Tag: Food

Here’s a very quick-to-throw-together (although not quick to cook) recipe, for those who, like me, consider the crock pot to be one of the most essential items in a kitchen.

Ingredients:

1 lb. pork breakfast sausage (spicy or plain, whatever you like), cooked and crumbled
2 large cans of baked beans (By “large”, the normal size of, say, Bush’s baked beans. Use whichever flavor you like.)
1/2 cup Ketchup
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbs. mustard

Combine all ingredients in the crock pot, stir to incorporate, and then put the lid on and heat on High for 90 minutes or so. Or on low for three hours or so. Serve as a side dish, or a main dish with nice thick bread and butter. Ideal for a fall or winter potluck.

I love the crock pot. Tomorrow I’m using it to make chili.

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I’m sure that prison food probably ranks below high school food in quality. I don’t remember ever finding any maggots in my high school meals; but then, even if I had, there was no James Whitmore sitting nearby waiting to take my maggot and feed it to the bird he was nursing back to health. But I obviously have no real basis on which to make this judgment, except for the existence of an item called “Nutriloaf” (or “Nutraloaf”).

Nutraloaf is a special prison food, intended for inmates who have apparently demonstrated behavioral issues. I suppose Nutraloaf is what they feed to the guys who are spending “a month in the hole”. And apparently it is disgusting — so disgusting, in fact, that there have been lawsuits over the serving of Nutraloaf on the basis that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Well, some fine soul out there actually decided to do a Nutraloaf taste test, making it according to a recipe cited in one of those court cases and then giving it a whirl. My favorite comment was this one: “Even though it doesn’t have a taste, it feels like something is lingering in my mouth. It’s like a Nutri-ghost.”

It certainly can’t be worse than Rachel Greene’s “English trifle”, though:

Note to self: stay out of prison.

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I never read Gourmet. Never. Not really sure why; I didn’t have any particular reason for not reading it other than my interests in food don’t go to, well, the “gourmet”. I love food and I love to cook, but I’m not exactly a “foodie”, to be honest. Put it this way: as much as I love watching Hell’s Kitchen, I’m not in any great hurry to eat the food they make there, and I felt a certain amount of sympathy for the guy who, in the first episode of this season, made biscuits-and-gravy for his “signature dish” and got berated by Chef Ramsey for it. (This guy, who owns a diner somewhere, was so out of his depth in the “gourmet” kitchen of the show that he was eliminated from the competition before the first dinner service was even completed.)

As far as food magazines go, the one we really like to read at Casa Jaquandor is Cooking Light. We’ve subscribed for years (and come to that, we should come up with a way to store our back issues more usefully one of these days). We’ve found lots of recipes we love from its pages, lots of good articles, and all that jazz. Other than that, we don’t really read much by way of culinary magazines.

However, I’ve always — at least as long as I’ve been, shall we say, culinarily aware — known of Gourmet‘s presence. I remember hearing it mentioned on a lot of the cooking shows we used to watch in the days when we had cable teevee and the Food Network. I’ve known people who read Gourmet religiously, and it’s been a mainstay on the magazine racks at The Store.

Here’s Buffalo News food writer Janice Okun on the demise of Gourmet:

Although certainly elitism was very much present in Gourmet’s early days—when cans of food were referred to as “tins” and French cuisine was seen as the ultimate—it had greatly lessened in recent years. The recipe format became much easier to read. The wonders of American food were extolled along with the cuisines of Asia and South America.

There was social commentary, too. I remember well (and clipped) a cogent article about how Wal-Mart had changed the grocery industry. I read about the mistreatment of agricultural workers. But truthfully, though I read the magazine from cover to cover, I never cooked from it much at all. Maybe all the revision went too far—some of the magic got lost along the way.

I first became acquainted with Gourmet in high school. A friend’s mother, known for her magnificent shortbread cookies, I must add, had stockpiled all the old issues and I was fascinated. This chubby kid from North Buffalo whose idea of good eating was overdone pot roast was suddenly exposed to the fact that there was a world out there where food could be exquisite and glamorous restaurants provided amazing culinary experience. It had no relation to my life or the life of anybody I knew, but I was hooked.

And that air of excitement continued even as Gourmet democratized. The recipes never drove me to the kitchen, but I looked forward to that magazine every month.

I was not alone, I guess. When the time came for my husband and me to downsize, we cleaned out our attic to find that we had hoarded 20 years of Gourmet magazines up there. (Big attics have their uses after all.)

We put them in our garage sale. I tell you, those gorgeous old Gourmets practically walked off the driveway. (Ah, if we only knew then what we know now.)

My old school chum Kerry also has a personal remembrance of the magazine, important in her life for several reasons:

Today it was announced that Gourmet magazine would end its publication, after 70 years. It made me sad – not because I’m a subscriber (I’m not, although we were at one time), but because my mom was a loyal reader. Following in a close second to The New Yorker, Gourmet was her reading material of choice. And when Jon and I first got together and it was his birthday, she got him, as aspiring chef, a subscription to Gourmet as well. He was touched. Years later, in his stint as Executive Chef of Saucebox here in Portland, Jon was written up in an article in Gourmet, complete with a dashing photo. Too bad my mom never got to see it.

