Category: i love cookbooks

When in doubt, look to the 1950’s.

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Last night’s dinner was leftover split pea soup. I needed to round it out with something and I knew some sort of bread was the answer.  We’ve already had sourdough baguette a few days this week, including with the first round of split pea soup, so something else was called for.  I’d spent the afternoon making and canning applesauce,  I didn’t feel like running out and grabbing something, I didn’t feel like putting effort into making something, I wanted something quick, easy and instantly gratifying.  What I really wanted was some Bisquick drop biscuits, but I was out of Bisquick.  Some quick research showed me that even if I whipped up a homemade style Bisquick, you are still required to cut the fat into the dry ingredients and that’s exactly what I wanted to avoid.  If I felt like doing that, I’d make biscuits already.

I reached for my 1956  Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book.  I felt for sure if any of the cookbooks on my shelf had a quick & easy drop biscuit recipe, it would be that one.   It’s chock full of tips on how to be a good housewife including reminders to be pleasant and have something interesting to relay to the family at dinner, so it seemed it would come through with a recipe that required little effort, because it also is full of reminders that the lady of the house should also take time for herself.  It did not disappoint.

The recipe says to sift together your dry ingredients, then pour all your liquids in at once, stir until the dough is a ball and there you go.  It seemed too easy to be true.  It wasn’t. It really was that simple.  As you stir, the dough becomes a ball.  Really.  And they were good.

How stinking happy am I that I found a quick & easy biscuit recipe that’s not Bisquick?  Admittedly, I have a soft spot for the mix seeing how it was my Granny’s secret recipe for just about anything, as long as the recipe was printed on the box.  It’s not whole grain and I’ve yet to find another baking mix that is as versatile as Bisquick that is whole grain (although I’ve been known to throw some wheat germ into pancakes made with it, just to feel like I’m healthing it up), but otherwise, it is one of two processed foods I tend to make room for in my pantry (the other being Kraft Mac & Cheese).

Because of my thing about using more whole grain flours when I bake and my current experimentation with spelt flour, I subbed a cup of that for all purpose flour.  I also threw in some fresh herbs – parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and oregano- which I chopped finely and threw in with my dry ingredients.  You can roll them out or drop them, as I did.  If you can turn on an oven, you can make these.  They are that easy.

Stir and Roll Biscuits 
(From the Betty Crocker 1956 Picture Cook Book)

Sift (or whisk) together:
2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Pour into measuring cup (but don’t stir together):
1/3 cup cooking (salad) oil
2/3 cup milk

Then pour all at once into the flour.
Stir with a fork until mixture cleans sides of bowl and rounds up into a ball.  
For rolled or patted biscuits, smooth by kneading about ten times without additional flour.  With the dough on waxed paper, press out 1/4″ to 1/2″ thick with hands or roll out.  Cut with unfloured biscuit cutter.  Place on ungreased baking sheet and bake until golden brown.

For drop biscuits, skip the kneading and drop from spoon onto ungreased baking sheet.

Bake at 475 for 10-12 minutes.

Buttermilk version:
Reduce baking powder to 2 tsp and add 1/4 tsp. baking soda.
Use 2/3 cup buttermilk in place of sweet milk.
Makes 16 biscuits.

In which I finally announce winners.

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Last Thursday was the announced deadline to enter my cookbook giveaway, which also happened to be my birthday.  In the midst of birthday celebrations, a house full of company here to celebrate it all weekend on top of our usual jam packed schedule and preparations for the storm of the century, I just now got around to my faithful assistant drawing names out of the fishbowl we like to use for such things.
With out further ado, the winners are:
The Vegetarian Epicure  – Tracy
Vegetarian Pleasures – Gail
The Great Vegetarian Cookbook – Gabby
Breadtime Stories  – Vikki
And the highly contested Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen cookbook lucky winner is Allison!  Which is probably highly fitting, because I seem to recall her eyeballing it many years ago in my kitchen, telling me that if I ever get rid of it, she’ll take it.  It also means I will get to visit it from time to time.
Thanks for all the entries.  I’m quite happy to report that I received two new (highly coveted) cookbooks for my birthday, so the space I cleared is filling up quickly.  Winners, please drop me an email so I can get your cookbook to you!

