Author: Dave the Hubby

Margie’s Southwest Tomato Soup

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Many soups can be vegetarian or not if you just adjust one or two ingredients.  In this soup you may use chicken broth or V8 in place of vegetable broth.  Add chicken, beef, or shrimp.

Ingredients:

  • 1 small onion — diced
  • 1 Tab olive oil
  • 2  28 oz. cans tomatoes, crushed or 4 – 5 lbs fresh tomatoes
  • 1 qt  vegetable broth
  • 1 Tab cumin
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 2 tsp garlic salt
  • ¼  tsp pepper
  • 1 pinch sugar
  • 15 oz. can corn
  • 15 oz. can 1 black beans
  • 7 oz.  fresh salsa

Directions:

  1. Saute onion in oil until soft.
  2. Add tomatoes, broth, and spice.
  3. Simmer soup 15-30 minutes.
  4. Adjust spice as needed.
  5. Before serving, add beans and corn and return to simmer.
  6. Add fresh salsa and heat through.
  7. Serve with cheese and sour cream.

Serves:  8

Source:  Margie Kleerup

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Orange Ginger Butter

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Margie made these last Thanksgiving.  I’m not a yam/sweet potato kind of guy, but those who like this sort of thing will definitely find it the sort of thing they like!

Ingredients:

3 large red skin “sweet potatoes” (yams)
2 tbsp. Olive Oil
Kosher Salt

½ c Butter
¼ c Orange Juice
¼ c Marmalade
2 tbsp. Candied Ginger – diced

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375F
  2. Slice yams into 1 inch cubes. Place in shallow roasting pan and toss with Olive Oil. Sprinkle with salt. Roast until brown and tender (~20-30 minutes).
  3. While the yams roast, cook butter, orange juice, marmalade, and ginger in microwave for 30-60 seconds, or until melted and bubbly.
  4. Place cooked yams in medium casserole dish and drizzle with butter mixture. Serve immediately or cover dish and keep warm in oven.

Creamy Macaroni and Cheese

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Anything, anything to stay away from the Kraft Cheesy Mac!

As Adam, the source, notes, “The idea here is that rather than making a fussy white sauce, something I never seemed to get the hang of, you make a custard for the cheese.  It’s fantastic and easy — not much harder than the box, and so much better.”

Ingredients:

½ lb. Macaroni
4 tbsp Butter

2 lg Eggs
12 oz. Evaporated Milk
¼ tsp Hot Pepper Sauce
1 tsp Mustard

3 cups Grated Cheese

Pepper
Salt

Instructions:

  1. Boil up the Maraconi in salted water, definitely al dente.
  2. Drain Macaroni, transfer to a large fryer, dutch oven, or large pan (if the original isn’t large enough).  Should be something with a thick bottom such that heat is distributed evenly.
  3. Add Butter; leave it to melt in the hot macaroni.
  4. Mix Eggs, 1 cup (8 oz) Evaporated Milk, Pepper Sauce, Mustard, Salt & Pepper (to taste) in a small boul.
  5. Put Macaroni (and Butter) on medium heat.
  6. Pour the Egg mix over the Macaroni along with 2 cups of the Cheese.  Stir constantly until the cheese starts to melt.
  7. Gradually add in the rest of the Cheese and Evaporated Milk, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes more.  The whole mix will look overly liquid to begin with, but as the cheese melts and the egg cooks, it will thicken.

Serves:  4
Prep Time: 20 minutes

Ingredient notes:

  1. The original recipe calls for half  Cheddar, half Monterey Jack.  Since we always have some Mexican Blend shredded in bags in the house, we use that.
  2. You could go for more Macaroni; as is, the recipe has a high sauce-to-mac ratio.
  3. The original recipe calls fo 2 tsp Mustard.  Consensus in our household is that’s too much.

Serving notes:

  1. If you want to be fancy, you can take the individual servings, put them in a small ceramic dish, sprinkle bread crumbs or crumpled croutons, and put them under the broiler for a short bit.
  2. The original writer suggests the recipe is not as good the second day, but it can be reheated on the range, slowly, with a little extra milk.

