No need to call for Chinese take-out. We’ve got the classic dish right here. It could be your fall-back answer to the question, “What am I going to make for dinner tonight?” as well as your automatic response to invitations to potlucks and other adventures in group eating. Like all good Chinese take-out, it’s great left over, so double the recipe and store the remains in the freezer, to, well, take out later. A thin pork steak works well, and so does leftover roast pork. The quantity you use depends on whether you’re big on meat or bigger on vegetables.
image: homechineserecipes.com
Continue reading “Pork Stir-Fry” »
In a little cookbook a friend sent me from England, I found a category called “Set Picnics.” Here, the author, Prunella Kilbane, presents simple recipes for typically British delicacies, like this one.
image: blog.foodnetwork.com
Continue reading “Melon With Prawns” »
We here at Camp Cook & Tell – counselors, campers in the field, and the Head Counselor (me) are pleasantly occupied in the business of conversation about what’s going on in our kitchens. We have a grand time amending, correcting, and one-upping each other’s recipes, and, in general, carrying on a sort of talk show by mail, e-mail, and telephone.
Continue reading “Notes From Camp Cook & Tell” »
The traditional lobster roll—meat from a boiled lobster mixed with nothing but mayonnaise and packed into a toasted hot dog roll—has stood the test of time and simply cannot be improved. Nevertheless, I keep trying. To subdue some of the la-di-da quality of my gussied up version, I recommend wearing old clothes and sitting on a big rock when you eat them. Or you could forget the rolls and serve the filling as a salad, with more than a few sprigs of watercress.
image above from flickr.com: One version of Local Lobster Roll Nirvana is available at Red’s Eats, Wiscasset
Continue reading “Maine Lobster Rolls” »
A quick sauté of ripe, sweet cherry tomatoes is fun to make while a tenderloin roasts in the oven or fish cooks outdoors on the grill. Fix them at the last minute to ensure perfect roundness.
image courtesy of flickr.com
Continue reading “Sparkly Cherry Tomatoes” »
Ginny Maxfield uses canned stewed tomatoes, the kind with onions, celery, and peppers mixed in, to produce a cold soup that delivers all the advantages of gazpacho, but doesn’t require a whole lot of chopping. This was one of the slightly-chic-but-homey recipes that made Ginny’s restaurant, Maxfield’s, over the bridge in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, so popular for so long.
image: dailymail.co.uk Continue reading “Easy Chilled Tomato-Cucumber Soup” »
For this dish you need one of those deep-frying baskets, plus a bit of skill with a chef’s knife. And you thought the only way to cook asparagus was standing them up in an asparagus steamer or simmering them in a reclining position, in an inch of water in a skillet.
image: flickr.com
Continue reading “Asparagus ASAP” »
What was the question?
In a dither over the census? Just throw it back at them.
image above: “The Census Taker” (1870) Harper’s Weekly
Continue reading “Census Recipe” »
In homage to the maple syrup season, I converted an old recipe, with its brown sugar and vinegar, into a luscious, maple-flavored dainty, sparked with lemon juice. Egg tarts come in myriad versions, and maple syrup is not exactly unknown up here, so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that someone has already thought of this winning combination. The filling is soft, almost runny, and just lovely.
image: ehow.com Continue reading “Maple Egg Tarts” »
Ever notice how those great big portobello mushroom caps almost exactly match the mini pita breads in size? When my neighbor wondered what to do with portobellos, I adapted a recipe from a women’s magazine, sending in a whole portobello cap to replace the suggested chopped white mushrooms. Think lunch! Think hors d’oeuvres! Think how tasty!
image: examiner.com
Continue reading “Cheese ‘n’ Chutney Portobello Pitas” »
You should keep all these ingredients on your pantry shelf at all times–even the clam juice, which comes in handy in fishy things and transforms tomato juice into a gourmet elixir–so that all you have to do is run out to the fish market for a pound of haddock and, presto: a fine kettle of fish!
(image: foodnetwork.com)
Continue reading “Tomato Fish Chowder” »
Marvin, my boss, was the art director of his own ad agency. I was his assistant, fresh out of art school. From him I learned plenty about advertising and design. Once he wrote me a bit of doggerel that ended with this affectionate put-down:
If you really try your hardest
Maybe you’ll become an ardest.
He also taught me about squaring things up. Marvin never left the office without lining up his pencils, all parallel, straightening up the papers on his desk, and arranging his layout pad flush with the edge of his drawing board. He told me his closets at home got the same treatment. I imagined his wardrobe of shoes resembling the disembodied feet of a precision drill team. Continue reading “The Square Route to Dinner” »
Leigh Ann Schwartzkopf remembered her Swedish grandmother making a simple pudding with grape juice and a thickener and despaired of ever finding the directions for it (sometimes the simpler it is, the harder it is to get it exactly right). Barbara Larsen read Leigh Ann’s search in Cook & Tell and promptly sent us the very recipe of Leigh Ann’s dreams.
image courtesy of flickr.com/photos
Continue reading “Swedish Grape Pudding (Kram)” »
From an island craftswoman comes a seafood chowder I call “finest kind,” as we say around here in Maine.
Continue reading “Island Seafood Chowder” »
New England’s beloved berries are the basis for the sauce that enrobes this succulent roast, the perfect centerpiece for a festive winter menu. The recipe is Randy Decoteau’s adaptation of one from Eating Well, with tinkering by Cook & Tell.
Continue reading “Cranberry-Glazed Pork Roast” »
Somewhere back along, I picked up the incidental intelligence that the Native Americans of greater Plymouth, Massachusetts, introduced their Pilgrim friends to the three major crops of the New World – squash, beans, and corn. Of course, the world in which they encountered each other was not new to the Native Americans. But to the Pilgrims, everything was new, including the wild, barren land they would need to tame and till, in order to build houses and plant vegetables.
Continue reading “Thanksgiving Pea Dish” »
Twenty years ago, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and the Soviet Union came unglued, Cook & Tell observed the dramatic changes with a special menu. We promoted Hungarian Goulash, Czech Noodles and Cabbage, a Polish Leek Salad, and Moravian Sugar Cake. Herewith, an edited version of the accompanying ramble from the March 1990 issue. You may need to scout up some old maps and any Modern European History textbooks swiped from high school or college to help you wade through the puns. Here goes: Continue reading “News of the World in Small Bites” »
This improbable combination was a whim that paid off. Butternut squash loves butter, and cabbage turns tame in the company of both. When you’re planning a vegetarian meal and you’re in the market for for something substantial, colorful, and texturally interesting to accompany brown rice and black beans, for instance, put a squash and a cabbage on your shopping list. Continue reading “Squabbage” »
We’d been having a continuing flap over what, exactly, makes a meatball Swedish. Some said allspice; others nutmeg. Then a friend remembered her mother-in-law’s meatballs, which purport to be Swedish, but which give off not even a whiff of either spice. But that’s OK. We’re all just glad that the Vikings discovered Fritos in their journeys. Continue reading “Swedish Meatballs with Corn Chips” »
I almost wept when I heard, earlier in the season, that something possibly awful was going on in certain sections of Maine’s blueberry barrens. The rains had come, the rains had stayed for a while, and a fungus had moved in. This sounded dire for the crop, on which so many growers depend for their livelihood, and on which so many pancakes, pies, and muffins depend for their very identity. Pray tell, what is a blueberry pie without blueberries? Continue reading “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Blueberries” »
