I say on the sidebar to this blog that I’m concentrating on “company” food, not on what I made for dinner Tuesday night. It’s not really cheating for me to include this recipe, since I have made it for an overnight guest–once. These waffles have been a Saturday breakfast staple at our house for almost 20 years, as I can remember making them when Gideon was a baby. (I probably got started making them because we were given a waffle iron as a wedding present. Thanks, Steve and Evelyn! That waffle iron lasted a long, long time.) Over those same 20 years I’ve made various changes of my own, so I now feel comfortable posting the recipe. The original is from a cookbook I’ve mentioned before, Beat That! Cookbook by the inimitable Ann Hodgman. You know a cookbook is good when the pages are splattered and covered with notations. That’s certainly true for my copy of this one. Ann titled this recipe “The Only Waffles Better Than That Damn Mix” (her language, not mine!). The mix she’s referring to is Pepperidge Farm’s Homestyle Pancake and Waffle Mix, which I’ve never seen on a grocery store shelf. But then, I don’t buy mixes. (Hoity-toity, aren’t I?) I do make these using freshly-ground flour from my grain mill, but don’t let that scare you off. I think they’d be very good (just not as good) made with store-bought white whole-wheat flour. You can mix up the dry and the wet ingredients the night before. I’ve tried mixing up the batter completely the night before and putting it in the fridge, but I’ve decided that it’s not as good that way.
A Great Alternative to Pasta Casserole
For many years my family enjoyed something called “Chiquita’s Chicken,” a recipe we’d gotten from a magazine article by the redoubtable Peg Bracken, author of the I Hate To Cook Book. The article had a little booklet of recipes included which we apparently didn’t keep, although we did write down the one by Chiquita.. I remember that there was something called “Hao Nao Brown Kao” made with ground beef and vaguely Hawaiian or Chinese or some such, and another item called “Gloria’s Good Goulash.” I found HNBK on cooks.com but the other two are lost to posterity. (At least under their original names. Chiquita, whoever she may have been, apparently cribbed her recipe from an almost-identical one for “King Ranch Chicken,” which is very well known.) Since Chiquita’s Chicken relies heavily on canned soup, I looked for something a little more upscale to replace it and found the following. The cream of mushroom soup has been replaced by sour cream and cream cheese, so I guess that’s progress. The cream of chicken soup stayed. The original recipe called for the chicken and cream cheese to be rolled up in individual corn tortillas, something I refuse to do. Any time you’re asked for something that fiddly, just do layers instead. (There are quite a few other fiddly things I do, such as the individual mini-tart shells, but at least there’s some point to them.) So here’s my recipe, adapted from Taste of Home magazine.
A Great Mexican Salad Idea
I specify romaine lettuce in this recipe because your greens need to be fairly sturdy to go with the substantial add-ins. I don’t think spring mix would work as well, but if you’re pressed for time then go for it. If you want to really be fancy you can make some crispy tortilla strips with leftover corn tortillas by giving them a quick fry. Or (I guess) you could just top the salad with some crumbled up corn chips. What a thought.
A Couple of Unusual Brownie Recipes
Brownies, or some kind of simple bar cookie, are a great asset to have in your recipe box. You can pull them out, whip them up, and get them to the potluck or party in reasonably short order. You probably have a simple chocolate brownie recipe that you use; these two are a little off the beaten track. I’ve always had good success with them.
Glorious Beef Burgundy Stew
The stew is a streamlined version of a Julia Child recipe for Beef Burgundy. Her original is just ridiculous, with all sort of last-minute additions and incredibly time-consuming pearl onions. No Way! But you’ll see below that I don’t let you just dump everything into the crockpot and hope for the best. (You can also do this in the oven.) I give you . . .
A Very Different Sweet Potato Recipe
Sunday evening was a big get-together over at my in-laws’ house in celebration of four birthdays (mainly my father-in-law’s) and as a farewell to my son Gideon who is leaving for his internship in Seattle at the end of this week. Jan, my mother-in-law, was making pulled pork and various other things and wanted me to make something with sweet potatoes. I am on record as being totally opposed to sweet sweet-potato dishes, especially for Thanksgiving, as I think that they’re too much like dessert. (I always end up being overruled on this at Thanksgiving and people always love what Jan makes; what can you do?) But for this meal I got to choose, so I went looking for a savory sweet-potato dish. The following has been heavily adapted, so I have no problem with posting it as mine. The original recipe called for pancetta. Well, I thought, I’ll use bacon. Then I realized, far too late to do anything about it, that all of my bacon was in a solid block in the freezer. So I left it out. And I have to say, as a committed bacon lover, that it doesn’t need it. It’s also supposed to have a lot of fresh sage, which I didn’t have, and a lot less crumb topping. Gyp! So I doubled the crumb amount and put in more butter. That should make up for any calorie deficit from leaving out the bacon. This is really, really good. I promise.
Spicy Cheddar Cookies
These are always a great hit when I serve them at parties, as they’re rich and crumbly like shortbread cookies but they aren’t sweet, so they’re nice for people who don’t like sweets or are staying away from them, but they’re still, well, cookies. And there are rarely more than a few left at the end of the evening. They’re no more labor-intensive than regular cookies, especially if you do what I tell you and roll them into balls instead of rolling them out.
Easy Southwest Corn Pudding
When we went on a huge driving trip one year from Denver to Los Angeles and back again, our first stop was at Arches National Park in Utah. In their gift shop was the gorgeous cookbook Seasonal Southwest Cooking. I decided that it would be my one souvenir for the trip, and I’ve made a number of its recipes. The one below has come in very useful whenever I’m feeding a breakfast crowd, as at the Saturday-morning rehearsals of the community chorale to which I belong. People go absolutely nuts over it, and it’s vegetarian and gluten-free! So almost everyone is a crowd can eat it. Highly, highly recommended.
Make-Your-Own Granola
Many years ago I ran into a granola recipe in the old Gourmet magazine (now gone, alas) called “Sherry’s Granola.” I have followed its basic concept for many years, tweaking it and generalizing it until I can call it my own. Granola is a great kitchen-sink item, and as you’ll see below it’s more of a procedure than a recipe.
You may be surprised at the amount of sweetener called for, a whole cupful of maple syrup (not pancake syrup, puh-leeze!) or honey, since these recipes are for the most part low- or no-sugar.