I find it sad to see such long-lived mainstays of many worlds going away in this current economy. But who knows, maybe Gourmet will live again someday. After all, Realms of Fantasy was put to pasture and then relaunched by another publisher, and that mag’s circulation is, I’m sure, significantly smaller than Gourmet‘s. And really, the economy can’t stay in the toilet forever. Right?

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One of my Facebook friends posted this morning that she’s on her way for some wine and sushi. Noting the amusing timing of said posting — eight in the morning on a Sunday — I was reminded of this, one of my favorite quotes about wine, from Lily Bollinger:

I only drink champagne when I’m happy, and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.

I love that quote!

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I’m not sure where I got the idea from — I’m pretty sure that it’s not my own — but a thought for a potentially yummy sandwich popped into my head the other evening. I tried it out today for lunch, and sure enough, I loved it. This one’s going in the rotation. What is it?

— 2 slices of thick, whole grain bread (I’m using Dark German wheat right now, the kind where the crust is studded with seeds)
— 2 tbs cream cheese (I’m using light cream cheese, as I can’t really tell the difference between it and regular)
— 7 or 8 nice-sized strawberries, sliced.

Spread the cream cheese on both slices of bread, as you would mayo or butter or whatever. Fill the sandwich with the strawberries. Consume.

I love sandwiches, of nearly all types. I’ve been on a PB&J kick of late, but instead of the grape jelly that The Wife and The Daughter insist are proper for PB&J, I’ve been using strawberry, or raspberry, or the blueberry-rhubarb freezer jam that The Wife made some time back. I’ve also been doing good old tuna salad a bit. And of course there are the usual cold cuts, although I don’t use those as much lately.

But yeah, the cream cheese-and-strawberry sandwich is terrific.

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Some recent notes on food and drink:

:: I shouldn’t like this stuff, but I do. It’s Blueberry Lager. I’ve had “fruit beers” before, and they always taste like beer with added fruit flavorings, not unlike Cherry Coke. This beverage, however, tastes like blueberry soda with the beer added. It’s an odd item, to be sure. It also has nice alcohol content and, when you pour it, the head is purple. So, in honor of the impending release of Star Trek, I am going to pretend that this stuff is Romulan Bock. (No, I will not be serving it at diplomatic functions.)

:: My readers in the Midwest will be familiar with “broasted chicken”, a delicacy out there that is generally hard to come by in other locales. Well, a few weeks ago we learned of a pizza place in nearby Hamburg that sells broasted chicken, and last week, we made the trek there and picked up a bucket of the crispy golden stuff. Oh mama, how I’ve missed broasted chicken since leaving Iowa! Local readers, if you’re interested, the place is Koz’s Pizza, on Camp Road in Hamburg.

(What is “broasted chicken”? It’s chicken that’s been broasted. Duh! But seriously, “broasting” is actually a trademarked process, so you can’t call your chicken “broasted” if you’re not using the gizmo made by the company that makes “broasters”. But what it basically entails is battering the chicken and then cooking it in a method that combines deep frying and pressure cooking. Done right, this results in chicken with a wonderfully crispy skin and a wonderfully moist inside.)

:: Longtime readers may recall that I have long pined for my favorite snack food of all time, Planters Cheez Balls. Oooooh, how I miss my Cheez Balls! Well, I may not have been reunited with the real thing, but I have found the closest thing to them that I’m ever likely to find, barring the re-entry of Planters into the Tasty Cheese Snack market: Snikiddy Grilled Cheese Puffs. They’re a bit on the pricy side, being one of them new-fangled Organic, All Natural, hippie snacks, but that’s right up my alley anyway, so I love ’em. Hooray!

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FINAL UPDATE: This post has become pretty unwieldy over the years, so please go to this page for the best and most current version of this recipe! Thanks!

UPDATED AGAIN 9-15-2013 with instructions for making a gluten-free version of this soup!!! See below.

EDITED AGAIN on MARCH 27, 2011! See below.

UPDATED BELOW on NOVEMBER 10, 2010.

A couple of weeks back I posted about my inaugural attempt at making Chicken Wing Soup. Yesterday, I gave it a second attempt, using some of the notions that I had already formulated from Batch Number One, and to my taste buds, this batch was significantly better than Batch Number One. So here is the recipe on which I have now settled:

Ingredients:

1.5 lb cooked chicken
1/2 lb potatoes, cooked and diced
1/4 cup Frank’s hot sauce

1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour

32oz Chicken stock
1 cup skim milk
1 cup lowfat sour cream
More Frank’s hot sauce or other hot sauce, to taste

Seasoned croutons for garnish

1. Cook and shred the chicken and marinade in the 1/4 cup hot sauce, the longer the better. (I marinated mine overnight until afternoon, about 18 hours.)

2. Put marinated chicken and potatoes into a crockpot and turn on “High”. Cover and let “crock” while you make the rest of the soup.

3. Melt the butter in a soup pot or stock pot over medium heat.

4. Add 1/2 of the flour and stir until it is completely mixed with the melted butter; then add the rest of the flour and continue stirring the roux until it is the color of light caramel, about three or four minutes.

