Weekly Cooking Thread ~Recipes~ May 28, 2011

FreeRepublic Cooks | May 28, 2011 | libertarian27

[libertarian27]

Welcome to the 25th installment of the FR Weekly Cooking (Recipes) Thread.

Looking for something new to make or made something new that came out great? Please share a 'tried-and-true' recipe or two - or all of them:)! for fellow FReepers to add to their 'go-to' Recipe Stack of Family Favorites!

Here's the place to share and explore your next favorite recipe.

[hattend]

I’ll post it tonight when I get home from work. It’s on my laptop.

[Flamenco Lady]

I love all kinds of beans too. You are right that chili is a good way to introduce him to black beans. I have never been able to get him to try black beans until last week when I made a huge batch of chili. I’m a Northern Gal and I grew up with chili being mostly beans and a little bit of meat, so that is how I make my chili as well.

I had used up all the chili beans I had made up (I have been soaking and pre cooking dry beans), but I felt like this particular batch of chili needed a few more beans in it so I asked him if he would still eat it if I added one can of black beans to it since I had a can of them in my pantry cupboard. He said he didn’t think one can would make much difference in my huge batch of chili, so I could go ahead.

We had big bowls of chili with home made cornbread one night for dinner last week, and chili dogs another night. My hubby liked the chili so much he actually had chili or chili dogs several times for lunch last week. I had filled three empty 48 ounce sour cream tubs with the leftover chili to put in the freezer, and he had me keep one of them out so he could have chili dogs for lunch last week. He had the whole 48 ounce tub gone in two days!

I really think his aversion to black beans is either all in his head or perhaps due to his mother cooking up some black beans that he didn’t like when he was growing up. He has told me that both kidney beans and black beans are too bitter for his taste, and are never soft enough for him, but I have never found either to be bitter at all, and the only reason I know of for beans not getting soft is when they are salted too soon or have acid like lemon juice or vinegar added too soon to the pot.

I don’t usually add any vinegar or lemon juice to my beans, and wait to salt them until the end, but my mother in law was always big on adding vinegar or lemon juice to her beans, and over salted just about everything. She used one cooking temperature too, HIGH!

When we first got married there were a whole lot of foods he wouldn’t eat. In fact it would have been a shorter list to just write down the few foods he would actually eat. I have introduced him to a slew of new foods in close to 20 years of marriage, but he still has a real aversion to some foods.

I am always looking for new chili recipes to try as everyone in the family except one daughter absolutely loves chili. She will eat it most of the time as long as there is lots of shredded cheddar cheese to put on top of it. If she really doesn’t feel like it she will fix herself something else or eat her hot dogs without the chili on them.

For quite a while now I have been making a big pot of chili about once a month, and freezing the leftovers, so it is easy to just pull out of the freezer when someone wants chili. My hubby’s favorite kind of bean is pinto beans, so your chili recipe sounds right up his alley, now that I have gotten him to eat some black beans in some chili already.

I will look forward to trying your chili recipe too! I’ll watch for the recipe!

[Flamenco Lady]

Okay I just had a small taste of the first of my mother’s cake recipes that I tried making today. I had planned to try the applesauce cake first, but realized I didn’t have enough applesauce left, so I made the spice cake instead.

I was a bit worried about this turning out okay as the batter was really thick and very sticky. It was such a heavy batter that I could just barely hold the mixing bowl over the cake pan and pour the batter in the cake pan. Just before I put it in the oven it dawned on me that this cake has no eggs in it and I wondered if the recipe could have been typed up with a mising ingredient. I didn’t remember ever making a cake without eggs.

I cooked it anyway and hoped for the best. I just took a tiny taste and it is good, so we will have it for our dessert tonight. I don’t think my mother ever frosted this cake. I just remember having it with a big glass of milk as an after school snack and sometimes instead of a coffee cake at breakfast time. My dad liked it with his morning cup of coffee or topped with a little sweetened whipped cream for dessert at dinner time.

Anyway, here is the recipe:

Spice Cake

1 cup of sugar
½ cup butter
1 cup sour milk *
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. nutmeg
½ tsp. cloves
1 cup floured raisins
¼ cup nuts (optional)

Sift together flour, baking soda, and spices. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the sour milk and then the flour mixture to the butter and sugar. Fold in raisins and nuts. (Batter is very thick and dense). Pour the batter into a greased 8X8 inch cake pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40-50 minutes. (If you use a dark pan I would decrease the temperature to 325 degrees)

*To make milk sour add 1 tsp. lemon juice or vinegar to 1 cup of milk. Stir and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes.

