Category Archives: Recipes

Works in Progress

Posted on July 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

A while ago my sister sent me the contents of my mother’s 4×6 card file from the 1970’s to 1980’s.  This recipe was typed out onto a yellowed card on her IBM Selectric typewriter.

Orange chicken included an entire chicken, specific amounts of flour, salt and pepper in which to dredge the chicken, then shortening for sauteeing.

The sauce called for orange juice concentrate and a minimal amount of water, brown sugar, oregano and nutmeg.

The New Outlook

I was only cooking for two so had 1# of chicken cutlets.  I didn’t measure the flour and added s&p to it and had it ready to dredge chicken at the last minute.

The chicken was sauteed in butter and olive oil in a non-stick pan until nearly done.

In this test for the sauce there was 1/2 shallot, minced, 1 c fresh-squeezed orange juice, 1/2 c chicken broth.  I sauteed the shallot in butter, added the juice and broth and reduced by 1/2.  I did add about 1/2 tsp of raw sugar as an homage to the original recipe but don’t think it’s needed.  At the end 1 tsp of butter was added and the chicken cutlets were returned to warm.

It was served over rice with sauteed zucchini.  We enjoyed the dish, but I would add some orange zest to bring home the flavors.  Anything more would alter the original dish, which I may do in a future episode of Cooking with Dee.  Cheers!

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Lunch a deux

Posted on July 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

I must say that I have not been alone or lonely during the long weekend my husband was out of town for a family funeral. The first night I sat in for an ill guest at a dinner party. Saturday was quiet. Today I’ve a luncheon turned overnight guest who is visiting to perform in town. I still miss Jim but he’ll be back tomorrow night and will need to de-compress and rest after being a pallbearer outdoors in 104 degree weather and dealing with family and all the sadness that surrounds such an occasion.

On a warm day, I didn’t want to heat up the oven so didn’t make salmon en papillote. I microwaved it in an old recipe of my mother’s, and served it with couscous and sauteed asparagus and cherry tomatoes. It was light and tasty and a treat for me to cook at home as my husband is allergic to anything that swims.

Then dinner, our guest is staying over so I had two small chicken breast “cutlets” that I breaded and served with cherry tomatoes, a German cucumber salad and sliced avocado. Tired now, so will get you recipes tomorrow. Sorry! Dee

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Food Gifts

Posted on July 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’m big on “hostess gifts.” Sure, you can always bring a bunch of flowers or a bottle of wine, but certain occasions call for something more personal, more special.

One of my favorites is spiced nuts. Of course I’ve asked for permission to share this 20 year-old recipe and been summarily denied by a magazine that is now defunct but has a presence (and this recipe) online. Choose the nut(s) of choice, I like raw cashews, and coat them with a toasted spice mixture of your liking, melt some butter into it, toss the nuts in the mixture and bake at 350 for 5-10 minutes. Keep an eye on them because they like to burn. Make sure they are completely cooled before placing in a decorative container (I love mason jars) and wrapping for giving.

I also like to buy olives, preferably at an olive bar so you can control the liquid content. I love meaty Kalamatas for this preparation. Drain the brine from the olives. Place the olives in a bowl and add whatever you like and have on hand. I place a few cloves of garlic in there, a sprig of rosemary (bruise it to allow the flavors out), some chili flakes. Don’t add salt, as the olives are salty enough. Place in a decorative container, leaving some room at the top. Cover with extra virgin olive oil and sit out on the counter for a few days to a week, making sure the olives are submerged. Make sure to notify the recipient that once the olives have been consumed the oil can be used for cooking or salads.

These are two great appetizers I like to keep on hand for when guests visit. If placed in the refrigerator the olive oil will solidify a bit but at room temperature will look normal again. For the nuts, keep them in sealed bags in the freezer until ready to serve or package as a hostess gift.

I know, I don’t make sweets. My sisters and many others are great bakers and I am not. Perhaps my palate is more suited to hot and salty flavors. In the college cafeteria my favorite breakfast was cocoa puffs with chocolate milk, now it’s smoked salmon on a sesame bagel but I’ve been known to eat cold pizza for breakfast! Cheers, the birds are up and so are we so at 6 a.m. it’s time to take out the dog. Dee

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Dee’s Burger

Posted on July 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

I figured if I could plan my wedding in four days, I could entertain 20 in two days. Luckily my friend D and I were able to pull it off. There were a few glitches, including my apprehension that we may not have enough food if more people showed up, and the trusty grill that the wheels broke when traveling to the site.

