Need a laugh? After an eleven hour work day, I sure did. And What Not to Crochet gave it to me.

Since you can find anything on the Internet, I decided to do a little research on how to convert older cookie recipes to the kind of cookies I like.

Sunset.com has an article about making The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie. They took the chocolate chip cookie recipe, (the one on the bag,) and made it over twenty-five different ways. They have a pretty good explanation of why cookies turn out cakey, crunchy, flat, etc.

Alton Brown, on his show “Good Eats,” had an episode called “Three Chips for Sister Marsha,” in which he made three versions of the same chocolate chip cookie recipe. The show’s transcript can be found here: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Season3/Cookie/CookieTranscript.htm .

So, I will be experimenting with shortening/flour ratios on some of these cookie recipes to see how they turn out.

This is also not a pie.

The recipe this was based on, however, is called “Hamburger Pie” for no better reason than that was the name that its contributor chose to call it.

The recipe is from the book Our Favorite Recipes by The Ladies of St. John’s Ev. Lutheran Church, in West Bend, WS. Copyright 1949. This is a nifty fundraiser cookbook. It stands out because all the pages are hand-written, and many of them have little cartoon-like illustrations. Most of the recipes look pretty good, too.

Here is the one that I chose:

Hamburger Pie

2 T. fat
1 onion, sliced
2 c. canned tomatoes
3/4 lb. ground meat
salt and pepper

Brown onion and meat in fat add tomatoes – season. Cook until thick in 9 inch skillet. Put biscuit dough on top and bake in hot oven 425 deg. 20 minutes.

Savory Biscuit Dough

1 1/2 cups sifted flour
2 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
1 t. celery salt
4 T. fat
1 t. parsley
3/4 cup milk
1/2 t. poultry seasoning

Mix and sift dry ingredients. Cut in fat with [pastry] blender – add milk – mix thoroughly – Pat out and cut biscuits.

Mrs. Robert Fuge

Looking at this recipe, I realized that Mrs. Fuge made a mean baking powder biscuit, but that she cared little about her filling. So… I improvised. This is my version:

Lisa’s Hamburger Pie Filling

1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
2 minced cloves garlic
1 lb. ground meat
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 1/2 cup water
2 T. corn starch
2 bouillon cubes (beef, vegetable, or mushroom)
1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz)
1 can mushroom stems & pieces (4 oz), drained
1 T. Italian seasoning

Fry up the first five ingredients in a large frying pan until ground meat is no longer pink.

Meanwhile, boil water and bouillon cubes.

In a small bowl, dissolve corn starch with 2 T. cold water. Add to boiling water/bouillon mixture, and stir with a wire whisk until thickened.

Add thickened bouillon mixture to meat mixture, stir, then add tomatoes, mushrooms, and Italian seasoning. Turn heat down to simmer and continue cooking while you make the biscuit dough, as per original recipe.

When biscuit dough is ready, transfer filling to a casserole dish and cover with biscuits. Bake as directed in original recipe. After baking, let the dish set for about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

This is good. I was actually correct in my observation that Mrs. Robert Fuge made a mean biscuit. These are AWESOME. I didn’t have poultry seasoning, or fresh parsley, so I used 1 1/2 t. of Italian seasoning in its place. I think that whatever seasonings you choose to use for this, you can’t really go wrong. It’s all in the biscuit.

Baking powder biscuits are not like the layered biscuits we get out of a can. You don’t knead them, roll them, and fold them over ten times to create 1024 layers (!) as you would with the layered type. You also don’t drop them down on a pan. Baking powder biscuits have very little fat, and so are barely mixed, then patted down on a lightly floured surface. The more you handle them, the more chance the gluten in the flour has to interact with the milk and become stretchy. Stretchy is great for yeast breads. Stretchy biscuit dough just makes tough biscuits. So, be gentle.

And have fun with it, already. It’s only hamburger pie, but the biscuits are what make it worthy of Cookbook Obsession.

