Kitchen Klatter and Raw Meat

 

No, that is not a can of cat food artfully presented with a hint of lemon.  It is, rather, in the words of Wikipedia: 

Steak tartare is a meat dish made from raw groundmeat (beef or horsemeat). It is usually served with onions, capers, pepper and Worcestershire sauce, and other seasonings, often presented to the diner separately, to be added to taste. It is often served with a raw egg yolk, and often on rye bread.

Clearly, this dish is not in the mainline for meat eaters, those of us who choose between a burger and a filet depending upon the dollar signs on the menu.  But other foodies extol the virtues of this purest of purists' meat choices.

You're Wrong About Steak Tartare

Why do I even risk ruining someone's supper or, worse yet, turning them against beef altogether as a barbaric choice made by folks with ultra long incisors?  

Because once upon a time, on a whim and a dare,  I ordered steak tartare...at a German restaurant in Washington, D.C.  Even given fair warning, the appearance of the dish, bringing to mind nothing so much as a uncooked cube steak, was enough to give me pause.  The articles tell us that raw meat is supremely tasty...and I'll admit that a fine rare or medium rare steak certainly has more flavor than the sliced beef 'n gravy on the average buffet.  But even decades later...for that's how long it has been...the overwhelming 'remembrance of things past' is not the beef, but the capers, onions, and other strong herbs I suspect were used to cover up the taste of the meat in times past....not enhance it.

Because it was lunch, and out of pride and bravado, I did eat some of my steak tartare.  The German beer was much more palatable....

Since then, we've enjoyed other adventurous food outings: main dishes with the eyes intact...and other artistic but unarguably raw concoctions.  Blake has always loved oysters and for many years, I eschewed the slippery gray things.  But I do love the places where oysters are on the menu: the East Coast, West Coast, Gulf Coast, and over time, I've weakened and now eat my share, dabbing horseradish and dipping malt vinegar to....what?....accentuate?....eliminate?....the underlying mossy essence of the shellfish. 

Gabe....

not a big fan of oysters....

Thinking about these 'delicacies' gives me pause as I contemplate some of my culinary accomplishments when we were first married.  Clearly the guy that has survived oysters for more than forty years earned that cast iron digestive tract.

I remember cooking pork blade steaks several times a week while we lived in Columbia: they retailed for $1.29 a pound, never mind that a person burned more calories than he consumed trying to separate the meat from the bone.  Another favorite dish involved cooking hamburger, then mixing in a can of tomato soup and a can of cream of mushroom soup, and pouring the whole mess over spaghetti.  I am sure I can blame that one on Campbell's soup, but, it was mighty cheap and fed us several times.  I used my harvest gold electric skillet a lot!....

It's so convenient anymore to look up a recipe using whatever combination of ingredients you desire.  For lunch today, I had bought some asparagus, having a vague notion that I'd seen an interesting pasta recipe using both shrimp and asparagus.  Very springy, right?  All you need to have on hand.... besides the shrimp and asparagus and pasta........ are such staples as mushrooms, fresh oregano, fresh parsley, and fresh thyme!  Pardon me if all my spices come in those convenient little round orange containers that say "Tones"....

The cookbooks in my pantry reflect the way people used to cook at home...and the kinds of meals kids ate in the school cafeteria.  One of my most careworn cookbooks is one I received as a wedding shower gift.  Even though the blue cover is long gone, I know Grandma Hurst's friend, Mabel Pursell, gave me the big thick Kitchen Klatter cookbook.  I still use it: particularly for frostings and muffins.  A windshield survey of the contents is sufficient to recognize how much times have changed in the kitchen: 

Exhibit A:   Mustard Ring (Extra special!) 

Ingredients: eggs, sugar, unflavored gelatin, dry mustard, turmeric, salt, water, cider vinegar and whipping cream.  Follow the instructions and turn into a quart and a half ring mold. When firm, turn onto salad greens.

When was the last time you saw a mustard ring?  

Exhibit B: Just-Before-Payday Casserole

Ingredients: margarine, flour, pepper, onion, milk, potatoes, can luncheon meat, grated cheese. Make a white sauce, add potatoes, and bake with lunch meat.  Top with a little cheese.

Or...

Exhibit C: Wiener Dinner

Ingredients: Minute Rice, frozen green beans, 10 hot dogs, margarine, onion, mushroom pieces, pepper, flour, chicken broth.  

