I have spent the day trying to figure out what to do about the next soup listed in Julia's cook book. Watercress, and I could skip that and I go to Mushroom but, I can hear Gram laughing...fungus and weeds....I could see her steeping them for tea, but soup - think not! So what can I do with potato stock, because that is basically what Julia has you used adding 1/4 lb of watercress before the cream and butter step. Hmmm, then there is the cold Watercress soup which is a vichyssoise (cold leek and potato soup) which is an American invention based on the leek/potato soup. Again I hear Grams laughter....."COLD SOUP? Lands alive girl what are you thinking." You see a farmers wife soups are hearty and HOT....after all she is feeding her husband, children and the farm hands who literally worked at times for the roof over their head and food for their belly. So, what can I do with that base, more to the point what would Gram would. Actually a lot of things. You could add a ton of other vegetables and turn it into a vegetable soup. You could add some stewed chicken with it's In fact if you ever need to make a soup thick (or sauce even) you can add instant mash potatoes - but don't tell Gram. Since there is no soup left over anyway, it was way too good - all eaten. Because Gram never made Vichyssoise, Mushroom or even Onion soup, how about my dad's favorite. Chicken and Dumplings...YUM! It is hard for me not to share my onion soup recipe and onion soup always conjures up memories of my dear friend Jessica who will know why - she makes the best!!! But Jules has been dying for chicken and dumplings so just maybe I will make a batch and send her some when I pick up Nico tomorrow.
2-1/2 to 3 lb. Chicken (whole)
Cover with water
1 Carrot, roughly chopped
1 Medium onion, chopped
1 Stalk of celery, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup cream
1/4 tsp Freshly ground pepper
Dumplings:
2 Cups All-purpose flour
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1/2 tsp Salt
Tbl. Shortening
3/4 Cup Buttermilk
Place the chicken in a Dutch oven, and add the water, broth, carrot, onion, celery and salt. Cover and simmer for 60 to 70 minutes.
While the chicken is cooking combine the flour, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt; cut in the shortening with a pastry blender or two knives until mixture is consistency of coarse meal. Add the buttermilk, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead, do not over knead or your noodles or they will be tough.
Note Here: it took me years to make dumplings that even come close to grams and two things are important kneading and drying time.
Roll the dough out on a bread board coated with flour, flour your rolling pin well and roll out a square. With a small sharp knife cut noodles about 1 inch wide by 3 inches long lay on parchment or wax paper to dry. After 30 minutes turn them over so the other side dries.
When the chicken is tender and falling off the bone remove it from stock and make sure you get all bones. I put it through a colander reserving the liquid. Bone the chicken, reserving skin to make crackles. Discard bones once all meat is removed. You can cut or tear chicken meat into bite-size pieces. Set aside.
Now it's time to marry everything.
I put the cooled chicken stock and the left over potato soup through my blender and puree. There is a school of thought that you should discard the carrots and onion from the new stock, but I don't see why. I suppose the theory is that flavor has been boiled out, but I believe they add a bit of color if nothing else...so in the blender it goes.
Bring the chicken broth to a boil, and stir in the milk and pepper. Season to taste. Drop dried noodles in one at a time, bringing the stock back to a boil then reducing the heat simmer for about 10 minutes. Add your chicken and heat through. The noodles will help thicken your soup.
Yesterday I forgot one REALLY IMPORTANT item to go along with your soup. Corn Bread...you have to make corn bread, pan fried is the best! It also goes well with this dish. Hope you enjoy this recipe, we'll see if jules gives it two YUMS up!
Lets Cook with Viola Brown
I had taken my dauthers 10 year old son Nico to see "Julie and Julia" last summer and she recently rented the movie. Nico told his mom that Lala would love that cook book, and I am now the proud owner.
Nico loved the movie, which surprised me. We had spent the summer going to all the movies he wanted to see and I told him finally after about ten kids movies it was my turn to choose. So reluctantly, very reluctantly he went with me to see Julie and Julia. He laughed out loud several times at Meryl Streep's authentic portrayal of Julia Child. She totally caputed the comedy of Julia. He liked the movie, but was disinclined to start a blog himself. I suggested he write about 365 days of Pizza. Not just your ordinary pepperoni, the only kind he will eat, but Egg Benedict pizza grilled, or Chicken Alfredo Pizza (yummy white sauce), or dessert pizza with an Oreo cookie crust. All the idea made him want to do was order Domino's...
