Split Pea Soup

This is a little more 50's-housewife than I normally do, but it was in Louisa's recipe file, so there. This soup is incredibly easy and also incredibly cheap. I spent $15 in all-organic ingredients and ended up with at least 4 quarts of soup.

Pea Soup
1 lb split peas
3 qt water
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 stalks of celery, grated
3 carrots, grated
1 ham bone or 2 smoked pork hocks or 1 small daisy ham (2 lbs or less)

Rinse peas. Place in pot with rest of ingredients. Bring to a boil and let simmer uncovered for 2 1/2 hours, adding water as necessary to cover other ingredients. Pull out the big hunk o' pork, remove meat, cut into medium pieces, and replace meat (if you have a bone, don't put it back in). Simmer for about another 1/2 hour. Salt and pepper to taste.

Family secret: add a teaspoon of white vinegar to the bowl when serving.

Escarole Soup With Mini-Meatballs

This is a somewhat time-intensive but simple recipe from Grandma Louisa. Escarole is in season in the fall, and I haven't been able to find it here in January, so I've been making this soup from chard instead and it's still delicious. My mom remembers my great grandmother gathering dandelion greens to cook with, and they may or may not have gone into this soup, so that's worth a try too.

We had to reconstruct this from memory, since apparently no one wrote it down. I don't know if I got it quite right, but it tastes good. Unless you put way too much pepper in. Don't do that.

Soup:
4 quarts chicken broth
2 heads escarole, or 2 bunches of chard
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, to serve

Meatballs:
1 lb ground beef
1 egg
2 slices sandwich bread, crumbled (use a grater or food processor) (can be omitted for gluten-free version)
1 tbsp finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp dried parsley
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic granules or minced garlic, optional

Mix all meatball ingredients in a bowl. With your hands, if you're not too grossed out by the idea. Squeezing and squishing the meat will get it all to stick together. Put the broth in a pot on the stove to boil while forming the meatballs. Meatballs should be 1/2" to 3/4" across.


Slide meatballs into the boiling broth and simmer while chopping greens. Cut greens in 1" strips, removing thick parts of the stem if using chard. Add greens to soup and simmer until just softened (this is 15-20 minutes for chard, less for escarole). Salt and pepper to taste.

Top with grated Parmesan to serve.

Solet (Hungarian Bean Soup)

Soup week! I've used up all the soup-appropriate containers in the house and I have at least a gallon in the freezer, so I guess it's time to take a break from soup making.

I don't remember Marie making this soup, but it's delicious. Exactly what should go in Solet, and whether Solet (Hungarian) and Cholet (Jewish) are varieties of the same thing or have nothing to do with each other, is a topic of debate online. So I'll just present my grandmother's recipe.

You do need either an oven-safe pot and oven or crock pot for this recipe. I recommend making late in the evening and cooking over night.

Solet
10 oz beans (kidney beans, pinto beans, or soup mix all work)
1/2 lb corned beef, cut in 1" pieces
5 oz fatty stew meat, cut in 1" pieces
1 marrow bone
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1 tbsp flour

Place beans, meat, and onion in a large pot. In one cup water, mix salt, paprika, and flour, and add to pot. Fill pot with water to cover ingredients. Cook on high, covered, for 45 minutes, stirring frequently at the beginning to prevent burning. Place in low oven for 12 hours, or transfer to crock pot and cook on low for 12 hours. Add more water before leaving overnight to make sure the top doesn't dry out.

Notes: I never have half a pound of corned beef, so I've made this with bacon and with smoked turkey. Pretty much any meat will do, although it's traditional to used smoked meat. If your meat is pre-cooked, add it when you transfer to the low heat.

This recipe doesn't call for pre-soaking the beans. I always cook for the full 12 hours and have never had a problem. The early cooking time on high heat plus the slow cooking accomplishes the toxin reduction that soaking is for. I've used mixed soup beans, which give a more interesting texture and color, and white kidney beans, which look boring but taste fine.

Peanut-Ginger Carrots

This recipe comes from family friend Kitty, who has made it many years as a side dish for our Thanksgiving feast. It's a surprisingly hearty creamed carrot dish, with peanuts and ginger giving a southeast Asian flavor. Great for the late fall and early winter in the Pacific Northwest when there's very little produce in season.

This definitely requires a food processor -- I tried it once at a friend's house without it, and while you can chop the peanuts and mash the carrots by hand, the texture will be completely different.

