Peanut Pie

 This isn't in my grandmother's cookbooks that I could find, but I have it on a separate piece of steno pad paper in her handwriting. This pie is similar in vein to pecan pie, but definitely different. It's delicious.

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PEANUT PIE

3 eggs

½ cup (100g) sugar

2 T (16-18g) flour

1 cup (235 ml) light corn syrup

¼ cup (60g) peanut butter (cheap, smooth)

1 cup (150g) roasted, unsalted peanuts

1 9" (23cm) unbaked pie shell (Pilsbury frozen work well; maybe try a shortcrust recipe)

Beat eggs thoroughly. Mix sugar and flour together and add to eggs. Beat to mix. Add the corn syrup and peanut butter and continue to beat until completely mixed. Scatter the peanuts evenly (I completely cover) in the bottom of the pie shell and pour the pie mixture evenly over them. Bake in preheated 350°F oven. Immediately reduce heat to 325°F and bake about 1 hour or until puffed and brown. Allow to cool before serving.

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This blog is documentation of my late grandmother's handwritten recipes, as well as recipes I've come across or made up. There are no photos or images as my grandmother's recipe book didn't have any, except for ones she clipped from magazines, for example.

These recipes are free for all to use. Please enjoy them by yourself, with friends, with family, feeding the hungry, or in whatever way you wish.

God bless you all.

Mince Pies w/ Shortcrust Pastry

This is one of the recipes I've come across somewhere, and not from my grandmother's cookbook. And, to be fair, it's more about the pastry than the filling. If you're going just for the shortcrust pastry, you only really need the first three ingredients and the first two instructions. Nothing else applies to just the pastry.

I did find this recipe somewhere on the Internet, and I do not have the source written down. This explains why it's in metric and not normal measurements first. (Yeah, I said it.) If this does, in fact, violate someone's copyright, let me know and I will take it down.

Mincemeat... It's not meat. It's minced fruits in a vinegar and sugar reduction to make a sweet and slightly sour pie filling. It's delicious. It's decidedly British (both UK and RoI), and almost exclusive to Christmas. Its dark, spicy, and earthy flavors are perfect for the holiday season and winter months, but it's very tasty and should be enjoyed whenever you feel like it. Mincemeat is available in many US grocery stores in November and December and no-when-else. There are many, many recipes for it on the Internet.

While you can fill the pastry with whatever you like, I do recommend keeping it sweet. I don't think this would make very good savory pies.

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SHORTCRUST PASTRY MINCE PIES

255g (2 sticks) cold salted butter, diced
350g (~2¼ cups or 12.3oz.) all-purpose flour
100g golden caster sugar OR 3.5oz or ~1/2 cup extra fine sugar
1 small egg for washing
icing sugar for dusting
prepared mincemeat or other filling

A small muffin tin (2"/5cm pots) will be needed.

1. In a large mixing bowl, rub butter into flour, then knead in sugar. Play-Doh consistency is desired. (Other modelling clays are available...
2. Allow to rest in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes. If making for later use, it may be kept in the fridge for about a week, or kept in the freezer for much later use.
   
3. Flatten walnut sized pieces and press into muffin tin, trimming level.
4. Put about 1½ tsp of filling in each pie.
5. Preheat oven to 200°C/390°F.
6. Flatten smaller balls of dough for tops. Press to seal, cleaning edges and peeling away from pan edges. Pierce with a knife.
   NOTE: Shaped tops work well, with a star being a common sight among other Internet recipes for mincemeat pies. As long as there is a top with some kind of venting.
7. (OPTIONAL) Give the tops an egg wash.
   
8. Bake ~25 minutes or until golden brown.
9. Let cool at least 5 minutes, then pop out of the tin and onto cooling racks.
10. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

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This blog is documentation of my late grandmother's handwritten recipes, as well as recipes I've come across or made up. There are no photos or images as my grandmother's recipe book didn't have any, except for ones she clipped from magazines, for example.

These recipes are free for all to use. Please enjoy them by yourself, with friends, with family, feeding the hungry, or in whatever way you wish.

God bless you all.

Bavarian Pork Chops

 BAVARIAN PORK CHOPS

4 pork chops, trimmed
1 small onion, sliced
2 medium sized potatoes, sliced ¼" (6mm) thick
1 can sauerkraut, drained
1 can whole tomatoes, squashed
S&P to taste
1 tsp caraway seeds

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). In a casserole dish arrange in layers of potatoes, onions, pork chops, then cover well with sauerkraut. Pour tomatoes and caraway seeds over all. Bake at 350°F(175°C) until pork chops are tender. Serves 4.

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No real anecdotes or notes for this one. I haven't tried it, and likely won't since no one else in my household likes sauerkraut. To make it even worse, my grandmother's sauerkraut, made from cabbage my grandfather grew in his mountainside garden, was better than any canned or bagged sauerkraut I've had. I don't have the recipe for that, but I think it was basically shredded cabbage in salt, vinegar, and caraway seeds, properly pickled and canned.

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This blog is documentation of my late grandmother's handwritten recipes, as well as recipes I've come across or made up. There are no photos or images as my grandmother's recipe book didn't have any, except for ones she clipped from magazines, for example.

