Ask the Readers: What's your favorite family recipe?
I am currently drowning in first week of school tasks, plus my mental state is super distracted because we are all waiting for our math exam grades. I and multiple other 4.0 students are feeling pretty worried that we didn't pass because this one was a lot harder than we expected.
We have to get 90% of the 20 questions right, which leaves so little room for error. And I already know I made one careless mistake.
Sigh.
Soo...this seems like a good day for a short post from me!
A little while back, Rose commented with a post idea:
What might be a fun post sometime is your and the Commentariat’s favorite family recipe.
I feel so not hungry right now, I can't even think of what my favorite recipes are. But of course, you can always browse all my posted recipes right here!
If I was forced to nominate one of my favorites, though, it might be my grandma's apricot sweet rolls. Those are serious comfort food for me!
What's a favorite family recipe of yours?
You can link to it, or just type it right in the comments if you prefer. 🙂
Fingers crossed for you!
I have several family recipes on my blog (mostly my husband's family, actually), but the most useful one is this one for a very basic chocolate cake:
https://going-country.blogspot.com/2021/12/tt-in-honor-of-my-42nd-birthday.html
Besides its practicality, it uses buttermilk or plain yogurt along with the baking powder, so it foams in a way that is very fun for children. 🙂
@kristin@going country, Baking soda, that is. Oops.
I’m sure you did just fine! Deep breaths. Mom and granny were great cooks- very few recipes ever written down though. Granny made delicious ginger cookies but used shortening and Mom fried a lot of foods- not many vegetables. My husband’s grandmother made carrot cake and did write that recipe down for me. She used a 9x13 pan though and we prefer layer cakes. I’ve been busy this week even though I cut my caseload. It might be time to think about giving my boss a retirement date.
Blueberry pudding with lemon sauce. This recipe (https://www.christasterken.com/vintage-blueberry-pudding/) is similar. I'm not good with technology, so I can't post the weathered recipe cards from my mother and grandmother. The family story is that my mother cut this recipe out of the newspaper as a child. We always made a double batch of lemon sauce.
Now this is bugging me because I can't find my folder of family recipes. Possibly it's for the best as my mother was famous for her cheesecake (as I've mentioned before, she made three-layer cheesecakes as both my and my sister's wedding cakes), and I feel protective about cheesecake. No, you can't bake it in a pie plate, no, you can't add chocolate, that would ruin the taste, etc. Anyone who questions the cheesecake recipe does not deserve the cheesecake recipe. Heh. Also it's kind of expensive, with 1 lb cottage cheese, 1lb cream cheese, 8 ounces sour cream, stick of butter, cup of heavy cream, 4 eggs, etc. I'm afraid to type it in because I'm afraid of forgetting something, and I can't remember offhand how much lemon juice and lemon zest. Also Mom refused to give out the recipe which I think is a very silly 1950s attitude.
Well, onwards. This 1973 recipe card for Floating Heart Ritz was a favorite for birthdays. In our family, the birthday boy/girl could pick a dessert, not necessarily cake. My sister often asked for this, while I tended to ask for Peach Melba and my older brother wanted German chocolate cake.
https://vintagerecipecards.com/2011/09/02/floating-heart-ritz/
My dad loved an ice cream pie, appropriate for the fall (his birthday was October 7). This one can be a little hard now since Famous Original Wafers have been discontinued; you could use Oreos, but they're sweeter and less chocolatey.
Anyway, crush chocolate wafer cookies and add melted butter to make a chocolate crust. Then scoop best quality vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet (hard to find) alternately until you get a nice tall pie. Drizzle with syrup made from melted semisweet chocolate chips thinned with orange juice and freeze.
A couple more. This is an English style trifle I often make for Christmas. Don't leave out the wine in the custard unless absolutely necessary, because it makes the custard out of this world.
Trifle
Custard
1/2 C sugar
3 T cornstarch
1/4 t salt
1/2 C white wine
3 C milk
3 egg yolks, beaten
1 T vanilla
3 T butter
Mix 1/2 cup sugar, the cornstarch and salt in 3-quart saucepan; gradually stir in milk and wine. Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute. Gradually stir at least half of the hot mixture into egg yolks; stir back into hot mixture in pan. Boil and stir 1 minute. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla until butter melts. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours.
1 bag frozen red raspberries
2 pk ladyfingers (3oz) (I use pound cake—you could use frozen Sara Lee, probably one and a half cakes) (My mother complained about my being too lazy to make my own ladyfingers; she had a lot in common with Daughter)
1/2 C red raspberry preserves
Sliced almonds
2 T sugar
1 C whipping cream
Split ladyfingers lengthwise in half; spread each half with raspberry preserves. (I slice my poundcake into thin pieces and then spread with preserves.) Layer in 2-quart serving bowl 1/4 of the ladyfingers (jelly side up), 1/4 cup of slivered almonds, half of the raspberries and half of the custard; repeat. (Save a few raspberries for decoration if you want to get fancy.) Arrange remaining ladyfingers around edge of bowl in upright position with jam sides toward center. (It may be necessary to gently ease ladyfingers down into custard about 1 inch so that they remain upright.) Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes. Beat cream and 2 tablespoons sugar in chilled small mixer bowl until stiff; spread over top of dessert. Garnish with remaining almonds and reserved raspberries.
One more, which is a favorite of my kids'.
Chicken Chili
Poach a couple chicken breasts and shred the meat.
Then cook a chopped onion, a couple chopped red peppers in a little oil in a big pot.
When tender add chopped garlic, some chicken broth, the chicken, a couple cans of beans (whatever, I like cannellini), a large can of crushed tomatoes, some chopped cilantro, and some canned chipotle chilis in adobo. We like a lot of the chipotle, some might like less. Then let it cook a while, adding plenty of cumin, some pepper & salt if needed, and any other spices you want. Maybe chili powder, it's a free country, and add more liquid if needed. When it seems ready, whisk one package of softened cream cheese in, and then serve with more cilantro, shred-ched, crushed chips, sour cream or whatever.
