Calling All SDMB Cooks: Your favorite, special recipes

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

If you made my chicken recipe, while you still have the bacon grease out, let me talk to you about Southern Homestyle Green Beans.

These beans will make you very happy if you are Southern and miss the taste of your late grandparents’ home-canned green beans. They bring back memories for me.

Get 1 or 2 decent cans of green beans, not french style. Get a decent brand, not some off-brand. Rinse them very well.

Put the beans in a lidded saucepan and add 1/8 - 1/4 inch of water, some butter, some bacon grease, a handful (or less) of dried onion flakes, and some salt. Simmer covered over low heat for 1-2 hours.

Now, you may think this will be mush, and you may be right. But this is how it’s supposed to be. Cook 'em a good long time.

Add pepper near the end (this is a modern gourmet updating; pepper gets bitter if cooked for a long time). Taste for salt.

This recipe comes from a southern elementary school cafeteria ( :eek: ) but I affirm that these taste exactly like Proper Southern Green Beans of the kind you can’t get outside the South anymore, and hardly inside it these days. I regard this recipe as a miracle.

22

I’m all about the appetizers.

White Trash Artichoke Dip
1 Cup Mayonaise (hence the White Trasheiness)
1 to 1 1/2 Cup Fresh grated romano/parmesian cheese (too much makes it oily)
2 cans Artichokes (13 oz cans)
2 cloves minced garlic

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Chop the artichokes to a bite size. I’ve found this to be smaller than quartering them.

Mix all ingrediants in a casserole dish, leaving a small amount of the cheese aside. When everything is thoroughly mixed, top it with the rest of the cheese.

Bake for 20 min, or until golden brown and bubbling.

** Stuffed Mushrooms **

As many Crimini Mushrooms as people will eat. (usually 8-10)
2 gloves garlic (more to taste)
1 cup bread crumbs
1/8 cup tomato, cubed very small.
2 tbs. lemon juice
Red wine to taste
1/4 cup Parmesian
1/8 cup shredded cheddar
1/4 cup olive oil

(these measurements are wild guesses. I never measure, as it’s all dependant on the size of the mushrooms)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

De-stem the mushrooms. Mince the stems. Brush outer edge of mushrooms with olive oil.

Combine the stems, bread crumbs, garlic, and cheeses. Add the red wine, and enough olive oil to make the mixture stiff. (it should hold its shape when you mold it into balls, but shouldn’t have any extra liquid on the bottom of the bowl.)

Stuff them mushrooms. The more stuffing, the better. Make those little buggers overflow with goodness.

Dust the tops of the mushrooms with parmesian, and a leeeetle bit of cheddar (more as a garnish than anything else.) Drizzle with red wine.

Bake for 15 min, or until the cheeses on the top are melted and browned. The mushrooms themselves should be grayed, and softened, without being wrinkly and withered.
I’m like Cher in Mermaids. All appetizers. All the time.

23

I have Americanized a Sierra Leonian staple, and I like it. Here is how to make it.

Throw a handful of dry large lima beans into a two quart pot. Add one chicken bouillon cube, and one beef bouillon cube. Cover with a quarter to a half-inch of water. Turn on a low flame. Grate a whole medium onion into the pot. (A nice stinky one, not a sweet or Vidalia onion.) Chop up a very hot pepper, (either a large Jalapeño, or a Jamaican ball pepper) as fine as you can, and add that. Pour in an ounce of Spiced Palm Oil (Zomi). If you don’t have that, then coconut oil will do in a pinch. Throw in a frozen chicken drumstick, and a wing, and a package of Frozen Chopped Spinach. Put on a tight lid, and let it simmer for about an hour. (Stir only enough to keep it from burning, and keep the fire low, after the stuff melts.) After it has simmered, stir in two tablespoons of peanut butter (the kind with no sugar, preferably the kind with nothing but peanuts) and stir until it melts. Add one average sized frozen fish filet. (I use whiting, but smoked barracuda is great, if you can get it.) Cover and leave over a very low heat until the fish is cooked. Salt to taste. Make rice or boiled new potatoes and serve it over that.