Tis better to give than receive.

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Today has been the day of Becky. 
I heard the mailman come by and when I looked in the box, there was this:
A very fun creatively packaged treat from my friend Lesa.

Just a small, clear plastic box she had re-purposed.  Perfect.

Inside was a new apron pattern, a pickle recipe and a few butterfly and bee trinkets that I can’t wait to make into something – probably for Edie’s room, since she has a bit of a butterfly theme in there.  Thanks Lesa!
A few hours later, a UPS truck pulled up and dropped this off:

A new cookbook I’ve had my eyeball on. Thanks Michele!
I can’t wait to sit down with it.
They say it’s better to give than receive though. 
When I pulled out all my cookbooks this week in the name of biscuit research, I couldn’t for the life of me get them all back in.  Which meant one thing – time to purge.  I thought I’d share them with all of you out there in the world. 
I have 5 books I’m getting rid of.  Instead of sending the entire lot to one person, I thought I’d send 5 books to 5 of you.  Simply leave a comment telling me which cookbooks you’d like – you can choose more than one (and win more than one!).  I know sometimes the Internet can make it tricky to leave comments, so you can also email me.  I’ll leave the giveaway open until October 25.  And then I’ll dump all the names in a hat and pull them. 
All of these are good cookbooks, with at least one recipe that’s a regular part of my repertoire.  But they don’t get used nearly enough to warrant the space they take up.  So, out they go.
First up for grabs:

Breadtime Stories by Susan Jane Cheney.
Paperback.
Bread and things to put on bread.  She’s baked for Moosewood, that legendary vegetarian collective in upstate NY, so there’s lots of whole grain bread recipes.  This cookbook taught me how to make english muffins.  
The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. 
Paperback.
A classic vegetarian cookbook, my enchilada sauce is based on a recipe in here.  
Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin
Paperback.
This cookbook is set up in menu format, easy to use for those who love to have a menu.

The Great Vegetarian Cookbook The Chef’s Secret Recipes by Kathleen DeVanna Fish.
Paperback.
Some very lovely chef recipes, including ones from Emerile Lagasse and Alice Waters.

Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Lousiana Kitchen Cookbook.
Hardback.
Cajun AND Creole and the difference explained between the two in this essential cookbook.
Also contains hands down, the best, quite possibly the most decadent oyster stuffing you’ve ever had. 
So, fire away.  Leave me comments, shoot me emails, drop me a line on Facebook and tell me which one of these gems you want before I change my mind and find more room for cookbooks.

Biscuit theory.

