Enjoy Chinese New Year on Throwback Thursday With Chow Mein 1950s Style

We remember the 1950s--just barely--here at Potluck Paradise headquarters. In the midwestern small towns where we spent most of our young lives, the exciting, exotic foods of big city international cuisine were a dream from the pages of Gourmet magazine, or the ads in Life and Look.

But that didn't mean our mothers stopped trying for the exotic. Back before there was a pizza parlor on every corner and refrigerators had a freezer inside the main compartment that was the size of a shoebox, our clever mothers enlisted help from Chef Boyardee and La Choy to bring something different and tasty to the table.

Not for them just the simple opening of a can--magic and wonderful though its ingredients might be! No they did more than that. This Chow Mein recipe was refined over many versions. In the end it is the perfect fusion of Midwest with Far East. We hope you enjoy this throwback to the 50s flavor.  For a true taste contrast, pick up some modern frozen egg rolls as an appetizer. It is quite an experience.

1950s Chow Mein

1 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 cups celery, decoratively sliced on the diagonal
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, caps cut in half or quarters depending on the size
1 1/4 cups low salt chicken broth ( a 10.5 ounce can)
1 1/2 tablespoons corn starch
1 1/2 cups diced cooked chicken breast
1 can chop suey vegetables, drained
1 can fancy Chinese vegetables, drained
1 can chow mein noodles
soy sauce, to taste

No one in the Midwestern small towns we lived in had a wok.  So it is the frying pan that steps in to create the magic.

Melt the butter in a large frying pan. Add the celery, mushrooms and 1/4 cup of the chicken broth. Cover and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the celery is just tender. While this is cooking, stir the corn starch into the remaining chicken broth and set aside. Add the cooked chicken to the frying pan and heat through. Add the broth and corn starch mixture and cook over medium heat until the pan juices are thickened. Add the vegetables and heat through. Add soy sauce, if desired. To serve, put the cooked Chow Mein on a large plate and surround with the crispy noodles.

Serves 4 to 6.

May the Year of the Goat find your path lined with primroses, carnations, and good luck.

Potluck Perfect and a Salvation for a Snowy Day -- Ice Cream for Breakfast Day

George Washington Ice Cream -- Cherry Delicious

What could be more perfect -- tomorrow is Ice Cream for Breakfast Day?

According to the Ice Cream for Breakfast Day official website, the "best holiday you just discovered" started Florence J. Rappaport's Rochester, New York, kitchen in 1966. Florence decided to distract the youngest two of her six children on a day when there was "nothing to do" because of the snow and cold by declaring it was.... you guessed ... a day when you could eat ice cream for breakfast.

The children and other relatives introduced people all around the world to this delicious notion. 

Here at Potluck Paradise headquarters we're taking a page from our sister blog on soda fountains and Prohibition--Soda Shop Salvation and sharing one of our favorite homemade ice cream recipes.  It is perfect for this holiday-crammed month of February as it celebrates George Washington whose actual birthday in February 22. 

You'll find recipes for tasty sodas, wonderful sundaes and a great, rich ice cream topping along with other soda fountain favorites at http://sodashopsalvation.blogspot.com/

But before you toodle over there, spend some time with this great recipe.  Better than pie, which, of course, we often eat for breakfast, too. 

George Washington Ice Cream

1 1/2 teaspoons powdered unflavored gelatin (Knox brand)
1/4 cup cold water
1 (10-ounce) jar maraschino cherries, including the juice
1 1/2 cups milk, approximately
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cups cherry juice, bottled or frozen
1 1/2 cups half-and-half

In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water and let it stand until softened. Drain the maraschino cherries, putting the juice into a glass 2-cup measuring cup. Coarsely chop the cherries and set aside. Add milk to the maraschino cherry juice to make 2 cups. Place the juice and milk mixture into a medium saucepan and add the sugar. Cook over low heat, stirring from time to time, until the sugar has dissolved. remove from heat and stir in the softened gelatin. add the remaining cherry juice and half-and-half, and then stir in the chopped cherries. Chill the mixture and then freeze following the directions of your ice cream mixer. It will come out of the machine as as "soft serve" mixture. Spoon into containers with tight-fitting lids and store in the freezer for an hour or two until it fully hardens.

In a Pickle? Relish your Dinner!