@Rose, it’s funny you mention your mom’s refusal to share her recipes because my grandmother was the same way! Glad to know it may have been more of an attitude from their time and not something else.
@Haley, I think it was common then. Me personally, my ego doesn't ride on baking a better cake than other people.
That said, I DO make a better pie than my friend whose pies everyone worships, but I keep it to myself. She uses the WRONG apples, dammit! MY WAY IS THE RIGHT WAY
@Rose, I love your description of your mother's cheesecake!
@Rose,
Your description of your mom's cheesecake recipe sounds like just the PERFECT cheesecake for me. No, it shouldn't be "fluffy" or "light", save the chocolate and/or caramel drizzle for something else, and no, it doesn't need chocolate chips, candy bits, or anything added to it. Let it shine in its own cheesecakey goodness!
Your dad's ice cream pie also combines three favorite flavors for me, too: I adore Creamsicles, so vanilla + orange is a fave; add chocolate = perfection. I kind of hate that they stopped making chocolate wafers, even though I rarely used them. I guess I'm part of the problem. heh.
@Haley, and @Rose,
My DH's grandma was the same way....OR, she'd share the recipe, but leave out a key ingredient. Lol!
@Liz B., oooooh, evil!
I will find the recipe for you, Liz. It is superlative. You are permitted to put fruit on top if you like. Heh.
@Liz B., also, this was one of Mom's favorite Christmas cookies. We just like cheesecake. My daughter made a batch for Mom to have and to give her favorite aides in the nursing home last Christmas and my mother got choked up.
https://www.food.com/recipe/cheesecake-dreams-117992
@Liz B., Ohh, when we were briefly members of a church where the women took turns to bake the communion bread, I asked one of the trusted bakers for her recipe (it had to be very specific ingredients--only water, yeast and flour, maybe some salt--and shaped JUST so, so the texture of the dough was critical), she gave me her "recipe" and it was...horrible. I couldn't get that dough to shape for ANYTHING. After stomping around the house for a while, I sat down, Googled everything I could about that bread, and after experimenting for a month I came up with my own darn recipe.
Everyone at the church praised it, which I hope (in a not very Christian way) really cheesed that lady off. And yes, I wrote down very, very specific instructions so that if anyone wanted the recipe they would get the correct recipe! DH said I should have offered mine to that lady, but left out one critical bit. HA! In retrospect, that church was doing the wrong thing by posting who baked the bread in that week's bulletin. Honestly.
@Rose, You do understand that we all want to make your treasured, perfect cheesecake, right? 🙂 🙂
@Karen A., Wow! I've never heard of people baking communion bread! That said, my entire religious experience has consisted of New York Episcopalians, with the occasional Catholic family friend funeral thrown in. DRY WAFERS FOR ALL!
@Karen A., that's funny 🙂
@Rose,
DH's grandma definitely had her old-school Southern passive-aggressive moments. 🙂
My sister in law told me one time how Grandma (GM) made the best chicken and dumplings, and she begged GM to show her how she made her dumplings. Finally, GM agreed. Sister in law was maybe a bit disappointed, but also laughed, when she found out GM took a tube of "pop n'fresh" pre-made/unbaked biscuits, separated them, rolled them thin and cut them into smaller dumplings before putting it into the stewed chicken. 🙂
Rose, I'd love the recipe! I want to try the cookies, too. Thank you!
@Karen A.,
Lol! I hope that lady saw and heard how everyone praised your Communion bread! And yeah, take a page out of my DH's grandma's book!
@Rose, The boarding school I went to was Catholic and the communion wafers were kept in a place known to all, since they were not blessed yet. Several of us loved the flavor and would nab some during the week. One week we got greedy and on Sunday the priest could not find any wafers. We ended up having loaves of bread, with people pulling off a piece as they came to the communion alter. In my culture, at Christmas you buy the wafers but in large squares and they have manager scenes embossed on them. At the meal, you each have one and pass it around breaking off pieces. You can get them in pastel colors, too. I order them from New Jersey every year still. They taste just like the wafers.
@Liz B., Here you go. My mom's name was Karen and I miss her so much today. She was beautiful with curly golden hair, and she was smart and took zero crap from anyone. She grew up in NYC and loved my dad, her kids, and Jane Austen. She eloped with my dad when she was 19 because she was pregnant with my older brother. She died in May this year.
Note: I cream the cottage cheese via a blender. Moderately slow oven is 350. I bang the cake batter and pan a couple times on the rack while putting it in the oven because it purportedly keeps the top from cracking, not that it matters that much.
Cheesecake
1 lb. cream cheese
1 lb. cottage cheese
1 ½ cups sugar
4 eggs, beaten
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
3 Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp cornstarch
¼ lb. butter, melted
1 pint sour cream
Grated rind of one lemon (1 teaspoon)
Cream the cream cheese until light and fluffy. Rub cottage cheese through fine sieve into bowl. Add to cream cheese. Gradually beat in sugar. Add beaten eggs, lemon juice and vanilla. In a cup, stir together flour and cornstarch, and then gradually beat into cheesy mix. Add melted butter and finally sour cream. Mix well. Fold in lemon rind. Pour batter into a greased 9” springform pan. Bake in moderately slow oven for one hour until set in center. Turn off oven, leaving cake for two hours more. Remove from oven and let come to room temperature. Chill thoroughly before removing rim.
Graham Cracker Crust
1 ⅓ cups graham cracker crumbs
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup butter
Mix and chill.
@Liz B., FFS this recipe still doesn't have the heavy cream. Add 1/2 cup. It makes a difference.