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I have long held the theory that if I just found the right biscuit recipe, I would be able to make flaky, delectable biscuits that my family would rave about.  Over the years, I have sworn by this recipe and then that one.  Among my cookbook collection, I have dozens upon dozens of biscuit recipes – my Southern Living Southern Heritage series alone has 95 recipes scattered throughout its eighteen volumes.  The “Bread” volume alone has an entire chapter on biscuits, with subsections on beaten biscuits (5 recipes, including Maryland and Kentucky style beaten biscuits), yeast biscuits, basic biscuits (17 recipes, including 3 with ‘buttermilk’ in the name), as well as biscuits suitable to be served with tea. Both the beaten biscuit as well as the basic biscuit section feature picture tutorials with step by step how-to instructions.
It’s not entirely about the recipe though, it’s about the ingredients and technique of putting those ingredients together.  While many of the recipes I have call for all-purpose flour, one could assume all flour is the same, when in fact, all purpose flour differs from  region to region.  Southern all purpose flour is made with soft red winter wheat, which has a lower protein and gluten content than what is available in other regions of the country.
I first learned this in conversations with my friend Mark down at city market this summer.  He often sets up a stand, handing out samples and recipes of dishes made with local produce.  We share similar interests in food and when he’s down there, I find myself engaged in conversations with him and other foodie types, discussing things like pickles and grits and curing your own meats and yes, flours.  Turns out that while I was reading Game of Thrones on my summer vacation, Mark was reading about biscuits.  Three books worth in fact.
As a baker, I knew the importance of different flours – high gluten flour for pizza crusts that resemble the ones your favorite local pizza place makes,  Cake flour for lightly textured cakes, pastry flour, whole wheat flour, rye flour, buckwheat flour and more, including just plain old bleached & unbleached all purpose flour, but even I did not know that flour was different from region to region, brand name to brand name.
Interestingly enough, my older (1946 & 1964) copies of The Joy of Cooking both call for cake flour in their biscuit recipes, saying that it will make for a lighter biscuit.  Nowhere else have I seen a peep about how the flour you use is a large factor in making your biscuits light and fluffy.
There are differing opinions on how much to handle the dough, whether to knead or not, some say to roll it out, others say to keep the rolling pin far away from the biscuits.  Beaten biscuits, which apparently are unbelievably light and fluffy are made by literally beating the biscuits for a good 20 minutes or until the dough starts to ‘blister’ and pop.
With it being soup season, that means it’s biscuit season too.  I made my first batch of biscuits the other night,  using a technique I picked up from Rachel’s pie class I assisted with this past summer.  She cuts her fat in in stages, handling the final crust as little as possible. This, combined with using a southern flour (which took visiting a few grocery stores, believe it or not, despite the fact that I live in Virginia, which is considered the home of the ham biscuit), resulted in what I think is hands down my best biscuit ever.
They were everything you want a biscuit to be – light and flaky, excellent with butter and some blackberry jam for breakfast the next morning too. I think I have finally figured out the secret to a good biscuit – it’s not necessarily the recipe, it’s the flour you use and how you put them together.  Really, so much to cooking is about the ingredients you use as well as techniques.
Here’s my next goal – to figure out how to make a biscuit using whole wheat flour that is just as flaky and light as a biscuit that’s made of nothing but white flour.  I know that whole grains are healthier for us and since a big part of my motivation in my food sourcing and cooking is so that my family eats healthy, nutritious food, I’m not comfortable with us eating home baked goods on a regular basis that only use white flour, especially the lighter versions with less nutrients.  I have a few ideas about how I want to go about developing my own flour mixes, namely I’m going to try mixing some cake flour with some whole wheat flours and seeing what those results are.  I’ve also gotten my hands on some lard, not from the grocery store, but from animals that have been raised humanely, not commercially.  I’ve read good things about cooking with lard and I want to see for myself how they work in my biscuits and pie crusts.

You are what you eat.  Which is why I spend so much time thinking about biscuits, clearly.

Along the way.

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I have lined up another canning class to teach this summer – a pickling class in August for Market Central.  In talking it over with the folks there, we thought it might be fun to do different types of pickles, maybe even some fruit pickles.  Admittedly, I have wanted to try pickling some fruit.  If you have been reading this blog for some time, you might have noticed I tend to pickle pretty much everything in sight.  I am utterly fascinated by the process of pickling and I happen to have a husband who likes pickles, so it’s kinda win-win. I thought it would be best if I actually pickled some fruit before I marched into a class and taught it, so that you know, I might appear as if I know what I’m doing. 

So I called up my friend Melissa and borrowed her copy of “The Joy of Pickling” yet again, with an invitation to come help me figure out how to pickle peaches.

Melissa came over and held my hand on the watermelon rind pickles the first time I did them – I like having her come over and help me when I’m doing something new in the canning realm.  I’m so glad I had her over for the peach pickles, she definitely helped me get myself organized, get down to business and get the job done.   She made sure we followed the recipe exactly, even measuring out the peaches to the weight called for in the recipe.  She also tried to ensure we used the proper equipment, another thing I tend to overlook.

I have learned the hard way that when pickling, you really need to use ‘nonreactive’ pots.  Which means stainless steel. I might have a few hard anodized pots that are slightly scarred from pickling & jamming adventures.  I didn’t think I had any stainless steel pots left until I remembered a huge stock pot that seems to have found it’s way into the sandbox.  It didn’t start out as a sandbox toy, I think it was a piece of camping equipment that was stored in the basement and since the gang of girls that hang out around my house think that pretty much anything in basement is up for grabs, it somehow found it’s way into the sandbox.

