Jenmenke

Road Warrior

bacon

Exactly How Far Will She Go?

I wonder myself sometimes.

I bought this formerly lovely broccoli — I don’t know — a week ago? Two? Actually, now that I think about it, Michelle Sandquist bought the broccoli for me when her family came over for dinner last weekend.

Oh dear. I just looked at the calendar and realized it wasn’t last weekend it was the weekend before last. July 9th to be exact.

OK, so the broccoli was 15 “crisper days old” when I unearthed it and decided it was “just fine”.

Yes, it looks bad, but honestly, it tasted “just fine.” Not slimy at all. Just strangely brown colored…

I simply vigorously rubbed the brown nubbins’ (Morgan absolutely hates the word “nubbins” and so I use it just as much as I possibly can) into the sink…

and proceded with the recipe I intended to make two weeks earlier.

I’ve mentioned I’ve been busy lately, right?

This salad was served at who-knows-how-many graduation parties this spring. I have always loved it, saying “What IS the dressing on this? It’s SO good!” to many a hostess, only to be met with blank and/or incredulous stares.

Apparently, EVERYONE knows how to make this salad dressing except for me. But since I consider myself a cultured and experienced cook, I can’t admit that I truly am the only one in the dark. and so I share it with you today in case you, too, are broccoli salad clueless. (With some tweaks, of course). (Let me know in the comments if I really am the only one who didn’t know the wonder of combining mayo with cider vinegar and sugar)

Broccoli Bacon Salad

  • 1/2 cup light or regular mayo
  • 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 head broccoli cut into small pieces. (I use most of the stem, too, but peel tough part off)
  • 1 small or 1/2 a medium onion, diced
  • 1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted
  • 1/2 – 1 cup craisins (dried cranberries)
  • Lots ‘O Bacon crumbles (I used the stuff in the big bags at Costco, because it’s so easy)

Put broccoli, onion, craisins, almonds and bacon in a large bowl. Mix mayonnaise, vinegar and sugar together. Adjust to taste. If you like it creamier, add more mayo, sweeter, more sugar, etc. Pour dressing over ingredients and mix well. Serve at room temp or chill.

Try to disregard how awful mine looks. Trust me, it tasted just fine.

My Favorite Ragout

Actually it is my only ragout.

I don’t even really know what a ragout is. In fact, up until opening the cookbook just now for the general recipe, I was thinking it was called Ragu! Wait. Is that the same thing? Just a different spelling?

Wikipedia to the rescue:

The term ragout (French ragoût) refers to a main-dish stew. (The etymologically related Italian ragù is a sauce such as Bolognese used typically to dress pasta.)

Your (and my) lesson for the day.

So they are basically the same. Good. I was right. I love being right.

Anyway, this recipe is from a cookbook I’ve had for years: Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Cooking with Claudine. It’s taken from their PBS cooking series, which I used to see every now and then. I got it as a thank you gift for donating to public television. I love his recipes. But like most cookbooks I own, I don’t use it much. This one recipe being the exception. I don’t follow it to the letter, because it calls for lardons. No wait: salt pork. It calls for salt pork, which of course I absolutely never have, even if I did know what it was. Salt pork, I suspect, is one of those ingredients that, if bought locally in a standard grocery store in Minnesota, would pretty much stink when compared to the salt pork that Jacques uses. So, with my rationalization, substitutions are a must. Plus, it skims about 30 minutes off the recipe.

What, you don’t believe me? This is the intro to the recipe in the book:

Salt pork is sometimes called cured pork or sweet ‘pickle’ in this country. In France, this type of meat is called lard — hence the name lardons for the small pieces of it we add to stews and other dishes. (What we call lard in the US is called saindoux in France.) French lard is similar to what the Italians call pancetta, and both of these versions of unsmoked bacon are usually leaner than the salt pork we find in markets here.

Look for a salt pork slab with as much meat on it as possible, then cut it into 1/2″ pieces, blanch the lardons to remove most of the salt, and sauté them to enhance their flavor.

Told you.

My method is much faster: I simply use bacon fat to brown the chicken for the bacon flavor and sprinkle crumbled bacon pieces (that I keep in the freezer for quick use) over the dish in the last few minutes of cooking.

I’m not saying it’s better, mind you. But at least it doesn’t require a trip to the grocery store…

Sometimes I’ll throw spinach or kale into the mix, sometime sweet potatoes. If I don’t have white wine, I’ll use red. Scallions get replaced with regular onions or frozen chives if I find mine in the crisper to be slimy and gross…

The point is, just make it work. Don’t get all freaked out because you don’t have what the recipe calls for.