@Haley, IMHO, it is ego cuz that is the way society was. The "best" cook, her house is spotless (speaking of a woman whose children were all in school and her husband made a good salary so no financial worries). I call it the brainwashed era and sad to say, far too biological males are "pining" for the era when me man, you woman, me in charge.
@Haley,
I had a great-aunt who steadfastly refused to share her famous pound cake recipe. She was an incredible cook, but possibly the meanest person I have ever met. I think she wanted to make sure everyone had a reason to miss her when she died.
@Liz B., I wonder if chocolate Teddy Grahams might work?
The childhood recipe I remember most is granola! But I think Kristen has a better recipe and method than we did, so I vote to use hers haha 🙂 My mom (to this day) doesn't cook, so I'm glad I taught myself to cook starting as a teenager so I don't have to eat out of boxes. Our current favorite summer "recipe" is this Caprese -style salad:
Garden tomatoes, in chunks
Mozzarella cheese, in chunks (can sub cottage)
Basil leaves, torn
Good olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
All to taste. Love this for lunch.
@Heather Mar, I love this too! A friend showed me how to make it with peaches added, and that was delicious as well.
Growing up, we always made my mom’s mom’s sugar cookies at Christmastime. We rolled them out and cut the shapes, added a light glaze of frosting made from melted butter and powdered sugar, then decorated them with colored sugar sprinkles. They were always my favorite. I have carried on the tradition with my kids.
Full disclosure, my mom is/was not a natural cook. I mean, she could follow a recipe just fine, but she had to follow it exactly, because her instincts were not good. The one time she got creative, she tried making an eggplant lasagne...with eggplant as the noodles. And she didn't really know how to deal with eggplant. It was not good. If she wanted to make baked chicken breast, she didn't season it because she was afraid of getting it wrong, and she wouldn't add any fat or marinade, so we would have dry, bland chicken breast. Come to think of it, that was during her Weight Watchers days, so maybe it wasn't all her fault. She also didn't really like cooking, so that factored in.
My grandmother (her mom) was a very good, inventive cook. She managed to make squirrel meat tasty, according to my dad, and she needed to, because sometimes that's all the meat they had. They raised chickens, but those were layers and they sold the eggs to pay for my mom's college. Once in a while they'd butcher an old hen, but mostly that was their cash crop.
My grandma left behind two recipes that I made a lot when I was a kid and teaching myself to cook, with my mom's blessing (she didn't have to cook!). One was baked macaroni and cheese, made with a white sauce that you melt the cheese into. No fussy bread crumbs, no fancy cheeses. Sharp cheddar (extra sharp if you're feeling spicy), white pepper, salt, flour, milk, elbow noodles, paprika on the top to impress the guests. I got so I could get that ready and on the table in about 30 minutes with a salad on the side. I can still make it, though we don't have it very often.
The other one, and I'm kicking myself for not copying out of my mom's recipe box before moving out (after I moved out she wouldn't have given me water if I was dying of thirst), was strawberry shortcake. It was a biscuit-like cake we baked in a round pan. I know it had flour, sugar, milk, maybe an egg, and some kind of leavening and salt. The strawberries we'd slice and mix with sugar ahead of time. Cut the cake in wedges and pour the strawberries on top, and it was SO good. Not spongy, sturdy and a bit crumbly. I can remember the taste and texture so vividly it's like Proust's madeleines.
@Karen A., I feel that way about my mom's blackberry cobbler. First we kids would pick the blackberries, then we had to go through them, looking out for bugs, then Mom would make cobbler and serve it with whipped cream. The smell of hot blackberries is the smell of summer. How I loved that cottage kitchen, which was straight out of the forties, holey linoleum and all.
@Karen A.,
Hi Karen - I hope the following recipe is close to what you remember. My mom passed away two years ago at the age of 89 and this is the recipe she used throughout my childhood. It tastes like home to me.
1 & 3/4 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
6 tbsp butter at room temperature
2/3 cup milk
Stir dry ingredients together. Cut in the butter. Stir in the milk lightly until combined. Batter will be thick. Spread into a greased 8" round cake pan (not springform). Bake at 425 F for 20-25 minutes. Serve with sliced strawberries and whipped cream. Enjoy!
@Allison, I think I will try that. Sounds fab. There's something about slightly cooked strawbs that i just adore.
@Allison, That does sound familiar--very little sugar, and cutting in the butter! Thank you!
@Rose, We never cooked the strawberries, just sliced them and let them macerate with some sugar at room temp. They get saucy and delicious that way, no cooking!
@Karen A., You're very welcome - and that's what we did with the strawberries as well, just sliced them and mixed them with some sugar (back in the day, it was fine fruit sugar, but in Canada we haven't seen that in a number of years. So regular sugar it is). It's amazing how juicy they get. Just delicious!
@Karen A.,
Maybe something like this? My mom used to make strawberry shortcake for my dad's birthday every year, and always used 2 cake pans for the sweet biscuity cake. I don't have her recipe, but this looks pretty similar (no mint, she did not macerate the berries, and no Almond extract).
Ahttps://www.alattefood.com/strawberry-shortcake-cake/
@Liz B.,
Maybe she did let the sliced strawberries sit after being tossed with sugar....all of a sudden, I'm not sure.
Oh, and Kristen, I will join you in the waiting game---still waiting to hear back about my math proficiency exam! I know that anxiety, but I'm sure you did great. Fingers crossed and prayers for you!
The waiting is the WORST especially when it's a pass-or-get-kicked-out-of-the-semester test.
@Kristen, YES.
@Karen A. and @Kristen, best of luck to you both!
My Oma's cucumber salad is my most treasured family recipe! There's no real measurements, but my latest batch used these measurements:
Peel 3 cucumbers and slice it on the slicing side of the box cutter. Thinly slice 1 bunch of green onions. Stir in 1/3 cup white vinegar (I use white wine vinegar for a milder taste), 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons salt, 1 tablespoon pepper. Refrigerate for 2 hours. You can add sour cream after that to make it creamy.
