Maggie's Farm

One of the Bird Dog daughters, and my lad, know that it is easy to please Dad with a selection of stinky, strong, expensive imported cheeses from The Grand Central Market in NY. At Sunday's Mom's Day cookout we had a killer cheese platter. Even a goat brie, which was a first for me.

All present were lovers of rare and strong cheeses. Since I have heard Steve Jenkins interviewed on the radio a few times recently, I began to pontificate about what I had learned from him. (He is the cheese-buyer for Fairway, the world's most prominent cheese pro, and author of the Cheese Primer.)

Jenkins preaches serving cheese with fruit, nuts, or honey - never without. To demonstrate his correctness on the topic, I pulled some hot pepper jelly (like this) and some fig preserves out of our dying fridge. Fresh fruit is good too, but I am partial to the preserves. I think everybody present was converted.

Our error was in offering the cheese board before the steaks, instead of after. The savoury course. Well, nobody's perfect.

Here are some of Fairway's cheese-platter suggestions.

May Wine has been a tradition in the Bird Dog family. My Dad has maintained a good patch of Sweet Woodruff under a Cherry Tree for just that purpose.

He'd put a bunch of leaves in some chilled Riesling for a few hours, then mix with some Champagne and serve with a bowl of strawberries.

Adding Champagne technically makes it a May Wine Punch. It's fine plain, too.

It's not as good as a Mint Julip, but it's nice.

A friend told me the other night that he was served hot pepper mashed potatoes at the home of a friend in Delhi. I did not know they made mashed potatoes in India. He said it was so hot he was in agony.

Well, I like hot but I respect the sanctity of ordinary mashed taters. Nonetheless, I have to try it.

Here's one recipe (photo from the recipe, but ignore the steak. I think hot pepper taters would go well with anything grilled). Here's another.

We like to eat lots of those skinny French beans. We steam them in Costco-style bulk, and they last a week.

Mrs. BD likes to dress them with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon (which is the Italian way with vegetables), but I prefer olive oil and wine vinegar. And salt of course.

Add a little crumbled goat cheese or Feta cheese, some bacon, maybe a chopped tomato, and you can make a fine lunch out of them.

It's been many years since we have bought either fresh or dried Thyme at the store. It's the easiest herb to grow in full sun and dry, lousy soil, and it comes back after hard freezes and cold winters. An advantage is that the leaves stay on the plant all winter, so you can just go out and scratch the snow off and harvest the sprigs you need. (I just throw the sprigs in with the leaves on, so my cooking often ends up with denuded Thyme sprigs in it.)  Cooking with Thyme.

Another advantage is simply the smell it creates in a garden on a hot summer day. 4 or 5 small plants in the Spring will spread all over, only needing a little watering the first year to get started.

Thyme is the ultimate "savoury" flavor, but it's mild enough to make it difficult to over-use. I think it's basic to most stews and soups, Italian or otherwise. My chef friend uses it in muffins and biscuits, and on vegetables. She uses chopped Thyme blossoms on fruit cocktail. It has to be part of any bouquet garni.

Thyme comes in many varieties, some man-made and some wild. Most is Thymus vulgaris - common Thyme, with variants thereof. I assume it has Mediterranean origins. In the Massachusetts Berkshires, we have acres of Creeping Thyme as weeds in the less-fertile meadows, and my Mom always planted it between flagstones. Smells good in the summer when stepping on it, but watch out for the bees.

As a lady with refined sensibilities, Mom was always attentive to the small, charming details of life. There were always small vases of wildflowers around.

Made another Ribollita for Dad tonight (photo). Will deliver tomorrow - these things are always much tastier a day later. My ol' Yankee Dad loves Italian peasant comfort food.

I used a different recipe this time for the Ribollita. These greens are half Kale and half chopped cabbage, plus the whites of two leeks. I pureed about 1/3 of the Canellini beans, and had to use plenty of chicken stock to keep it from being too thick. Water would be purist but I like flavor, and I throw all chicken bones in the freezer for whenever I need to make chicken stock. Or I make it and freeze it.

There's over 1/2 cup of olive oil in there, and pretty much all the rest of the (frozen) Thyme I could find in the icy garden. Plenty of garlic, onion, celery, carrot, of course. Large can of crushed tomatoes - maybe a little too much.