Cook rice and beans according to packages.  Cut hot dogs into chunks and saute in margarine.  Saute mushrooms, onion, and pepper.  Stir in chicken broth and flour.  In a large bowl, put the rice on one side, the beans on the other, and pour the wiener mixture over all.

Hmm.. Makes me want to pack a lunch....but all the ingredients are in your pantry!

Don't misunderstand: I mean no disrespect. The women of Kitchen Klatter  were women like my grandmother, the cooks who sent in both family favorites and aspirational recipes like Mary Beth's Quiche Lorraine  (Pronounced Keesh Lorraine) and President Eisenhower's Old-Fashioned Beef Stew.  They were Presbyterian women with honorifics: Mrs.Wm. R. Tweedie or Mrs. C.A.Bottermuller and they were careful to thank the Presbyterian business and professional men who sponsored the cookbook. 

Food fetishes come and food fads go.  What would our fore-mothers make of the current popularity of sushi, sashimi, ceviche...

or for that matter, steak tartare??

A Heart Healthy Diet

Are you hungry?  I’m not, having consumed a generous helping of Spanish rice and Italian sausage, enhanced with sauteed onion and a pepper fresh from the garden.  I limited the pepper contribution after the aroma cleared my nose as I sliced it; that sensation made me think my long green pepper was a Garden Salsa, classified medium hot. Spice is nice, but too hot is not!

But tomorrow is Saturday, and even though there are no cartoons in my future, I’ll roll out of bed just a little jollier knowing there’s a Mrs. Peters’ coffeecake on the counter to accompany the first cup of coffee.  It’s a simple dish, the kind of cake you can make anytime with what’s in your cupboard: two eggs, some milk, sugar, oleo, flour, baking powder and cinnamon. That’s one reason this coffeecake is one of my favorite recipes. Another is its provenance: I copied the recipe word for word from my mom’s card, right down to the admonition to use a toothpick to check for doneness because it’s a terrible flop if it’s not.  She got it from my godmother, my mom and dad’s landlady when they moved to Lemont, Illinois for my dad’s first job out of college.  My godmother and her husband, Emil, were German.  Mrs. Peters was a wonderful cook and a generous lady, sending birthday cards with five dollar bills, the most money I ever had to spend.  Their house was cozy, piled high with rugs and afghans and pillows, but its most captivating feature was the cuckoo clock that hung in the hallway.  My sister and I watched that clock like hawks, enthralled by the little bird popping out of his door on the hour.

The only downside of Mrs. Peters’ coffeecake is what pan to use...my mom cooked it in a 9”square pan and never seemed to have that dreaded ‘flop’.  I struggled for years with a slightly smaller Pyrex square, but finally settled on a fairly large pottery pie plate….and it makes for a prettier presentation!

Though Mrs. Peters is long gone, her legacy continues up here in northwest Missouri, far away from Lemont and her native land.

My father basted almost everything he grilled with a sauce of Worcestershire, butter and onion.  He’d call in from the garage door to my mom when he was ready to sauce up the burgers or chicken or steak. The only exception was barbequed chicken, a painstaking production requiring multitudinous bastings with the mixture of ketchup, the ubiquitous Worcestershire, and butter. It was a special meal whenever my dad grilled. My mom made a dish she called “Boccherini ala Romano’ that I loved.  Made with round steak, green peppers, ham steak, and mozzarella cheese layered and baked in the long Corningware pan with the blue flowers, it doesn’t really sound like something that would appeal to a youngster, but the meats would be super tender, the pepper added zest, and no kid turns down an opportunity to string mozzarella from plate to fork to mouth.  I cannot find a recipe with that name after all these years, but perhaps that moniker was a creation of my father’s inventive mind…

It isn’t just what we cook but who we cook with that makes our food memorable.  Putting up sweet corn, or processing chickens, or canning tomatoes or freezing apple pies, are jobs that beg for company, for conversation, for storytelling, commiserating, and handing down of traditions.  I used to peel bucket after bucket of little apples in Millie’s old kitchen while she rolled out pie dough amid a cloud of flour and spice on her kitchen table.  Now, I peel buckets of apples at Lee’s sink while she rolls out dough on her kitchen counter.  The pies are stacked and frozen, close at hand for a funeral dinner, or a 4-H food stand, or just a homemade dessert during harvest.

