I Cooked Borscht!!!

That's right, I actually got myself into the kitchen and cooked something from one of my cookbooks! I think it was the scent of woodburning stoves permeating the neighborhood this morning; just seemed like a day when one should be in the kitchen, making something warm and nourishing.

I chose to make borscht, since we have a garden full of beets and onions and received even more beets and onion--not to mention tons of raw garlic--in our CSA this weekend.

What I like about this recipe is that it uses the entire beet--root with peel and leaves and stems--not just a peeled root. Waste not, want not!

From The New Laurel's Kitchen

Whole Beet Borscht

• 1 small onion [I used two]
• 1 clove garlic [I used three!]
• 2 tsp oil [I used extra virgin olive oil]
• 2 Tbls flour
• 5 cups stock or water [I used some of the frozen stock we still have saved from this spring]
• 1 bunch beets and their greens (3 large or 6 small) [I tossed in a few extra]
• 1 potato
• 1 carrot
• 1 stalk celery
• 1/2 small cabbage
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp honey
• 2 Tbls tomato past or 2 fresh tomatoes, chopped [I used the fresh option, since I had them on hand]

Chop onion and saute with garlic clove in oil. Mash garlic clove when onion is translucent and browning. Stir in flour and cook gently for a minute. Add stock or water and bring to a boil.

Meantime, trim roots of beets, saving the good leaves and stems. Grate beets, potato, and carrot, or slice them thin. Slice celery thin. Add these and simmer 10 minutes while you shred the cabbage and chop the beet leaves and stems small. Add these and bay leaf, salt, pepper, honey and tomato to the vegetable mixture. Simmer until all vegetables are tender. Remove bay leaf.

Makes 10 cups.

Mmmm. Nothing quite like beets. You either love 'em or you hate 'em. You've probably already figured-out which side of that fence my family and I are on...

Post In Which I Discuss Frugalness & Cranberries

I actually thought my cookbook buying days were ending. No longer can I pop into Saint Vincent de Paul's and find books for $1.00. No, they've increased their prices to a bloated $3.00-$4.00 a cookbook. And I cannot abide it.

I've held in my hand several Frugal Gourmet cookbooks these past months, nearly talking myself into a splurge. But I've always finally held off, not convinced that my fanatical need for cookbooks is at the stage where I pay more than $2.00 a pop. Especially for a cookbook which contains "Frugal" in its title.

Today, my patient tightwadedness feels triumphant. I can still find cookbooks for less than a buck here in Madison:  at my local library's book sale. I arrived in time for their "we'll sell you anything you can fit into this bag for $3" clearance. And did I ever manage to pack my paper bag full. I believe even a professional grocery store bagger would have been impressed. Final total: sixty-three books, five of which were cookbooks. My haul included Jeff Smith's The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American, which I well remember from my younger days (having read many of Jeff Smith's books and spending hours watching his show on PBS). So HAH, Saint Vincent's! I just bought a cookbook for less than $0.10 and I more than ever convinced that your new $4.00 prices are rip-offs.

Don't be scared-off by the odd Boy Scouts/granny/turkey photo on the front cover. This is a good book!

So, you ask, upon my initial review of the book, what have I discovered? Let me tell you. The chapter on cranberries. It's nearly cranberry season, and I literally had no idea the amazing options we'll soon have. Oh yes, it's beyond sauce. Far beyond. There's going to be:

• Cranberry Fool (sweetened cranberries, almond extract, orange peel & whipping cream)
• Cranberry Cheddar Sandwiches (buttered bread spread with cranberry sauce and cheddar, broiled)
• Cranberry Pie (berry pie! using cranberries!)
• Cranberry Dumplings (Mr. Smith warns that these are addictive)

and

• Sweet Potatoes with Cranberries (fresh cranberries added to a sweet potato souffle)

That's right. I'm actually vowing to begin cooking again soon. Within the month. Exclusively with cranberries.

What?

Food Blogger Writing about Food Columnist

I've just finished reading Wild in the Kitchen, a cookbook by Will Jones, a former columnist at the Minneapolis Tribune. Picked up the cookbook (published in 1961) for a smooth $2 at St. Vinny's (LOVE that place!). Oddly enough, I can't find hide nor hair of the cookbook online. Imagine! In all the world of Amazon, no one is selling a copy? Hmmmm...