5 cups carrots, sliced (around 2 or 3 lbs, I think)
1 cup salted peanuts
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp ginger (powdered, or fresh ginger minced)



Cook carrots (recipe doesn't specify how, I boiled them in water as potatoes for mashed potatoes).

In the food processor, grind peanuts, then add carrots and butter and blend until smooth. Add sour cream and ginger. Salt & pepper to taste.

Alice's Stroganoff

After making this, I can report it is the Best Stroganoff Ever.

This is the beef stroganoff recipe from Alice's Restaurant of Arlo Guthrie fame. My mother ate there in 1973 and managed to convince someone there to give up the recipe. The key is cooking the beef lightly so it's still rare and juicy.

2 lg onions, finely chopped
1 pint sour cream (use fancy stuff for this, it makes a difference. You could probably replace part with low fat yogurt. But don't use fat free sour cream. Just don't)
1 handful pine nuts (about 1 oz, get in bulk if possible, in packages they are ridiculously expensive)
1 lb fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 lb very lean beef, trimmed and if possible frozen for 1-2 hr before cutting
1/10th of a whole nutmeg, or 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
A few tbsp butter or oil for cooking
Paprika, salt, and fresh ground pepper to taste

Finely chop onions and saute at least 20 minutes until clear. Add sliced mushrooms and saute till barely soft. Remove from pan.

Slice meat very thin (1/4" or less), in 1" by 2" pieces. Partially freezing before cutting helps get good thin slices.

Add more butter or oil to pan. Recipe says add paprika here, but I added it with the sour cream because I was afraid of burning. Sear both sides of meat quickly, on a high flame. Use tongs (not fork) to turn pieces of meat individually; try not to let them touch one another (fork piercing or touching make juices run out...). Do 8 or 10 slices at a time: put slices in pan with one hand, turn and remove with other... set aside in a dish. Goal is that they still be rare.

Return mushrooms and onions to pan. Add meat, sour cream, and pine nuts. Use medium-low heat; don't let it boil.

Add fresh grated or ground nutmeg, paprika if you didn't already, salt, and "lots" of freshly ground pepper. Stir until combined, and cook only until everything is heated through.

Serves 4-6. Serve over egg noodles, rice, orzo, or fresh dumplings (recipe I posted last week).

Variations: add red wine to mushrooms & onions before meat goes in. Tomato paste, garlic or dill can be added. Poppy seeds instead of pine nuts is another option.

Lebanese Cauliflower

My mom says: "This recipe came to me when Gene [her boyfriend at the time] and I were living in Seward, Alaska. One of our friends, of Lebanese descent, made it for us when we came to dinner in their cozy log cabin. I love how the combined tartness of the lemon juice and sweetness of the onions transform the cauliflower!"

This is a delicious, simple way of cooking cauliflower. I don't remember eating it as a child, but I hated broccoli and would only eat it under duress with lots of cheese sauce, so maybe cauliflower came under the same category of "icky" to my brain at the time.

Her copy of the recipe is a little water-stained and worse for wear, written in beautiful calligraphy, and contains no measurements, so take mine with a grain of salt. You can use any kind of cauliflower; I used Romanesco, which is why mine turned out green after cooking.

1 lb cauliflower
1 small onion
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp minced garlic
Mint, parsley, salt, and pepper to taste
Olive oil

Saute onions in olive oil until clear. Add cauliflower and cook for a few minutes, until not quite soft. Add other ingredients to taste. Simmer to blend flavors.

Nockerl

"Nockerl" are small dumplings similar to German Spätzle. They go well with Goulash. You can form them by hand by pushing bits of dough off a board with a knife or spoon, but it's much easier to use a metal colander with large holes.

Marie was a reference librarian, and as with most of her recipes, this is typewritten on the back of an old card catalog card.

There are two variations of this recipe. Original:

1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold water
1 egg

Penciled in next to it (this is the one I used, since it seems to be a later variation):
2 1/2 c flour
2 tsp salt
1 c milk
2 tbsp margarine (I melted to make it blend)
1 egg

Beat egg well, add salt and water and stir this into the flour until you have a smooth batter. Drop by teaspoonfuls into boiling salted water, or push through colander into water. Let cook approx 15 minutes, depending on size, until dumplings are firm and springy. Drain in colander. Pour cold water, or a little oil, over dumplings to keep them from sticking together. Reheat in any desired sauce.