My assignment was burgers and I was going to make them from scratch. I had to make 24 burgers so had the butcher, only a few hours before I was to put them together, to put three 2# packages up for me, 85/15 beef. I looked that beef in the eye and made up my recipe right there. The key is to keep the meat cold and not compact it too much. For this recipe I had to do everything to scale, which is how I can give you the recipe.

For two pounds of freshly-ground 85/15 beef:

Two cloves garlic
One Shallot

Microplane them into a bowl with

One egg, 1t salt, 1/2 t pepper, 1 t Worcestershire

Mix ’em up

1/4 c bread crumbs, have on hand cowpoke

When you finish settin’ up, take the 2# of meat out of the frig and put it in a chilled bowl, if y’all can. If not just get moving. Break it apart quickly with a large fork, do not compress. Add the eggs/seasonings and fluff up again with the fork. Add bread crumb until it comes together. That’ll depend on the day and the humidity. Don’t make them into hockey pucks like the Scots do.

Form and cook on a good hot grill. I measured mine out and actually made them into rectangles (I had so many to do and wanted to make them uniform in size) but do whatever you like. Just handle them as little as possible and if the grill isn’t ready, put them on a plate and refrigerate them until it’s time to cook. They were a hit, not like the Royals in the US, but pretty durn close. Cheers, Dee

ps Homage to Alton Brown? My husband loves you because you’ve reduced cooking to a science. Now he thinks a robot can do what I do in the kitchen…

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High Altitude Hard-Cooked Eggs

Posted on June 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

First off, I use the oldest eggs I have, usually a week old. I get fresh food delivered weekly from a local provider who has wonderful milk, OJ, apple juice, eggs, bacon et al. If I use the new eggs they will not peel. When I have three dozen eggs on the frig door the oldest is always on top and that’s what I use for hard-cooked eggs.

I’ve learned a few ways to make these eggs, all easy at 3′ above sea level. I made them yesterday at 6,400 feet above sea level and they turned out perfect. Cover cold eggs with cold water and place on stove. Before the water boils add salt (not to season the eggs, to bring up the temperature of the water). When boiling, time for 12 minutes of rapid boiling then place eggs in an ice water bath to cool.

Thirteen minutes would have firmly set the yolk but I like the yellowy color in the middle as long as it’s cooked and nothing is runny. And I must say to our farmers that our eggs are VERY fresh and this is to be admired. But for hard-cooked eggs, a week-old egg is OK to peel, a 2 week-old egg would be better for that purpose only.

It is wonderful to have the farmers’ markets open once again. What is Summer for many readers is really Spring here, but it was 80 degrees in the mountains today and our A/C kicked in a bit, which is OK because the pollen counts for grasses are off the radar. The markets are slow to bring what we usually get now because of the long, cold and snowy winter. Corn is here, salad greens. We’re waiting for tomatoes and berries and more tasty treats. Cheers, Dee

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I got to the B’s

Posted on May 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

My mother died 2 1/2 years ago. A year and a half ago I got a package from my youngest sister. First let me tell you that three boxes were sent to me the day before we moved away and they were placed into storage, unopened, where they sit today.

To say that my relationship with my mother was rocky would be an understatement. She always treated us kids well and I appreciated and learned much when she took an interest, in the 1980’s in food, when a family friend gave her a subscription to Gourmet. Gone were the cream of mushroom canned soups. It was a new world, for me, anyway.

The package from my youngest sister has sat there, along with a small check from my mother’s estate that I will not cash and hope my sister has used wisely, for well over a year. Tonight I tore it open, and it contains 3×5 card recipes from a plastic box my mother had for eons. When I got to the B’s her BBQ Beef (a recipe I’ve wanted in order to transform it) was in my handwriting. I teared up and put the lot back in the envelope to tackle tomorrow. Apparently my sister is still missing a lot of recipes mom wrote on thin paper in green typewriter ink, probably on her classic IBM Selectric they bought used. I might actually have her infamous birthday cake recipe in storage, Viennese Chocolate Pecan Torte. It’s something I should have because we get at least 2# of fresh pecans shelled and picked by my mother- and father-in-law each year.

The torte is a decadent pecan cake, with milk chocolate ganache and a dark chocolate frosting on top. It was a birthday treat for all and I thought my sisters, the bakers, knew how to do it. I may have that recipe in the vault in air-conditioned storage but that will remain to be seen.

My thought was to do a book of favorite family recipes. We all depend on those taste and scent memories to bring us home. I’ll let you know when I get beyond the B’s. Cheers, Dee

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Essential Pantry

Posted on January 23, 2011 | 2 comments

I notice that a lot of cooks are doing this now, telling viewers or readers one thing at a time about how to build a pantry.