I decided yesterday (Christmas Day 2009) when I opened this gift, that I too would cook my way through Julia's book. As I began reading it this morning I realized there was something missing from today's cook and even perhaps from Julia's. Now I am not criticizing her book or her value and example. She brought French and Gourmet cooking to us, both of which appeal to my culinary sense and taste buds. But now with Pacific Rim, Fusion and the Food Channel we are all into food presentation as well as taste, and freshness. All good but shouldn't we be able to enjoy, in moderation and on occasion, some of the good old country cooking I grew up on. You know chicken and dumplings, where the chicken is browned in bacon grease. I know, I know, hearts are palpitating at the thought of heart attack on a plate supers, but my grandmother lived to be 96 years old and never owned a range where there wasn't a can of bacon grease decorating it's stove top.
Viola Brown or Grammy to me was a dirt poor chicken farmers wife. She had five children to feed as well and nothing...I mean NOTHING was ever wasted. She had recipes and used them but she knew her recipes so well that she didn't have to use them to fix a meal. And just because something called for carrots didn't mean she couldn't add broccoli too if she was so inclined or had it left over from Sunday super.
She was so known for her cooking that my mother often joked that my father married my mother for her mothers chicken and dumplings. The truth is Grammy drove him nuts, but he did love those chicken and dumplings.
As a child and a young woman I was exposed to the never waste a thing cooking mentality of the lower income families of the 1950's. It is not to say that julia or anyone who ate prime rib or porterhouse steaks for Sunday super would waste food. I am sure they didn't either, most had lived through the depression and knew better. But, as I continue to read Julia's book I realize just how poor my grandparents were. Aspic salads would be something the man my grandfather worked for family would serve. Grammy did not have luncheons, or even attend one unless it was a church social but, she knew how to feed her family and then eventually their families.
Calories were never lacking and every meal included home made bread or biscuits and butter. And bones were cooked down until every single spot of meat had escaped.
Julie talked in her blog about how long it took Julia to fix meals. This Christmas I did what every good cook that is not a baker should do at least once. I made cookies and candy. My grandmother was both a cook and a baker and if baking weren't so tedious I might be more inclined to whip up some sugary delights or high carb breads more often. As I was making pinwheel cookies and chopping (finely chopping) 3 cups of pecans I realized I could put them in one of my handy machines and do them in a heart beat. My tireless brain reflected on the fact that Grammy not only chopped her nuts by hand, she had to shell them, discard the shells and most likely picked them off the tree.
Even the landscape had a food value no Feng shui clipped decorative trees could be found in the front of their farm house. She had walnut, pecan, pomegranate, apple and apricot tree's, a full vegetable garden and even grape and berry vines.
So yesterday when my daughter was saying how GREAT her Christmas Eve dinner came out, I realized something. She has become a fantastic cook but, today's young woman knows nothing of two generations back, where recipes were just the beginning of a good dish. Where imagination, ingenuity and left overs were the heart of the meal.
Julia Child opened doors to my mothers generation about French and Gourmet cooking, but how will my daughter and her children ever know about grammy's cooking if I don't share what I learned. And learn I did, although it took sometime for this girl who was known to burn water.
So I decided to add a twist to my exploration of Julia's book. Not a "Betty Crocker", or a Julia Childs French cooking" blog, but more like a "Viola on the Prairie", recipe blog that will have some things in common with Julia's recipes.
This blog will tell you Grammy's answer to each of Julia's recipes - a poor man's style of food serving from the farms around the 1950's Food I grew up eating. At least as I would interpret them based on the experience I gained from the best cook I ever knew, Viola Brown. Lets see how far I get!