It’s a one pot meal, for two, and you can double the recipe easily, and have it come out fine. Make it spicy! The original dish upon which this is based is made with casava leaves, and it will clear your sinuses, and melt the wax in your ears. It’s good, though. This one is quite a bit different, but you can get most of the stuff at your regular grocery store. Latin or African stores have Zomi, if you need it. Ghanian or Sierra Leonian Kuta is the fish you want, but you have to know someone to get it, and other fish are fine.

Tris

“What have you done to that cat? It looks half dead!” ~ Mrs. Erwin Schrodinger ~

24

Eva: Are you also interested in drink recipes (both alcohol & non-alcohol)?

25

*Chicken with Chianti

This is awesome in that it’s really easy and impresses guests.

4 chicken breasts
2 cups chianti, or other red wine
water
onions
Garlic
1/2 cup red grapes, cut in half
Salt and pepper to taste

Brown chicken breasts in the pot, add the onions and cook until softened, add garlic and cook briefly. Add wine, and enough water to cover the onions and chicken. Bring to a boil. then simmer for 25-30 minutes, until chicken is cooked through. Add grapes, and cook a couple more minutes.

Goes really well with french bread, and salad.

26

Mmmm, chicken. Here’s another one.

Creamy Baked Curried Chicken

2 breasts chicken, deboned
2 heads broccoli florets (more or less)
1 cup mayo (more or less)
1 can crm. mushroom soup
1 can crm. chicken soup
2 tblsp. curry powder (or to taste)
2 tblsp. lemon juice (or to taste)
shredded cheese of your preference (about two cups)
bread crumbs

Bring large pot of water to boil. Throw in chicken breasts, lower heat, simmer until just pink inside. Cut into bite-sized pieces.

Wash and trim broccoli florets into bite-sized pieces. Blanche (in chicken-water if you like) Put cooked chicken and broccoli into casserole dish.

Mix mayo, your two cans of soup, curry powder and lemon juice into creamy sauce. (I use just enough curry powder to just taste it, makes the sauce a light greenish colour.) Pour sauce over chicken and broccoli mixture, use spatula to spread as evenly as possible. Dust evenly with bread crumbs, and sprinkle with shredded cheese. Dot with margarine or butter. Bake 25 mins. at 325 degrees.

Serve with rice. Yum.

27

Thanks for the recommendations! As if I needed anything further to, ummm, feed my cookbook addiction! I’m also the kind of person who will curl up on the sofa and happily spend the afternoon reading a cookbook; the best are the ones that combine history, cultural narrative, and food, preferably anything ethnic. If there’s such a thing as a culinary ethnohistorian, that’s another thing I want to be when I grow up. If you like that stuff too, I highly recommend Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York.* The introduction alone had me in tears (it’s about the author’s childhood in the Jewish quarter of Cairo, back what it was a multicultural melting pot where Jews actually got along with Arabs).

So yeah, feel free to toss those Algerian recipes this way! I’ll puzzle my way through the French. And **Monty, ** sure, whatever floats your boat, and I suppose liquids would actually be rather easier if one wanted to float a boat. We don’t discriminate based on physical state around here!

28

If you like a drink with pow to it:

“California Chocolate Milk”
1 shot 151
1 shot Creme de Cocoa
1 shot kahlua

Forgive any misspellings. At any rate, after you’ve had this one, you probably won’t care how anything’s spelled.

29

OK OK OK EVA, I told you in the IMHO thread I’d come back with a good ethnic recipe - Spanecopeda in this case. This is an Ode to my Greek and Spanish buddies in Phoenix. I usually rework the recipe to make it either more picante or more salty depending on who I am preparing it for. One way to prepare this dish that makes it absolutely astounding and will make all your friends go “oooo and ahhhh” is to put some Angelica or Apple blossoms added to the feta to give it a little color and enhance the sugar nodes on your tongue…Most people never consider adding edible flowers to meals but it makes for an amazing cuisine and a pure culinary adventure…I love food.