Grandma Hurst would always help with corn, standing or sitting, slicing with her knife toward her and huffing for breath as she worked.

I think of Millie’s dinner rolls, the first item on everyone’s plate during the holidays, a food I never cook...and never will...because her rolls are better than anyone else’s.  Several years back, she gave all the “girls” a tutorial on her dough...a kind gesture, but we all know that kind of cooking is more art than science, more earned than learned.

Apple bread is what I bring for all occasions.  The recipe is super easy...if you don’t mind peeling...and is another one of those plug and play breads that cooks for an hour every time and...almost always...comes out of the pan cleanly.  It can be bread...or dessert.  It can be frozen. It can even pretend to be a “healthy” treat!  I don’t know how many loaves I’ve made through the years, or how many times I’ve given away the recipe, but I hope it gives as much pleasure in the eating as I have had in the making and baking.

When I make my very favorite recipe, it is almost a reverential experience.  That’s because the cream cheese coffeecake is such a special occasion dish that I almost always make it for Christmas and Easter mornings.  Unlike many of my go-to baked goods, this one requires time and planning: each cake needs five eggs and yeast and sixteen ounces of cream cheese.  The dough must be mixed and then chilled for at least 2 hours.  The eggs must be separated. The cream cheese has to be softened. The dough is split and rolled thin; then the filling is spread, the second layer rolled and carefully laid atop and the two crusts crimped together and trimmed. Then the cake has to rise.  Maybe I’ll raise it on the range top with the oven warming, but often I put a dish towel over the pan and set it on the radiator in the kitchen.  The last little bit of dough I flatten into a cross….for Easter...or a star for Christmas.  And then wash the top with a bit of egg white and bake.  Through the years, baking cream cheese coffeecakes for the family..or Easter breakfast at church...has tended to be a late night task, lending a peaceful and prayerful atmosphere to the warm kitchen. As offerings go, it is small, but it is cooking for the very best reason: as a gift.

The Family Jewels

It has been a busy but productive two weeks in the family kitchens.  

The cucumbers are gigantic, yellow and bloated on the fence, but we've canned our fill of bread and butters and refrigerator dills and can shrug off any recurring guilt. A generous picking of blackberries was distilled down to 14 jars of jam.  Not to be out done, the four grape vines on the corner of our yard produced six ice cream buckets and a 2 gallon pail of little purple and marble sized green grapes. Then the late summer, early autumn apples began to drop, requiring yet more containers: 3 gallon pots, 5 gallon buckets and a couple of honest to goodness bushel baskets were pressed into service.  The apples are tasty out of hand, but there are so many wonderful ways to preserve them for fall and winter!  

Then...finally, the tomatoes come on. 

Right at the peak of a late summer heat wave, the vines I've been resolutely watering yield their bounty.  More pots, a milk crate and a couple more 2 gallon rubber buckets are piled high with Celebritys, Romas, not-so-Early Girls and whatever other orphans I couldn't bear to let wither away in June.  The slugs have taken a few bites, but for the most part, the fruit is smooth, firm, not mushy and perfect for canning.

From the depths of the basement, to the tall shelf in the kitchen closet, from the back of the utensil drawer to the tangled hardware of the crockery in the corner: out comes our version of the family jewels to be drawn into service for another summer of tomato seeds, pungent vinegar, and the royal purple of the brambles.  As steeped in tradition as any family recipe, as worn as any tarnished silver brooch, as indispensable as a spare set of keys, a fresh battery, an iphone....is the stainless steel canner I bought from Spiegel after burning out two enamelware pans in six years; the jar lifter and jar funnel are original equipment....

 ....as is the 3 1/2"quart Revereware pot my mother gave me for my wedding shower.  It has boiled corn, pasta, and simmered more pots of chili than I can count in these 36 plus years.  It shares the cupboards with Grandma Eunice's deep and wide 14"skillet and Grandma Froerer's 1 and 1 1/2 quart saucepans.  There is more than a century of feet to the fire for those Revereware copper bottom pots and even boiling some tea bags dry but dimmed their stainless steel luster.  The next generation can try its luck....