[Irish Eyes]

marking thread

[hattend]

Black Beans & Rice

You can cheat a little on the recipe by purchasing prepared black beans in the can, or you can quick-soak the beans in a crock pot to reduce the over-night preparation time, but it still takes 5-hours on a high-heat setting.

1 lb. Dried Black Beans (3 cups); Picked Over and Rinsed
8 cups Water (4 for beans and 4 for rice)
1/2 cup dry white wine
6 Cloves Garlic; Crushed
2 Tbs. Dried Oregano
1 Bay Leaf
2 tsp. Olive Oil
1 Large Onion; Chopped
1 Red Bell Pepper; (I prefer Green Bells) Chopped
1 Tbs. Ground Cumin
1 Jalapeno Pepper; Seeded and Chopped
2 Tbs. Red Wine Vinegar
1 tsp. Salt
Freshly Ground Black Pepper to Taste
2 cups Long-Grain White Rice
1 Lime; Sliced into 8 Wedges

Soak beans in cold water overnight making sure all beans are covered by 2-inches of water.

Drain and rinse beans.

Place in a large soup pot or Dutch oven.

Add 4 cups of water, wine, garlic, oregano, and bay leaf.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. cover and simmer until beans are tender, approximately 2-hours.

Drain beans and return to the pot or Dutch oven.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

Add onion and pepper, cook, stirring occasionally until softened for about 5-minutes.

Add cumin and jalapeno, cook, stirring until softened for approximately 1-minute more.

Stir onion mixture and vinegar into beans.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, bring remaining 4 cups of water and 1 tsp. salt to a boil.

Add rice, cover and reduce heat to low. simmer until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed, approximately 15 to 20-minutes.

Serve the beans over the rice with lime wedges on the side of the serving dish.

Additional cuban style topping (but not necessary to the recipe) Cube up, or chop, a white or yellow onion into a bowl, drizzle some oil and red wine vinegar over the onion bits, mix together... top the beans and rice.... Yum

[Current Occupant]

Love these threads but would like to see a thread for us singles out here. Simple and not a lot of ingredients.

[Flamenco Lady]

Thanks so much for posting this recipe. I am going to cook some chicken breasts tomorrow night and I think I will make the black beans and rice to go with it. Since the black beans are cooked separately, if hubby doesn’t want to try them he doesn’t have to eat them. I will fix some corn to go with it, so he can fill up on the rice and the corn, which is his favorite vegetable anyway.

Opps, I’m out of bell pepper and don’t have any jalepeno peppers, so I may have to wait until I go shopping on Monday, unless I can get hubby to stop at the grocery store tomorrow on our way home in the morning so I can make a quick trip in to the produce section.

[little jeremiah]

Placemark.

[libertarian27]

“A very big thanks to the person that posted the Upside Down Pizza recipe. It’s become a family favorite. I’ve made it 4 times already!”
*************************
That was Fast Moving Angel on the April 2nd thread

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2698653/posts?page=14#14

That’s a ‘ringing endorsement’ - I’ll need to try it! My husband doesn’t like pizza but since it’s upside down I may be able to sneak it by him :>)

[hattend]

Hope you enjoy it

Other than the bean soak, it’s quick and easy to prepare.

[pops88]

Thanks. I want to send a personal thank-you. It’s so easy and adaptable. I ended up looking at lots of recipes for it online to come to my final version. We’ve had sausage and pepperoni, sausage,onions and mushrooms, Hawaiian, and lastly chicken and artichoke. I’ve been trying to use up the Dr. Pepper pork, but my daughter said, “why would I eat anything else when I have this.” She was thrilled when I bought more artichoke hearts for the future.

[Fast Moving Angel]

Aw, shucks ::: blush :::

[rightly_dividing]

I have no real recipe for the three bean chili, I just guesstimate it. I use a can of pintos, a can of garbanzos, and can of black beans. I make the chili sauce using a chili mix with some chili powder added and/or cummin. A large can of diced tomatos, whatever kind of meat, always lots of onions diced large. As you can see, I am not one to consider chili to be an art form, canned beans and chili mix are OK with me. It is just a quick easy pot of meals, I make this in double order most of the time, although there are only two of us; we freeze leftovers in sandwich size containers for single lunches later. If I am wanting hot dog chili sauce, I use a finer ground beef and use no beans or tomatos.