Here you go…

2 lb fresh spinach
1 lb filo dough
1/2 lb feta cheese
7 eggs
1 onion – diced

Dice the onion and saute it until golden brown - you can add some flower of your choice here, depending on the season I recommend apple blossoms. While the onion is cooking, wash the spinach. Put it in a bowl and rub lots of salt into it. Let the spinach/salt sit for 15 minutes. This is meant to reduce the volume of spinach. An alternative to this is to barely steam the
spinach (30-60 seconds).
Beat the eggs. Crumble the feta cheese and add to the eggs. (Note that feta cheese is fairly salty.You can replace half or all of it with ricotta cheese.) Rinse all the salt out of the spinach. Add it and the onions, flowers to the eggs/cheese and mix. Also add some spices - what ever you like. The original recipes calls for salt, pepper, and oregano. I use basil. Melt some butter (at least 2 oz .) Butter the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Lay the filo down one layer at a time, brushing butter on each layer. Turn each successive layer a little so they are not all piled directly on top of each other. The filo will hang over the sides of the dish. Continue until you have 3-5 sheets of filo left. Pour the filling into the filo. Fold the filo that hangs over the side over the filling. Place the last pieces of filo on top, buttering each as you go you can make designs on the tops with the excess filo if you want to, I usually do a grape leaf or orchid design. Trim off the filo that hangs over the edge of the dish. These last pieces serve to cover the filling. Make two or three slits with a knife in the top layers of filo that go all the way down to the filling. Bake at 375 for 50 minutes.

Good luck, I’m sure you will have a blast. If you want to vary the recipe you can find any number of them online. Have fun.

30

Ooh - sounds good! I’ll have to look for that one. Sorry to feed your addiction, but you’d probably also like Consuming Culture: Why You Eat What You Eat by Jeremy MacClancy. It’s full of all sorts of weird food information, like a recipe for Cat in Sauce from Navarre, Spain.

The Art of Dining by Sara Paston-Williams is also good. She talks about the agriculture, food, and history of England. There’s some beautiful photographs of historic British kitchens.

An Algerian cookie recipe from Patisseries traditionelles algeriennes: These are quite tasty. I hope the French isn’t too difficult (I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to get the characters for all of the accents, etc.)

Maqrout T’mer (Losanges aux dattes)

3 mesures de semoule moyenne (1500 grs)
1 mesure de smen (1/2 l)
1 mesure d’eau (1/2 l)
1 pincee de sel
1/2 verre a the d’eau de fleur d’oranger
Tous ces elements seront mesures avec le meme recipient.

Farce: 700 grs de dattes ecrasess et denoyautees
1 pincee de poudre de cannelle
1 pincee de poudre de clous de girofle
une c. a soupe de smen

Debrasser les dattes de toutes les impuretes, ajouter la poudre de clous de girofle, smen la cannelle, malaxer jusqu’a ce que l’on ait une pate homogene et lisse, laisser reposer.

Puis, preparer la pate de semoule: mettre la semoule tamisee dans “Sahfa” arroser de smen fondu, sabler entre les mains pendant un bon momnet, ajouter le sel, l’eau de fleur d’oranger et arroser peu a peu d’eau, tout en traivaillant du bont de doigts, la pate doit etre molle et docile sous la main. Laisser reposer quelques instants.

Ensuite, reprendre la pate de semoule en faire une “khobiza” ou galette de 2 cm d’epaisseur et une “khobiza” ou galette de dattes fine de 1 cm d’epaisseur. Glisser la galette de dattes sur celle de la semoule, mettre par dessus ne 2eme galette de semoule “la galette de datte se trouvera en sandwich” travailler toute la surface de maniere a lui donner un bon aspect.