I needed an extra large bowl, my big orange plastic one having gone missing (I seem to recall it being borrowed by a certain wee one that lives here for some sort of project.  I’ll have to check the tiki hut to see if it’s there as it’s not in the sandbox.  She’s lately started dragging things down into Brian & Betty’s yards, building forts there too.  It really could be anywhere on the block now that I think about it.  Hmm….)Thankfully, I was able to grab a punchbowl to use as a spare large bowl.  It’s good for your various collections to do double duty I think, and as they are large and glass, they are excellent for pickling.  I keep those out of reach of little hands, which is why they haven’t been moved into another location.

I also realized I have no empty half pint jelly jars on hand.  I have no idea what that’s about. I swore I had a case or two down there.  Thankfully, I did have a few empty cases of pint jars, so we used those.

This morning I felt the call of the thrifts, thinking I might find myself a new stainless steel pot.  The one I rescued from the sandbox holds about 20 gallons or so (okay, not really, but it’s the biggest pot in the house) and honestly, I have nowhere to store it upstairs, which is how it ended up in the basement and then the sandbox. So off I went.

I totally scored today.  I found a new springform pan to replace mine, which has a dent in the bottom thanks to one of the neighborhood kids and their hijinks (it sounds as if my kitchen is regularly raided as a toy box, but really, it’s not.  The springform pan has been like that for a few years now.  I’m slow to replace things, can you tell?) as well as a preforated baguette pan and a Julia Child cookbook, Julia Child & Company, which was apparently the companion book to her show in the late 70’s.   Good scores, all of them.    But those were not my best scores. 

My best scores were a pair of Land’s End pink suede boots and a pair of red cowgirl boots, with room to grow for a certain girl’s foot.  Her face when she saw them was priceless.  She has always refused to wear anything matching with me, but red cowgirl boots?  Watch out world, we’re gonna have matching boots. 
There were also punch bowls galore at every thrift I went to today.  It was hard to resist them, but I did.  I think three is enough, don’t you?  I never did find a new stainless steel pot.  The one I have works for now, it’s just, huge. 
Oh, and the peach pickles?  7 pounds of peaches yielded exactly 4 pint jars.  Not a whole lot.  I got some half pint jars today and did another batch, as there was a bunch of brine left over and I didn’t want to waste it.  They have to sit for at least 24 hours and I don’t feel like opening one of my 4 large jars tonight, so I can’t report on the taste.  Two batches of pickles didn’t make a dent in the half bushel of seconds I picked up out at Henley’s for a song yesterday, so I also canned a half dozen pint jars of plain peaches and whipped up a pie this afternoon, because yesterday’s slightly underripe peaches were today’s about to be overripe peaches when they sit in a box in your un-air conditioned kitchen and it’s 90 something degrees outside.  Also exactly why I felt I needed to can AND run the oven today because honestly, the house didn’t feel like it was 90 something out there today.   I can report my pie crust definitely acted as if it was too hot to be making a pie, but I perservered anyway and made it work.  It’s not pretty, but it’s pie.

Treasures and Kindred Spirits.

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So, I was all set to tell you about the absolutely wonderful baking class I assisted with at the cooking school this weekend, but on my way home this morning, I stumbled upon the most fantastic estate sale I’ve been to in a long time.  So, the baking class recap will just have to wait until tomorrow.

We had borrowed some tables and chairs from the Parks & Rec department for bingo night at school last Friday that needed to be returned this morning, to their storage shed over by CHS.  Along the way, I saw a sign for an estate sale.  On my way home from dropping them off, I popped in, just to see what I could find.  I noticed as I walked in, this was the last day, so everything was half off.

Sweet. 

As I walked into the garage, I couldn’t help but notice all sorts of good kitchen gadgets.  Although picked over, I could tell, there was a cook that lived here.  I hoped that not everything was picked over, that I could find a few useful things for myself.