I was not aware of using vinegar in dry beans until recently when we moved to Texas and we tried some complimentary beans in a restaurant. They were sour! yuck! My wife explained that sometimes people add vinegar to beans to soften them faster. I had never heard that at the time, but I have cooked all forms of dry beans for many years, especially large limas and red beans. And I put almost any bean over a bed of hot steamy rice. While working south of NewOrleans after Katrina, I picked up on something that was new to me, white beans over rice, on Wednesdays. Cooked and seasoned just like red beans except they used navy or great northern beans, and over a bed of rice, and make them on Wed. instead of Mon.

[rightly_dividing]

I have spent a few minutes looking at this Fannie Farmer Cookbook and it is really great reading about cooking. It is instructional about cooking, not just a book of recipes. That is what is being lost as the generations pass. For example, on the section of soups, it has 8 pages about cooking soups and stocks before giving any recipes; it tells about using leftovers in soup, seasoning soup, storing and freezing, binding and thickening, canning, garnishes, about stocks and broths, ingrediants for stock and broth cooking stocks and broth, seasoning them, cooling them, removing fat, reducing, storing, clarifying, and substitutions before giving any recipes. It gives the same kind of details for Veggies, cakes, pies, all kinds of stuff. It is really an all in one cooking manual. It is 1170 pages before a 50 page index! I can see that I will be immersed in this book for a while and that it will be kept handy at all times.

I did a search on Ebay and see 222 copies for sale, some very old and some more recent, one a 1936 eddition and anothe a 1946.
Ebay is a good source for books. Several years ago, I lost most of my hardcover books in a move and replaced them very eccomomically at Ebay. I got some like new books and even found some local cookbooks books there. Books can ship by USPS at media rates which make it an attractive way to get books.

[Flamenco Lady]

We have about the same recipe or guesstimate for making chili, except that I have used all different kinds of beans, depending on what I had in the cupboard: chili, pinto, kidney, black, small red, and more. I actually like to get Carrol Shelby Chili seasoning the best, because it comes with a packet of masa flour to thicken the chili with in the end. I haven’t been able to find masa flour, at the grocery stores here, so if I don’t buy the Carrol Shelby seasoning, I have to use a different thickener and the chili doesn’t taste quite the same to me without it, although spelt flour is a close second to the masa flour. I sometimes add diced green, yellow, or red pepper to my chili as well for a change of pace.

I did not like the sour taste of beans with vinegar either. Most people I know that do like it, add it at the end of the cooking time as a flavor enhancer. Some people claim that it also helps to get rid of the gas in the beans, but I have also heard that the claim is hogwash. I am certainly not going to try it, since I didn’t like the vinegar taste in my mother in law’s beans at all. Her beans never tasted fully cooked to me, even though she would presoak them and cook them for far longer than I have ever had to cook my beans. I suspect that her use of vinegar and or salt too soon in the cooking process, may be the reason my husband thought black beans were bitter and too hard a bean for his liking. He did comment that the black beans in my chili last week did not seem bitter or hard and I used a can of black beans, since I had them in my pantry.

He only would eat pinto beans or navy beans and baked beans when we were first married, but by that point in time my mother in law was using only canned beans, so the beans were already soft when she cooked them.

I was taught by my mother that you should never add salt or an acid like vinegar, citrus juice, or tomatoes to your beans or lentils until after they are soft because it inhibits and slows the cooking process, and can actually prevent your beans from ever getting completely soft, no matter how long you cook them. I know from experience after getting stuck with undercooked beans or lentils, that adding salt or tomatoes can stop the cooking process. I neglected to follow my mother’s cooking rules a few times, by trying to speed up the bean preparation by adding ingredients too soon in the cooking process, or following a new recipe that didn’t follow her rules. I guess some of us like myself have to learn the hard way, what not to do. I now fully admit, my mother was right! LOL! Fortunately, I learned that lesson before I even dated my husband! LOL!