That’s why I was happy to stumble upon a first edition of Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book, copyright 1963, complete with the original $1.95 price sticker on the front. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you where I bought mine or how much I paid for it. Nevertheless, it’s 159 pages long, hard cover and spiral bound.

I decided to try the first recipe in the book: Applesauce Cookies.

Coming from a Dutch background, I have a special relationship with applesauce. We used to serve it at every dinner, and I’ve even heard it referred to as “Dutch Gravy.” As a child I used to mix it with magma-hot scallop potatoes to cool them enough to eat, and my mother would sometimes serve cottage cheese with a dollop of applesauce in the middle as a sort of winter salad.

Imagine my horror, then, when my stepson made a face after hearing the name of the cookies and declared, “Applesauce is evil.”

Applesauce? Really?

Not beets, fried liver, brussels sprouts, or creamed spinach, but my beloved applesauce?

There is no explanation for such lack of judgment. Sigh.

Applesauce Cookies

1 cup shortening
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup cold coffee
2 cups well-drained applesauce
3 1/2 cups Gold Medal Flour
1 tsp. [baking] soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. each cinnamon, nutmeg, and [ground] cloves
1 cup raisins
1/3 cup coarsely chopped nuts

Mix shortening, sugar, and eggs thoroughly. Stir in coffee and applesauce… Mix dry ingredients and stir into applesauce mixture. Chill at least 2 hours.

Heat oven to 400. Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough about 2″ apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 9-12 min., or until almost no imprint remains when touched lightly. If desired, frost when cool with Lemon Butter Icing.

Makes 7-8 dozen cookies.

Lemon Butter Icing

2 1/2 tbsp. soft butter
1 1/2 cups sifted confectioner’s [powdered] sugar
1 1/2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. grated lemon rind

Blend butter and sugar together. Stir in cream and vanilla until smooth.

Makes icing for 4 doz. cookies.

Despite this being a rather straightforward cookie recipe, I had some problems with it. Apparently, I did not drain my applesauce well enough. I am not at all sure how to drain it better than I did with my strainer. Perhaps I should have left it for an hour or so. Perhaps I should have left it in the sun to dehydrate. Perhaps they sell freeze-dried applesauce somewhere online, maybe as part of the military’s MRE rations. (You can find anything on the Internet!)  The extra moisture in the applesauce made the cookie dough the consistency of cake batter. At this point, it would have made some pretty good muffins. That is what I should have done with it. Instead, I added more flour and stuck it in the refrigerator to set.

When I took it out, it was sticky. It was really sticky. The gluten in the flour had taken the opportunity to bond with the moisture in the applesauce to turn elastic. With no more than a cup of shortening in the batch, there was nothing to prevent this from happening. I used two teaspoons to drop the cookies onto my silicone-lined cookie sheets and popped them into the oven.

I like crunchy cookies. The crunch is satisfying, and it lets you know that you’re eating a cookie.

These however, are not crunchy. They’re like little apple spice cakes, except that they’re not terribly spicy either. Their flavor is not objectionable; it’s just not notable. These cakey little cookies bored the heck out of me.

So… I tried the Lemon Butter Icing

Mistake.

This icing is not lemony-tasting. It’s just sour. It’s so oddly sweet/sour that it made my mouth water, but not in a good way. I think my body was just trying to tell me that it wanted to dilute this stuff before it hit my stomach. Even the little bit of icing I put on my cookies completely overpowered their delicate (bland) flavor, rather than complementing it. Icing FAIL.

This made A LOT of cookies. In fact, it made way more than we cared to eat. DH and I were glad to see the end of the batch, which happened long after we thought it should have.

So, here’s the verdict:

This is a pretty good reduced-fat muffin recipe. Too bad it’s in a cookie cookbook.

This is not worthy of cookbook obsession.

To Amy Vanderbilt, however, this is Broccoli Italian Style.

This recipe is from Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook. Copyright 1961, New York.

Ms. Vanderbilt’s cookbook is not something that would naturally grab a vintage collector’s eye. It’s from 1961, not a terribly interesting time for cookbooks, in my opinion, and it has no colored pictures. It doesn’t really have much personality at all, really.