I'd never heard of Will Jones, but I gather his column was as a food critic (I get the information that he was a columnist from the book jacket). And I'm guessing specifically critic because while his writing is that of a foodie, his recipes are all scavenged from others. Other cooks, restaurants, other people's mother and aunts, other cooking club members. Very very seldom does he claim a recipe as as his own creation (and when he does, it often includes sliced white Pepperage Farm bread as it's main ingredient. Yes, sugared/fried white bread is one of his concoctions.)

So personal chef extraordinare he's not. Nevertheless he seems to have the tastebuds for this sort of life (food writing) and the descriptions he includes for each and every recipe remind me exactly of how today's funny food bloggers write a post (I'm including myself in that group. I realize my claim hangs by only the most tenuous of threads. Let me live my dream, please.)

These two recipe, for brownies and accompanying peach topping, will be the first on my list to try. Once I reenter the kitchen and will myself to pick up a mixing spoon, that is. (Maybe by Christmas?)


Mr. Jones describes these as brownies of authority, "not to be confused with the chocolate dog biscuits commonly made to assuage packs of hungry children."

Grownup Brownies
[credited to Mrs. Bowen]

Step One:

2 squares bitter chocolate
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs, separated
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup nuts, chopped
1 tsp vanilla

Melt chocolate. Add sugar, butter & salt. Add beaten egg yolks, flour, vanilla and nuts. Mix well. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in an eight-inch square plan at 350 for about twenty minutes. Cool.

Step Two: Frosting

2 squares bitter chocolate
1/4 cup cream
1 1/2 Tbls butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten slightly
1/2 tsp vanilla

Melt chocolate. Mix chocolate, cream, butter, sugar, and egg in a heavy pan. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Boil one minute, sturring. Remove from heat, add vanilla, and cool. Beat two or three minutes. Spread onto brownies. Refrigerate overnight. Cut into sixteen squares.


Serve brownies accompanied by

Peaches with Wine
[credited to M. Barrows and Co., previously published in The New Serve It Buffet]

4 large ripe well-flavored peaches
3/4 cup any good red wine
2 Tbls powdered sugar
1 piece cinnamon
1/2 lemon peel, grated

Slice the peeled peaches into a bowl, and cover them until the wine mixture is ready. Heat the wine with the other ingredients in an enamel, glass or agate double boiler until boiling; then pour, while still boiling, over the peaches. Let this stand covered for at least two hours. Then turn it into a serving dish.

My Fannie

Alas, my heinie is getting bigger monthly even without me cooking (perhaps because I'm not cooking). But that's not the subject of this post. I'm talking about the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. What a fun book.

Its full title is The All New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook.

::talk about a mouthful!::

My tenth edition copy was purchased for $1 at St Vincent's and hails from some tidy kitchen in 1959. I fear that the previous owner cooked nary an item from the book, it's in such pristine condition. I hope to spill upon it some spaghetti sauce or some other gooey nummy substance so it at least appears to have been loved by someone.

One bit I find amusing: this edition contains the preface to the first edition (1896), a quote which reveals Fannie's hope for a near-future America that I don't believe has yet been realized:

"... the time is not far distant when a knowledge of the principles of diet will be an essential part of one's education. Then mankind will eat to live, will be able to do better mental and physical work, and disease will be less frequent." 

Can't say that America is here as she'd predicted, but still nice, no?

I am perhaps overly proud that I have actually MADE SOMETHING from this cookbook. I'd forgotten about it when I'd written my last post. I made---wait for it---French Dressing. That's right! A vinaigrette. Fancy.

French Dressing

Mix in a bottle or jar with a cover

1/2 cup olive or salad oil

2 Tbs mild vinegar

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

1/2 clove garlic

Cover. When ready to serve, remove the garlic and shake hard to blend. Makes 1/2 cup.

Here's what I don't understand. If you buy French dressing at the grocery store, it's red. It's sweet and red. But when you make it from a recipe it's your regular every-day vinaigrette like you'd imagine your store-bought Italian to be. 

I don't really understand it. I just accept it.

A Post In Which I Reveal My Craziness

I think I may actually have a problem. I am an obsessive cookbook collector. Cookbook maniac.  I know that's, like, the point of this entire blog--too many cookbooks and not enough cooking--but I think I've officially turned into a cookbook freak.