These recipes are free for all to use. Please enjoy them by yourself, with friends, with family, feeding the hungry, or in whatever way you wish.

God bless you all.

Peanut Butter Fudge

 A short, quick recipe for desert or a high calorie, sugary snack. The paper this was written on is very stained. It is definitely one of the older ones in the book.

I should not that my grandmother's recipe books are photo album binder with some other odds and ends stuck in, like index card sheets (think baseball card collector sheets, but index card sized pockets).

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PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE

1 cup (200g) sugar
3T (43g) butter
¼ cup (60ml) milk
3T (60g) smooth or creamy peanut butter

Cook the sugar, butter, and milk together until it forms a hard ball in cold water. Then add 3 or more tablespoons of peanut butter. Makes a small amount.

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This could also work as a basic fudge recipe with different elements added instead of peanut butter, keeping in mind the peanut butter does make for some of the pliability of the final product.

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This blog is documentation of my late grandmother's handwritten recipes, as well as recipes I've come across or made up. There are no photos or images as my grandmother's recipe book didn't have any, except for ones she clipped from magazines, for example.

These recipes are free for all to use. Please enjoy them by yourself, with friends, with family, feeding the hungry, or in whatever way you wish.

God bless you all.

Chicken Casserole & Half Recipe

This will be two recipes in one post. My grandma wrote out a chicken casserole recipe and right next to it is the half recipe. Looking at the numbers, a few things don't half perfectly, so there's a bit of a reason for it. The format will have the half recipe in parentheses instead of metric conversions this time, largely because there are some things I'm not sure how to convert to metric. Six different web sites had six different ideas of how much 1 cup of chopped onion weighs.

Of course, once you've baked the casserole, you can either pour the sauce over the whole thing or serve it on the side. You can always make more or less sauce. There is only one sauce recipe, and not a halved version.

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CHICKEN CASSEROLE

1 cup (1/2 cup) chopped onion
1 cup (1/2 cup) green pepper
1T (1T) butter

1 16oz. package herb dressing mix (1 8oz bag stuffing mix)
4 cups (2 cups) chicken broth
6 (3) eggs, slightly beaten
3 cans (2 cans) celery soup
8 cups (4 cups) diced chicken or turkey
3 cups (1½ cups) cooked rice
½ cup or 1 4oz. can (¼ cup) pimientos

Preheat oven to 325°F. Sauté onion and pepper in butter. Mix everything together and pour into 2 (1) 13"x9" greased baking dishes. Bake at 325°F for 50min.

Sauce
2 cans cream of chicken soup
½ cup milk
1 cup sour cream

Heat soup with milk. Add sour cream. Remove from heat.

Serves 24 (12).

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This is the first recipe in the books to have a serving size. I modified the format of this recipe and added in some things that are apparent if you do what you should and read through the recipe first (preheating the oven...). I don't always do that, so if it isn't earlier in the directions, I'll forget to do it (preheating the oven...).

You can add caseless sausage (think patty breakfast sausage or chorizo) to spice it up and add some different texture and flavor to the dish. I recommend long grain or brown rice rather than short grain rice.

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This blog is documentation of my late grandmother's handwritten recipes, as well as recipes I've come across or made up. There are no photos or images as my grandmother's recipe book didn't have any, except for ones she clipped from magazines, for example.

These recipes are free for all to use. Please enjoy them by yourself, with friends, with family, feeding the hungry, or in whatever way you wish.

God bless you all.

Red Wolf's Lasagna'ed "Rosto"

This recipe came out of a misunderstanding of Italian "rosto" as told to me by my dad. "Rosto" does mean "roast" in Italian, and the beef in this recipe is roasted, sort of (it's more stewed, really), but it is not what an Italian would call "rosto". Lasagna, I was told by my Italian teacher in college, is a way of saying "layered" and does not require lasagna pasta, but that the dish be "stratificato", layered. I'm not sure if she was goofing with us, but I'll go with it.

One thing to note about my "recipes" is that I rarely measure anything. This is both good and bad in that it's hard to replicate reliably, but leaves room to adjust for taste. This recipe is a multiple-cook recipe. You can make large amounts of the components and make multiple casseroles, or use the components in different ways for other meals.

Speaking of components, this can be as cheap or expensive as you want to make it. Put simply, this is pasta, sauce, beef, and cheese. My recommendation for beef is the leanest, cheapest roast you can find. You're going to cook it to death and shred it, so the less fat, the better. Cheap roasts (eye of round, chuck, etc.) yield better results, I find. While this recipe mentions penne rigate, any pasta will really work. You could use lasagna or lasagnette, but I recommend staying away from long and/or thin pasta, and filled pasta. (Though mixing in some kind of ravioli, maybe a cheese tortellini, could be good.) Short cut pasta is preferred, like cavatappi, cavatelli, conchigliette (small shells), fusilli, gemelli, mafaldine (like in Betty Crocker "Helper" mixes), radiatori, and anything else that will hold sauce pretty well. Use your favorite sauce. Either make sauce, buy a jar, or buy a can. This is comfort food. Do what you like.