And then I walked into the kitchen.  I saw a shelf of cookbooks that looked seemingly untouched.  I started rifling through them, then, suddenly became aware that there were at least 4 other bookshelves next to me, all FULL of cookbooks.  I stepped back and realized the breakfast nook off the kitchen had even more.  There were cookbooks EVERYWHERE.  There were complete sets of cookbooks – Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Time Life, Betty Crocker, McCalls, Southern Living, I could go on and on.  There were vintage cookbooks, there were new cookbooks, there were shelves upon shelves of what I call those church cookbooks – you know the ones that churches and ladies groups put together and sell as a fundraiser?  She had a whole collection of them.  I noticed many of her cookbooks were noted as to who had given them to her and when.  She had handwritten notes in them, she had recipes she’s written down, shoved in them, she had cards taped to the inside covers.  I realized I was standing in the kitchen of a woman who’s cookbook ownership style was very similar to my own.  Not only that, I realized that she had some of the same cooking interests and cookbook collecting habits as myself – with a heavy emphasis on southern style cooking as well as those church collections.
The first cookbook I grabbed was a rather beaten up one.

That I realized was an old, beloved copy of The Joy of Cooking.

A 1943 edition as a matter of fact.

Shoved full of recipes and notes and stains.

This newspaper clipping was in the front of the book.
  I like to imagine she cut it out because of the picture it painted.
Isn’t it lovely?

This was glued to the inside front cover. I think she covered the book in a wallpaper scrap and that appears to be a label from a product she wanted to remember.  This is something I do – shove labels I want to remember into cookbooks.  Hers was glued in, on top of the book cover edges.
The inside covers and all blank pages on the inside of her Joy of Cooking were filled with handwritten recipes.  Some are water damaged, but they are a treasure.
I realized as I looked that she had multiple copies of cookbooks – I found two Joy of Cookings, but went with the beat-up copy.  I have a newer version myself and what I really wanted were her notes.
So now I have two Joy of Cookings myself.  Which will fit in splendidly with all my Betty Crockers cookbooks.  (I have two an early 1950’s and a late 1980’s, plus the Cooky cookbook from the mid-sixties).

Amazingly, I held myself to two of the church collection cookbooks.  The one on the right is from First Presbyterian Church, here in Charlottesville, circa 1966.  The other is from a group called the Proud Land Rose Society and it’s the “Bicentennial Issue”, 1976. 
She had shelves upon shelves of these.  She had multiple copies of some of them.  I couldn’t help but notice, we had some of the same, from different areas of the state.  She had them from up and down the east coast.  I collect these as well, but I narrowed it down to these two, because one was from Charlottesville and the other one fascinated me. 
It had pages I had never seen before in these books. Serious menu planning.

Baking hints and food measures.
Gardening charts!

And then I found this.  Good Housekeeping, 1949.  Also full of bookmarks and notes. 

This one being my favorite.  An old Sweet & Low packet to mark the Indian Shrimp Curry recipe, with notes.  Yes, I will be making this and soon.
A canning cookbook.  Always good to have more of those, especially ones with pickles, jams & jelly recipes.

This is a classic.  I first learned about Edna Lewis from my dear friend Leni.  I’m not sure the previous owner used this, as it’s in mint condition, but I’m tickled to now have a copy in my collection. Edna Lewis was the granddaughter of a slave, and this cookbook is considered a classic in Southern Cooking.  Edna Lewis was sometimes referred to as the Julia Child of southern cooking. 

For years, I have collected piecemeal, books from a collection put out in the mid-1980’s from Southern Living, called the “Southern Heritage Collection”. 
Today I discovered the missing books in my collection.
I snatched them all up, as well as the index.
She had two sets of these. TWO!

I have loved the ones I’ve had, so to complete the collection has me beyond tickled.
I got my first one, “Vegetables”, at a yard sale when we still lived in Birmingham.  They are full of old Southern recipes, with illustrations and pictures from the late 19th and early 20th century.  They are gems. And I now have the complete set, which includes, but is not limited to:
Bread
Breakfast and Brunch
Cakes
Celebrations
Just Desserts
Gift Receipts
Pies and Pastry
Socials and Soirees
Soups and Stews
Sporting Scenes
Oh the possibilities in there!