Confession: I was so scared to start writing this blog I worked for weeks getting together my essential cookbook collection and then the pantry collection. I believe cookbooks spanned four episodes and the pantry, five, but no-one reads them. No-one refers to them and I wish you would.

Please let me know how I can make these integral pages a meaningful part of your life. Yes, I have to redo my home page and will do so to make it easier for you to access this information. Signing off for now, Dee

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Beef Stew

Posted on December 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

I took two onions and cut them each in six pieces. Four full-sized carrots, two stalks of celery, and a half dozen small red potatoes. All in bite-sized pieces. I blanched the carrots for five minutes, then the whole or halved potatoes for ten. I sauteed the onions in a bit of olive oil and butter for a few minutes then had all the veggies with raw celery chopped and in a huge bowl.

Two pounds of cubed beef were salted peppered and tossed with flour and thyme, then sauteed in two batches and added to the veggies. I stirred everything together, added it all back to the pot and heated it up, adding an entire bottle of good red wine, one can beef consomme and one can water plus two bay leaves.

It cooked for about 2.5 hours simmering on the stove (I can’t trust my oven) and it was rich and fantastic. I had to add a bit of buerre manie at the end (2T flour and 2T butter, combined with a fork) but it was a great stew and I just made it mostly of things I had on hand. A neighbor arrived from a trip last night and had nothing in the frig so I made enough to give us two meals and she and her husband one.

Things I would do differently: cut the potatoes smaller; add some sauteed mushrooms; and add the frozen peas I’d planned to do at the end but forgot. The sauce was heavenly, the carrots bright orange and the beef tender and succulent.

Accidents happen and good food is made on the fly. As no-one will share recipes for blog publication these days, more of these accidental hits should be tried. It helped that my husband was home with a cold for the past three days, upstairs moaning about how horrible it was to be sick. Being in the kitchen was a pleasure, not a chore! Cheers, Dee

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Pizza

Posted on December 16, 2010 | 2 comments

I mixed things up the other night with homemade pizza. Usually I do a white pizza with sauteed peppers and mushrooms, pepperoni and mozz. The dough is 2/3 unbleached white flour, 1/3 whole wheat flour, water, yeast and a touch of olive oil.

Used to be I’d make two cookie-sheet sized pizzas but that’s too much food so I halved the dough recipe. This week I made Jim a meat-lovers pizza with the usual mozz and mushrooms, pepperoni and I bought one mild Italian sausage and sauteed it. He got half the pizza.

My half was a reminiscence of the best slice of pizza I ever had, from a shop just off the main piazza in Siena, Italy. I parboiled a few small red potatoes and sliced them thinly, grated some Gruyere cheese for the bottom, arranged the sliced potatoes and brushed them with olive oil. Seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh rosemary and a sprinkle of Parmigiano Reggiano. It was so delicious I ate some for breakfast yesterday morning and still have a slice for lunch tomorrow.

I love trying new things, especially when Jim says his was the “best pizza ever!” Cheers, Dee
p.s more about yesterday’s stew later.

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Sallie’s Concord Grape Pie

Posted on September 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’ve gotten so many hits on Concord Grapes that I went to another source who has sent me a book about them and makes her own version. She is my grade school music teacher, Sallie P. We got in touch a few years ago at a reception. Definitely a musically, educationally and culinarily talented family. What was that song, I Love to To Go a’Wandering… I learned in third grade? My sister played the baby in a college opera production of Madame Butterfly where Sallie’s husband sang the lead. And I’ll never forget our class performance of Fly Me To The Moon. I have known this family all my life and it’s so good to be back in touch as we moved away when I was twelve. Thank you, Ms. Sallie, for this recipe.

Greetings Dee,

Over the years I have heard so many people cast off the idea of grape pie as unappealing only to realize that almost anyone who enjoys cherry pie will like grape also. It became a favorite in our family and served as a hospitality gesture to newcomers to Fredonia. My North Carolina sister, a caterer for many years, surprised and pleased clients often with a pie they had never heard of. Freezing the prepared filling made it possible.

My recipe is very conventional with a slight twist:

3 c. Concord grapes
1 c. sugar
3 tblspn. flour (I prefer tapioca)
Dash salt
1/2 tsp lemon zest (I add a touch of nutmeg also)
Pastry for bottom and lattice crust
Butter to dot filling

Slip skins from grapes, bring pulp and seeds to a full boil, press through sieve to remove seeds; return skins to pulp in mixing bowl. Mix sugar, flour (or tapioca),salt, zest and nutmeg, add to grapes. Makes 9 inch pie. Bake at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Enjoy!

Happy Fall, Sallie

Cheers, y’all, Dee

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