@Somcak, mmmmm!
My family didn’t cook so there aren’t a lot of choices. I’d say one of two:
1) My grandmother’s gingersnap-thickened meatballs in sauce
(However today’s commercial gingersnaps are a ton sweeter than when she made them, so I need to find old-fashioned ones or make my own; further she never wrote down the recipe so I’ll need to rejigger for the new cookies.)
2) My chewy brownies.
There are a few tricks, the essential secret is to add chocolate syrup.
@WilliamB, Look maybe for a sauerbraten recipe? Germans frequently thicken things with ginger cookies.
I like Kate Hepburn's recipe for brownies.
@Rose, Thanks. Someone suggested I try Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger Cookies.
@WilliamB, Mmmm. I saw a recipe for sauerbraten meatballs somewhere once. I meant to make them and serve with pickled red cabbage yum!
In conclusion, after commenting 50x today, it's clear that 1. I don't feel like working and 2. Mmmm I like food! mmmm.
I'm a bit short on recipes I can pass down from either my family of origin or my in-laws. As I've noted in the past, my mother's standard meal prep was opening cans, though she did manage to make us pretty good birthday cakes by carefully following the directions on the backs of the old Duncan Hines cake mix boxes.
My Bohemian MIL made an excellent chicken paprikash, and her daughter, who married into a Greek family and was determined to be more Greek than they were, learned to make the best spanakopita this side of Santorini--but, alas, they took their secrets with them when they departed.
So here's the recipe for the thing I learned to make that DH liked best: Medieval Chicken with Milk and Honey. The original recipe is from a small cookbook published in 1975 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, called To the King's Taste. It presented modernized recipes from a cookbook prepared in the late 14th century for the court of King Richard II of England. Because DH and I first ate this at an end-of-semester banquet for a Chaucer class I was taking in grad school, we always just called it "Chaucer chicken."
Anyway, here's the Food Network's version of the recipe, which is faithful to the MMA version (https://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-in-milk-and-honey-23914). I usually tweak it by using 2 pounds of boneless/skinless thighs and 2 cups of milk, but keeping the honey and the herbs the same, which results in a real flavor explosion. Also, pay heed to the Food Network's #6 about curdling. This may well happen, but do NOT be put off by the appearance; it's still delicious!
I plan to get back to making this chicken this fall, since I've grown and dried hyssop this year, for the first time in ages. If you don't have access to hyssop, feel free to double up on the sage and savory; you can also substitute thyme if you can't find savory.
@A. Marie, Heck, I'll try that too. Daughter just bought a bunch of pine nuts to turn our giant hedge of basil into pesto. (Nonfrugal! I like almonds better! But whatever.)
@Rose, you're darn right that pine nuts aren't frugal. (Even the prices at my local grocery outlet have me staggering around doing a Redd Foxx/Fred Sanford imitation--clutching my chest and yelling, "I'se comin', Elizabeth!") But for an occasional indulgence in Chaucer chicken, I'll take the splurge.
Oh, and your daughter is willing to make pesto?? Just go with the pine nuts and don't ask too many questions. 🙂
@A. Marie, The Sanford & Son reference is cracking me up.
She makes green pesto, she makes red pesto....now and then I've asked her if she wants to give up textile art and take up cooking. Answer is no. But she is a wonderful cook. We started her off early making cranberry sauce when she was seven. Even today she has this "OK everyone else, clear out, the expert is here" attitude to the kitchen that I would resent except she's the light of my life and her food really is exceptional. She was my mom's favorite of her six grandchildren.
Okay, one last comment and then I have to get to studying: When I took Home Ec in eighth grade, we were taught "Crazy Chocolate Cake" which I have since learned has been around since the Depression, and is pretty much the same the world over. Here's Peg Bracken's version, which is exactly the recipe my teacher gave us:
1 and 1/2 cups flour
3 T cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 T cooking oil
1 T white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup cold water
Sift the flour, cocoa, soda, sugar and salt right into a square 8x8 pan. You don't have to grease it. Make three holes in the mixture. Into one, pour the oil; into the next, the vinegar; into the next, the vanilla. Now pour the cold water over it all. You'll feel like you're making mud pies now, but beat it with a spoon [I use a fork] until it's nearly smooth and you can't see the flour. Bake it at 350 degrees F for half an hour.
My one moment of culinary glory came early in eighth grade; I was in 4-H and used this recipe, adding a teaspoon of cinnamon and calling it "Quick Mexican Chocolate Cake," and I got a blue ribbon for it at the local fair. 😀
@Karen A., That was BFF's favorite cake. She called it Wacky Cake.
@Rose, @ Karen A,
My mom called it Wowee Cake. So funny, all the name variations.
Real macaroni and cheese! We ate it on special occasions growing up and I can make it in my sleep. It's my go-to for bringing to new parents.
1.5 c dry macaroni or other pasta
3 tbsp flour
1/4 c butter
1 c milk
Pinch salt and pepper
1 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese
Optional 1/2 c panko crumbs
Preheat the oven to 375.
Cook the noodles as directed. Grease an 8x8 or similarly sized oven-safe dish (I often use a large round Pyrex)
In a pot over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour and whisk until bubbling. Add the milk in small amounts, whisking smooth after each addition (it'll look like mashed potatoes for the first few additions, then more liquid.) Whisk constantly until bubbling and thick. Remove from the heat, add salt, pepper, and 1 c of the cheese and stir until melted and uniform. Add the cooked pasta, stir, and put into the baking dish. Top with the remaining cheese and breadcrumbs. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes.
