Abuela Rosa's Vodka Spiked Tomatoes with Dipping Salt

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Abuela Rosa opened her house to family and friends every Friday night. There was guitar music and the rhythm of heels on parquet floors punctuated with laughter. Abuela and I started early in the day to get enough food prepared for the crowd. This recipe was a fun one that was adults only - quick, cheap, and always a big hit.

You'll need:

1 pnt cherry tomatoes
1 cup vodka

English: A pack of organic cherry tomatoes, from a local farm food co-op program. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1T ground cumin
2T finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2T salt


Then all you have to do is take a tooth pick and poke each tomato about a dozen times. Put them in a bowl and cover them with the vodka for about 3 hours.

When the guests are arriving, mix your seasoning and place them into a small dipping bowl/dish.
Pour off the extra vodka and voila! You're done.

Nana Kate's Cassoulet

Cassoulet cuit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now granted, Cassoulet is no the most beautiful dish that you would ever put on the table. I usually serve mine by candlelight.  But it is the essence of comfort food. Rich, warm, delicious. And I have found it freezes very well, so making a batch without company is still well worth the effort.

I always start from scratch -  Nana Kate would call anything less "cheating." So no canned beans. To make this right, you'll have to start the night before with the soaking process - so all in all give yourself about 12 hours to get this done. Longer if you have to run by the store to pick up the ingredients - there are lots. BUT Cassoulet was peasant food - so use what you have, substitute, experiment, have fun, and don't sweat the results.

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb dried white beans (preferably Great Northern)

White beans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

8 cups cold water

2 cups beef broth (I try to keep this in the freezer, but surely you could use packaged if you don't have any)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 cups chopped onion 

8 cloves of garlic

1 stalk celery, cut into thirds

4 fresh thyme sprigs

1 bay leaf

6 whole cloves

6 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs plus 1/2 cup chopped leaves

1/4 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

1 (14-oz) can crushed tomatoes

6 confit duck legs* (1 3/4 lb total)

1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil 

1 lb cooked garlic pork sausage cut 1/3-inch-thick slices

2 cups coarse fresh bread crumbs

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

PREPARATION

1. Soak those beans! Put the beans in a pot and cover with 2" of water over night. In the morning rinse them off and drain in the colander.

2. Pour your bean into your pot with the water, broth, tomato paste, onion, and 1/2 the garlic. Now here's the oolala French-ie part: put the celery, bay, cloves, parsley, and peppercorn onto a cheese cloth and tie the ends together to make a bag and throw it in the liquids (It's called a "bouquet garnis.') Bring everything to a boil, then reduce to simmer (uncovered) until your beans are tender. This takes a little less than an hour.

3. During the simmer - cut the meat from your duck legs and put it in a bowl. Throw the bones in with your beans.

4.  Pour in your tomatoes and let simmer another 15 minutes.Cook your duck meat and

     sausage.

5. preheat your oven to 350 F 

6. Remove the bouquet garni and bones.

7. Stir in the meats salt and pepper and the rest of your  garlic

8. Ladle everything into a casserole dish.

9. Spread you breadcrumbs over the top and cook in the middle of your oven until it's bubbly - about an hour.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

See? Not complicated - just... long. And delicious! Nana Kate made this every time it snowed. She sevred it with fresh baguette and a tossed salad. 

Nana Kate's Chicken Soup - It Will Cure What Ails You.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I vividly remember the day that Nana Kate taught me to make her famous Chicken Noodle Soup.  Give someone a bowl of soup, and they are fed for the day – teach them to soup and you feed them for a life time. She even gave me permission to post the recipe, such as it is, on my blog.

Such as it is? Yes. Nana Kate usually cooks by eye and handful. She cooks by feel. (It's me who tries to write it all down).

We started by taking a big fat chicken and removing the inards and pop-up plastic do-hickey. The chicken went into my very biggest soup pot and was covered with water. We ground black pepper until the surface of the water was covered with black flecks. We brought this to a boil, then covered the pot and put in on simmer until the chicken was fall off the bone tender. Periodically we skimmed any foam from the surface.

