Monday, May 27, 2013

New...Old Recipes Coming Soon!

Now Playing -  The Bomb by Bitter:Sweet
 
Life -  
 About a month ago, I found a few old cookbooks at Goodwill to go with my beloved Mexican cookbook. I have become a total sucker for cookbooks from the fifties and sixties. Not just their recipes but the way they did things and the little comments and intros are fantastic.But above all else, the recipes themselves take center stage. Food back then was made from scratch. None of these recipes in my other books where the bulk of the soup or the sauce is a can of super-salty, over processed Campbell's Soup. The cookbooks with a focus on crockpot cooking have been especially notorious for that and as we get healthier, I really want to get away from it in my cooking.

Of course, on the flip side is the prevalence of daring, odd or hard to find ingredients that were somewhat commonplace back then. Some I'll never find out here, some I could find, but would end up paying too much, and some of them, like Cracked Pig's Feet.... well.... I'll never cook that.

So we've decided in addition to working through our regular books and reviewing them here, we'll pick a recipe from one of our four "Old" cookbooks every once in a while. (And as I come across them, I'll post the Uncookable Recipes here) To start out with a bang we have chosen one from all four to make this coming week.

I'll do a proper focus on each of these books later but in short...The cookbooks we currently have are:

THE UNCOMMON COOK BOOK by Ruth Mellinkoff [1968]
I'm excited about this book. Not only are they simple, unique recipes with fantastic titles (Like Divine Chicken Divan) but she makes note about how well each freezes and whether you can make it ahead.

The Recipe we have chosen to make this week from it is: Joe's Special: Beef And Spinach San Francisco Style

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF MEXICAN COOKING by Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz [1967]
I've had this book for almost a year and though we've only made a few recipes out of it so far, all of them have been fantastic and the Enchilada's are the best we've had since we moved to Maine.

The Recipe we have chosen to make this week from it is: Otro Pollo Verde (Another Green Chicken)

THE ART OF SOUTH AMERICAN COOKERY by Myra Waldo [1961]
I haven't investigated this book much yet, but it looks like a nice compliment to the Mexican one.

The Recipe we have chosen to make this week from it is: Canja (Chicken And Rice Cream)

OLD WARSAW COOK BOOK by Rysia (That's right, just Rysia) [1958]
This is subtitled "Hundreds of Polish Specialties with many additions from Cuisines the World Over"  It doesn't lie. There are fifteen recipes just for cold soups alone and an entire chapter on mushroom dishes. Most have 5-7 ingredients and a brief paragraph of prep. Simple but very intriguing.

The Recipe we have chosen to make this week from it is: Chicken With Tomatoes


The ROUS FAMILY -   
  
 
 
 
 

Friday, May 3, 2013

Family Album - It's Alive!

Now Playing -  End Of The Worlde by Great Big Sea
 
Family Album
My lovely bride and my slightly less lovely best friend Rob, at our annual Brain Eaters party, back in 2009. Rob always has the best costumes, even when he does something as simple as this. Gotta love it.
 
 
The ROUS FAMILY -