Corn Bread

I have to give credit to Paula Deen for this recipe.  I don't usually cook complicated recipes but this one isn't that bad and it's worth it. It calls for buttermilk and I don't usually keep that in my house.

(You can substitute by putting a tablespoon of vinegar in regular milk and nobody will notice.  It's really the acid in the milk that counts.)

Ingredients

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus butter for baking dish
1 cup cornmeal
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Melt the butter in an iron skillet in the oven. Take it out when the butter melts and pour the melted butter into a bowl to let it cool slightly.  Put the skillet back into the oven.  This will grease the skillet and heat it at the same time.

In a large bowl, mix together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, buttermilk, and butter. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the cornmeal mixture and fold together until there are no dry spots (the batter will still be lumpy). Pour the batter into the skillet.

Bake until the top is golden brown and tester inserted into the middle of the corn bread comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes. Remove the cornbread from the oven and let it cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Now--if you want to make this in a dutch oven over a campfire, which I highly recommend--because this is one recipe I have done this with several times and had great success with-- here's how I do it:

Since you are outside and things are a little more rustic...….

• You will be using a dutch oven:  the cast iron skillet with (1) feet and (2) a cover that has sides to hold the coals.  It is easier to use charcoal because you can regulate the temperature by counting the charcoal but with experience and some abandonment you would just throw coals around trust it all to work out. Coal counting comes later in the recipe.
• You can just throw the whole stick of butter in the skillet and it won't really make any difference.
• Instead of a mixing bowl, you can mix everything together in a ziplock bag with your hands. Measure it all ahead of time back home and transport in the ziplock bag.
•  It's great to have one of those chimney charcoal starters.  They aren't that expensive and use newspaper to start the charcoal and really work.  Then you can put things on top of it like a little table to keep stuff out of the dirt. 
• Make sure you have good pot holders--at least two--thick ones.  And something to lift the lid.

Dutch Over Method:

1. Melt butter in hot skillet
2. Mix everything else in ziplock bag
3. Slowly add butter to mix
4. Add mix to skillet and cover
5. Put skillet on top of 16 red hot coals.  Put 20 hot coals on lid.
6. After about 15 minutes check inside.  Add coals or adjust as needed. 
7. Enjoy!

German Potato Salad

I got this recipe from a friend who grew up in an old-fashioned German family from Illinois like my grandmother. It's just as good cold as hot.

Also, note that the recipe calls for two teaspoons of salt, not two Tablespoons like I read it one horrible morning that I made it for a church potluck lunch.  It was a good thing I tasted it before it packed it up for church.  And it was a good thing I had enough time to run by the store and buy an emergency-back-up-salad.  Also, in God's gracious mercy someone else had also made German Potato Salad that day so it all worked out.

5 large potatoes
4 slices thick-sliced bacon
1 onion, diced
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/3 teaspoon dried (powdered) mustard

boil the potatoes.  Set aside and cool a bit

cut the bacon into pieces and cook in an iron skillet-- take out of skillet and set aside

pour out all but 2 Tablespoons of the bacon fat
add the onion and cook until soft 

add 1 Tablespoon flour to make a roux
when roux is cooked and smooth (as smooth as it can be with onion pieces in it)
add 1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
cook until thick gravy-like consistency

peel and slice the potatoes
add to the roux
add the reserved bacon pieces

You can eat this either hot or cold.

Fried Chicken

I've been watching Ina Garten again.  This really works.  Fool-proof. Moist.  Delicious.

The only catch is you gotta think ahead--marinating the chicken the night before you cook it.  Or all morning for an evening meal. Oh.....And it makes a huge mess. 

Buy a chicken and cut it up.  Or buy the parts you like.  Marinate it overnight in about a cup or so of buttermilk.

For lunch the next day:

Mix the coating:  2 cups of flour with 1 Tablespoon salt, 1 Tablespoon pepper, and 2 teaspoons garlic powder.

Dredge the chicken in the coating. 

put about 2" oil in a cast iron skillet

Fry at 360 degrees for about 3 minutes each side, or until brown.

Place chicken on a cookie cooling rack placed over a baking pan..

Finish cooking in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes

Chocolate Ice Cream

This started out as an Ina Garten recipe for Chocolate Sorbet.  I wanted to turn it into an ice cream so I substituted milk and cream.  But Ina has taught me that adding coffee and/or cinnamon to chocolate brings out the chocolate flavor.  And this recipe proves her point,  This takes chocolate to the nth degree.

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder (like Hersey's)
1 teaspoon instant coffee
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups half and half
1 cup whole milk
1 cup whipping cream
(I guess if you consider half and half to be half milk and half cream you could just use 4 cups of half and half.  duh.)

Heat this on the stove until the cocoa dissolves and everything is combined.
Cool in the refrigerator. Freeze in the ice cream mixer.

Chocolate Sauce

This is one of the mainstay recipes in our family.  We have always called it Papa Els' recipe, although it certainly came from either his mother or his sister.  My money says it's really Aunt Esther's Chocolate Sauce, because she also made a killer bourbon sauce that is very similar.  Whoever taught it to George-- it is a winner. Elizabeth had the recipe memorized by the time she was in high school; Sarah, by the time she was 11 years old.  None of the ingredients are perishable so I keep it all on hand.  And every time she comes to our house it's all right here ready for her. 

1 cup sugar
a 5 ounce can of Evaporated Milk
1/2 stick of butter
pinch of salt
2 squares of semi-sweet chocolate
vanilla

Put everything except the vanilla into a pan with a stout bottom so it cooks slowly and deliberately.  Stir as everything melts. The better you stir, the more homogeneous and creamy it will be.  A wire whisk or electric mixer does a great job.  As soon as it starts to bubble, give it an extra whirl with the mixer and take it off the heat.  I think this keeps it from being grainy or having sugar crystals form.

Now you add a healthy dose of vanilla, maybe a Tablespoon. Once Sarah's hand slipped and we thought she might had added too much but it didn't hurt anything. You know how we are about our vanilla. Stir it again and and pour into 1/2 pint jars.  It will fill two jars perfectly.  You can use it on top ice cream now if you want to call them hot fudge sundaes.  If you let the jars cool the lid makes a neat popping sound as it cools.  Sometimes Beaven gets into a hurry for it to cool and he puts the jar in a bowl of ice. It will thicken as it cools.

You should probably store it in the refrigerator but we've never had it last long enough to spoil.  

Chicken Gourmet

Alternate Title: Free-Range Chicken in Mushroom Sauce
(but using store-bought chickens because I would never kill the family pet)

This was the first recipe I learned to cook.  My Daddy saw it on one of the first cooking shows in Dallas.  The first, everyone raised in Dallas knows, was the Julie Benell show on Channel 8.  But in the early 60's the PBS station produced a local cooking show with a guy named David Wade.  Daddy was really into cooking at this time since we was between wives and decided that if he had to cook he might as well make the best of it.

Yes, dear ones, I am so old that fast food had not been invented when I was young.

This was also the dish I landed a husband with. I can't help but remember that once I cooked this for Beaven his interest in me deepened.  It's one of my kids favorites.  I've amended it a bit-- but only minor adjustments to keep up with the times.  In the early 1960's for instance you couldn't buy fresh mushrooms in the grocery store so the original recipe called for canned mushrooms.  It also used Cooking Sherry instead of the real thing.  So, in most respects this recipe is an improvement over the original.

I have no idea if the flavor would be different if you used freshly killed free-range chickens since I'll never be allowed to kill a chicken at this house as long as Beaven Els lives and breathes.

And I've cooked this so many times that it might be hard for me to write out instructions but I'll try.

Ingredients:
1 package skinless, boneless chicken breasts
(which I will grant you is a lot easier than catching a chicken, donning a rubber apron, slitting the chicken's throat and letting it bleed out, then boiling a few gallons of water, scalding the chicken, plucking the feathers, then gutting and skinning the bird.)

a couple of onions, sliced
a package of carrots (big or baby, peeled or not but definitely sliced into thin coins
a package of mushrooms, sliced

Chicken stock (you can buy this in the soup aisle or make your own using my recipe)
cream or whole milk--1/2 cup
Sherry (not cooking sherry, that stuff is nasty)

salt and pepper
a stick of butter

Tenderize the chicken breasts  by pounding with a mallet or rolling pin.  Gently saute them in some butter until they're brown.  Set the meat aside.  In the same pan add some more butter (maybe the other half of the stick) Saute the carrots until brown and carmelized.  Add the onions and cook until translucent.  Add the mushrooms last and brown them just a bit.  Add about two cups of chicken broth. Then add 1/2 cup of sherry.  Cook this until the flavors blend --maybe half an hour or so.  Add the cream or whole milk and lower the temperature to just keep it warm but not bubbling.  Thinly slice the chicken breasts across the grain and add the chicken and let it simmer gently for another half an hour.  Don't let it come to a boil.  Add another 1/2 cup of sherry and serve over egg noodles.

The sherry sweetens the dish and makes it richer.  You can add more sherry anytime you want if you don't think you have enough.  I don't think you can add too much.  The biggest mistake I make is when I try to raise the heat and/or get in a hurry.  High heat will mess this up.  Low and Slow is the key to this recipe.

Broccoli Salad

This was so popular at the Garland Womens Retreat that we asked the kitchen for the recipe.  I notice it comes from a popular cooking show hostess.  I hope she won't sue us for publishing the recipe.  We're not making any money from it, we're just making a great compliment to the cooks at Camp Gilmont and the Cooking Show Hostess whose name I won't mention because I don't want her people surfing the internet for recipe thieves and finding me then sueing me for a million dollars just for one little broccoli salad recipe.  Sheesh.

Now I'm almost afraid to ask who brought the spicy crackers she made and get her recipe for it.  Proceed at your own risk.