5. Add the Chicken stock, milk, sour cream, and hot sauce, all at once. Turn up heat a bit, stirring constantly; taste and add more hot sauce if desired. Turn heat up again, and keep adjusting heat up a bit at a time, stirring all the while, until the soup is just reaching a boil. Allow the soup to boil for a minute or so, constantly stirring. (This allows the roux to thicken the soup.)

6. Pour the soup into the crock pot, over the chicken and the potatoes. Stir a few times, cover, and allow to crock on “High” for an hour or so. After that, to keep warm turn the pot down to “Low” until serving.

7. When serving, sprinkle seasoned croutons on top; best eaten with thick slices of crusty bread with butter. Even better with a cold beer!

Notice that this time I omitted the aromatics, opting not to saute onions and celery in the roux before adding the stock, milk and cream. I may go back to doing this in the future; this probably does make for a more complexly flavorful soup. This time I was mainly interested in getting the consistency and flavor exactly right, and this formula resulted in a really good product. I made this for a potluck dinner at church last night. I went in with a crockpot full of soup. I came home with a nearly empty crockpot. That tells me something.

UPDATE 11-10-10 and 3-27-11: OK, I can’t ever quit tinkering. So I decided to try something a bit different when I made the soup again this weekend past.

I love the flavor of the soup as prepared above, but the one thing that always vexes me is that it doesn’t totally blend together the way I want it to — what I think happens is that the sour cream never really integrates into the soup, but rather breaks apart into a whole bunch of really tiny bits that are suspended in the rest of the liquid. This doesn’t really impact the flavor, but the creamy consistency is never quite what I want it to be.

So when I decided to make the soup again the other day, I thought of a change to make. I left out the sour cream, and instead used half-and-half. So, here is my newest formulation of the soup!

3-27-11: I’ve added details on optional aromatics to add to the soup. It’s in italics in the recipe below.

Ingredients:

1.5 lb chicken, cooked and shredded
1/2 lb potatoes, cooked and diced
1/4 cup Frank’s hot sauce

Optional Aromatics:
1 small onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 carrot, shredded

1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour

32oz Chicken stock (I use a “No sodium added” brand. This dish doesn’t really need any additional salt.)
1 cup skim milk
1 cup half-and-half
More Frank’s hot sauce or other hot sauce, to taste

Seasoned croutons for garnish

1. Cook and shred the chicken and marinade in the 1/4 cup hot sauce, the longer the better. (I marinated mine overnight until afternoon, about 18 hours.)

2. Put marinated chicken and potatoes into a crockpot and turn on “High”. Cover and let “crock” while you make the rest of the soup.

3. Melt the butter in a soup pot or stock pot over medium heat.

4. Add 1/2 of the flour and stir until it is completely mixed with the melted butter; then add the rest of the flour and continue stirring the roux until it is the color of light caramel, about three or four minutes.

4a. If you wish to use the Optional aromatics — and I do recommend it — add them to the roux at this point and stir them about for several minutes, until tender, allowing their flavor to sweat out.

5. Add the Chicken stock, milk, sour cream, and hot sauce, all at once. Turn up heat a bit, stirring constantly; taste and add more hot sauce if desired. Turn heat up again, and keep adjusting heat up a bit at a time, stirring all the while, until the soup is just reaching a boil. Allow the soup to boil for a minute or so, constantly stirring. (This allows the roux to thicken the soup.)

6. Pour the soup into the crock pot, over the chicken and the potatoes. Stir a few times, cover, and allow to crock on “High” for an hour or so. After that, to keep warm turn the pot down to “Low” until serving.

7. When serving, sprinkle seasoned croutons on top; best eaten with thick slices of crusty bread with butter. Even better with a cold beer!

Basically, it’s the same recipe except with half-and-half replacing the sour cream. This resulted in a much nicer, creamier, more consistent texture to the soup. I suppose that you could go farther and use 2 cups of half-and-half, or if you really want a rich dish, use heavy cream. But I don’t think the dish needs that much fat.

UPDATE 9-15-2013: If you need a gluten-free version of this soup, fret not! Omit the making of the roux above. Just leave it out. I’d still saute the aromatic veggies in the butter, just for richness, but do not use the flour. Instead, just make the soup without the roux. Then, toward the end of the cooking process (you can do this anytime when you’re about to serve), whisk a bit of cornstarch into a cup of cold milk or heavy cream, and then stir that into the soup to thicken it. And hey, you might not even need to do that, if you like the consistency without the thickeners at all.

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I haven’t shared this in a couple of years, and I know (or I hope!) that I have new readers since then, so here’s an incredibly easy way to make wonderfully delicious chicken: marinate your chicken pieces (or the entire bird) in this mixture: soy sauce, sesame oil, and honey. Equal portions of each. When doing fix or six pieces — usually a few thighs and a few split breasts — I’ll do a half cup of each. Just mix and marinate; turn the pieces over in the marinade once in a while before cooking. Then, cook as you will — roast or grill — using the marinade as a basting solution. Wonderful and easy!

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