Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Saturday, January 13. 2024

Classic Mommys of America easy winter supper #6: Tetrazzine

Another American adaptation/bastardization of an Italian recipe. CHICKEN OR TURKEY TETRAZZINE


My Mom used to make this when we were young. She'd never had any real Italian food in her life at that point except spaghetti and meatballs (not Italian either); she thought Tetrazzine was an Italian dish.


Who was Luisa Tetrazzini? A soprano 


This pasta thing tastes just fine, especially if you are hungry.


Posted by Bird Dog in Food and Drink at 15:24 | Comments (20) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

What is this, cooking.com? I thought maggie's farm was more interested in the unusual, the exotic, the off-the-wall? Dump the mundane stuff - we all have a copy of a good run-of-the-mill cookbook. You're wasting blog space, in my opinion.
#1 toad on 2013-01-07 16:46 (Reply)
It's a sentimental journey.
#1.1 Bird Dog on 2013-01-07 17:24 (Reply)
you had commercially canned soup? we weren't so lucky. we had to grow our own cans and hope the lid blight didn't strike.
#1.1.1 wirraway on 2013-01-07 19:51 (Reply)
wasting blog space? then just use your scroll wheel on the mouse.

I'm rather enjoying these posts - yes, it is a trip down memory lane for me too.
#1.2 Charles on 2013-01-07 18:40 (Reply)
Hey toad, nobody is forcing you to be here. Go start your own exotic blog if you don't like it.
#1.3 D on 2013-01-08 07:35 (Reply)
At least the food posts don't attract the Z-Bot.

I enjoy them.
#1.4 foxmarks on 2024-01-14 13:19 (Reply)
I think its cool. after a hard day of thrashing demoncraptics and foreclosing on orphanages, I like coming home to mom-style cooking.
#2 wirraway on 2013-01-07 17:09 (Reply)
While I applaud the eclectic nature of Maggie's farm, a recipe featuring canned soup from the bygone era of ghastly "Charity League" paper cook books earns a thumbs down. I found an incredible Turkey Tetrazzine recipe some time ago that replaces the cream of mushroom with chicken broth - an easy tie in on a classic recipe with an healthier improvement!
#3 NWFloridarules on 2013-01-07 18:47 (Reply)
After I made an undistinguished turkey tetrazzine one year, my husband took pity on me and made a real one, with a real sauce. I don't know the right names for all the roux-based sauces, but this one was a light roux to which we added equal parts cream, (homemade) chicken stock, and white wine. Sautee up the usual celery-onion-carrot mixture, add garlic, thyme, and sage, add diced turkey, add the sauce, stir in some bread crumbs and pre-cooked noodles, arrange in a casserole, top with more bread crumbs -- et voila. It's the difference between something edible and something that will knock your socks off.

The whole thing didn't take more than 45 minutes to assemble (another 45 or so to bake), though it's true there's a big improvement in flavor if you start with stock you've made previously instead of the icky stuff that comes in cans. It's easy to make up stock in big batches and freeze it in conveniently sized chunks. The quality of the wine matters, too, but anything dry will do nicely. We used the tag end of a bottle of champagne that had sat out overnight after New Year's Eve.
#3.1 Texan99 (Link) on 2013-01-08 10:45 (Reply)
PS, Oh, yeah, and grated parmesan mixed in with the bread crumbs in the body and on top.
#3.1.1 Texan99 (Link) on 2013-01-08 10:47 (Reply)
I think that's a veloute sauce. It's what I used in my tetrazzini recipe, too.
#3.1.2 T Migratorious on 2024-01-14 08:02 (Reply)
Add a little tarragon or, if you can't find that (our store never carries it), Pernod or other anise-based liqueur will do. Just a small amount to taste.

My husband's turkey tetrazzini is to die for. No canned soup, just a traditional roux and good veg. It helps if the leftover turkey was brined before roasting.
#3.1.3 Texan99 on 2024-01-14 10:04 (Reply)
But if served in a HS cafeteria it is called Turkey Tetrachloride.
#4 Paulk on 2013-01-07 19:51 (Reply)
ROTFL!

Though in one sense this is a mother-in-law joke. From what I have seen, school cafeteria food is better than what it used to be- at least better than what I ate as a student.
#4.1 Gringo on 2013-01-07 21:47 (Reply)
I used to make this a lot when I was in high school. (I've always loved to cook and my mom was glad to let me pinch hit as often as I wanted to.) Anyway, among my crowd of admittedly nerdy friends, we always called it chicken tetrachloride and thought it was hilarious.
#4.2 T Migratorious on 2024-01-14 08:00 (Reply)
My mom made turkey curry, extremely spicy, with the leftovers from Thanksgiving and Xmas, which was the only time we ever ate the boring bird. THe curry was the best form: She wd fry an onion, then add garlic and fresh ginger chopped, then apple slices, celery, sweet peppers, eggplant diced, some very hot pepper like jalapeno or whatever else was around, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, standard curry powder (whatever was around), and add the diced turkey pieces, then pour in either water and add two TBS peanut butter and stir OR 1 can of coconut milk. Add raisins. Simmer. At the last minute, stir in fresh cilantro, a little bit of salt, and some red pepper if it wasn't hot enough (nowadays you can just burn everyone's mouth by putting in commercial Vindaloo curry paste with coconut milk, easy, easy, easy).

Served over rice (in the days before rice steamers at home, this was rarely as good as it is now) with some steamed green beans with coriander chutney, and dishes of mango chutney and plain yogurt on the side.

This was our comfort food on a horrible grey English evening. Warmed you right up. And actually really easy to make. Just toss in spices with abandon, and whatever veggies you had around that the family would tolerate. It's one drawback was that the turmeric stained messy kids' clothes something awful...But the combination of sweet and spicy--YUM!
#5 retriever on 2013-01-08 00:47 (Reply)
Tetrazzini is good. It's comforting, economical, versatile and named after an opera singer.
#6 D on 2013-01-08 07:36 (Reply)
Turkey and Christmas leftovers make the best dishes. My DH makes a giant pan of turkey enchiladas, which take almost all afternoon between the sauce, the filling and the assembling. We eat like kings for the next week or two as we work through the lot.

I used the leftover roasted crispy duck from Christmas to put together a giant batch of cassoulet. I sat for days poring over all of my cookbooks looking for a new version. I ended up taking an amalgam of things from Julia Child and Gerald Hirigoyen, a San Francisco-based chef. He's from the Basque region of France and has an interesting twist on classic French bistro dishes. It's been resting in the fridge since Saturday so I think it might be time to give it a go tonight.
#7 KellyM on 2013-01-08 11:35 (Reply)
BD, thanks for bringing these old entries back. My mother used to make this all the time. Much enjoyed. Thanks!
#8 Grant1863 on 2024-01-13 23:14 (Reply)
Tinned soups are not to be disparaged; I use them a fair bit but always gussy them up somewhat.
For our tetrazini, I use noodles or other pasta rather than spaghetti. While the pasta is cooking, i sauté onions and garlic in butter, then add a lot of diced peppers of various colours and some real mushrooms. Then I add a tin of Golden Mushroom soup as the sauce. Seasonings? salt and pepper, possibly some Italian herbs, and perhaps a dash or two of Worchestershire sauce.
Meantime, I've turned the cooked pasta into a casserole dish, and have placed a fair bit of cut-up turkey (this is a "last of the bird" dish) atop same. Then I pour on the sauce and veggies, grind a batch of parmisan cheeze over the top, and bake it until cheese is melted and everything is bubbling.
#9 Frances on 2024-01-14 01:01 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.