And then I found this, right next to that collection.  
The inside cover.

The note on the inside of the card. More than a few of her cookbooks had similar inscriptions. 
I love that she kept track of her cookbooks this way.  I want to start doing this to my cookbooks.
This particular cookbook was written by Eugene Walter.  The most charming man you probably have never heard of.  I read this review of his oral history, Milking the Moon: A Southerner’s Tale of Life on This Planet and thought it looked interesting.  I wrote it on a running list of books I wanted to remember to read, only to have my dear husband buy it for me one Christmas.  Go read it. 
Allison currently has my copy, otherwise I’d lend it to you. It really is mandatory reading if you are going to know me.  I’m quite sure Eugene and I would have been kindred spirits, had I ever been lucky enough to meet his acquaintance.
I have been looking for my own copy of this cookbook for years now.  I’ve borrowed it from the library, so I’ve read it, but to now own it?  Happy happy.
She actually owned the entire series, but at that point, I felt I’d picked up enough cookbooks.  As it is, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going to store all these.  But this one I had to have. 
As I was walking out, I stumbled upon one last treasure, that they just gave to me, for free.

A binder of recipes, labeled as to the contents on the spine.
I found another binder with meats and casseroles and so on, and decided to leave that one.
This one, with desserts and cakes and breads suited me just fine, thank you very much.

Table of contents.
Menus – she has a spot for menus.  In there, she had menus of Thanksgivings past.  I have thought about organizing my menus of Holiday Dinners past and now I shall.

Inside, she had an assortment of recipes, all taped or glued down to looseleaf paper.

She had little headlines and sayings cut out and glued down too.

These two gems were covered by a sheet protector. Stapled to the Dark Fruitcake recipe is a note signed Mother.  It was written on a Tuesday and her mother wrote she had included some tips in the recipe so it should turn ‘just as well for you as it does for me’.  She closes saying she’s not going to the club party tonight- ‘it’s too bad for me to go out.’ In pencil, just under the ‘Tues. nite’ written in the upper right hand corner is ’66, marking the year.
Anne Thomas gave this recipe to her in 1963. It’s noted by hand in the corner.

This recipe, for green sauce, is written partly in German, with English translation.   
It looks like a Green Goddess recipe.
She had decorated some of the tab pages of the binder with images cut out of magazines and the like.  It reminds me of notebooks I made myself in high school and college, dedicated to fashion clippings.
Pictured above are the dessert and cake cover pages. 

Mother Carter gave her this Cranberry Salad recipe in 1958.
I’m guessing that was her mother-in-law.

And then there was this.  Tomato Aspic.  With multiple exclamation points on either side of EX, which I gathered was her way of saying a recipe was good, as it is on many recipes throughout her cookbooks, especially ones with stained pages and other notes. Stained pages are a dead giveaway a recipe has been tried and probably well liked.  I have never, ever been inclined to try any recipe for tomato aspic, but in going through her cookbooks today, I find myself wanting to try this.  Perhaps I shall.
Flipping through these cookbooks, I found all sorts of notes, both cooking and gardening.  As I walked through the rest of her house, I realized not only did she collect cookbooks, she was an avid knitter as well as a gardener. She was a big reader and must have been well traveled, as there were many travel books and books on other countries.  There was a number of history books too – honestly, I probably could have filled my truck up with all the books I saw in that house that I wanted to bring home. Her record collection was simply amazing.  In so many ways, I felt that I was in the home of a kindred spirit.  I’m sad our paths didn’t cross sooner, but I do feel like I was meant to stumble upon that sale today.  The only other thing I bought was a new watch – the battery in mine died a few months back and the watch is too beat up to put yet another battery into.  My new watch is a Seiko – that I got for a whopping $2.50.  I’ve wanted one of those for a long time, never thinking I could actually score one second hand for such a great price. All in all, I ended up paying about 25% of what everything had originally been marked for, which ended up being less than $25.  That’s right.  23 cookbooks and a watch, for $24. 
I spent a little bit of time looking through the knitting and gardening things, but honestly, I was so jazzed about the cookbooks, I couldn’t quite focus.  And I’m quite content with my current knitting and gardening libraries.  This was the third day of the sale – the knitting supplies had been well picked over and I don’t want to add to the stash.  (That was part of the deal with Pat when I started knitting, that I would NOT have a stash for that, as my sewing stash is uhm, sizable to say the least.).  As for the vinyl records, I know I walked away from some gems, but at that point, I was in line, ready to go and well, as much as we love music, we have been moving away from vinyl.  Most of our library is digital these days and I’m quite okay with that.  I’ve even moved to e-books, having gotten a Kindle for Christmas.  I can’t go to e-cook books though.  I need to be able to spill and to note in my cookbooks.  I need pictures.  I need to flip back and forth between pages.  I need to stack about 3 or 4 of them and cross reference similar recipes while I’m cooking, so that I can write my own recipe when I’m done. Most of all, I like using all random manner of items as bookmarks in my cookbooks and today I learned I’m not the only cook who feels that way.
What an absolute score.