Chicken Ragout ‘Jennie’ (originally titled ‘Jeannette’)
  • 1 T bacon fat
  • 4-6 chicken thighs, skin removed. Either boneless or bone-in
  • 1 bunch scallions (about 6) cut into 1/2″ dice
  • 1 medium onion chopped
  • 2 t flour
  • 1-1/4 c water
  • 1/2 c dry white (or red) wine
  • 2 cloves garlic, pressed
  • 1 t dried thyme leaves
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 1 lb small potatoes, left unpeeled but cleaned
  • 1/4 t Cholula or other hot sauce
  • 2 T bacon crumbles
  • optional chopped parsley for garnish (which I also never have)

Heat the bacon fat in a large sauce pan or sauté pan. When it’s hot, add the thighs and sauté them over medium heat for 6-8 minutes, turning once. When chicken is well browned transfer to a plate, reserving the contents of the pan.

To the pan, add the scallions and onion, mix well and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally.* Add the flour, mix well and continue browning the mixture for about a minute.

Add 1 1/4 cups water and the wine, stirring well and scraping all the cooked-on brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Stir in the garlic, thyme, bay leaves and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Add the potatoes and browned chicken thighs, nestling everything into the liquid. Return to a boil, then simmer covered over low heat for 30 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves, add the hot sauce and bacon crumbles. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with good bread.

*This addition to the pan will spatter considerably. I say, who cares? The kitchen is a mess after cooking dinner anyway. Dave says, “Use the splatter screen!”

“…But I don’t have a splatter screen.”

“What happened to mine from College?”

“Who cares!”

Guess what I got in my stocking for Christmas this year?

I hate it.

Meatless Monday Eight!

Lowly Potato Soup.

I could almost call this Stone Soup. It’s practically the same thing.

Wait, no. That sounds bad. This really is good soup. It’s seems to make a lot of something out of practically nothing. So, in that way it is like stone soup.

It is a very old family recipe.

Actually, like most things I say, I don’t even know if that is true. It seems like a very old family recipe to me, probably because we don’t have one of those families with a rich tradition of cooking — passing recipes from generation to generation — like some. I remember eating this as a kid. And it wasn’t my mom’s recipe. It was my aunt’s. And my aunt couldn’t cook. So how this recipe came to be a success is a complete mystery, unless it was never hers to begin with. Hence the lore that is is an “old family recipe.”

How’s that sound?

Anyway, this was yet another Meatless Monday where we were not together for dinner. I had my monthly bookclub meeting. It was being held at the best cook in the club and I wasn’t going to miss it for anything. Not even if swedish meatballs were on her menu. Oh my gosh. Those swedish meatballs…

…are fodder for another post….as soon as I wrangle the recipe away from her.

I will be eating meatless today (Tuesday) to make up for my Meatball Monday transgressions and will be looking forward to the potato soup. I should mention that Dave was leaving town again Tuesday, so I couldn’t just push Meatless off until today, because — by God, he was not missing another Meatless Monday, I was going to see to that. So I made them the soup before I left for bookclub. Simple as that.

So the soup. What can I say about it? It is very plain. It is very smooth. It is very plain and smooth.

And also, it is very cheap.

And for some reason, every body seems to love it.

Oh, and it is very, very easy. It must be, because, like I said, my aunt was able to make it without burning it.

But there is nothing spectacular about it. It is just creamy potato goodness.

Oh I forgot another thing: it is very healthy, too. Barely a fat-gram to its name. (Assuming you are not one of the non-carbohydrate freaks of nature.)

So here it is:

Aunt Rita’s Potato Soup (for lack of a better name)
  • Russet potatoes, any size
  • cold water to cover
  • 3T flour
  • 3T butter
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • cheese for garnish
  • bacon bits if you are not partaking in Meatless Monday!
  • fried homemade durkee onions if you ARE partaking in Meatless Monday*

* which I will post if anyone is interested. They were so good!

Put unpeeled, whole cleaned potatoes in a large dutch oven or saucepan with a lid. (for 4 people with left overs, I used 4 baker-sized potatoes) Cover potatoes with cold water by about 1/2″ – 1″. Bring to a simmer and partially cover. Cook until potatoes are tender. DO NOT THROW OUT THE BOILING WATER. Drain the potatoes, reserving the water.

Let potatoes slightly cool and peel. Put the potatoes back into the pot and mash. You can put them thru a ricer or food mill first, for perfectly smooth potatoes, or you can use a hand masher. The idea for this soup is to get it mostly smooth.

For the roux, put 3 tablespoons of flour and 3 tablespoons of butter in a small skillet, stirring together as the butter melts. Cook, bubbling, over low to medium low heat about 5 minutes — just until the mixture barely turns a shade darker. (If you are making soup for less than 4 or 5, cut the flour and butter to 2T each.)

Over low to medium heat, add the cooking water back to the mashed potatoes, stirring until smooth, then add the roux stirring well. Simmer 10 minutes or so, adding more water if soup is too thick. Salt and pepper to taste. (it will need salt!)

