Put shortening in heavy pot – black cast iron being the best – add ground meat, onions, bell pepper, celery and salt and pepper. Cook for 15 minutes. Then add soups, raw rice, parsley and onion tops. Turn into a 2 quart buttered casserole. Cover and bake at 350 for 1 and 1/2 hours.

As a note: My friend had doubled this and it fit nicely in a 9 x 13 baking pan. She also mentioned that she’d cut back a bit on the seasonings for the kiddies.

Cut steak into pieces. Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.Quickly fry steak in oil on both sides until lightly browned. Place on plate. Reduce heat and add butter to skillet. Saute onion and mushrooms until tender. Place on plate with steak, leaving as much butter as possible. Add butter to make 2 tablespoons. Blend in flour. Cook until frothy. Blend in beef stock, Worcestershire sauce, salt and peppers. Simmer and stir until thickened and smooth. Add beef, onion and mushrooms to sauce and heat through. Remove from heat and blend in sour cream. Warm to serving temerature. Pour over noodles. Makes 4 servings.

Notes:
I didn’t change this recipe too much, but did let it simmer for a bit longer than called for. Oh and put in a bit more mushrooms. Also, we prefer the sour cream in a dollop on atop each serving rather than being blended in.

But the best part of this one is that it doesn’t taste like mushrooms. I don’t like the things, though Mecandes does.

by Catherine Doherty

How much we miss in fun, taste, adventure, and economy in bypassing yeast-raised dough and all the wondrous things one can make with it!

For some unearthly reason the modern housewife considers yeast dough, and all that goes with it, first a mystery, secondly a chore. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is less a chore than many elaborate dishes, and there is no mystery attached to it nowadays, because of the new fast-raising yeasts and the perfectly timed electrical or gas ranges. In fact it is very simple to dazzle the family with many new variations on an old theme, and to bring into the modern home that good homey nostalgic smell of newly baked yeast dough, which sharpens appetites even before one sees the finished product itself!

Take a yeast-dough meat pie with rich gravy. Make it, say, for a family of four.

Two fast raising yeast envelopes (Fleishman is best)
½ cup of lukewarm water
2 teaspoons of granulated sugar

First stir sugar in lukewarm water until sugar is well dissolved. Then add yeast. Add by sprinkling. Don’t mix. Let stand ten minutes. In the meantime, heat 2 ¾ cups of milk (or water) to scalding temperature. Add ½ cup of granulated sugar, 1/3 cup of shortening or any other fat you prefer (or have on hand) and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

Mix yeast mixture with second mixture and work into this combined liquid 4 cups of sifted ordinary white flour. Beat well until dough is elastic and smooth. Add about 2 to 3 cups more of white sifted flour. Put on board and knead until flour is well mixed and dough soft and elastic again. It takes only a few minutes really.

Then put into greased dish and let rise until double its original size. Keep it in a warm place in your kitchen, away from drafts. Usually it will rise enough in an hour. Then take half of your dough. Flour table or bread board well and roll dough out with rolling pin. At first it will sort of stretch, and you may think you are not getting anywhere. Jest press harder on the rolling pin and make of the dough a nice square – big enough to fit into the baking pan you want for the occasion (you know your family’s appetites!) and enough to cover over. For what you have in mind is a meat pie, remember.

O.K. So you rolled your dough over. It is a nice good square of orderly shape. Now you take the meat. Best for this is leftovers of beef that have been ground through a machine, with two raw onions and then seasoned to taste with salt and pepper. (I add just a pinch of paprika and sage.)

Now you lay out this meat mixture on half of your square of rolled out dough. Then cover it with the other half, and pinch sides all around nicely. Put into greased baking dish and smear the top with some melted butter. Put into oven and bake at 300 degrees for one hour. Serve piping hot with the following gravy:

Four finely chopped onions, browned
1 can of celery soup
Salt, pepper, sage and paprika to taste

If this gravy is a wee bit too thick for you, add water.

Some dough may have remained. Make buns with it. Usually though, everyone asks for a second helping. That meat pie is good cold too, for school lunches.

The other day those of us working in the kitchen were confronted with a tragedy – a nice pudding made of coffee cake and sweet bread crumbs which just did not get baked thoroughly.

There it was. Nicely brown outside, and raw inside – sort of heavy. A big pudding for there was many of us. We just could not throw it out. That would be sheer waste. And waste is sinful with millions of people going hungry in the world. And for us who take promises of poverty, it would be a sin even if all men had had their daily fill of food.

Pudding to Pancakes

So we put our heads together, and thought up ways and means of using this pudding. And the idea struck us, why not make pancakes of it. For after all what was “a pudding”? It was originally flour, eggs (bread crumbs are flour too) – so we treated it as if it were just that. Try it some time when you have pudding leftovers – raw or well cooked.

Take said leftovers and adding warm milk and a few more eggs (if you have them) – or dispensing with them if you don’t (water can be used instead of milk too) – reduce the mass to that state of liquidity that any of your pancake recipes call for. Then leisurely proceed to fry them. Make small fat pancakes. Serve with jam or powdered sugar. Truly it is delicious, cheap and an ingenious way of disposing of the hardest thing to dispose of that we know: pudding leftovers.

Have a Heart

So much for leftovers. Let us share a nice cheap recipe with you that will go a long way in stretching that budget of yours. Buy some beef hearts. They are still relatively cheap at our butchers. One, or two, or more, according to your family size. Remembering too that hearts are rich in proteins, vitamins and minerals. Boil said hearts, in water, well seasoned. I suggest that you add onions and paprika to the seasoning (don’t throw the water away – it makes lovely soup).