This can be made with a range & oven (stove), just a range, crockpot, slow cooker, InstaPot, or whatever else you can contain things in. My only recommendation is to have an oven available to finish the dish.

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ROSTO LASAGNA

2-4# (1-2kg) beef roast, trimmed of as much fat as possible
2-4 jars (24oz. / 680g) Prego spaghetti sauce, flavor of your own choosing
1 box  (12-16oz / 340-450g) of penne rigate
24+ oz (700+g) shredded mozzarella

salt and water for making pasta
deep covered casserole and several containers and plates for storage

1. Preheat an oven to 350°F (175°C).
2. In the covered casserole, pour in enough sauce to cover the bottom, then add the beef and cover with as much sauce as it takes.
3. Cover the casserole and put in the oven until the beef will shred with a fork.
4. Take the beef out of the sauce and allow to rest. Put the sauce from the casserole in a bowl and set aside. Wash out the casserole and let dry.
5. Start the water for the pasta and cook according to the directions on the package. I recommend salting the water to season the pasta.
6. While the pasta water is starting to boil, use 2 forks (or meat claws, or punish your fingers by hand pulling) to shred the beef pretty finely. Small chunks are okay, but large chunks should be avoided.
7. Once the pasta has cooked, drain and rinse in cold water to stop the cooking. Slightly underdone pasta might be best as it will cook more in the oven.
8. Speaking of which, turn the oven back on since we need to heat through and melt cheese shortly.
   
9. Layering time. In the casserole layer from the bottom up: pasta, beef, sauce, cheese, pasta, beef, sauce, cheese. Do this until the casserole is about to overflow. Use fairly thin layers, just covering the layer beneath or the bottom of the dish.
10. Pop the casserole without the lid on into the oven and bake until the top is browned and bubbly. Probably about 20-30 minutes. If it's cooked and not browned, use the broiler ("grill" in the UK, apparently) to brown up and crust the top. It really is better with a browned top.
11. Serve it up.

If you have more sauce left over, and want something saucier, pour it on. Go for it. It's your food. Do what you like. Serve it on a plate, in a bowl, or in the dish used for shredding the beef. Just don't eat straight out of the casserole. It's hot, and this is a lot of food.

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This is definitely one of those recipes you can play around with, too. Different sauces have different flavors. Instead of shredded beef, you could make Italian beef (think Philly cheesesteak beef), or do sausage, pepperoni (American, not Italian, which are peppers), or whatever meat. Try adding onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, whatever to a layer. I might try replacing the upper meat layer with a vegetable layer at some point. As I said above, this is comfort food. Do what you like. :)

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This blog is documentation of my late grandmother's handwritten recipes, as well as recipes I've come across or made up. There are no photos or images as my grandmother's recipe book didn't have any, except for ones she clipped from magazines, for example.

These recipes are free for all to use. Please enjoy them by yourself, with friends, with family, feeding the hungry, or in whatever way you wish.

God bless you all.

Granny Buley's Brick Chili -- With Variations

The original recipe for this hot dog or brick chili was my great grandmother's. My grandmother (her daughter-in-law) had to basically prise the recipe out of her. What I have below is a transcription from my grandmother's cookbook with a little editing.

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CHILI

I have changed the recipe slightly. Her recipe called for 1 lb. beef kidney tallow. It is impossible to find, so I use lean ground beef and add beef bouillon cubes for the same flavor. (Less fat means less indigestion.)

T - Tablespoon
tsp - teaspoon

4 lbs. ground beef
1 T ground oregano
1 T Marjoram
2 T Cumin
2 tsps Garlic Powder
8 T Chili Powder
6 T Paprika
1/4 to 1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper (You can add heat but you can't take it out.)
1 T Onion Flakes
4 Beef Bouillon Cubes

Cook meat until no pink remains. Add spices, simmer for about 2 hours. Add beans -- 1 T Chili Powder & Cumin & 1 tsp Onion Powder & Garlic Powder to unseasoned canned beans -- 4 to 5 cans chili beans or red beans. (Bush's Chili Hots are great for this.)

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I will add that the original recipe also did not call for beans. Beans are something that divide chili lovers all over the US. Whether this is "chili" to you or something else, this is fantastic. I have made this myself once, but it makes a lot. I recommend serving it the way I've always eaten it, which is with a bunch of shredded sharp cheddar stirred in.

I would also add that it's more comfortable to use a mild paprika, like Sweet Hungarian Paprika, in line with the note on cayenne pepper. However, you can use hot paprika and skip the cayenne, if you want. It wouldn't hurt anything to experiment with the beans. Can size referenced for the beans above is the 16oz. can, so if you want to start with dried beans, plan accordingly. You will also want to add a little water to the chili if you're adding beans so it bricks up less.

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This blog is documentation of my late grandmother's handwritten recipes, as well as recipes I've come across or made up. There are no photos or images as my grandmother's recipe book didn't have any, except for ones she clipped from magazines, for example.

These recipes are free for all to use. Please enjoy them by yourself, with friends, with family, feeding the hungry, or in whatever way you wish.

God bless you all.