Image via Wikipedia

While the stock was being made, Nana Kate dumped flour into a large bowl. She said 2 cups – it looked more like 4. 2 eggs were cracked and added, and enough milk to pull the dough into a ball. It was the consistency of bread dough. Too moist? add flour. Too dry? Add milk. Sprinkle the surface of a large work space with flour and roll out the dough until about a 1/4 inch thick - uniformly. 

The dough is then cut with a sharp knife. The noodle ribbons should be about pencil wide and six inches of so long. Leave the noodles on the table to dry out. HUGE HINT – they won’t dry when it’s pouring down rain outside – so they will taste a little more dumpling-like but still oh, so good!

Image via WikipediaBack at the soup pot…

When the chicken is falling off the bone tender, take the chicken out to cool in a bowl.

To the stock pot add:

Nana Kate said, 2 T of salt, but I think it ended up being about 5 T. Start with a little and keep taste testing.

2 T Morton’s Nature Seasoning (though again this ended up being about 5T so keep tasting until you are happy.)

1 carton of chicken stock (or several cubes of bouillon)

a half a plastic bag of barley (1 ½ cups of dry barley).

Add about 2c of carrots cut into small bites (we just used a small bag of pre-scraped carrots and cut them into thirds).

5 stalks of celery cut into bite size pieces (green part only)

1 onion chopped

Cook until the vegetables are tender and the barley is chewy. Add chicken that you have deboned, de-skinned, and cut into bite size pieces.

To your simmering pot, add the strands of homemade pasta. It will take about ten minutes for the pasta to cook through. Your kitchen will smell FABULOUS. Your family will come running to the table. There will be no conversation as everyone settles into the comfort of their bowl of Nana Kate's Mystical Magical Cure Everything Soup….and they will remember it for years to come and feel loved.  

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Wednesday I Spent with Nana Kate, Beer Bread

Simple pink knitting on single-ended needles. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Wednesday, I was with Nana Kate. Unlike Biji’s bejeweled home. Nana Kate’s apartment did not look like a party. It looked like boot camp. It was very utilitarian. The only thing that was a constant spot of bright happy color was her knitting bag. Nana Kate made beautiful sweaters, in fanciful patterns, for her real grandchildren, who lived in southern California. And even though she knew that her grandkids would probably never get a chance to wear the hot wool, that didn’t stop Nana Kate’s needles from clickety-clacking whenever she had a spare minute. Nana Kate took the adage, “idle hands are a sinner’s tool,” to heart. Her fingers were always busy.

Nana Kate was from Nebraska by way of Minnesota. She was a good, steady, no nonsense kind of woman with a steel-colored bun on the top of her head and a solid Lutheran upbringing. She taught me how to make the all-American foods that find their way, nightly, onto middle class tables. She made meatloaf, fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, mashed potatoes with gravy, and pie. She taught me to can fruits and vegetables, make jams and jellies and how to frost beautiful Wilton birthday cakes. On most days, Nana Kate fed her family from the four food groups - good old fashioned, tried and true, patriotic menus. But every once in a while, Nana Kate got a touch of the devil in her and she’d pull out her Julia Child “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” cookbook. Then we would revel in cassoulet and chocolate mousse, baguette, and tart tatin.


One of the staples in my quick kitchen arsenal is Nana Kate’s beer bread. It’s kind of weird that Nana Kate even knew how to make beer bread. She doesn’t drink alcohol, even beer, and doesn’t like it in her house. She thought that it would end up being one of Satan’s insidious tools pulling her from her perch of righteous living. On days we made beer bread, Nana Kate would call next door to Abuela Rosa’s and have someone bring over a Corona.

Beer Bread

3 cups Self-Rising flour (best if you sift this)
3 T sugar (Yes, you have to use real sugar. It’s a chemistry thing)
1 can beer.

*Mix flour and sugar. Make darned sure you have Self-Rising flour or you’ll just be making bricks. Yes. I know that from experience. But if you don’t have Self-Rising add 3 tsp. of baking powder and a tsp. of salt.
*Mix in beer
*Pour into a greased bread pan
* Stick it in an oven preheated to 375, for one hour.
* When the top is hard and craggy take it out of the oven. Let it sit for ten minutes, then remove pan.

I think this is best when its cooled to warm, not eaten too hot or you don’t get the rich grainy flavors from the beer. This tastes particularly nice on a chilly fall day with some apple cider and beef stew (and lots of melty butter!)