We've all been there.  The end of dinner and we're stuck with the last half cup of vegetables...served, but uneaten. Most can just be bagged up and put into the freezer "soup store."  After all there's hardly a meat or vegetable soup that wouldn't benefit from some extra corn, green beans, peas or even asparagus.  Some would go nicely in a pureed cream soup--again, asparagus and peas, but also spinach, kale, or brussels sprouts.

But then there are beets!

Here at Potluck Paradise headquarters we love beets. We frequently buy a dozen or more, trim off the tops and put them in a foil-lined large baking pan. Add about 1/2 cup of water and seal the foil around them.  Depending on the size, an hour or two in a 350 oven and the skins come right off the fully-flavored red or golden globes.

Leftover beets present their own delicious opportunities!

One of our favorites is the Quick No-Salt Pickle.  We've done this pickling technique for years in the summer Mixed Canned Vegetable Salad--you know the one--a can each of corn, peas, French-cut green beans, kidney beans, and any other kind of bean you like. Drain and rinse and then pour over the boiling hot liquid made from equal parts sugar and white vinegar! Let stand until cool. Refrigerate overnight if you want to make ahead. Keeps for a week. Yum!

So the technique is the same

Picked Leftover Vegetable Relish

For each cup of leftover cooked vegetables such as:
Beets
Carrots
Peas
Green Beans
Asparagus
Corn
Brussels Sprouts
maybe even Turnips and Parsnips

1/3 cup white vinegar, you could use cider if you prefer
1/3 cup white sugar

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon dried seasonings such as: cumin, dill seed, dill weed, mustard seed, celery seed
More of fresh seasonings such as dill weed

Rinse the cooked vegetable to remove any butter or other sauce you may have put on them when you served them for dinner. Cut them into uniform small size, if necessary. Put the vegetables into a heat-proof bowl and add seasonings if you wish.  Combine the vinegar and sugar in a small pot and gradually bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Pour this pickle over the vegetables and stir from time to time as they cool.  Store in the refrigerator for three or four days.

So tasty, no one would even think they were leftovers!

Celebrate with the Delicious Mardi Gras Drinks --Non-Alcoholic, Too

Prohibition Sour  "A Drink for Men"

Celebrate Mardi Gras in style with these throw-back drinks from the Prohibition Era. Tasty and easy-to-make, they are a far cry from what we call in the Midwest "pop" and everyone else calls "soda."

During the thirteen years of Prohibition from the sales, manufacture, and transport of alcoholic beverages some folks turned to boot-leg beverages made in bathtub or basement stills. Some folks gave the "high sign" and slouched into dark speakeasys.  Others discovered the joys of tasty beverages and super ice cream sodas and sundaes made before their eyes in sparkling bright soda fountains--some even occupying remodeled saloons.

Keep a bottle of homemade flavor concentrate in your refrigerator or freezer and mix with purchased carbonated water or in one of those new-fangled "Soda Stream" machines. You and your guests will be refreshed before you can say "Al Capone."

Simple Syrup Based Flavor Concentrates

Let's start with the flavor concentrates -- and they all start with Simple Syrup.. Which is as simple as it's name suggests.

Simple Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup white granulated sugar

Put the water into a medium pot. Gradually add the sugar. Warm over low heat, stirring gently until the sugar dissolved. Do not even bring to a simmer. Just heat it enough to encourage the sugar to dissolve.  That's it!  Simple syrup keeps for days in the refrigerator.

Lemon, Lime, Orange Flavored Syrup

1/4 cup simple syrup
1 tablespoon frozen concentrated juice mix, such as lemonade, limeade, or orange juice

Stir the concentrate into the syrup. Use immediately, or store in the refrigerator for two or three days, or in the freezer for longer.  NOTE: you can use any frozen concentrate.  You can also make flavor concentrates by mixing actual fruit juices with the simple syrup or infusing the syrup with fruit peels, ginger root, and other ingredients. This is just faster and easier. And that's what we like here at Potluck Paradise -- tasty, easy, and fast.