Except for one thing.

There’s a little note on the title page that says, “Drawings by Andrew Warhol.”

For those of you readers who don’t know, Andy Warhol was a successful commercial illustrator in the 1940s and 1950s. This book would have been near the end of his freelance career. Unfortunately, the illustrations aren’t of the fun, funky sort that typify his work.

These look like Andy phoned it in.

Oh, Andy. We’ve all been there. It’s the dreaded Assignment That Never Ends. You think you’ll have fun doing a cookbook gig, but then the come back and tell you the work’s all wrong, that it wouldn’t appeal to their clientele. So you end up doing something like this, just hoping they don’t put off paying you in the end.

I forgive you, Andy. Really, I do.

Now… on to the Italian Broccoli!

DH executed this one, as I was busy with the Oven-Fried Chicken.

BROCCOLI ITALIAN STYLE

1 1/2 lbs. broccoli
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and mashed
1/3 minced, peeled onion
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon salt

Wash broccoli. Look over carefully. Trim stalks. Remove all large, coarse leaves. Cut stalks and flowerets into large pieces.

Heat oil in large skillet. Add garlic, onion, and chili powder. Stir and heat until onion is soft. Remove garlic and discard. Add broccoli, water, and salt. Cover skillet. Cook 12 to 15 minutes or until just tender. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

I think the garlic and olive oil are what make this Italian, but I’m not sure. DH, however, had a thing or two to say about discarding a clove of garlic. We consider such behavior to be unacceptable. Not that it mattered. We use the minced garlic in a jar. That’s not coming out of a pan without the rest of the food any time soon.

Also, 12-15 minutes is too long to cook this broccoli. We shut the stove off at 5 minutes and let it sit and steam for the rest of the time.

The verdict? Awesome. It has lots of flavor, but still tastes like broccoli. The chili powder is just enough kick to make the green stuff interesting again. It probably didn’t need the full 1/4 cup of olive oil, but it wasn’t too oily.

Amy Vanderbilt’s Cookbook is definitely worthy of obsession!

After all, Cookbook Obsession is a vintage cooking blog. Therefore, there must be gelatin.

Let’s just start by giving the recipe, which is from the Grayling Cook Book, “compiled by the ladies of the Michelson Memorial Church Aid Society” in Grayling, Michigan. There is no publishing date.

GINGER ALE SALAD

1 pkg. unflavored gelatin
3/4 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups ginger ale
3 T. sugar
3 T. lemon juice
1/2 cups seedless grapes
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup canned pineapple bits
1/2 cup chopped apples

Pour boiling water over gelatin and sugar in a medium bowl, stir until gelatin is dissolved. Add ginger ale and lemon juice and chill.

When partially set, fold in remaining ingredients and put into mold.

Serve with whipped cream.

Okay, so now with the commentary…

Gelatin and I have an unsteady relationship. I like to eat it, but I’m not that good at making it. I have a hard time getting the stuff to dissolve properly, I have a hard time choosing the right moment to add the fruit, and I have a hard time figuring out which mold to use.

Yes, that’s right. I have to decide which mold to use. I have a collection.

So, I was working on making this molded salad, and I thought, “Wow, I really have a love/hate relationship with this stuff!” I tested the mold before dinner, and it hadn’t set. So I tested it after dinner. It wasn’t quite set. So I tested it after dishes. It was finally set. I took some pictures of it and dished it out… and DH says to me…

“You really have a love/hate relationship with this stuff, don’t you?”

*sigh*

Oh, by the way, this was good. We ate it all. I really enjoyed the ginger ale flavor and all the crunchies in the the gelatin, and yes, that’s real whipped cream I put on there. But if you’re going to put it into a mold, I suggest a simple one. These clear salads don’t look so great in the fancy molds.

And of course, you don’t really have to mold it at all. That’s just to make it fancy.

Oven-fried chicken is one of two “Sunday Dinner” meals that I remember most fondly from my childhood. (The other one is Mom’s pot roast, but I’ve never gotten the hang of that. Beef and I? Not such a good match.) I once heard my dad say that if he only ate chicken cooked this way for the rest of his life, he would die a happy man. I would have to say that I feel the same way.