You can make the whole thing in advance up to the point of baking it; keep it in the fridge overnight and bake straight from the fridge. I wouldn't make it more than 24h in advance, because the noodles will start to absorb the sauce and will seem dry after baking.
This is a modest amount; the original recipe is double and is made in a 9×13 pan. My mom often doubles that (so, quadruple the above recipe) and bakes it in an enormous pan for entertaining.
It can be frozen after cooking and reheated, but it's not as good.
You can use any cheeses you like, as long as they melt. We always used the cheap blocks of cheddar cheese from the grocery store and it turns out great.
The sauce comes together quickly, so have everything measured out before you melt the butter. I prep it while the noodles cook.
Enjoy 🙂
Fingers crossed that you exam is what you need it to be,
I i had to chose it would be my bestmore Chocolate chip cookies...(crap most of her cookies) and maybe her apple crisp.....
miss her!
or maybe even her Put Klubb ( norwegian potato dumplings)
This may have some slow responses today as we all sit and ponder our favorite old recipe and try to remember/find it for here.
I don't think I can come up with one Favorite Family Recipe. There are too many, but I'll give this a go.
My grandmother's chicken and dumplings. Background, she was born in 1896 to a native American father and Irish mother. She was one of identical twins. She and her family lived on a farm and rode to town via horse and wagon on Saturdays to replenish supplies. She never knew what it was like to have spare money or a nice house in all of her 90 years.
Anyway, for years after her children were grown with kids of their own, she and my grandfather hosted family Thanksgiving, which was not complete without a turkey AND chicken and dumplings. This is how she made the chicken and dumplings while the turkey roasted:
Stew a stewing chicken until the meat is cooked, then remove the bird from the broth. Let it cool until the meat can be picked from the bones and set aside.
Meanwhile, fill a bowl with flour to which a little salt is added, stir and make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Dip a coffee cup of bubbling hot broth out of the pot and pour it in the well. With a fork, toss and stir the flour mixture into the broth until a soft ball of dough is formed. There will still be dry flour mixture left around the sides - it will get used with the next batch.
Grab that boiling hot (ouch!) ball of dough and plop it on a floury surface, kneading it just until smooth and flouring as needed, then rolling it out thin after adding more flour to the surface. Cut the dough into strips. Peel the strips from the floured surface and drape them over your hand, then drop them, one at a time, in the bubbling broth. Stir once or twice so they don't stick together. Add more flour and salt to the bowl as needed, make another well, add more broth, repeat, repeat, repeat, until enough dumplings are made to feed however many people you have there. Keep the broth bubbly hot so the dough will cook quickly instead of dissolving, and stir frequently so the dumplings won't stick to the bottom of the pot and scorch.
When all dumplings are cooked, add back the chicken meat and stir while warming the meat. Put it, broth and all, into the biggest bowl you've got and serve.
Some people are aghast at that recipe, but family then and now loved/loves it and one of my daughters requests it for her birthday every year. Perhaps the thing that made us love the dumplings so much was how much we loved my darling grandmother. I sat at her tiny kitchen table as a kid and watched her make the dumplings while the smell of roasting turkey and dressing, simmering homemade cinnamon apple rings and cooling pumpkin pies swirled around me. Often, I was allowed to cut the dumplings and help drape them over her hand. What a good memory that is.
@JD,
What a lovely memory! I love chicken and dumplings, but I have not made them for years. When I found out that I was allergic to wheat, I stopped baking and cooking many foods.
@JD, my MIL used to make dumplings too, but hers were completely different. She'd use 1 cup of flour and 1 egg times however big a batch she wanted to make; make a fairly stiff batter with as much water as needed; drop this batter by spoonfuls into a pot of boiling water with some oil in it; and cook till the dumplings rose to the top of the pot. The results were, in my private opinion, suitable for throwing through windows during a riot, but DH and his siblings adored them--especially when served with the aforementioned chicken paprikash.
@A. Marie, That reminds me of the clash in matzoh balls (basically dumplings) between "sinkers" and "floaters." I tend to make floaters--we love matzoh ball soup around these parts.
@A. Marie,
I'm envisioning rioters armed with plastic containers of dumplings....
That was a good laugh!
@Bee,
Thanks. I miss my grandmother so much sometimes. My other grandmother died when my father was a teen, so this was my one and only, but she was truly a treasure. I have so many good memories about her, and many involve food :).
ugh. So sorry you have to wait for results. That is always so hard. I'm betting you passed, because you are so good at studying.
One family recipe/comfort food I love to make is what we called "bacon spaghetti" (spaghetti carbonara) as kids. My dad was in the Navy, and when we were stationed in Italy our neighbor taught my mom how to make this. You simply prepare noodles, usually linguini or spaghetti (using the whole package). While they are boiling you put a stick of butter, cooked bacon (12 oz or so, chopped into bits), around a cup of parmesan, (another recipe with no hard and fast measurements!) and 4 eggs in the bottom of a large bowl. Stir everything in the bowl together. When the pasta is done, you drain it (leaving just a bit of water) and dump it directly into the bowl, then STIR. The little bit of pasta water and the steaming noodles cook the egg and melt the cheese. It is amazing. Also, this makes a TON of pasta, so feel free to adjust to your family size. It does reheat really well. We've used it in leftovers by either just reheating or by pushing it down into a pie plate, baking and adding over-easy eggs on top. YUM!
@Cheryl 90, I love that and make it all the time. My son and I fight about whether to use linguine or spaghetti, or guanciale (most authentic) or pancetta or bacon (least authentic but I like it best), and I usually get in a huff and say if I'M cooking it I want bacon and spaghetti. Heh. Also guanciale is expensive.
As I thumb through my mother‘s recipe book, I find that many of her recipes are for party foods and decadent desserts. Few people loved to have a party more than my mother. It has been years since I’ve made most of her recipes. When they’re only two of you at home, recipes that feed 12 fall by the wayside.