Something borrowed.

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I often find that when people share recipes with me, unless I’ve actually eaten the dish before, I have a tendancy to file them away and forget about them.  Lend me the cookbook with your own notes in it though?  Well, I might try it.

The recipe in question was “Jimmy Ray’s Butternut Poblano Soup”.  Among the spices used were both chili powder and cinnamon, so right there I was intrigued.  For the longest time I was pretty sure that cinnamon only went in my morning oatmeal or apple pie.  Anything else was just weird.  And then I discovered Mollie Katzen, who is my hands down favorite cookbook author, and some of her interesting uses of cinnamon.  I still am not brave enough to throw it anything on my own, but any recipe that calls for it, I’m game.


See?  It must be good.

The cookbook is from a resturant in Athens, Georgia, by the name of The Grit.  The recipe is a vegan one, and while I’ve got nothing against vegan, I wasn’t in the mood to go to the store for soymilk.  So I used real dairy in the form of milk & butter, instead of soy versions.  I think cream would be outstanding in this soup, but I was fresh out.  I may actually be slightly over cream at this point in my life, having just gotten through the holiday season, heavy on the cream.   There was still a nice richness to the soup, even with skim milk, but that may have been the smidgen of chicken broth I used, as I was also fresh out of vegetable broth.  (I realize that those changes took this lovely soup about as far away from vegan as possible and honestly, I don’t mind vegan, we do eat that way at times, but I’m also the girl who fries her tofu in bacon fat.)

I made a few other changes to the recipe, mostly to fit what I had on hand.  So, instead of buying and roasting poblanos, I just pulled some of the anaheim peppers I grew, roasted, chopped and froze last summer out of the freezer.  Fresh herbs were used for the parsley and rosemary, in place of dried, which is what the recipe called for.  I may have used too much parsley – I went out and cut some from the garden as it was getting dark and I didn’t realize until I started chopping how much I had.  Oh well.  There are worse things than too much parsley in your soup.  It may have covered up for the fact that I didn’t take the seeds out of my hot peppers, as the recipe called for and they ended up in there as well.  While I’m confessing all the changes I made, I’ll go ahead and say that when I froze the chopped peppers, I filled jars, so there was no measuring ‘one to two’ peppers.  I just eyeballed it and threw in what I felt was a good amount.

It was….delicious.  It had some heat from the peppers, but not too much, because Edie ate it without complaining. She commented on the ‘interesting’ spice mix.  She thought perhaps I had thrown ginger in there and was surprised to learn it was cinnamon.  As this isn’t my recipe, I’m not going to post it, although if you do a google search, you are likely to find it.  I haven’t decided if I need this cookbook yet or not, although Pat’s already waived the ‘no net gain’ of books rule on this one.  Seems Dahlia raved about it to the point where he was sold on it before he even tasted anything out of it.  That’s pretty big. Although, since he got me “The Way to Cook” for Christmas, I’m not sure how much he holds to that rule.  He did let slip though, that since he got me a Kindle, he’s wondering how many books we can get rid of. Hmm.