Source:  Adam Blust at “Words Mean Things,” who originally got it from Pam Anderson’s The Perfect Recipe.

Chicken Biryani

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Dave found this recipe long ago, and Margie keeps asking him to make it again. It’s a bit labor-intensive, but the results are well worth it. Biryani is a Pakistani/Indian cooking style, and you can find a lot of variations on this recipe out on the web. Dave writes:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp Oil (I use olive oil) [2]
1 mdm Onion, sliced
3 lg Potatoes, chunked [1]

1/4 tsp Cumin Seed
3 Black Peppercorns
3 sticks cinnamon

1 clove Garlic, minced
3/4 tsp Coriander, ground
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper, ground
1/8 tsp Turmeric, ground
1/4 tsp Ginger, ground
1 dash Salt, to taste

1 whole Tomato, chopped
1 tbsp Tomato Paste

6 pieces Chicken [3]
1 cup Water

Instructions:

  1. Heat oil [2] in a Dutch oven or large pot or large skillet [5] over medium heat.
  2. Saute onion clices in oil until golden; remove and set aside.
  3. Brown potatoes in oil (get those surfaces nice and crispy); remove and set aside.
  4. Add cumin seeds, peppercorns, cinnamon to pot; fry for about 30 seconds.
  5. Add garlic, coriander, cayenne, turmeric, ginger, and salt to taste; fry another 30 seconds.
  6. Add tomato, tomato paste; cook 1 minute.
  7. Add potatoes, chicken, water. Cover and simmer until tender. [4]
  8. Add onion slices and simmer a few seconds.

Notes:

[1] The original recipe calls for “quartered,” which makes for very large potatoes. I usually use smaller pieces, but if you make them too small, the simmering process will basically make them part of the sauce, esp. if you don’t brown the sides enough, rather than leaving them as chunks of potato. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there’s probably a happy medium.

[2] The original recipe calls for 2 tbsp of oil, but, honestly, you will probably need an extra glug or two of oil after the onions and potatoes.

[3] It’s not always easy, in this packaged age, to find “chicken parts.” If you interpret this as a drumstick or a wing, that’s going to be different from a drumstick-thigh combo, or a boneless breast. Choose the size/qty of chicken you want as a serving and use that. The basic recipe will work okay with any of the above. You might also, with boneless breasts, chunk the chicken up into bite-sized chunks; that would fit with the more traditional Indian/Pakistani serving.

[4] If you end up with large chicken pieces (thinking here of boneless/skinless breasts with leg meat), it will look like you have much more chicken than you can handle. The fact is, though, by the time you’re done simmering enough to cook the chicken (180 degrees!), even large pieces like that will have simmered down into the sauce (which will have increased due to the water and fat from the chicken).

[5] I usually make double-recipes, so my 16 quart pot works great for this, eventually. It’s a bit more difficult in the onion and potato browning stages, though.

Serving suggestions:

Serve over hot rice (Basmati rice would be most traditional). Flat noodles also work (though since “biryani” means “rice,” that probably breaks a rule somewhere).

Source:

Derived from LA Times, 6 June 1985 (attrib. to Barbara Skaggs, Woodland Hillls, Calif.).

Moving to WordPress

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Dave the Hubby here. I’m in the process of moving “Margie’s Kitchen” over to WordPress from Movable Type. So if you are following along the RSS feed for the site, or have links to posts here, those are likely to be broken after I do so. Visit https://hill-kleerup.org/blog/margie to pick things back up and enjoy a better, brighter, more stable Margie’s Kitchen!

Death Chili

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Dave likes making chili, and he likes it spicy — and he likes bacon. So when he saw this recipe on line, it was a natural for him to try it out. The below is a two-pass modification of the original: stuff he did before making it at and stuff he wishes he’d done differently after that first time. 

This is a large recipe (doubled from the original). How many it cooks for depends on how much people eat, but this filled up a very large pot on the stove. 

The name, by the way, doesn’t have to do with the heat, but with the bacon. 