As you can see, there is no heavy breading on this chicken. Because of this, the chicken itself is not particularly greasy, despite being cooked in oil. The skin is browned to perfection, however, and crispy as can be. Delicious! It’s amazingly simple, too. Thanks, Mom!

SHARON KLYNSTRA’S
OVEN-FRIED CHICKEN

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup shortening
1 cut-up frying chicken (or a “pick of the chick” package)
flour (about 2/3 cup)
salt
pepper
nutmeg

Place vegetable oil and shortening together in a 9×13″ cake pan (glass, if you have it, because it’s easier to clean), and melt in an oven set to 400F.

Meanwhile, rinse off chicken and dredge in flour. For cooking noobs, that means that you dump the flour on a plate and roll the chicken around in it until it is coated. Alternately, you could dump the flour in a plastic bag and shake the chicken, one piece at a time, in the bag to coat it. Honestly, though, I prefer the plate method.

Once the shortening is melted, carefully place the chicken in the baking dish, SKIN SIDE DOWN, and liberally salt, pepper, and sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake it like that for 20 minutes. Don’t touch!

After that first 20 minutes, turn the chicken skin side up, then liberally salt, pepper, and sprinkle the skin side with nutmeg. The nutmeg adds a nice flavor and helps to attain that beautiful brown color. Let it cook about another 20 minutes, a little bit shorter if your chicken is a little skimpy. You can pretty much tell it’s finished when the skin comes away from the drumstick ends.

After the second 20 minutes is done, pull the pan from the oven and set the chicken pieces on paper towel (or lint-free cotton towel) to draw away any excess fat.

After about a minute or two of draining, plate it up and watch it disappear!

My mom learned to cook from my grandmother (her mother-in-law), so a lot of my family recipes are good farm-type cooking. Most of it is not fancy, but it’s pretty darned delicious!

When I make my own cookbook… these are the recipes that will be in it. Definitely worthy of obsession!

Today’s Cookbook Obsession is a photo essay of DH’s Manly Hash in the making.

One chopped onion

chopped leftover skirt steak from Mexican dinner

Chopped leftover German sausage

Potatoes and onions, sauteed in olive oil

Adding the meat

leftover rice and halapenos

eggs scrambled in

scrambled altogether

The final product, sprinkled with cheese

Savory, spicy, browned, filling, and quite manly!

DH’s Hashup Mashup is a great treat for Cookbook Obsession!

Sometimes they’re tasty, sometimes they’re bland, sometimes they’re unfortunate, and once in a while they’re really kind of fun!

After this week’s unfortunate experience with Banana Salad, I thought I would give Fannie Farmer a chance to redeem herself on the salad front. So, this salad recipe is also from The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, copyright 1943.

PEAR SALAD

Place pear halves, cut side down, on lettuce. Spread with cream cheese. Arrange halves of seeded, skinned, Malaga grapes close together on cheese to represent bunch of grapes. Garnish. French Dressing.

Once again, not so much a recipe as a set of instructions.

It’s December, and fresh pears were not in my regular supermarket. I personally like canned pears (in juice, not syrup), so using canned pears was no hardship for me. Besides, they’re already peeled. Who can complain about that?

Canned pear halves are usually pretty small, though. These were no exception. So, as I fished them from the can, I allotted two pears per person. So cute.

Next came the task of spreading the pear halves with cream cheese. I had a feeling this would not be easy, so I did a little improvisation. I warmed about a half cup of cream cheese in the microwave, then beat it (severely!) with the mixer (found it!) set on high to make it fluffy. Then I added a spoonful (oh, roughly a tablespoon) of sweetened condensed milk to the mixture and beat it again. This made it less than impossible to spread onto slippery little canned pear halves.

After the pear halves were spread (read: SMEARED) with cream cheese mixture, I cut my non-malaga, (malaga?) seedless grapes in half and put them on the pear halves. Did I peel my grapes? No, not in a million years. You know that song, “Peel Me A Grape“? Every time I hear it I want to shout, “Peel your OWN dang grapes! Can’t you see I’m BUSY???”

