Posts Tagged “cookbook”
I know how easy it is to just open a box of Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker or Ghirardelli brownie mix, add an egg or two and some water. But this recipe, that I’ve adapted from my former MIL’s Women’s Club Cookbook, Keys to Our Kitchens is every bit as easy and fast. But it’s way, way better.
The first time I ever made mayonnaise, it was from a recipe out of Keys to Our Kitchens, the cookbook my friend (and former MIL) Carlene wrote for the Women’s Club in Dayton, Ohio. It used melted butter instead of oil so in actuality, it was probably more of a Hollandaise sauce than a true mayonnaise.
The secret ingredient that sets these pancakes off is absolutely the rice. The pancakes are light as a feather, but they offer some tooth-resistance that is totally satisfying and unlike any other pancakes I have ever eaten. The author (another beloved former relative) attributes the recipe to someone’s grandmother and who am I to argue. Thank you to that grandmother.
I have my list of go-to foods that I make over and over because they’re good, fast, familiar and easy. There are other foods – like turkey tetrazzini – that I make only once-a-year. Not because they’re hard to make, but because they’re seasonal and indulgent and they become special that way.
My first attempt was dense and heavy, but not a total disaster. It had a nice flavor and a hard, caramelized crust. But, I had rushed the process. The leaven was not ready, which meant that the starter was not ready.
“Keys to Our Kitchens” became my first blueprint for cooking. To this day, some of the best things that have ever come out of my kitchen were created – or inspired – from that homespun Women’s Club cookbook: Turkey Tetrazzini, cornbread oyster stuffing for that turkey, rice waffles, gumbo, brownies-from-scratch. The pages are deeply stained from use. The binding barely holds together. It is a treasured part of my life.
I tend to go for seasonal, but here we are in very early spring in “USDA Planing Zone 5″ where nothing much will be growing and harvested for at least a few weeks and there’s just not that much calling to me. Everything failed to inspire me until Jamie Oliver.
Some Ancient FoodBeest who must have been really hungry did us a big favor when he or she actually discovered the pleasures of the artichoke. But what do you do with them when you don’t want to dip those succulent leaves in unlimited melted butter and or mayo?