Her signature dish was a variation of an Italian crepe which she adapted from Mama Leone’s cookbook. I still have this cookbook which is battered and stained. It is filled with handwritten notes. She made this dish only once a year for her Christmas luncheon which was always the second Sunday in December.
My adult children and I have talked about making it again, but have not. Essentially it is a thin crepe that is stuffed with a seasoned mixture of meat and spinach then topped with a meat sauce. The recipe is too long to write out, but I’m sure it’s online.
Happy cooking!!!
@Bee, that's canneloni. I believe the more authentic version is with crepes rather than pasta.
@Bee,
Yes! I made this dish for special occasions with company, birthdays and such—many thanks for the memory, it’s been years.
My recipe was from a well-known restaurant and it was called Canneloni St. Joachim. I feel sure it’s online. Besides the red meat sauce the crepes were cris-crossed with a white sauce as well, making it a lovely presentation. So, so delish!
@Erika JS, I haven't made canneloni with beef but I have made this:
https://seabrookfarms.com/index.php/recipes/canneloni-with-spinach-chicken-filling
I love Seabrook Farms creamed spinach. I use it in a quiche my kids love, too, topped with Swiss.
@Rose, The Mama Leone’s version required a thin pancake type wrapper. It is much like what was made for cannoli, but not sweet. It also used ground pork and chicken livers rather than beach.
@ Rose, that would be beef.
@Erika JS, I am sure the kids and I will make it again one Christmas. I wish now that I would have helped her, because the recipe is complicated!
@Bee, I was unclear. The Mamma Leone's version of canneloni with crepes is the more authentic version--some recipes call for pasta tubes instead of crepes.
Cannoli is different from canneloni. Leave the gun; take the cannoli.
Gawl, Kristen, is this nursing program designed to abuse the participants?? 90% proficiency on a very difficult math exam in order to be a nurse?? I'd think A&P or chemistry or biology would be the determining factor in your profession.
No family recipes to share, but enjoying reading other peoples' food memories.
@Central Calif. Artist Jana, I couldn’t agree more. I was a nurse for 43 years and I can assure you that complicated math was never used. If you can master d/h XQ, you’ve pretty much covered most of your math needs. While I understand that knowing more than the basics is necessary, realistically, the computers, the IV pumps, the pharmacist and a calculator are going to do all of the math. Move on to skills nurses really need ie; critical thinking. Throwing a valuable nurse out over a math exam is pure lunacy. Nurses are needed now more than ever.
@Central Calif. Artist Jana,
Man, this made me worry about the possibly great nurses that could be excluded. And, knowing nothing about the nursing program, my eyes have been opened with how intense it is! But to be booted out for higher math….?
This has always been something that's made me contemplative over the years. A lot of families have such wonderful recipes like, "Great Aunt Ermitrude's Pecan Pie" or... puddings, main dishes, etc. I literally do not have that.
Growing up, my family ate a lot that was cheap and convenient. My absolute favorite dish were drop dumplings made with bisquick (it's on the box) put over some sort of stew (meat what likely whatever beef was on sale). My grandpa is from Puerto Rico so he'd make a beef stew that was wonderful. But the recipe sometimes changed based on available ingredients at the local spanish market.
I'm really enjoying reading everyone's recipes! Almost like I'm in the family <3
@reese, Welcome to join mine any time! Can I interest you in some cheesecake? Heh. Speaking of Puerto Rican foods, me and my kids have been known to get a little whiffy on coquitos on Christmas Eve. Yum.
@reese,
Not all families have complicated food traditions. My MIL signature dish was chicken and rice. It was simple and delicious.
This has become my family's favorite red sauce. It's not from my family, it's from Martin Scorsese's! Mom S. gives you her recipe for sauce at the end of Italianamerican, a doc by Martin interviewing his parents. Especially if you grew up in New York, the movie is priceless and it's free on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcWUNfmf0tI
Anyway, it's worth trying as it make the absolute best sauce I have ever had. And boiling the meatballs gives a delicious flavor. I have never used a lamb neck bone but I do use the rest of the meat. It's amazing, seriously. Thanks, Mrs. S.
“Singe an onion and a pinch of garlic in oil. Throw in a piece of veal, a piece of beef, some pork sausages and a lamb neck bone. Add a basil leaf. When the meat is brown, take it out and put it on a plate. Put in a can of tomato paste and some water. Pass a can of whole tomatoes through a blender and pour it in. Let it boil. Add salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. Let it cook for a while. Throw the meat back in. Cook for 1 hour. Now, make the meatball. Put a slice of bread without crust, 2 eggs and a drop of milk into a bowl of ground veal and beef. Add salt, pepper, some cheese and a few spoons of sauce. Mix it with your hands. Roll them up, throw them in. Let it cook for another hour.”
@Rose, Two notes: I use much more basil than one leaf and I chop the onion. I don't use ground veal but I do use a single slice of veal, a piece of chuck, and a pound of Italian sausage. I buy already crushed tomatoes in a big can, preferably San Marzano. I chop all the meat before putting it back in. By "cheese" she means Parm, of course.
The sauce is expensive but worth it. And it very filling with all that meat and goes a long way.
My grandmother, who was a mom of 6 during the Depression, used to make chocolate-mocha cookies and they were the best! She brought them to our family reunion every year and we would bring home as many as we could then my siblings and I would fight over them. Now I'm the only one who makes them as they're a bit more time intensive. So yummy!
My mother was an excellent cook - being raised on a farm she stuck to meat, potatoes & veggies.
A favorite was homemade noodles, which I still use as it uses a whole egg.
1 beaten egg, 2 T. milk, 1 t. salt & 1 cup flour. Use a lot of flour to roll out and you can use immediately after cutting or dry to use later. Cook in broth & add leftover roast or chicken to make a full meal.