Through the years I have been able to expand my husband’s palate to include vegetables such as zucchini, raw broccoli and sometimes very lightly sauteed or steamed, raw cauliflower (with dip only) or cooked Au Gratin style, and cabbage cooked any way; legumes including just about everything but black beans; grains such as barley, bulgar wheat, brown rice, cous cous, and ocassionally fried polenta; and much more. I am still working on black beans, dark greens such as spinach, swiss chard, etc., and some kinds of seafood, but I hope to someday get him to like those foods too!

We do not eat beans every day, but we do have them more frequently now because they are budget friendly and add additional protein to a meal, so I can sometimes get by with less meat per person. This is especially true with soups. Since meat is usually the most expensive part of any meal, by adding other cheaper proteins such as eggs and legumes I can reduce the meat in it and thus the over all cost of the meal, but still have a well balanced meal for my family.

[Flamenco Lady]

The other two old cookbooks “Better Homes and Gardens” and “The Joy of cooking” also have similar introductions for each section of the cookbooks as well, but are slightly smaller in size, due mainly to smaller print. My “Joy of Cooking is from 1946 and is 822 pages. It has an index that is 61 pages. In addition to the introductions for each section, it also has substitution tables, helpful hints, a list of items every woman should have in her kitchen including pots and pans etc., a list of items to always have on hand in the pantry, definitions of cooking terms, how to set tables, sample menus, a section on herbs, convaleescent cooking, leftover suggestions, food storage, meal planning, a section on vitamins in foods, a calorie chart, having different types of parties, table settings and much more.

My “Better Homes and Garden” is from 1949. It is a little different than a normal cookbook because it was set up as a three ring binder with dividers followed by instructions and recipes. A person would buy the basic cookbook in the binder and then could add to it. It was set up so you could easily add your own recipes and each month their magazine had additional pages you could cut out and add to your cookbook with additional recipes.

Frequently the magazine recipes were from women who read the magazine. Readers could submit their recipes, Better Homes and Garden would test the recipes several times and then if it passed all their tests it could be published in their magazine. It was considered quite an honor to have one of your recipes featured in Better Homes and Garden on the pages intended for the cookbooks. Because of this even though two cookbooks may have the same copyright date, some copies may have lots more pages than others, depending on how avid a fan a woman was of the magazine, and how many of their own recipes they added to the cookbook.

This cookbook was intended to be an all in one cookbook for the average housewife. There was no need to have an extra recipe file, because all your recipes could just be added to your binder. It was obviously a great marketing tool that encouraged housewives to subscribe to their magazine. Because no two of these cookbooks are alike, it is great fun to look at every copy you run across of this particular cookbook.

I don’t know exactly when cookbooks started to get away from the instructional cooking methods and became just a compilation of recipes, but I know by the time I graduated from high school in the 1970’s most of the cookbooks were simply recipe compilations.

I have found garage sales to be the cheapest source of old cookbooks, and often garage sale finds will have extra recipes tucked inside by a former owner as well. The last old cookbook I picked up was about 5 years ago and I picked up an old Better Homes and Garden cookbook for a friend and paid only 50 cents for it. Garage sales in retirement communities usually have the most and the oldest cookbooks since the older a person is, the greater chance they knew the fundamentals and learned them from an instructional style cookbook and the family cooks.

[rightly_dividing]

I also use many other beans in chili, and many different ingrediants, a different chili each time, usually. If you use Shelby's Chilli mix, then you may have heard of the Carroll Shelby Chili Cookoffs that are held in many cities across America for the Heart Association. He is a long living heart transplant patient, about 25 or more years, I would guess.

You are fortunate to have learned some rules from your mother about cooking. A book of cooking "rules" like that would be a great help to beginner and intermediate cooks everywhere, I'm sure. There may be such a book, I don't know. Maybe you could write one yourself!

I never seem to find anything worthwhile at yard sales and have quit stopping at them. My wife has required me to also stop shopping antique stores because I have too much stuff already.

[Netizen]

There are some, you just have to watch for them. Just like some of the recipes are geared towards low fat or diabetics or those trying to eliminate trans fats etc.

[Netizen]

darn. Bisquick, sigh even the light has partially hydrogenated oils/trans fats. :( Knew there had to be a reason that I hadn’t grabbed that recipe.

THANKS for posting your ‘dough’ recipe. Now I can try it! :)

[Netizen]

You didn’t use eggs in your dough?