How many cooks do you know still using their 1970s orange Tupperware measuring cups?  Or spooning the flour out of their 1978 faded metal canisters (purchased from goodness knows which defunct discount store with the aim of keeping varmints out of the baking supplies if not the rest of the porous household)? This measuring cup set has the oh so important 3/4 cup, something I use in nearly all my baking recipes.  For instance, the 3/4 cup is part and parcel of the 2 3/4 cup flour used to make a loaf of white bread in my ever so antique bread machine.

Blake and Ben bought me that refurbished, reconditioned West Bend bread machine many years ago.  When you are married to a farmer and your birthday falls in mid October, you had better plan on a steady diet of gifts from either a hardware store, NAPA, or the local equivalent of a Pamida or Dollar General.  In this case, when Blake asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I had just been to Pamida and had an appropriate answer....  I have ordered but two small replacement parts for that thing over the years.  A loaf of bread from that machine is considered a treat by the grandkids, especially slathered in butter and honey or peanut butter and home made jam.  The recipe is in my brain and the ingredients always on hand.

Ahhh, I do, of course, have more than one set of measuring cups.  These sturdy stainless steel cups and a matching set of spoons (my spoon set had shrunk to a quarter and a half teaspoon)were from Ben and upgraded my equipment one Christmas morn.  But that big yellow Rubbermaid batter bowl?  That I bought for myself.  Also many years ago.  I am rather daunted to find it for sale and listed as "vintage" on numerous Etsy sites.  

Alas, here is a casualty of long life and the multi tasking!  Millie gave me a big green Tupperware bowl when we were married along with the recipe for her Christmas morning Bubble.  I treasure the recipe card itself; it is well worn, though I will admit that, were a family vote taken, most would forego all gifts on Christmas and even Christmas dinner for a plate of Grandma Millie's bubble.  And the big green bowl?  One year someone used it in a remodeling project...after holding "mud"for sheetrock, it was honorably discharged from the kitchen.

Oh, all right!  You can say what's on your mind.  The kids have pointed it out more than once.  Yes, these utensils are SHOT!  As a matter of fact, they might even be hazardous to one's health.  The melamine (yes! melamine!) handles are faded (a classic harvest motif) or busted or both.  The chromed finish is history; only a matter of years before oxidation is complete and the spatula and soup ladle match the slotted spoon for liquid holding capacity.  The wooden spoons range from full to gibbous waning moon with the toothless grin befitting their relative antiquity.  But Laura gave me the utensil set and...I am loath to dispose of wooden spoons with such a patina of experience.  At least as long as there's room in the crockery.

Despite appearances, there is also room in my recipe box.

There is room for Granny's Brown Bread, chock full of raisins and baked in either a cranberry sauce or pork and beans can. The little round slices were just so darned cute and just the right size for kids to pack in their lunch box with their sandwich and apple.   I have a recipe card for her Favorite Fried Chicken too, even though its been years since I pan fried chicken  But Granny had Grandpa write that recipe card for me in 1977 after he had suffered a stroke and just seven months before he passed.  It is part of the family heritage.  Grandma Froerer could fry a mean chicken too, but the recipe she wrote out was for the pineapple upside down cake she had waiting for us every time we came to visit...whether it had been six months or six days since we'd seen her.  I still use the 9"cake pans she gave me....the white enamel is visible just below the rim. Guess we've probably ingested the rest over the years!

My mother's tiny cursive appears several times in the recipe box on random pieces of paper, notecards or index cards, but those are just pennies to the doubloons in the treasure chest of taste and tradition she has passed along.  Some recipes rest untouched, committed to memory and familiar by use, like the teriyaki marinade for chicken or steak, stir fry or grill.  

Others I read each and every time I make them, like this dog eared copy of Ma's Coffee Cake, so there will be no missteps, whether I'm making gooey rolls, crusted with sticky brown sugar and syrup topping as I tip them out of the 9x13 pan, or pulling out those same faithful paintless 9" cake pans and forming two fruity struesel topped coffeecakes.  These coffeecakes are labors of love tied by the apron strings of the past to the taste buds of the present.

But...enough flipping through the pages of memory. Today's tasks await and that means turning these:

into these:

using these.... oh wait, those are the old ones.....

Ah....that's better...newer, non rusty Wilton loaf pans from Ben and Kenz

To make these...

Apple Crunch Bread loaves...what passes for legacy around here...