A sweet recipe from a Farm Bureau kid's cookbook was no-bake peanut butter cornflake cookies. 1 cup corn syrup & 1 cup sugar, bring to a boil and cook about 1 minute. Take off heat & add 3/4 cup peanut butter, smooth or crunchy. Then add corn flakes (I'm not big on measuring, just stir in more if you like it crunchier or less if wanting more of the syrup) Drop on wax paper & let cool.
May your math test score be at least 90%, hopefully 95.
@Jennifer G, the no bake cookies are yummy; good contribution here! They're also good with Cheerios instead. I like to put them in a 9x13 pan lined with wax paper and cut them into bars. Feels easier to me and uses less wax paper. Can also add raisins or chocolate chips for added decadence haha.
My maternal Grandma and Mom were such good cooks. Salt of the Earth good cooks. Homemade pastries and breads made every Saturday for the upcoming week. I did the same while raising my family - only I made 2 batches of cookies, only baking 1 doz of each and froze the other dough and hid it in a frozen pea bag (heh, heh), I would start my coffee, bake off a dozen cookies for the day's lunches - it was the best alarm clock for the house!
Spaghetti carbonara and soba noodle bowls is our idea of fast food.
Mom was known as the cake lady. My favorite of her cake recipes is her Kentucky Wonder pound cake. I'm at work so I don't have access to the recipe to post, but if anyone is interested, I can post it later this evening. It has pineapple, cinnamon and nuts in it.
My favorite recipe from my MIL is her dressing. She gave a dressing making lesson to me and my kids so we could record her recipe since she never had. She uses a pan of day-old cornbread, toasted hot dog buns, onions, sage, eggs, chicken broth, salt and pepper. I make it every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, as requested by my family.
@Beverly Burns, Mom's cake recipe is similar to this one as I recall.
https://www.cooks.com/recipe/4562g9im/kentucky-wonder-pound-cake.html
My mother's family is Czech, German, and Dutch. We have the strongest connection to Czech food culture. Therefore, pork and Dumplings with sauerkraut and lots of butter for the hot dumplings. My birthday is not the same without this dish!
Mother was a fairly decent cook, though she made horrible liver and onions. I don't eat it to this day. My father's mother introduced us to brains and eggs--also not a dish I wanted to repeat. My mother's mother made wedding cakes. I asked her when I was 12 if she would teach me, and she asked if I had $100, because that's what it cost her to learn. So, nothing really from them to pass down. I do remember Mother making some type of date nut log at Christmas, and she said she would give the recipe to one of her descendants some day. It wasn't me. I encouraged my sister to get the recipe for her daughter who loves to cook desserts, but I don't know if that happened.
My husband's aunt, who raised him, cut a recipe out of The Birmingham News back in the early 1900s: Cranberry pie. It is awesome! Hubby and I have made it a couple of times, and even the thick meringue came out great. It's time intensive, though, so I haven't made it in years. Maybe this Christmas I'll try it again.
With that kind of background, it probably isn't surprising I just don't like to cook. Some of my early disasters have been the stuff of family legends: Cupcakes with eggshells, lemonade shrimp, cooked 3-bean salad, etc. I love the no-bake chocolate cookies (we called them "splat cookies", but that is not a special recipe, and I did find an awesome recipe for Sour Cream Banana Bread in a church cookbook that I put my spin on.
Daughter is a fabulous cook, so she will probably not ask for any of mine, except for maybe the Spinach enchilada casserole and green chile stew I learned to make while living in Albuquerque. Oh, and the Indian fry bread. But she will be the one to pass down favorite recipes to her daughter and progeny. It has to start somewhere, right? lol
@StephanieLD,
I don’t really think it’s possible to make good liver and onions!
Only if you leave out the liver
My recipe of the summer is
6 oz shredded Zuchinni
4 oz cottage cheese
1 oz pesto
1/2 tsp salt
I also sometimes change out some of the cottage cheese for pulled chicken. Such an easy summer salad with good protein and I have a generous supply of Zuchinni from my in-laws’ garden. 🙂
My mother did not cook. My grandma was a great cook but she only went to 3rd grade so she didn't write anything down. So, I'm sharing an easy but modern recipe which could have been made back then as it uses ingredients that were popular back then. In a crockpot, place a 3 lb. beef roast. Top with one package dried onion soup mix. Top with one can cream of mushroom soup (or cream of celery if you don't like mushrooms). Cook. When done, remove the roast and stir the remaining liquids to make gravy.
One of my husband's family recipes: Eggs & noodles. Cook a bunch of hardboiled eggs (based on how many people you will be serving) and chop them up. Make a white sauce and stir in the eggs. Serve over chow mein noodles. The preferred side dish was lime jello with pineapple.
We all have our fingers crossed for you, Kristen. Math, blah! I would give you my MIL's recipe for my family's favorite, but I have two sets of recipe cards (remember those?!)
and they are not the same. Everyone loved Nana's spnaghetti and meatballs (she was Italian, or was it Sicilian? the stories get confusing...) She LOVED to cook with people, so she cooked this recipe many times with quite a few of her grandchildren. Funny thing is, I have two recipe cards for this delightful dish, and they are different. No one who cooked it with her can remember which is correct. Luckily, the secret is scorching the tomato paste before adding all the spices and other tomatoes so as long as you do that, the results are so good that you never want to eat Italian out ever again.
@Book Club Elaine,
Respectfully, Sicily is part of Italy. My maternal grandparents emigrated from Sicily to the US via Ellis Island. Sadly, no recipes were handed down through the generations.
@Liz B., not according to my better half's side of the family. If your last name ends with "o", you are Sicilian, not Italian. It was non-negotiable with them.
There are so many recipes I want to try after reading the comments!