Nico loved the movie, which surprised me. We had spent the summer going to all the movies he wanted to see and I told him finally after about ten kids movies it was my turn to choose. So reluctantly, very reluctantly he went with me to see Julie and Julia. He laughed out loud several times at Meryl Streep's authentic portrayal of Julia Child. She totally caputed the comedy of Julia. He liked the movie, but was disinclined to start a blog himself. I suggested he write about 365 days of Pizza. Not just your ordinary pepperoni, the only kind he will eat, but Egg Benedict pizza grilled, or Chicken Alfredo Pizza (yummy white sauce), or dessert pizza with an Oreo cookie crust. All the idea made him want to do was order Domino's...
I decided yesterday (Christmas Day 2009) when I opened this gift, that I too would cook my way through Julia's book. As I began reading it this morning I realized there was something missing from today's cook and even perhaps from Julia's. Now I am not criticizing her book or her value and example. She brought French and Gourmet cooking to us, both of which appeal to my culinary sense and taste buds. But now with Pacific Rim, Fusion and the Food Channel we are all into food presentation as well as taste, and freshness. All good but shouldn't we be able to enjoy, in moderation and on occasion, some of the good old country cooking I grew up on. You know chicken and dumplings, where the chicken is browned in bacon grease. I know, I know, hearts are palpitating at the thought of heart attack on a plate supers, but my grandmother lived to be 96 years old and never owned a range where there wasn't a can of bacon grease decorating it's stove top.
Viola Brown or Grammy to me was a dirt poor chicken farmers wife. She had five children to feed as well and nothing...I mean NOTHING was ever wasted. She had recipes and used them but she knew her recipes so well that she didn't have to use them to fix a meal. And just because something called for carrots didn't mean she couldn't add broccoli too if she was so inclined or had it left over from Sunday super.
She was so known for her cooking that my mother often joked that my father married my mother for her mothers chicken and dumplings. The truth is Grammy drove him nuts, but he did love those chicken and dumplings.
As a child and a young woman I was exposed to the never waste a thing cooking mentality of the lower income families of the 1950's. It is not to say that julia or anyone who ate prime rib or porterhouse steaks for Sunday super would waste food. I am sure they didn't either, most had lived through the depression and knew better. But, as I continue to read Julia's book I realize just how poor my grandparents were. Aspic salads would be something the man my grandfather worked for family would serve. Grammy did not have luncheons, or even attend one unless it was a church social but, she knew how to feed her family and then eventually their families.
Calories were never lacking and every meal included home made bread or biscuits and butter. And bones were cooked down until every single spot of meat had escaped.
Julie talked in her blog about how long it took Julia to fix meals. This Christmas I did what every good cook that is not a baker should do at least once. I made cookies and candy. My grandmother was both a cook and a baker and if baking weren't so tedious I might be more inclined to whip up some sugary delights or high carb breads more often. As I was making pinwheel cookies and chopping (finely chopping) 3 cups of pecans I realized I could put them in one of my handy machines and do them in a heart beat. My tireless brain reflected on the fact that Grammy not only chopped her nuts by hand, she had to shell them, discard the shells and most likely picked them off the tree.
Even the landscape had a food value no Feng shui clipped decorative trees could be found in the front of their farm house. She had walnut, pecan, pomegranate, apple and apricot tree's, a full vegetable garden and even grape and berry vines.
So yesterday when my daughter was saying how GREAT her Christmas Eve dinner came out, I realized something. She has become a fantastic cook but, today's young woman knows nothing of two generations back, where recipes were just the beginning of a good dish. Where imagination, ingenuity and left overs were the heart of the meal.
Julia Child opened doors to my mothers generation about French and Gourmet cooking, but how will my daughter and her children ever know about grammy's cooking if I don't share what I learned. And learn I did, although it took sometime for this girl who was known to burn water.
So I decided to add a twist to my exploration of Julia's book. Not a "Betty Crocker", or a Julia Childs French cooking" blog, but more like a "Viola on the Prairie", recipe blog that will have some things in common with Julia's recipes.
This blog will tell you Grammy's answer to each of Julia's recipes - a poor man's style of food serving from the farms around the 1950's Food I grew up eating. At least as I would interpret them based on the experience I gained from the best cook I ever knew, Viola Brown. Lets see how far I get!
Sunday, December 27, 2009
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