This cookie recipe was given to me by a neighbor when we lived in the Beverly Hills area of Alexandria. We only lived there for a year and we were renters, but a week or so after we moved in the across the street neighbors, Ken and Pam, walked over with a plate of the most delicious cookies I’d ever tasted.

When I think of this recipe I also think about my few moments of absurdity and suggested to Dean we hide in the closet before the neighbors arrived. At the time it was so funny I was bent over laughing about it, but I suppose I’ve lost that particular manic side. Good thing too.

Anyway Pam gave me the recipe a few days later, written in neat handwriting on a pink index card. She admitted she got the recipe from a cookbook I’d not heard of at the time, but ended up purchasing: The Silver Palate Cookbook.

I’ve not made these cookies in a very long time — my kids don’t like molasses cookies — but did recently buy some molasses, so maybe I’ll make some soon.

• 12 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt butter, add sugar and molasses and mix thoroughly. Lightly beat the egg and add to butter mixture; blend well
3. Sift flour with spices, salt and baking soda and add to first mixture; mix. Batter will be wet.
4. Lay a sheet of batter on foil, leaving 3 inches between cookies. They will spread
5. Bake until cookies start to darken, about 7 minutes. Remove from oven while soft. Let cool on foil

Growing up in the Chicago area, Italian Beef was a familiar food on many restaurant menus. My favorite Italian Beef was made by a chain of restaurants called Beef Villa. At the time I didn’t know that Italian Beef was only found in Chicago and its suburbs. Whenever I’m back in Elgin I have at least one meal of Italian Beef.

A few years ago my aunt sent me an Italian Beef recipe she’d tried and liked. I think it was published in one of the local papers. If I find out, I’ll give them credit.

I posted this on BigOven.com where folks have rated it highly. It tastes as close to Beef Villa as it can — in fact I like it more than Beef Villa these days.

We make sure to have lots of extra dipping juices — and when we’ve eaten most of the beef, we make a soup out of the leftover broth and some vegetables and diced potatoes.

So, without further delay, I give you

Aunt Ginny’s Italian Beef

• 1 teaspoon Red pepper flakes crushed
• 2 teaspoons Garlic powder
• 2 teaspoons Onion powder
• 2 teaspoons Basil dried
• 2 teaspoons Oregano dried
• 2 teaspoon Italian seasoning dried
• 1 teaspoon Garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon Black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon Fennel seeds
• 3 Beef bouillon cubes
• 3 Bay leaf
• 1 4 lb Rump roast
• 1 1/2 cups Water
• 8 Italian Rolls
• Sport peppers

Heat oven to 450F

Combine in a small bowl:
-pepper flakes
-garlic powder
-onion powder
-basil
-oregano
-Italian seasoning
-garlic salt
-black pepper

Rub half of the seasoning over all surfaces of the roast. Put meat in a shallow pan just large enough to hold it. Roast 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350F and roast an additional 20 – 30 minutes. Remove from oven and add cold water to bottom of pan. Let stand until fat has solidified. Remove and discard fat. Add remaining seasoning mixture to pan juices. Return meat to oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool 20 minutes. Slice in paper-thin slices. Put sliced meat in a large sauce pan with juices, bouillon cubes, fennel seed and bay leaves. Let simmer 1 – 2 hours until cooked as desired. Spoon over split rolls. Add sport peppers if desired.

I didn’t love chili until we first went to Hard Times Cafe in Alexandria. At Hard Times you could get different varieties of chili — who would have thought that there was more than one type of chili — not this Midwestern-born-and-bred girl.

Apparently the chili I was used to was Cincinnati — but without the cinnamon. My mom (and later I) would saute the onions, brown the ground beef, add spices and tomatoes and a can or two of red kidney beans and call it chili. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything I looked forward to. Mom used to serve it with saltines. And maybe Velveeta. And far too much salt.

So chili just wasn’t on my list of favorite foods. I hated kidney beans. They reminded me of large beetles that squished when I bit them.

Then I became a vegetarian and discovered Hard Times Vegetarian chili. It was delicious — and included peanuts. And was served with sour cream, chopped onions and shredded cheese. Who would have thought to add those toppings to chili?

But this isn’t about Vegetarian Chili. I’ll write another post about that.

Hard Times also served Texas and Cincinnati Chili– and the beans came on the side. After my vegetarian stage, I tried the other versions and declared Texas to be the winner.