I have three that I can think of right away:
My paternal grandmother's banana poundcake: https://sweetteareads.blogspot.com/2017/04/banana-pound-cake.html
My paternal great-grandmother's sweet tea: https://sweetteareads.blogspot.com/2015/04/sweet-tea.html
My maternal grandmother's pumpkin pie: https://sweetteareads.blogspot.com/2012/06/pumpkin-pie-in-june.html
This is my kids favorite dinner - super easy and very filling, makes a huge pot of chili so great for a crowd. I use 1 can of pinto beans, 1 can of kidney beans, and 1 can of black beans, a 30 oz can of tomato sauce since it's cheaper than four 8 oz cans, and we prefer chili ready canned tomato to the fire roasted.
https://www.theslowroasteditalian.com/wendys-chili-copycat-recipe/
Always served with this foolproof skillet cornbread recipe. The only thing I do different is when I take it out of the oven I rub a little butter over the top of the entire cornbread, and then sprinkle the sugar.
https://alexguarnaschelli.com/recipes/corn-bread/
I really hope you passed that math test! Maybe that one mistake is the only one you missed. Fingers crossed for you.
I was lucky to have a mom growing up who was a wonderful cook and baker. She worked full time outside of the house, and so would cook things ahead on the weekend, and freeze it. We rarely went out to eat, and fast food was a treat.
This is a favorite cookie recipe that my mom made for us sometimes when she had overripe bananas. I suspect it might be a war-time/ration era recipe, but I don't really know. Orpha was a neighbor when my mom was a kid/teen. I have yet to meet anyone who dislikes thease cookies.
Orpha's Banana Cookies
1 cup shortening (I use vegetable shortening; I've never used butter)
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe banana
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped nuts (optional; I don't add)
1/2 cup milk with 1/2 tsp white vinegar stirred in (or can use 1/2 cup buttermilk)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
Combine all ingredients. Chill dough 1 hour in bowl, then drop by rounded teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheet (or use a small cookie scoop). Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes. Makes 4 dozen. Frost cooled cookies with vanilla frosting. (I mix confectioners sugar with a little milk and a teeny bit of vanilla extract to make a spreadable "frosting").
My father, a single parent between various wives, was the cook. My favorite is a Lithuanian dish called Cepelinai. It takes all day to make but if I were president I would serve it at every banquet so the whole world could taste its deliciousness. For a small batch, which makes 24 of them: turn two pounds of burger or sausage and burger mixed into small meatballs, using two eggs to hold them together. Then peel 12 pounds of potatoes. Three pounds of them should then be boiled and mashed, with no additions like butter. The other 9 pounds need to be grated on the smallest holes of a box grater. You then wring out all the water from the raw potatoes, by hand in a linen cloth and hope that it does not explode from the pressure of wringing it. You mix the mashed and grated potatoes together. Then take a half cup of the misture and flatten it into a half inch round patty. Into the center of each patty, put a meatball. Fold the potato around it so you have a totally encased meatball. Boil these balls in boiling water for 20 minutes. Remove from the water and put two on a plate. Smother in a sauce made of bacon, onions, mushrooms and sour cream. (In truth you could eat cardboard if smothered in this sauce. It is almost the only time I eat bacon.)
My father taught my husband how to make these, since wringing out batches of the grated potatoes is hard and was considered to be man's work. The husband makes it for me every birthday and once during the summer. It is deadly caloric and has a tendency to expand in your stomach, but, oh how I love them.
My mom made the best vegetable soup. We would have it often on Saturday evening and she would go through the fridge and find all the bits of leftover vegetables and beef from the week and put it all together in a big pot, let it simmer all afternoon and it was wonderful. I have never been able to get mine to taste quite as good as hers.
@Addy, I forgot to add that my grandmother made a wonderful raisin pie. Not too many people like raisin pie, but hers was great! Over the years I have tried to find a similar recipe without any luck. A couple years ago for my birthday a friend surprise me with a recent pie that her husband had baked. It tasted very similar to my grandmas…. Just raisins, no nuts no other fruits just raisins in a little sauce in a single crust.
Like several others here, my mother was not a good cook. She seemed uninterested in food most of the time and had anorexia for many years. However, she made a Virginia Apple Pudding, with pudding used in the English sense of the word, that was always delicious. Allrecipes.com has the recipe. You can make with fresh fruit or a can of pie filling is in a rush.
An odd trick is that the crust is better if baked using an oval dish, and I prefer apple pie spice to plain cinnamon. I make it often to take to covered dish dinners and everyone raves about it. Awesome served hot and topped with ice cream for the deluxe version.
I always looked forward to my mama's homemade pancakes on the weekend! I was so excited many years later when my son loved them just as much!
https://readwritemom.com/best-pancakes-ever-my-mamas-recipe/
Fingers crossed for an excellent grade on your test!
For me, it was my mom’s spaghetti sauce. It was just a simple meat sauce with a few spices. Every time I make it I think of her, always have. It’s my children’s and husband’s favorite. My mom hated to cook. I think because my dad could be critical and nit picky. The sad thing was, she was a decent cook. I wish she had believed that. I consider myself blessed to have had her as my mom.
For context I grew up in NM. So my the most comforting will always be something related to that. My grandma was considered a good cook. I liked her Biscochitos, tamales, and her Posole. She also made great tortillas.
My grandmother's chocolate refrigerator desert! It's a pretty simple "church luncheon" desert, and you can google it to find a number of variations, but, of course, it always tasted the best when my grandma made it ❤️
Kristen, I love a post like this, so fun! Thank you.
For my wedding 32 years ago, my sister wrote to all my family and my husband's family asking for family recipes. She compiled a recipe book for me. The favorite of my family is Kielbasa casserole. 1 Kielbasa, 1 small can crushed pineapple, 1 jar of chili sauce and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Bake in a Pyrex covered 2 quart dish at 350 for 35 minutes. Serve with crusty sourdough and green salad.