My cousins insisted that you had to put the shredded cheese into the bottom of the bowl, so of course we do, using cojack or cheddar or whatever else green-sided hunk of cheese we find in the fridge. Then, add the soup and top with garnish of your choice. The garnish being a Menke addition.

Here is the picture Morgan took of her bowl, with the fried onion crisps, which were my attempt to combat the yearning for bacon. They scarfed them up so fast there were hardly enough for the garnish. Lord knows there weren’t any left for me today, so I can’t say one way or the other if the idea worked.

And here was my bowl that I had for lunch today. I added some chopped frozen chives for a little kick:

OK, I lied. I couldn’t take it:

So shoot me. It wasn’t Monday.

Meatless Mondays!

Come along on the ride, or join the movement with us*

*The Menke family is embarking on their 2nd annual New Year’s resolution lead fearlessly by the mother ship.

(I can’t say they are any happier about this resolution than they were about the last.)

See, I am a woman of the obtainable resolution. I am serious about resolutions. I don’t necessarily make one every year, but if I do make one, I aim to I keep it. For that reason, I never make a resolution about weight or working out. It’s such a cliché, it’s hard, and as soon as I go on record with anything diet or excersice related I begin to obsess. We can’t have that. But the bottom line is, it is really, really hard — though probably not any harder than the year I made a resolution to improve my posture….

That was a bad resolution.

I did work on my posture and I continue to work on my posture. And I will always and forever be working on my horrible posture. Bad resolution.

So anyway.

I always ask my family what their resolution is going to be. And every year it’s the same thing. They don’t have one. They don’t want one. They like their life the way it is. They see no point to self improvement.

So I make suggestions. Why don’t you try to __(fill in the blank)_.

Still no takers. (And I come up with some pretty good ones.)

So I make stronger suggestions mixed with threats and guilt, as only I can do. (I was going to say “as only a mother can do,” but I actually feel that I possess a special gift for this negotiation technique.)

Anyway, last year I had a brilliant idea. Instead of making my own resolution, I would make a family resolution. I would decide something that I wanted to achieve and then call it a family resolution and drag them all down the rabbit hole with me.

In order to make my plan work, I would need to choose the resolution wisely. It would need to be something that — if resisted — I could twist into something truly ugly.  And so it was:

The Spontaneous Dinner Prayer vs The Rote Dinner Prayer

You see, we defected from the local Catholic church a few years ago and began attending an Evangelical Free Church. Marvelous, marvelous place. Truly. However, with all of us Catholics and our rote prayer upbringing, we were serious fish out of water when it came to what I call the “spontaneous prayer.”

I like to think I’m a brave person and not easily embarrassed. But ask me to pray in front of someone or lead a prayer? I can’t think of anything worse. I’m not kidding.

Plus, our dinner meal always started off with the most pathetic attempt at prayer. Everyone mumbling “Bless us the Lord and these Thy gifts…” as fast as possible. I was quite certain that the kids didn’t even really know what they were saying.

I tried to slow things down. Emphasize words. But I was just that person not keeping pace with the rest.

The Spontaneous Prayer resolution would be multi-layered:

  1. It would force my family to join in the fun by making a resolution that I could enforce
  2. It would improve the dinner prayer by making everyone think about what they wanted to say
  3. It would improve our standing in the eyes of God (*hopefully)
  4. It would let me practice my insane fear of praying in front of people on my family with the idea that it would get easier when I needed to do it in front of others (*it did not)
  5. It would increase my diabolical control over my family

All things considered, Family Resolution 2009 was a smashing success. There is no reason to believe 2010 won’t bring the same success.

I came up with Meatless Mondays after reading and listening to several sources talk about the complexities of calculating our “carbon footprint” and why eating local isn’t the end-all solution.

We do fairly well on the whole localvore thing, so I was dismayed to learn (or be brainwashed into believing, as some would say) that US meat production is ridiculously bad for the earth. However, let me be clear on one thing: We Love Meat.

I do fantasize the notion of going vegetarian, but like making a resolution about exercising, I am a realist. And here’s one fact that can not be denied: there is no vegetarian dish that can’t be made 100% better with the addition of crumbled bacon. Period. How can I walk away from crumbled bacon for the rest of my life? And don’t get me started on vegan and the loss of blue cheese…

Vegetarianism is simply not an option for me at this point in my life. However — and this is for you  GARY FRANCIONE WHOEVER YOU ARE — if our family eats meatless even one day a week it will make a bigger difference than if we drove a hybrid car instead of our gas-guzzling SUV’s. Isn’t that better than nothing?

So all you vegans and vegetarians, please don’t turn your noses up. You could even encourage meat lovers like me to take baby steps in a noble new direction. Or you could simply worship and admire me. That would be even better.

Tomorrow: Our first Meatless Monday Meal: Disaster. What was I even thinking when I pureed year old carrots from the freezer?