We tried to make it, but it never tasted like Hard Times’ chili. Then my brother gave me a copy of  Jeff Smith’s “The Frugal Gourmet cooks American” cookbook for Christmas. Jeff Smith, if you don’t know. was The Frugal Gourmet. I used to love his cooking show. He was down to earth and a bit of snob at the same time.

Now-a-days, if you open the cookbook, it automatically falls open to the Texas Chili recipe page, crinkled from getting wet and splattered with tomato sauce. Of course we’ve altered it a bit — mostly to make it easier.

Ingredients:

• 4 strips of bacon, diced
• 1 pound beef chuck roast, trimmed of fat, cut into 1/8-inch dice
• 1 yellow onions, peeled and chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, diced fine
• 1 fresh jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
• 1 teaspoons salt
• 4 tablespoons  chile powder, or more to taste
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano leaves
• 1 can diced tomatoes (28 oz)
• Cooked beans (any kind will work, but I like black beans or pinto beans best)

Saute the bacon until clear. Add the diced meat and brown over high heat along with the onions, garlic, and jalapeno.

When the meat is brown and the onions clear, add the remaining ingredients. Make sure to add the tomato juice.

Simmer for 1 hour and correct the seasoning. Cooked beans can be added to this, but they are optional.

Serve with shredded cheese, sour cream and chopped onions. Guacamole is also good as a topping.

This is one dish I make without a recipe, but I thought I’d put it here in case I suffer from memory loss in the future, or in case my kids want to make it and impress their friends.

For years I made Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, added canned tuna, put it in a baking pan, sprinkled extra cheddar on top and baked it in the oven. That was my version of tuna casserole. Then I made it with a cream soup based sauce.

Finally I learned how to make a roux. Life was good.

Note that since I don’t use a recipe, the dish differs each time I make it, but I think the one below is perfect. Don’t skip the breadcrumb topping. It really makes the dish.

• 2 tablespoons butter (plus 1 tablespoon for breadcrumb topping)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (sharp and/or mild) (reserve ½ cup for topping)
• 1 or more shakes of Tabasco (optional)
• pepper & salt to taste
• About 1 (large) box dried pasta — we like medium or small shells, but almost anything other than long pasta like spaghetti will work
• 2 regular sized cans tuna (we like solid albacore), drained
• cooking oil or softened butter
• ½ cup coarse breadcrumbs (fresh or dried work equally well)
• oregano and thyme — a sprinkling of each

Pre-heat oven to 350° Fahrenheit Cook pasta according to package directions. Don’t overcook. While the pasta is cooking prepare the sauce:

Melt butter in saucepan over low to medium heat. Add flour. Stir with a wooden spoon until you get a paste — the color should be light brown at the most, but not bright white. Add milk and stir. Continue stirring until the mixture begins to thicken and boil a little. Let it boil about a minute, constantly stirring or else you will scald the sauce. When the mixture has thickened so it pours off the spoon slowly, add 1½ cups of the cheese and mix. Turn off heat.

Spray large casserole dish with cooking spray or rub with softened butter. We like to sprinkle herbs or dried minced garlic on the sides of the dish for extra flavor. Add all ingredients and bake in oven for about 25 minutes.While casserole is baking, prepare the breadcrumb topping:

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in small pan. Saute garlic in butter until soft. Add breadcrumbs and mix well. Add sprinkles of herbs. Remove from heat.

When the casserole has cooked for 25 minutes, add reserved cheese and sprinkle with breadcrumb mixture. Heat for 5 minutes more, or until cheese has melted.

This recipe makes a lot — but it is great leftover — warm or cold.

There has been a bunch of cilantro sitting in my refrigerator for a few days. I assumed it would end up being tossed as garbage, but then I remembered a recipe that called for cilantro, jalapeno and other things we had available and decided we’d have chicken wings in chermoula — something we used to make regularly. I’m not sure why we stopped making it, but neither of the kids remembered ever eating this — and they both loved it last night. (my daughter had it over Morningstar chicken nuggets.)

The sauce is very cilantro-y, so if you are not a fan of cilantro, then you’ll probably want to skip this one. According to Wikipedia,

“Chermoula or Charmoula is a marinade used in Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian cooking. It is usually used to flavor fish or seafood, but it can be used on other meats or vegetables.”

I think I found this recipe in the Washington Post not long after we’d moved to the DC area.  I don’t think I changed anything about it.

• 2 teaspoons cumin seeds
• 1 bunch cilantro (leaves and stems)
• 1 jalapeno pepper
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 thick slice ginger
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup water
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 2 teaspoons salt
• ½ teaspoon sugar
• ½ cup olive oil
• 1 lemon, thinly sliced

Toast the cumin seeds in a dry pan until fragrant, and add to a food processor (metal blade attached) or blender with all ingredients except olive oil and lemon slices. Blend into a paste and transfer to a mixing bowl and stir in the oil.