Cheap and delicious, and fun to make. It is difficult to over-use thyme in soups and stews. That's where the "savoury" comes from.

Serve on top of small 1"-cube chunks of preferably-stale Italian or French bread in a soup bowl. A glass of Chianti Classico Riserva. Then take a nap.

When I cook this, I do it in my largest stovepot, 10 or 15-quart. Usually 2 hunks of corned beef and 2 cabbages, plus the rest. I've never included rutabaga. Parsnips are always a good idea but you have to remember that they cook fast. Parsnips are delicious with their menthol tang.

New England Boiled Dinner

I like to overcook the meat a bit until fork-tender. Serve with abundant Dijon mustard and Horseradish mustard on the side. And beer.Mrs. BD got us some Wasabi Mustard this year.

But not so much beer than you cannot go out and plant your peas. It's the day to plant peas in Yankeeland, regardless of the weather. Snow Peas.

This is an annual re-post. We'll post more game recipes over the next few weeks to help our hunters with their bursting freezers -

With hunting season winding, it's time to get cooking what we have in the freezer. It all begins with the sauce:

Uncle Bill's Jus de Gibier (mixed game) sauce, aka Brown Game Stock, aka Clean out the Freezer Sauce

Technically, it's a jus, not a sauce. Add a little roux and it will become a sauce.

This will be the tastiest sauce base you have ever had in your life, for chicken, game birds, turkey, venison, pork, veal, pasta, ravioli, etc. It's an ideal base for pheasant, chicken, venison or goose bourguignon. It has an earthy richness to it which is remarkable. We like to make a woodcock ravioli with black truffle, and this sauce is essential for that.

Gibier refers to mixed game, but we do it with mixed meat too, but not beef, which would overpower the subtler flavors. It is the best use of freezer-burned game and other stuff in the freezer. It's fun to make (but it takes a while), and you can clean out the freezer and the fridge at the same time. I freeze the used carcasses of Thanksgiving turkey, ducks, goose, random deer bones, etc. to use when I make this, once or twice a year, along with freezer-burned chicken, pheasant, etc. You could do this with entirely store-bought stuff if you lack a hunter in the family. The more stuff, the better.

You need a 10-12 (or larger) quart pot to make this, if you have a lot of stuff to use, but it freezes fine when made. It's good for a few months, at least.

Bake in oven until browned (not necessarily cooked-though) your saved carcasses and freezer-burned game meat and meat, especially pork and pork bones are good, and veal bones, (even if they have already been cooked). Yes, you bake the bones too. Do not burn them in the oven. I tend to use freezer-burned venison, pork chops, all my game bird carcasses, venison bones (cracked with a mallet), a bunch of veal bones and veal scraps if I can get them nowadays (it doesn't hurt to hit up the butcher for some stuff for this), turkey carcass, woodcock carcasses, and a pile of chicken wings. Chop this stuff roughly with a cleaver into 3-6" chunks and toss in the pot. Try to crack the bones.

What are you cooking today?

I'm doing the cooking today and not doing Mommys of America cheap 'n easy - I am making Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon for the kids. I browned the meat, carrots and pearl onions (doubled the amount of onions because I love them) and prepped the lardons last night. Also threw in some porcinis because I hate a meat stew without them, and a couple of dashes of ground clove. I do it the French way - large chunks of meat (2 1/2" or 3" x 3" - they shrink) and large chunks of carrot. It's meant to be about the stewed meat. I used a Chianti Classico because I had a glass last night and an open bottle, but should have used a Cab I think. Why not a Burgundy, as the name says? I don't know. I used a 3-pound chuck roast instead of venison, and cut it into large hunks. I don't know why I used the pearl onions because big old onions work just as well, or better.

Then it all goes into the big new crock pot for 7 or 8 hours, adding the pearl onions near the end. Since we old folks are going out to dinner tonight with friends, I hope the kids appreciate my efforts and will leave us some leftovers. I'll have egg noodles for it. They are the best thing for beef stews.

The only real hassle with Julia's recipe is having to drain the stew and reduce the sauce instead of just ladling it out of the pot. Worth the trouble, though.

But this is a post on lardons. Or was. While catching up on the subject of lardons, I noticed this country-style French bread: Fougasse de Foix. Baked into it is Gruyere cheese, creme fraiche, and lardons. How good does that sound?