I haven't been posting here, not because I'm lazy (though I am) but because I honestly haven't cooked a single thing (nope, not a single thing) in months. Months! Nevertheless...

I've [somehow] managed to procure 6 (or 10) more cookbooks.

Good ones!!

And some bad ones that are rather funny and embrace their badness.

I plan to share them with you, even if I don't in fact cook anything right off the bat.

Here's a good one:   The Night Before Cookbook by Paul Rubinstein & Leslie Rubinstein (1967).

It's big idea:  prepare most of your party foods the day/evening before so that the night of the big event you don't have to rush around like a mad person getting ready. They tell you what to prepare in what order, how to store it, and how to put the finishing touches on the next day. Brilliant!

The introduction was what caught my eye and demanded that I buy the book to read it in its entirety. This quote in particular, written by Leslie about her husband, Paul:

Paul was not only born with a silver spoon in his mouth--it was filled with pate de foie gras. 

Funny, right? Gross, and no one should be eating foie gras, much less feeding it to a baby (click here to be cool and learn all about it from Kate Winslet), but it gave me the impression that here were some rich food snobs who were trying to impress me with their recipes. I bet they were pretty good recipes if these folks had their fashionable reputations on the lines. And so I've read and I really have been impressed. One dessert recipe in particular, Bombe Rothschild--a fantastical ice cream cake stuffed with chocolate and covered in cookies and chocolate sauce--sounds really impressive.

Will I actually make any recipes from Night Before? I hope so. I hope I whip up all sorts of recipes from each and every one of my ever growing stash of cookbooks. For now, however, I'm content to sit back and read of decadent foods. While sipping water and maybe scarfing a potato chip or two.

Use Your Noodle, My Friends

Taking a break from my usual blogging purpose & propose you ponder this:

No one claims that a packet of ramen noodles is the best for you. MSG, lots of other seasonings I can't begin to pronounce, and super yummy fatty noodles do not a health food make.

However, at $0.10 a packet your wallet (and your belly) always feel happy when it's for dinner (I believe MSG's affect on your brain may have something to do with that).

But. If you're one to avoid and/or scoff at the idea of a $0.10 meal, in all its MSG-laden goodness, there is now somewhere to turn for relief.

Enter Japanese chef Schiochi Fujimaki. He'll whip you up a bowl (well, it takes three days) of some fabulous noodle soup and he'll only charge you $110.00 for the experience.

Is that a 3,000% difference in price? For a bowl of noodles? (I'm not good at math!)

Yet in his defense: this dish is "25 years of [his cooking] experience distilled into one bowl." If I'd spent 25 years learning how to perfect something, even noodles, I suppose I too would want at least $100 a pop for its creation.

Best news: you soon won't even have to go to Japan to order some. Fujimaki is planning on opening a restaurant in LA.

Perfect. See ya there!

Care for Curried Carrots?

As mentioned in my last post, I have 5 lbs of carrots to cook. Thank you Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero for this tasty, zippy recipe I found in my copy of Veganomicon.

Curried Carrot Dip

• 1 pound carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
• 1/4 cup roasted sunflower seeds (salted are okay, just add less salt)
• 2 teaspoons grapeseed or other vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon minced raw garlic
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Boil the carrots for 7 to 10 minutes, until soft. Drain and let cool just until they are no longer steaming.

Place the sunflower seeds in a blender or food processor and process into crumbs. Add all remaining ingredients and blend until smooth, scraping down the sides of the processor as you go. 

Taste for salt and adjust the spices and lemon. Transfer to a covered container and refridgerate until ready to use (at least 30 minutes).

It's an attractive dip (I actually took pictures! I just need to load them onto my computer... I'll get to it this weekend)--orange, with a texture similar to hummus. And far more pleasing to look at than those sad, pale ranch or dill dips that everyone usually brings to potlucks.

Thinking about serving this dip with carrot sticks gives me an icky cannibalistic vibe; thankfully it pairs well with crackers, bagel chips and cucumber sticks or rounds. It would also be great tucked into a pita with some lettuce and maybe some raisins.

Mama and Baby Girl give this recipe a thumbs up. Daddy hasn't tried it yet (but I suspect he'll like it).