Minnehaha Maid -- invented in Minnesota 

Minnehaha Maid

Makes enough to flavor about 2 liters of carbonated water 

or 16 5-ounce servings

1/2 cup cranberry juice

1/2 cup white grape juice 

1/2 cup lemon syrup

1/2 cup simple syrup (recipe above)

Combine the syrups. Use one ounce to a 7-ounce glass. Add a small scoop of crushed ice and about 4 ounces of carbonated water. Finish with a twist of lemon.

Prohibition Sour

Enough for three liters of carbonated water

Or 12 7-ounce servings

1 1/2 cups lemon syrup

3/4 cup orange syrup

juice from 6 limes

Mix the syrups and lime juice together. Use 1 1/2 ounces syrup to an 8-ounce glass. Add small scoop of crushed ice and 6 ounces of carbonated water. Finish with a slice of lime

Stop Browning Beef !-- A Culinary Confession

I must confess.  It is a heresy here at Potluck Paradise headquarters, but I hate browning ground beef. Worse yet, ground beef and onions. I just have no patience for standing over the stove  for ten or fifteen minutes and mashing the bits of beef into smaller bits, shuffling them around the pan until they are all browned and ready for the next step in casserole, hot dish, or sauce making. And then there is the grease to get rid of.

There I've said it!

But I'm not going to hang up my apron.  I've discovered a better way to manage beef for even tastier dishes.  I make extra hamburgers every time I fire up the grill.  It doesn't take that much extra time. The cooked burgers fit nicely into the freezer and when I'm ready to make a browned beef dish, I just crumble the burger into it and off we go. They add a nice grilled flavor to the dishes. And I usually mix chunky-style salsa into the beef before I form the patties, so I get that nice cooked onion in there, too. I usually add about 8 ounces of salsa to 5 pounds of beef and get about four burgers to the pound. Very handy to have on hand for a quick version of the Midwestern favorite

Hamburger Goulash

1 8-ounce package elbow macaroni, cooked and drained

8 ounces ground beef
1 medium onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced

OR instead of the beef, onion, and pepper use
3 grilled hamburger and salsa patties, crumbled

1 24-ounce can tomato juice
6 ounces cheddar or American cheese, cubed

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly grease a 12 x 9-inch baking dish. If using the ground beef, onion and pepper--begin by browning the beef in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and pepper and cooke, stirring until the beef is brown, the onion is transparent and the pepper is slightly cooked. Follow directions below.

If using my ever-so-sensible method of grilled beef just put all the ingredients into the baking dish and stir gently to make sure the ingredients are evenly distributed. Cover with foil and bake until the tomato juice is mostly absorbed by the macaroni and the cheese is melted, about 30 minutes. Stir once during cooking.

Serves 4 to 6 or 2 famished teen-aged boys

Copyright 2015 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved. 

Nearly Instant Apple Crisp--Potluck Dream

It's hard to beat an apple crisp warm from the oven. Sweet and tart with just enough crispness in the crumbled topping to make a delicious end to supper. But here at Potluck Paradise headquarters we devised a way so that this tasty delight can be had easily for a quick breakfast or even a midnight snack.

It all began in typical potluck fashion with a gift of a bunch of apples. Our friend Michele's apple trees were in fine production last fall. When she asked if we could use some cooking apples of various kinds, we had visions of a pie or two, some sauce, a bit of preserves.  We did all of that. Set some by in the freezer and on the preserve shelf. . . but there were still more apples. Michele had done her own canning and freezing and said that she could feed the rest to her horses. But never one to turn away from a challenge, or the gift of free apples, we said that we would keep finding ways to use them.

And so we have the Nearly Instant Apple Crisp Filling.  It took a bit of tinkering to develop the recipe. And a bit of time to work through the apples to get them set up. Really it is just a matter of peeling, slicing, mixing, measuring, and filling the freezer bags--you could work through a couple of pecks of apples while watching your favorite team win its Saturday college football game. These little packets of great filling tuck nicely into the freezer and are ready to eat in less than 10 minutes.

Nearly Instant Apple Crisp

Cutting the apples:
The most important thing is to cut your apples into pieces that will cook quickly in the microwave when you are ready to make the crisp. We've found slices roughly an inch square and 1/2 inch thick work well, No need to be precise, you and your knife will get the idea. We generally peel and cut the apples in quarters and then remove the core. Then cut these quartered apples into thin slices.  Large apples should be cut into six pieces or even eight.