Marinate the fish, chicken or meat to be grilled in the most of the sauce for an hour (reserve about ¼ cup for later). Grill meat as you normally would, basting with marinade.

Heat reserved marinade with lemon slices and pour over fish, poultry or meat to serve.

Like I said — this is a great chicken wing marinade.

The recipe I have says it makes about 2 cups. That’s not entirely true — more like 1½ cups.

When I was a teenager a neighbor had a yard sale and I bought a cookbook called A World of Good Eating. While I didn’t use it for many years, there is one recipe that I use regularly.

I’d never had vichyssoise before I made this recipe, but I had heard of it before and the recipe looked easy enough. The recipe also had an inviting disclaimer, “If you haven’t tried Vichyssoise, do have it soon. It makes you feel SO good!

When the kids were small this soup was their favorite — and it still makes them happy when I make it.  We’ve called it many things including Cream Soup and Clare’s Favorite Soup.  The kids now know it is Vichyssoise, but I still call it Cream Soup.

• 2 medium large onions (about the size of a baseball)
• 3 stalks of celery (and some of the tender yellow tops)
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 4 medium sized red or white potatoes (about the size of your fist)
• 4 cups chicken stock (we use vegetable stock because my daughter doesn’t eat meat, but chicken stock is much better
• 1 pint table cream (or half and half if you want less fat, milk probably also works, but I’ve not tried it)
• salt and pepper
• chives or parsley

Slice the onions and celery fine and cook in covered pan in the butter until transparent and tender (don’t brown)

Dice the potatoes (I don’t peel them, but you can if you want) and add to onion/celery mixture, add a little salt if the stock has no salt, and cook until potatoes are tender, about 10-15 minutes.

Using a food processor or blender, blend mixture until creamy. Add cream and heat until piping hot, but watch so the soup doesn’t burn.

Garnish with snipped chives or parsley if desired.  A few turns of freshly ground pepper adds to the flavor if you like pepper.

I serve this with a salad, a variety of cheeses and fresh French bread.

While this recipe is served warm, I think you could have it cold. Warm is better though.

Note: You can substitute 2 or 3 leeks for the onions and celery. Make sure you wash the leeks well or you’ll have a sandy soup.

Back in my vegetarian days I bought one of the only vegetarian cookbooks readily available — Laurel’s Kitchen — and used it for most meals. My original copy fell apart and I bought “The New Laurel’s Kitchen” when it was published in 1986. I’m not sure what made it “new” but it is bigger than the original.

One of the recipes we still make today, and have memorized, from that book is what the book lists as “Tomato Sauce”. I’ve adapted it a little for our tastes.

We sometimes add half a jar of prepared spaghetti sauce to this recipe to thicken it up if it is thin.

We use this sauce as a topping on pasta and pizza as well as for lasagna and baked tortellini.

• ½ onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 T. olive oil
• 1 small carrot, grated (optional — I rarely include this anymore, but it is for sweetness)
• 2 T. or more chopped sweet red pepper (the original recipe calls for green pepper, but we are not fans of green pepper)
• 1 bay leaf, broken in two bits
• ½ t. oregano, dried or 1 t. fresh (although I usually just use about 1 T. italian spices — from Penzey’s of course — instead of the oregano, thyme and basil)
• ½ t. thyme or 1 T fresh (see note above)
• 1 t. basil or 2 T. fresh, chopped (see note above)
• 2 T. chopped parsley (I rarely have parsley, so don’t use it much — but if you do use it, use flat leaf, Italian parsley instead of the curly kind)
• 2 c tomatoes, coarsely chopped (I usually use a large can of diced tomatoes, but fresh Italian plum is really best)
• 1 t. salt
• freshly ground pepper — a few turns of the grinder will do
• a few shakes of crushed red pepper if you’d like it spicy

Saute onion, sweet red pepper, and garlic clove in oil until onion is soft. Crush garlic with a fork. Add carrot (if desired), bay leaf and herbs. Stir well.

Add tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer 15 minutes or more. Remove bay leaf before serving (or not — we always say that whomever finds the bay leaf is the winner).

This makes about 3 cups of sauce. You can thin it with vegetable broth, but I rarely do. If you don’t like chunks in your sauce, you can process the sauce in a food processor or blender.