Ingredients 

2 lbs. bacon

1 lb. chuck roast, cubed
4 lbs. chuck, ground
12 tbsp garlic ( = 1.5 x 4oz. tube crushed garlic)

4 large onions

8 tbsp ground cumin
8 tbsp black pepper
2 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp seasoning salt
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

1 pint beef stock
2 x 32oz cans of chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp maza / corn flour for thickener

2 x 8oz cans chopped green chilis
3 fresh Serrano peppers
4 tbsp chili pepper

Instructions 

  1. Fry bacon to a crisp. Pour off fat in the skillet.
  2. Brown meat and garlic, Set aside.
  3. Brown onions.
  4. Combine everything and simmer for a few hours.
  5. Let sit in fridge overnight

Note that it really is much better when it sits in the fridge overnight.

Serves: Lots. Like, dozens. Lots of left-overs. 

Source: Original is here, by “timmah.” This recipe (doubled) has been modified to use a bit less cinnamon, half-again the garlic, no tobacco, and half the Serrano peppers. What is not modified is the bacon. “The secret is the bacon,” Timmah says. “Bacon makes everything better.”

 

Jamaican Breeze

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This was Dave’s drink of choice at Margie Gras – Labor Day 2008. Cool and crisp, but unlike most drinks of this sort the ginger keeps it from being cloyingly sweet. 

2 oz. white rum
2 slices fresh ginger
3 oz. cranberry juice
3 oz. pineapple juice

Shaker, muddler, ice, highball glass

  1. Pound/muddle the ginger and run together in the bottom of a shaker.
  2. Add ice and the remaining ingredients.
  3. Shake and strain into a highball filled with ice.

You can, of couse, do the muddling at the bottom of the glass, add ice, and pour the rest of the juice in. You’ll end up with bits of ginger in the drink, but that’s not that bad of a thing.

Source: Ben Reed, Cool Cocktails.

Margie’s Mojo Mojito

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Dave says: We had some limes, and mojitos sounded fun. One problem: what is, in fact, the definition of a mojito? Generally speaking it’s a combo of rum, lime, soda water, sugar, and mint — but a Googling of the term turns up an amazing variety of blends and proportions thereof, including variations on the sugar (simple syrup? confectioner’s sugar? cane sugar syrup?) and what to do about the lime juice (everything from fresh-squeezed to Rose’s Lime Juice to lemons and lemon-lime soda). 

Here’s what we came up with that seemed to be a good combo. Noted for future reference: 

10-12 mint leaves (maybe fewer)
1 lime’s juice (1 oz.)
2 tbsp. simple syrup* (about the max sweet you want; you can use a bit less)

ice
2 oz. white rum
3-4 oz. club soda

  1. Put mint leaves, lime juice, simple syrup in a pint glass (highball). 
  2. Muddle the leaves (with a muddler, or else a spoon) until the are bruised and releasing mint flavor, but not shredded.
  3. Fill glass with ice.
  4. Pour in rum, club soda.
  5. Mix to get mint to the top of the glass, too.

Serve with a slice of lime or some sprigs or mint, if you want to get fancy.

*Simple syrup can be made easily (see any number of recipes online), or actually purchased by the bottle as a bar supply. If you make lots of mojitos, you can actually infuse some mint leaves into a special supply of simple syrup to simplify the first few steps.

Chicken/Turkey Tetrazzini

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The original dish is named after the Italian opera star Luisa Tetrazzini. It is widely believed to have been invented circa 1908–1910 by Ernest Arbogast, the chef at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where Tetrazzini made her American debut at the Tivoli as Gilda in Rigoletto on January 11, 1905.

A perennial comfort food. And, by its nature, it begs for tinkering to the ingredients on hand, including seasonings and (even more often than chicken) a post-holiday turkey carcass.

Ingredients:

  • 1½ Chickens (fryers)
  • Water (to cover in the pot)
  • 1 tsp. Onion Salt
  • ½ tsp. Celery Salt
    ——
  • ½ lb. Vermicelli (or similar spaghetti-like pasta)
  • Salt
    ——
  • 6 tbsp. Butter
  • ¾ lb. Mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 tbsp. Lemon Juice
    ——
  • 2 tbsp. Flour
  • ½ tsp. Paprika
  • ½ tsp. Pepper
  • ¼ tsp. Nutmeg
  • 1 c. Milk
    ——
  • 1/3 c. Parmesan Cheese

Instructions:

Chicken:  These steps may already have been done (e.g., having a Thanksgiving turkey already broken down and broth made from the scraps and bones; see Notes below for more on this).

  1. Place chicken, salts, water in large pan. Simmer covered 30 min, until tender.
  2. Remove chicken, save broth.
  3. Cool chicken, remove meat from bones, refrigerate.

Pasta:  Reserve 2½ cups of broth from the previous step if that’s when you made the broth.

  1. Add water to remaining broth to fill the pan (if the both had previously been made, add a cup of the broth to the pot for making the pasta).
  2. Add 2 tbsp. salt.
  3. Bring to boil, add pasta. Don’t fully cook; leave it a bit al dente (the pasta will absorb the sauce in the oven).
  4. Drain, return to pan or a large bowl.

Mushrooms:

  1. In frying pan, heat 3 tbsp. butter.
  2. Add mushrooms, sprinkle with lemon juice, ½ tbsp. salt.
  3. Sauté until soft but not brown.
  4. Put with pasta.

Sauce:

  1. Melt 3 tbsp. butter in pan.
  2. Stir in flour, paprika, 1½ tsp. salt, pepper, nutmeg. Cook 5 minutes.
  3. Slowly stir in reserved broth. Cook until it boils (it will be thin).
  4. Add milk.

Put it all together:

  1. Mix the pasta, meat, and mushrooms into a large bowl (or a pot you already used).
  2. Put the mix into a 9×13 buttered/sprayed baking dish.
  3. Pour the sauce over the the dish, wetting everything. The sauce will fill about half or more of the pan. (The pasta’s going to such that up.)
  4. Mix everything together in a large bowl. Place in a 9×13 baking dish. Sprinkle generously with parmesan cheese.
  5. Bake covered at 400F for 20 minutes.
  6. Uncover, add more cheese, before baking another 10 minutes.

Serves: 8-10 if half are ladies. On the other hand, a family of four can polish it off without much trouble.

Prep time: 1:30

Notes:

  • This will keep two days refrigerated. Oven heat from the fridge 45 minutes to an hour, until bubbly. Freezes well. As with most casseroles, many folks consider “aging” in the fridge or freezer an improvement over “fresh.”
  • If you are dealing with an existing carcass (chicken or turkey), pick the (presumably cooked) carcass from the bones. Use the (meaty) bones in water with with some celery, onions, maybe garlic salt and pepper, to simmer as described to make the broth. The amount of meat you pick off first will determine proportions on the recipe. You can also substitute chicken tenders or boneless breasts.
  • Yes, it’s spelled “Tetrazzini,” not “Tetrazini.”

Source: Ann Kleerup Coombs, as tweaked on more than one occasion by Margie.

Margie’s Corn Chowder

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This one’s pretty much Margie’s recipe. It’s actually scaled down from a large group recipe (great for luncheons), and makes the house smell great. Entered by Dave the Husband as a public service. 

Ingredients: 

4 oz. Bacon (diced)
½ Onion (diced)
¾ tsp. Thyme
¾ tsp. Sea Salt

2 tbsp. Flour
1 pint Chicken Broth

1-1/8 lbs. Canned Corn
½ large Idaho Potato

½ c.Heavy Cream

Instructions:

  1. Brown bacon until almost crisp. 
  2. Add onions and sauté until tender.
  3. Stir in seasoning until fragrant.
  4. Add flour and cook slightly.
  5. Slowly add half of broth while stirring. Cook until thickened.
  6. Add remaining broth and simmer 20 minutes.
  7. Microwave potato. When cool enough again to handle, peel and dice.
  8. Add corn and potatoes to soup and heat through.
  9. Remove from heat and stir in cream.

Serves 16.

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