This sentimental series could keep going on, but this is enough for now. I hope Moms are still cooking these simple, filling things for their kids, because kids (and Dads) appreciate them and the homey, loving, and pedestrian nature of the food.

Man cannot live on take-out alone. Even if Mom has no talent in the kitchen, hot and home-made (even with the help of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup) means a lot, says a lot.

Here's Moussaka. Very quick and easy to make. I've had it with ground beef, lamb, venison, even African antelope. All plenty good enough.

That's what Maggie's Mom's Home Cookin' is all about - good enough, loving enough, and cheap enough for a hungry, growing family.

(I deliberately left out many good Mom items which take more time to prepare - like Lasagna - or cost more - like ribeye steaks. And a good roast chicken can be got at Costco for $3.99. I left out Stuffed Cabbage and Shrimp and Grits, but I'll add them to the summary post.)  

It's not an Italian dish (it's an invention of Italian-Americans, poor immigrants from southern Italy who found they could afford meat in America), and it gives adults heartburn, but American kids seem to love it and it's easy to make.

I loved it as a kid, but now I feel it's an unpleasant meal. At least, we have evolved beyond Chef Boyardee. Here's Easiest Spaghetti and Meatballs.

One genuine Italian touch: Crazy Martha says to throw the drained pasta into the meat and sauce in the saucepan. That's the right way to do it. Pasta in the sauce, not the sauce on top of the pasta.

Black Bean Soup. Good stuff. I like it with a big spoonful of mashed potatoes in the middle of the bowl. Don't be afraid to use instant mashed taters for it: it's cheap and easy, consistent with our theme.

Red Beans and Rice. It doesn't really need the ham hocks as long as you use some bacon. I lived on this when I was in college. I miss it. Need to make some.

Each of these dishes is not harmed by some hot sauce or hot pepper flakes.

Being Yankees, we are attached to exotic American Indian foods like winter squash, cranberries, corn meal, baked beans (and hot Thai curries).

A friend asked me about squash pie. It's really the same thing as pumpkin pie, but made with winter squash (of which the pumpkin is just one type).

The winter squashes were discovered and genetically-engineered by clever American Indians - as was corn (maize), the potato, and the tomato. Modern Western cuisine owes a lot to the Indian gourmets.

This recipe for Butternut Squash Pie works for any type of winter squash including pumpkin. Squash pies (as in photo) have a more subtle flavor than pumpkin.

For a wonderful but not New Englandy dish, Butternut Squash and Pasta With Sage.

Pumpkin or winter squash ravioli is a fine dish too. We have become convinced, by a Cordon Bleu chef friend, that using supermarket wontons is perfectly fine for making ravioli. We will never bother to make our own homemade ravioli pasta again, because it's too darn much work and it's the inside that counts. (My Woodcock ravioli recipe will be posted one of these days).

I am fond of baked Acorn Squash with some butter and Maple syrup inside, but you can use any winter squash. Simple, and tasty:

It's the best use of an inexpensive chuck roast or round. Pot Roast can be terrible dry mystery meat, or it can be OK. Pot Roast never looks very appealing, and should taste better than the pile of grey, well-overcooked meat looks.

Either way, it gets the family well-fed and meated-up. Kids need meat to grow their brains. I like this recipe because it has lots of my favorite root vegetables in it, parsnips, turnips.

Pot Roast is not a roast, it's braised. I call it Braised Beef and it has to be cooked until fork-tender.

Here's a basic one: Beef Pot Roast Recipe

Here's Alton Brown's version which we have made and is uniquely tangy.

A (tomato-free) Italian version: Stracotto

Seems like a good thing for crock pot cooking.

It's the dumplings that make it worth eating. Good stuff. Otherwise, it's sort of like Chicken Soup or Chicken Stew, which are good if you have the flu but, otherwise, not too exciting.

The Pioneer Woman walks you through Chicken 'n Dumplings.

My Mom used Bisquick for the dumplings. I do, too.

When young, most Americans never saw any tuna that did not come out of a can. Tuna Noodle was indeed a classic and, for Fridays, a Catholic standby. Cream of mushroom soup in it, of course: Tuna Noodle Casserole.

I would not want to eat it today unless I were starving. Was not even Catholic, just had enough of it.

Shucks, I almost forgot the notorious Tuna Surprise, aka Tuna Disappointment.