After a little experimenting, I realized two things:

1. The pears should be positioned pointy-end at the bottom of the “bunch.” (DUH.)
2. If you use teeny-tiny pears, you should probably use teeny tiny grapes.

Here is how Fannie Farmer’s Pear and Grape Salad looks:

Considering my difficulties, I don’t think mine turned out too badly.

I served mine with the rest of the cream cheese mixture I had made, which suited it perfectly.

We have a belief in my family that there are no bad recipes containing cream cheese. This one follows that rule.

Cute salad: the reason for Cookbook Obsession’s existence.

I don’t have leftover turkey this year, as DH and I were fortunate enough to be guests at somebody else’s Thanksgiving meal. I do, however, find myself dealing with leftover chicken on a regular basis, due to the fact that the pre-cooked grocery store chickens are about the biggest bargain in prepared food.

So, faced with a cup of leftover chicken, I decided to try something interesting. I settled upon a recipe for “Chicken Timbales.” I cooked a half-recipe, but it’s the same process and cooking time as the whole recipe. Obviously, if you have leftover turkey, it would work quite well in this dish.

A timbale, of the food variety, is merely a small mold in which to cook food, or the food that is cooked in said mold. They come in various sizes, and apparently are quite expensive (the molds, and maybe the food, too.) I used custard cups, but if I decide to make timbales again, I may try reusing tomato paste cans for this purpose.

This is another recipe from The Country Kitchen Cook Book.

CHICKEN LOAF

1 1/3 c. scalded milk
5 T. butter in hot milk
2 c. soft bread crumbs or mashed potatoes
2 c. cooked chopped chicken
2 eggs, well beaten
1 T. chopped parsley or pimiento
2 T. green pepper
1 t. onion juice

Mix in order given. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake 30 to 35 minutes in moderate oven (350 F.) with pan set in water bath. Unmold and serve with mushroom, pea, or tomato sauce… Serves eight.

Variation
CHICKEN TIMBALES: Bake in individual timbales, or custard cups, and serve with cream sauce, mushroom sauce, pimiento sauce, or pea sauce.

Honestly, I did not expect much from this one. The ingredients seemed blah, and after my experience with the Bread Crumb Dumplings, I’ve been a little skeptical of recipes that call for bread crumbs. That’s why I made it for myself, instead of cooking it for my Long-Suffering Husband.

I dutifully chopped my chicken, however, leaving it in 1/4 inch pieces. I didn’t have any fresh parsley, so I omitted that and the green pepper, an ingredient which DH generally dislikes in any form, and so is rarely at my fingertips. I decided instead that I would substitute a tablespoon of minced onion for the green pepper and save myself the trouble of trying to extract juice from another onion.

I also added salt and freshly ground pepper. This is what the timbales looked like before cooking. Not too promising, I must admit.

I cooked them in my handy-dandy super-de-duper convection/toaster oven, which is capable of handling an 8-inch square baking pan. (Yes, just large enough for a Jiffy-cake mix!)

Because it looked a bit pale and plain after cooking, I decided to serve mine with spaghetti sauce (canned). This was a good choice. Even though the flavor of this was fine, the spaghetti sauce provided a nice, bright contrast to the smooth texture and flavor of the timbale. Before you think this odd, remember that Chicken Parmigiana is something at which nobody bats an eye.

I like this dish, although I don’t know whether it’s something for everybody. It is sort of creamy in its texture, like a savory bread pudding, and it could probably use some celery for a little bit of crunch. Its flavor is chicken-y, but not to the point of tasting chicken-flavored, like a canned cream of chicken soup. The butter adds richness.

I dare say that I may even serve the rest with a soup and salad for dinner tonight. Then we’ll see what my Long-Suffering Husband thinks. Oh, the trials he endures for the sake of Cookbook Obsession!

UPDATE: DH gives Chicken Timbales a thumbs-up! Score one for Cookbook Obsession!