To make the filling:
6 cups apple slices (see important note above)
3/4 cup sugar -- we prefer brown sugar, but you can use white
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

We've found it is really easy to mix this filling in an 8-cup clear Pyrex measuring cup. Put in the apples, pressing them down for a good measure, followed by the sugar, and cornstarch. Mix well and stir in vanilla.  Divide the filling into ten packets. We found plastic sandwich bags worked well. Roll tightly or flatten for compact storage in the freezer. We put the sandwich bags into larger freezer bags for better protection against freezer burn.

Now for the topping--you can make this easy recipe below, or just crumble cookies, granola, or buttered bread crumbs on top.

To make the topping:
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup Old Fashioned oatmeal, uncooked
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into chunks

In a medium mixing bowl combine the brown sugar, oatmeal, and flour. Using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until it looks like coarse cornmeal.  Divide into ten packets and freeze.

To make a crisp:
Empty the contents of an apple packet into a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. Microwave at a medium setting until warm and the sauce has thickened, about 4 minutes. Be sure to stir once or twice during the process.

Pour the filling into an oven-proof bowl and sprinkle with some of the topping--straight from the freezer will work. Finish by putting under a low broiler -- about 8 inches away -- for just a minute or two. Or in a preheated 350 degree oven, or in a toaster oven.  Watch carefully so that the topping doesn't burn.

There you go!

Copyright 2015 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved

Low-Salt and Delicious -- Sweet and Spicy Crackers Abraham Lincoln Might Have Enjoyed

Part of what we do here at Potluck Paradise is to research and write about old recipes.  I've written six books that are a fusion of history and food. Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen is my newest. This recipe is from that book and is one of the absolute favorites in our kitchen and wherever we have served these unusual treats.

These are kind of like cookies. They are sort of like crackers. They are absolutely delicious and ridiculously easy to make. And, once made, they keep for days, even weeks, if you can stop eating them.

They are called APees.  Pronounced "A Peas" not aps.  And they date way, way back. I've made them for years, first finding the recipe in a Civil War-era cookbook. I was thrilled to find a recipe for them in the newspaper Abraham Lincoln would have been reading in New Salem, Illinois, in November of 1833.

I don't think store-keeper Lincoln would have made these himself. He was sleeping on the counter of his store and taking his meals with families in town or at the Rutledge Tavern. Ann, the daughter of tavern keeper and New Salem founder James Rutledge, was said to have been Abraham Lincoln's first true love. They were, at the very least, good friends and mutually devoted to learning. Neighbors recounted seeing them together, often with their heads bent over books.

Lincoln was elected to his first term in the Illinois Legislature in 1834 and the Rutledge family sold the tavern and moved to a nearby farm. Ann made plans to enroll at Illinois College in the town of Jacksonville the following year. However in August 1835 Ann became ill, probably with typhoid fever. Lincoln rode to visit her for what the family feared would be one last time. The two spent an hour alone together as the grieving Abraham sat by her bedside. She died two days later. She was just 22 years old.

Lincoln was said to have become deeply saddened and seen to be wrapped in profound thought as he walked around town and in the surrounding woods. Years later, as Lincoln was leaving Springfield for the White House an old New Salem friend asked Lincoln about Ann. Lincoln is said to have replied, "I did honestly & truly love the girl."

These delightful treats are memorable, too.

 APees   -- adapted from an 1833 recipe

2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon mace
1 1/2 tablespoons caraway seeds
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold, salted, or unsalted, butter
1/3 cup white wine

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the flour, sugar, spices and the 1 1/2 tablespoons of caraway seeds in a mixing bowl, or in your food processor. Slice the butter into small chunks and cut into the flour mixture with a pasty cutter, two knives, or using the food processor, until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. Mix in the wine with a fork or the processor and knead until you have a smooth dough. Roll out on a lightly floured surface about 1/8-inch thick. Prick all over with a fork and cut into squares with a rotary jagging iron or just a knife. Place on lightly greased sheets and bake until light brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. The Apees shrink as they bake.  Makes about 7 dozen small cookies.

Note: these are great to eat all by themselves, but are particularly tasty -- and unusual -- as a base for cheese, spreads--ham would be great, or a bit of cream cheese and homemade apple preserves--see our recipe for February 2!

Copyright 2015 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved.