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An awesome idea for a summer meal: Shrimp salad

Cooked shrimp, green onions, hard boiled eggs, mayo with a dash of ketchup and salt—that's it.

You never know what will be a winner. Tonight my 91 year old father used the word “awesome” to describe our dinner. I’ve never heard him use that word before. Maybe my children have become a bad influence on him? This shrimp salad can be made in the time it takes to hard boil an egg. I served it with some sliced, toasted and buttered ciabatta bread and some extremely fresh and cold watermelon. Also, I put the salad on a bed of iceberg lettuce, because sometimes you have to go for the cold crunch of iceberg and save the nutritious dark green lettuces for a night when it’s not quite so hot. It really was an awesome summer meal.

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Aunt Annie’s Old Fashioned Scones

Bake these scones as a wheel, then separate to eat.

In my quest for the perfect scone recipe I stumbled across this one for Aunt Annie’s old fashioned scones. These are the perfect scones. I’m going to make up some dough with fresh blueberries tonight, so we can enjoy these tomorrow on the 4th of July.

Aunt Annie’s Old Fashioned Scones

1. Mix together with a whisk:

  • 1-3/4 c.  flour
  • 1/4 c. sugar
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt

2. Cut in:

  • 1/3 c. cold butter, with fingertips or pastry cutter

3. Stir in:

  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 c. milk (or half and half if you’re fancy free)

4. Fold in:

  • 1/3 c. dried cherries
  • 1/3 c. walnuts

5. Knead 10 strokes. Form into 8″ circle, sprinkle with sugar and wrap in  wax paper. Fridge overnight (or skip this if you didn’t plan ahead—don’t worry they’ll still be pretty good).

6. Cut into wedges, bake on parchment or a greased cookie sheet at 400 degrees for 16-18 mins. or until golden.
Separate and cool.

Options to fold in:

  • 1/2 c. blueberries
  • 1/3 c. pecans, orange peel
  • 1/3 c. choc chips, orange peel
  • 1/3 c. cranberries, 1/3 c. nuts
  • 1 Tbs. poppy seed, lemon peel
  • 1 Tbs. cinnamon and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar
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Frittata with New Potatoes and Broccoli

A frittata is much more exotic than "supper eggs."

When the kids were small I would occasionally serve eggs for dinner. I would fry up a pan of sunny-side ups, put them on a nice platter and declare them “supper eggs.” But now that this group is a little bit older, and has developed a more sophisticated palette, I have retired the supper eggs and introduced the frittata. A frittata is much like a vegetable omlette (you could, if you wish, include meat in the dish), or a crustless quiche. You start it cooking on the stove top, and finish by sticking the pan under the broiler for just a minute or two, to cook and lightly brown the top. It makes a lovely and light dinner entree, can be served hot, warm or cold, and can be bursting with the best of the summer vegetables. Add a salad, fresh melon and crusty bread to fill out the menu.

Frittata (serves 4)

  • 3 c. vegetables (I used 2 c. thinly sliced new potatoes and 1 c. tiny broccoli florets)
  • 1 large onion, sliced thin
  • 1 medium clove garlic, crushed
  • 6 eggs
  • 1/2 c. shredded Swiss cheese (may use cheddar, Gruyere or goat cheese)
  • 1/4 c. chopped parsley
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  1. Choose a pan which is oven proof. Saute the onion and potato slices in a little olive oil. Add the garlic, salt and pepper, cover and cook until the potatoes are soft, stirring occasionally. This should take 10-15 minutes. Add the broccoli during the last minute or two and cook only until barely tender and bright green.
  2. Beat the eggs very well, in a large bowl, then stir in the vegetables, cheese, salt and pepper.
  3. Clean and dry your pan, add 2-3 Tbs. olive oil and heat. When the oil is very hot pour in the egg mixture.
  4. Let the eggs cook over a medium heat for 3-4 minutes, or until the bottom is quite set.
  5. Place the pan under the broiler, for just a minute or two, to cook and lightly brown the tops of the eggs.

A kitchen mandoline.

This is a mandoline (pronounced the same way as the musical instrument). It’s a wonderful kitchen tool when you want uniformly thin slices.

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Farmer’s Market Stir Fry

This is sweet, delicious and fresh. Choose different colored vegetables to make a beautiful dish.

This is especially good if you belong to a CSA and wind up with odds and ends like kohlrabi in your ‘fridge. Just julienne the kohlrabi, yellow squash, and carrots, then throw in some sliced cabbage and sweet onion.

Heat up about a tablespoon of olive oil, add the onion and cook until soft, then stir in the rest. After about 2 minutes add about 2 Tbs. of water, cover and let steam for another 2 or 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

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(No flour!) Peanut Butter Balls

When you have a taste for a chocolatey cookie and you want it fast—this is the recipe to try.

These have to be the easiest cookies to make, and with only 5 ingredients you can enjoy them warm from the oven in about 20 minutes. This also makes a terrific starter recipe for young cooks.

Peanut Butter Balls

Mix together the following ingredients, then form into 1″ balls, place on an un-greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. Makes 3 dozen.

  • 1 c. peanut butter
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 3/4 c. mini (or regular sized) chocolate  chips
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Simple, elegant, vegieful: Kristina’s potato salad

From The Moosewood Cookbook, Kristina's Potato Salad is not your mother's potato salad.

Nephew Ben phoned this afternoon to say that he would be stopping by for dinner tonight, and bringing his Australian girlfriend, Rachel, for us to meet. I’d hate for Rachel to take the next boat home because our family doesn’t eat well, so I promised them a nice meal of potato salad and fruit. They politely said that potato salad sounded fine, and then they saw this platter and had a taste. “This is the best potato salad I’ve ever had,” said Rachel, whose mother is a gourmet cook.

This should be named vegetable salad, since it has more carrots, cucumber, tomato, parsley, alfalfa sprouts and peas than is does potatoes. Served on a bed of fresh spinach, and garnished with hard-boiled eggs and toasted sesame seeds, all you need to complete this exceptional meal is some good rolls and a platter of fresh melon.

The recipe can be found on-line by doing a search for Kristina’s Potato Salad.

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Having fun with challah dough: Knishes and Blueberry Buns

Potato knishes, blueberry buns and knishes with sesame seeds.

It takes a village to make knishes and buns.

The thing that I possibly love best about being Jewish is the food—the passing down of recipes, the sharing within our community, and the beauty of the culinary traditions. Some of them are so odd and involve an acquired taste: my grandmother slapping the board with whiskey to make her Passover candy, the cleaning of the fish bones to make gefilte fish and boiling up the broth we call yuch, and the tradition of cooking with chicken fat or schmaltz.

Blogging, apparently has broadened my community. I had never heard of blueberry buns until I received a comment last week from a woman named Irene Saiger, telling me of her family’s tradition of taking challah dough and filling it with sugared fresh blueberries. She invited me to try her recipe: click here for a link to that.

I couldn’t imagine why our family had never tried this, so I made them today. And since I was going to the effort of filling circles of rolled out challah I decided to make some potato knishes as well. A potato knish is another kind of challah bun, this one savory, stuffed with mashed potatoes. At their best they are made with chicken fat—schmaltz—both as part of the mashed potatoes as well as brushed onto the dough before baking. My mother always had chicken fat on hand. She would tear it off of the chicken every week and keep a bag full in the freezer, along with chicken livers, saving both until she had enough of each to make chopped liver. Years ago I started saving up chicken fat in the freezer. But I never used it for anything. Today I found the bag but it was, well, rancid. My kind neighbor, Bev, volunteered to stop by the store and pick up a fat chicken for me. And then I thought of Ben, five houses down, who loves to make his own chicken stock and matzo balls with schmaltz. “Ben,” I asked, “Do you, by any chance, have any chicken fat in your freezer?” “I have a jar in the refrigerator, still fresh. I’ll bring it right over,” he said.

What are the odds of finding a neighbor in the middle of east central Illinois with a jar of schmaltz in their fridge?

 

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Bean and Cheese Burritos—with homemade refried beans

Burritos topped with sour cream and salsa, garnished with fresh cilantro and served with corn and watermelon.

I got into the habit of buying canned refried beans, but tonight I set myself straight and made them from scratch. It was surprisingly easy and, not surprisingly, tasted fresh and light since I used far less oil than one finds in the canned beans.

Refried Beans

  • 1 lb. dried pinto beans
  • 2 Tbs. oil
  • 1/2 onion, chopped fine
  • 3 cloves garlic, slivered, to cook with the beans
  • salt to taste
  • cumin (optional)
  • more fresh garlic, crushed, to taste (1-2 cloves)
  • cayenne (if you like it spicy)

Put the beans, 2 tsp. salt and 3 cloves of slivered garlic up to cook, covering them in 3-4 inches of water. Boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook for about 2 hours, or until soft. Drain the beans, reserving 2 cups of the liquid.

Heat oil in a sturdy pan, saute onion until soft then add beans and mash them with a potato masher while cooking over a low heat. Add the reserved liquid, as needed, until the beans are the desired consistency. Taste, then add salt and 1-2 cloves crushed garlic. If you like it more spicy add cumin and cayenne to taste.

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Fish breading when you’re out of bread crumbs

Breaded and pan fried talapia.

This is a simple breading to use as an alternative to bread crumbs.

Fish breading

  • 1 c. matzo meal
  • 1 c. flour
  • 1/2 c. corn meal

Rinse off your fish fillets, and dredge them right into the breading (no need to dip in an egg if you don’t want to). Season with some salt, pepper, dill weed and garlic powder, then fry them up in a little hot oil.