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.

Gulasch

This is a recipe from our paternal grandmother Marie. We lived in the same town while Cielle and I were growing up and would eat over at her house once a week. Some kind of stew was often on the menu, and even when she branched out into other cuisines, it usually tasted to us like Goulash.

Marie's family was Hungarian, but she lived in Austria until the German occupation when she was nine years old. The family fled to Hungary, taking only a few possessions so that they could claim to be going for a visit. From Hungary they settled in southern France, then escaped German invasion again two years later on one of the last boats to leave. She liked to cook some traditional Hungarian dishes, and also had a number of recipes that she translated from old German cookbooks. She spoke at least four languages by the time she was 18, but in my lifetime she refused to use German out loud.

When Cielle walked into the house while I had this on the stove, she said, "it smells like Marie's house." Tastes and smells have such powerful associations.

This is a "plain" Goulash of only meat and vegetables. It's good served over egg noodles or dumplings.

2 onions, chopped in large pieces
2 lbs stew beef, cut in 1" pieces, or 2 lbs bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks
2 tomatoes, diced, or 1 can diced tomatoes
1 or 2 green bell peppers, cut into large pieces
2 medium potatoes, cut into 3/4" or smaller pieces
1 tablespoon paprika [at least, more if you like]
Cooking oil
Salt to taste

Brown onions in 2 tablespoons oil. Add meat and brown, then add paprika. Cook covered for 1 1/2 hours. Uncover and cook for another 30-45 minutes, then add salt, tomatoes, green peppers and potatoes. Cook uncovered for another 15-20 minutes until potatoes are cooked through.

Welcome!

A few years ago, Cielle and I made copies of recipes from our grandmothers' and mother's files. Some of them are memories of growing up for us, some for our parents, and some we never remember having tasted. We're going through the scrapbook with the goal of trying everything once and sharing our recipes and stories.