Boil hearts until tender. Then grind through your mince meat grinder and grind fine.

In meantime boil peeled potatoes – enough to make double the amount of your minced hearts. Mash them fine, well, and dry. Now take one onion raw, and grate it fine into the potatoes. Mix meat and potatoes most thoroughly. Add well beaten eggs – one to a cup of mixture. Put the mixture which has been well seasoned (according to your taste) to bake in a nicely shaped and well-oiled baking pan. We like the oblong type ones. Bake until browned well on all sides at 300 degrees.

Just before dinner take out. Put on platter. Serve with green peas and mashed potatoes and brown gravy. Yum! Yum! Your family will think you bought them pate-de-foie-gras right from Paris! Whilst you will smile a contented smile knowing that this meal for 4 or 6 people was somehwat inexpensive!

If you really want “brown gravy” be sure to “brown” your dry flour before you put it into action!

For the meatballs:
1 lb. lean ground beef
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoon grated Parmesan
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3 tablespoon minced onion

In medium bowl, combine beef to onion and shape into small meatballs. Bake 350 for 20-25 minutes.

12 cup chicken broth
2 cup spinach, chopped fine
1 cup dry small pasta
¾ cup diced carrots
prepared meatballs
dash of onion and garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste

In large stockpot, heat broth to boiling and stir in everything else, except pasta. Cook pasta separately and add in at the end. Simmer soup for 30 minutes. Add pasta and cook for 5 more minutes. Serve warm.

Notes:
When soups call for gigantic amounts of broth, I have one of two strategies. If I have some homemade stock, I prefer to do half stock and half chicken soup base. But if not, it’s all chicken soup base. Though I buy a brand from a health food store with no added salt or MSG. Otherwise, be careful on the salt!

One plus of this soup is that it stirs up very quickly. But don’t let that deter you from letting it simmer and giving that wonderful smell to the house. However long you bloop it, just be sure to put the pasta end at the end or it will get way too bloated.

Oh, and on the spinach… when I was growing kale in the garden, I substituted it for the spinach. No one noticed. And don’t be afraid to toss another chopped onion or some celery in either. If there’s one way that I cook like my mother, it’s in soups. She, when cooking anything, would open up the cupboard and you would never know what might be lurking in tonight’s jambalaya or “homemade” spaghetti sauce. Thankfully, I didn’t inherit that trait except in this one area of soups which to me are by definition completely fair game for “What’s in the fridge and needs to get eaten? ”

1 ½ lbs. lean ground beef
2 tbsp vegetable/beef/chicken stock powder
4 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
2 onions, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 – 28oz. can stewed tomatoes (I used 5 fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped)
1 pouch vegetable soup mix (I used Knorr)
6 cups waters
salt and pepper to taste

In large stock pot, cook beef until browned. Add the remaining ingredients.
Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Cook for 2 hours over low heat stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Madame Queen’s Cornbread Dressing

1 baked cornbread crumbled
1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. ground pork
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large bell pepper, chopped
4 ribs celery, chopped
1 chicken bouillon cube, dissolved in 1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon oil
3 tablespoons onion tops
3 tablespoons parsley
seasoning to taste
milk to moisten

Saute onion, garlic, bell pepper, and celery in sauce pan with the oil. Add the meat and bouillon cube that has been dissolved. Cook meat until light brown. Mix with crumbled cornbread, onion tops and parsley. Add more milk to moisten if necessary. Season to taste. Bake at 350 degrees until brown.

This dressing can be prepared the day before and baked the next day which is a good to know for holidays.

My living grandmother was following just about the same recipe, except the browning the meat part. Once the vegetables became transparent, the meat was added but cooked for quite some time after it had turned light brown. She would let it stick to the bottom of the pot just a little, then from a cup of water perpetually at the side of the stovetop, pour in like 1/8 cup of water. It was just enough to allow her to scrape the browned bits off the bottom with her spatula and allow it to keep browning without burning. And that’s the cycle – brown, water, scrape. I really believe it gives a greater flavour to the meat in a recipe like this.

But it’s also the basis for any good gravy making. Recently, I attempted a pork roast in my dutch oven on the stovetop. My neighbour couldn’t believe I wasn’t doing it in the oven, but I remember my father doing it this way and wanted to try. I seared every side first, then added the remaining vegetables of the marinade I had stuffed into little holes all over the roast. No, I’m not talking potatoes and carrots, but the three veggies Cajuns won’t do without – onions, bellpepper and celery. In this case, I added in garlic. There was never too much garlic for pork, according to my Dad.

Again, once the vegetables were withered and mostly transparent, I began the brown, water, and scrape. I let it do that all afternoon. Half way through I put a good amount of water – a cup or two – in the bottom to turn all the delicious brown stuff into the gravy. But I still had to be watchful and careful it did not burn. The roast did fall apart in the end, but I just forked it into serving size pieces. It and the gravy was the best I’d ever done. I was so proud!

I experimented with this technique last week when I made chili. A pound of beef and a pound of pork after the vegetables, and browned them until at least half of the meat was just kissed with that dark brown color. From there, I followed the instructions on the back of the chili seasoning packet – yum, yum! OH, only belatedly did I realize the seasoning was only sufficient for one pound of meat, so I scrounged out this homemade version to get the double seasoning I needed and it worked. It was my first chili that I really liked. For bean lovers, just add the beans with the tomato sauce.

2 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon salt
dissolved in a little cup of water

I’ll post more recipes to use this browning technique with as I find them.