Italians do love their Mediterranean Tuna, and you can Google plenty of tasty Tuna sauce pasta recipes. Here's one: Italian Tuna and Pasta

You get a mess of big old quahogs or sea clams (steam open and then chop them up), or some chunks of fresh Codfish, Haddock, or Monkfish - or just a bag of frozen corn.

The base of your Yankee chowder is the same, whether Clam, Cod, or Corn. See Grandma's Corn Chowder for the base (substitute other ingredients for the corn).

You can add a little thickener if you want, corn starch or whatever. Not necessary, though.

My Mom would serve chowda with Bisquick biscuits. Good memories: Mom cooking up a chewy, clam-packed chowder with the basket of quahogs we kids had harvested from the low-tide mud off Great Island in Wellfleet.

Fellow parents: Our job is to build sustaining memories and traditions as best we can, isn't it?

They called it "Beef Stew" because I don't think they put any wine in it. Mom served it on rice or on slices of white bread.

Good for the cheapest cut of beef you can find because it will tenderize any cut, and the poorest cuts have the most flavor. 

It probably tasted similar to that Dinty Moore dog-food-tasting canned thing, because it had no bacon, no garlic, no wine, etc. Tasted good at the time, though.

A more up-to-date recipe for a crock pot is not too bad: Crock Pot Beef Stew With Red Wine. Gets closer to a real Boeuf Bourguignon.

Here's the real thing. I like it on noodles.

The Brits and Aussies call it "Cottage Pie."

Why "Shepherd's"? Because it is traditionally made with ground lamb or mutton. That's how Alton Brown makes it.

Americans use ground beef, usually. Ground mutton is not a typical supermarket item. Go ahead and use instant mashed potato if you must - the recipe don't care.

I am hoping some Mom will try each of the recipes in this series, and report back on family response.

The Mommys of America commonly made winter casseroles using cans of Campbell's soups. Mushroom soup, especially. We're getting into Hotdish territory here.

In the good old days, eating in restaurants was not routine as it is now, but instead was a special treat for birthdays and anniversaries. Take-out Chinese, much less Thai or sushi, did not exist. Moms used to have food budgets, but no more because good food has, blessedly, become such a small component of an American family budget.

I sure hope moms still make stuff like this: Easy Creamy Chicken Casserole because it is good, and heart-warming. Ritz cracker topping. Wow. Put it on white rice.

Then home-made chocolate pudding for dessert with Jiffy Whip or Cool Whip on top. Perfection. Thanks, Moms of America!

A family friend just returned from a year's posting overseas, and despite massive jet-lag got himself over to the Maggie's HQ to cook up a storm last night.

After a year of southeastern Asian food, he wanted to cook a rustic Ragu. Either rabbit or duck are fine, but he used duck because rabbit was sold out at the market. Lots of Italians around here in Yankeeland. Use Porcini for the mushrooms, or at least the dried mushroom mixes with porcini in them.

There are excellent versions of this without tomato, too. "Italian" does not = tomato sauce. The Italians were cooking tasty dishes for thousands of years before tomato seeds were brought over from Mexico.

(Another great Italian classic is Rabbit Stew - like Veal Stew - which is usually not served with a carb or, if it is, with rice or risotto.)

For a Ragu - or for almost any meat concoction like Beef Bourguignon or Beef (or venison) Stroganoff - the only pasta I like to serve is pappardelle, which is a broad, egg noodle. It's also the best pasta for Pasta al Funghi with Porcinis. Trust me. How much do we love Porcinis? Is there any other mushroom really worth eating?

 A Chianti Classico or Chianti Riserva works well with it, too.

I had this at a very good Italian restaurant the other day. They served it on top of some thin potato slices sauteed in olive oil.  A couple of slices of fried polenta on the side would be an alternative. Or gnocchi. Pasta, I think, a poor fourth choice but readers know that, with a few wonderful exceptions, I think of anything with pasta as being a low form of Italian cooking. Call me a snob, but I think I've had more great, pasta-free Italian food in Italy and Sicily than the average American bear.

In my view, for this sort of recipe, stew the chunks of meat until you can cut them with a fork.

Italian Braised Beef with Red Wine Sauce.

Here's another version: Stracotto (Pot Roast) with Porcini Mushrooms