Posted on 10/30/2023 6:05:28 AM PDT by texas booster
When Danny Meyer was gearing up to open his barbecue restaurant, Blue Smoke, there was one recipe he knew he had to have on the menu: his grandmother’s secret potato salad recipe.
“I told the chef, ‘My very favorite potato salad in the world was the one my grandmother made,’” Meyer recalls.
That’s a big statement coming from Meyer, a successful restaurateur who has earned Michelin Stars and founded the fast-casual chain Shake Shack. At the time, his grandmother had already passed away, but Meyer remembered that she kept recipes on three by five index cards. After a search, he found the right card and handed it to the restaurant’s chef, who invited Meyer to try it in the Blue Smoke kitchen.
When Meyer arrived, the sous chefs had a big bowl of potato salad that brought back memories of his grandmother. He tried it, smiled, and told the chefs, “That’s exactly right.” They grinned back at him mischievously. Eventually, Meyer broke and asked, “What’s so funny?” A chef pulled out a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise and placed it on the table. Meyer looked at it, then realized that the secret recipe his grandmother had hoarded for years was on the jar. It was the official Hellman’s recipe for potato salad.
This actually seems to be a common phenomenon. The television show Friends even features a similar discovery, when one character, Phoebe, realizes that her grandmother’s “famous” chocolate chip cookie recipe came from a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips.
Two months ago, we asked Gastro Obscura readers to send in accounts of their own discoveries. We promised a (loving) investigation of grandparents lying about family recipes.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
That’s fine.
I use recipes from the internet but I print them out with originator info on them..usually.
WE LOVE THAT PIE!!! Mostly Ritz crackers and egg whites???
Had the same thing happen with Mom’s apple pie recipe:
Mom: “Take two Pillsbury dough pie crusts...”
Me: “Say it ain’t so!”
The Ritz cracker box recipe for broccoli/cheese casserole has been a staple at family get togethers for decades.
One side of the family comes from Massachusetts and New Hampshire - traces us back to the Mayflower and are big DAR supporters.
After WWII a couple of the boys moved down south, to the Florida coast and to the MS coast.
Suddenly none of the recipes for Thanksgiving or Christmas would work properly.
Something about storing the cooked birds, pies and cakes on the back porch to cool down ... doesn’t work so well next to a tropical swamp.
I think Alton Brown cribbed half of the recipes and techniques in the first two seasons of Good Eats directly from that book.
Thank you so much!!
Long ago I read an article about “Fish House Punch” which it was claimed was the reason for a three day gap in Washington’s diary. The Founding Father’s sure knew how to party.
At the time, he was the richest man in America, the Donald Trump of his day. He was obviously a very intelligent man, as a tour of his estate and farm amply demonstrates—multiple business ventures tied to his crops and the Potomac river flowing by. If you ever get a chance to visit the Mount Vernon estate and its visitor center, it is well worth the trip.
Used to live in Maryland, been to Mount Vernon and Montecello. My Grandparents house was built in 1815 and had slave quarters in the cellar.
Washington was intelligent, but his influence as a moral force was his best quality, IMO.
I must agree. He seemed to be quite impeccable. God bless him where he is.
Perhaps you’re thinking of something else. I just looked up the original recipe, and there are no egg whites in it. What my sister made was vile, and not because she was a bad cook, either. She was a very good cook, but it was a lousy recipe.
I don’t remember that one. Might be good.
LOL!!!
Broccoli & Cheese
4 sleeves Ritz crackers
4 boxes frozen broccoli
4 sticks of butter, room temp
8 oz. (1 pouch) shredded mozzarella (e.g., Sargento)
13x9 pan (foil kind = no clean-up)
Crumble crackers and mix with butter.
Set a handful or so aside for topping
Cook broccoli (nuke & drain)
Layer crumb mix on bottom & halfway up the side of pan
Add cooked broccoli
Sprinkle extra topping.
Sprinkle shredded cheese
(can be assembled the day before and refrigerated for baking the next day)
Cover with foil
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes
Remove foil
Bake at 350 for another 15 minutes.
[And I also forgot the diced GREEN PEPPER]
Lahmajoon (”Armenian pizza”)
dough
1/3 stick of butter
2.5 cups of flour
1 package of dried yeast (or one generous teaspoon of bulk active yeast)
salt
enough water to form a dough
I use a bread machine to make the dough
Mix the topping ingredients in a bowl while letting the dough rise:
a pound of meat (10% fat minimum so it will not dry out excessively when cooked)(my mom always used ground round hamburger but the standard meat is lamb)
6 ounces of tomato paste
28 ounce can worth of tomatoes, drained
minced garlic
about half a bunch of chopped fresh parsley (I grow my own, the store parsley often tastes like hay)
1 modest size green pepper (without the top, white pith or seeds), diced
some paprika for color (I don’t normally use this nowadays)
some salt
I roll the dough out to cover two cookie pans like my mom did, but the standard way is to make rounds 10 to 12 inches in diameter. The dough should be rolled out to be about 1/8th of an inch thick.
If using cookie pans, the dough should extend up the sides of the pans.
If making traditional rounds, increase the dough recipe amounts by about half.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Place the topping on the cookie pan dough while oven is preheating.
Bake about 28-34 minutes if using cookie pans. The dough should brown some and the topping should not dry out. Check about every couple minutes starting about 25 minutes in.
The topping on traditional rounds would not be as thick, so don’t bake them as long.
The cookie pan lahmajoon on the top oven rack will cook before the one on the lower oven rack.
Genuine butter, truly fresh parsley and good garlic are essential for proper flavor.
Do you have a Half Price Book store in your area? They always have great old cookbooks. I think they may have an online store too but I like to actually browse through the cookbooks.
Yes, and I used to visit used bookstores in most every city that business travel brought me to. I make an annual pilgrimage to their main store on NW Highway in Dallas.
I go by HPBs on a regular basis, and usually enjoy searching for bargains.
Certain selections are mostly forgotten by the young stores clerks, and they often wind up in the clearance section.
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