limes? No two limes. Go get ‘nother. They are three limes, three limes for dollah.” I dutifully went for another. If I buy one or two baby bok choy, she just shakes her head, “not ‘nuf, you need lot.” If I ask where something is, or how to substitute for something I can’t find, she talks so fast and barely understandably that I just nod and do what she says.

The market is amazing. Packed with all sorts of cans and jars that look strange to American eyes. Usual and unusual frozen seafoods. All sorts of wrappers and noodles and rices. The produce section looks small, but is full of good herbs and vegetables. The fresh mint is excellent. I learned about Asian mangoes from the store-boss; I found them in her store years before I started seeing them in other local markets. (They call them “champagne” mangoes and I’d eat them today but I’m allergic.) She sells fresh bean sprouts by the pound, which is great, since I rarely use all of a package bought in a regular market. Near the counter is a display of Asian packaged snacks. Oh, and my masseuse swears by the eucalyptus oil that is behind the counter. (It clears the nasal passages.)

Go there, check it out, if you live in the Boulder area. It’s an adventure. Where else can you find non-bar-coded foodstuffs? That in itself is a trip back a couple decades. I checked, but wasn’t surprised that the store does not even have a web site. You can only experience this store in person.

And what did I do with the pickled daikon and carrots? Well, I cooked a couple tablespoons of chopped red onion, then added chopped baby bok choy, then salt and pepper. Then I topped it with a heaping tablespoon of the pickled mixture. Served it next to the above mentioned Thai chicken dish and rice. It was very good. It’s all gone, not even a photo to share with you.