Lentil Shepards Pie

My mom used to make shepherd’s pie. She’d brown some hamburger, toss in some canned green beans and tomato soup and spoon it into a pie plate. Then she’d smooth some mashed potatoes over it and bake it in the oven.

It still is a comfort food for me, but I’ve not made it in years. When I was a vegetarian I modified my mom’s recipe to meet my needs and never went back to the ground beef version (although it’s really tempting now that I’m thinking about it…)

I don’t know if I found the recipe in a book or someone gave it to me or I just made it up myself, but here is my lentil shepherd’s pie recipe.

• 1½ cup dried lentils, rinsed then cooked in water or broth and fresh or dried rosemary (I use brown lentils usually, but sometimes throw in yellow and or red) until tender.
• ½ of an onion, chopped and sauteed in butter or oil
• Any cooked vegetable — green beans are best, otherwise you can use almost anything.
• Mashed potatoes — about 2 or 3 cups
• 2 eggs
• salt and pepper if desired
• shredded cheese — whatever kind you like

Mix the lentils with one egg until you cannot see egg anymore (the lentils should not be very hot or the egg will start to cook).  Mix the onion and cooked vegetable into the egg-lentil mixture. Add salt if desired.

Mix the mashed potatoes with an egg.

Place lentil-egg-veg mixture in a pie tin. Top with mashed potato mixture.

Cook at 350 for about 25 minutes. Sprinkle with cheese and cook until cheese has melted.

While my dad was not atypical for his generation (meaning he thought women should be in the kitchen) he did cook a few things. He made steaks and baked potatoes on the grill and he made fried chicken. He was not a big fan of chicken, but did like it fried. He also used to gripe that when my mom made the chicken she’d leave the stove and the chicken wouldn’t be done correctly. His philosophy was that you had to stand there, a slave to the chicken, to make it perfect. It was pretty darn good, I’ve gotta say.

We don’t make this recipe very often, however. Dean and Andrew don’t much like chicken and Clare is a vegetarian. Plus, the hot oil always burns my hand. Still, I wanted to include it since we have made it and enjoyed it in the past. 

Here’s his recipe.

1 broiler-fryer, cut up and patted dry
1/2 c. Flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1 t. paprika
Crisco

Mix flour and seasonings. Dip chicken into flour mixture. Heat Crisco in a heavy iron skillet (spider). The oil should sizzle when a bit of flour is dropped into it. Place chicken pieces into heated oil and fry over medium heat. Cook, covered, for about 40 minutes, turning occassionally.

Years ago, when we first moved to the DC Metro area we frequented a restaurant called Pines of Italy in Arlington, Virginia. I almost always ordered the Red Peppers & Anchovies and white pizza. We’d almost always also order their fried calamari. It was always a treat to go to Pines, but I wanted to know how to make some of their menu items.

When I visited my friend Marie’s mom in Rhode Island, I asked if she knew how to make that salad, her being Italian American and all. She did. Here is her recipe, edited a bit for our tastes.

• 2 sweet peppers (red, orange or yellow)
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 5 – 8 Fresh basil leaves
• ¼ cup Olive Oil
• 2 Tablespoons Balsamic or red wine vinegar
• 1 can anchovies if desired

Roast peppers via your preferred method. We usually use our grill, roasting the peppers on medium heat until charred. You can also roast them in your oven on a high heat, or broil them 4″ from the heat or even place them on your gas burners and remember to turn them when they start getting charred (note, this method is messy and leaves your house smelling like a fire).

Then, after they’ve had a chance to cool down, slide the charred skin off. You’re left with the tender and limp meat of the pepper. Don’t forget to remove the core and seeds.

Cut the roasted peppers in strips, the long way.

Mix olive oil and vinegar. We usually use balsamic, but if you prefer a less intense salad, use red wine.

Slice the cloves of garlic into very thin strips, then sliver them by cutting the strips into, well, slivers.

Take your basil leaves, stack them in a pile, and roll them up. Kind of like rolled cigarettes were once made, then slice the roll to shred the basil. This is called chiffonade, by the way. (I had to look that up when I heard the word for the first time).

Now get a pretty dish that will hold the peppers and place the peppers on them. Any juice that is left over from roasting is fine. Now sprinkle the garlic slivers over the peppers and pour the olive oil over everything. Finally toss the basil on the mixture. Feel free to sprinkle with salt and pepper if you want.

If you like anchovies (I do) add a can of anchovies (rinsed if you want) to the mixture before the basil.

This should marinate for at least a few hours or overnight. If you don’t use anchovies, you can leave it out of the fridge if you want, but I always refrigerate it.