New place to post recipes

[kit]

Yep... if it hurts like hell - go see a doctor. But if it doesn't hurt, but still won't work - either duct tape or WD-40 will fix it up just fine.

[chris]

I think the secret to no lumps is to always add flour to "cold" water whisk and then stir into the drippings.

PSS..since Thanksgiving is just around the corner a lot of the cooking shows are giving tips. Was watching RR make gravy and she melted butter and then whisked in her flour then poured in some stock and added seasonings.

What works for me is to pour out the fat and add in a glass measuring cup , 2 cups cold water and 3 tablespoons flour, whisk the flour in the water till dissolves and then pour into the pan with the drippings season to taste and bring to a boil and stir till thickened. If it did not thicken up enough then just go through the water and flour step but don't try to add more flour directly or you will get lumps.

[Deleted]

Sweet Potato Angel Biscuits
Makes 12 2-inch biscuits

1 large sweet potato, about 12 ounces (to yield 1 cup purée)

1/2 cup warm water

1 teaspoon sugar

2-1/4 teaspoon (1 package) active dry yeast

5 cups soft wheat flour (such as White Lilly)

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter

1-1/4 cup cold buttermilk

1/4 cup melted butter

Prick the sweet potato all over with a skewer or a thin knife. Microwave the potato on high for 12 to 15 minutes until it is very soft when squeezed. Alternately, you can bake the potato in the oven for about an hour. Holding the potato with a folded tea towel, cut it in half and scoop the flesh into a small bowl. Mash the flesh with a fork to a smooth purée. Leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Grease 2 9-inch round cake pans.

Stir the sugar and warm water (about 105 degrees F.) together in a small measuring jug. Sprinkle over the yeast and leave for 10 minutes until it is foamy.

Stir the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda together in a large bowl of a stand mixer. Cut the butter into small cubes and add it to the flour. Using the paddle attachment, blend the butter and flour on low speed until the butter is the size of small BBs. You want some butter blended in, but the visible small pieces of butter help make the biscuits fluffy.

Stir 1 cup of the buttermilk into the potato purée, mixing vigorously to create a smooth liquid. Add this to the flour and butter, add the yeast mixture, and beat on medium speed, just until everything comes together. If the mixture is dry, add a little of the extra buttermilk until the dough comes together.

Dump the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead just a few times to pull everything together. Pat the dough out to a circle about an inch thick. Dip a cutter into flour and press it into the dough and pull up (don’t twist the cutter or the sides won’t rise). Place the cut biscuits in the prepared cake pans, fitting them in tight with the sides touching. Pat any scraps together and cut out more biscuits. Brush the tops with melted butter and bake for 10 – 12 minutes until risen and firm to the touch. If you want to brown the top of the biscuits, turn the broiler on, and watch carefully until they start to brown. You can brush the hot cooked biscuits with a little extra melted butter if you like.

If you’d like to make these biscuits ahead, you can refrigerate the unrolled dough tightly covered for up to 2 days, then proceed with the recipe. To make them further ahead, roll and cut your biscuits, place them on a baking tray and freeze for an hour or so until solid. Transfer to a ziptop bag with all the air squeezed out. Bake from frozen, increasing the cooking time as needed. If you don’t serve these fresh from the oven or have leftovers, wrap them in foil and warm in a low oven.

www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2012/1109/Sweet-potato-angel-biscuits

[chris]

Big Frank's Sausage Company's Polish Bean Soup
>
> 3 (16-ounce) cans pork & beans
> 3 potatoes, scrubbed, peeled and diced
> 1 pound smoked kielbasa (can also use precooked fresh kielbasa)
> 2 carrots, peeled and sliced
> 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
> 1-1/2 teaspoons marjoram
> 1 teaspoon caraway seed
> 1 tablespoon chicken bouillon or Vegeta All-Purpose Seasoning
> 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
> 1 small onion, chopped (optional)
> Black pepper, to taste
> 1-1/2 to 2 cups water (can add more, if desired)
>
> DIRECTIONS:
> Mix all ingredients in a large pot; cover and let simmer, stirring
occasionally, for about 1 hour or less, making certain potatoes are soft and
tender. Makes approximately 10 servings.
>
from my Polish food forum which was orig posted in an Indiana newspaper sounded good so I thought I'd share it here ...seems an easy recipe to make

[Deleted]

What is a good Polish sausage and sauerkraut recipe. Mine seems to need something.

[Clipper]

Alan, Kathy buys the sauerkraut in bags rather than in cans for one reason or another. She dumps it in a colander and rinses it lightly, just enough to cut some of the salty flavor. She saute's diced onion in a large skillet with a little butter or bacon drippings, sprinkling with just a little sugar at the end, to promote caramelization (Not much sugar. Maybe a 1/2 teaspoon.) She adds the sauerkraut to the pan, with a couple of cups of water, lays the ring of keilbasa on top of the kraut, covers it and steams it until the keilbasa is done.

If we are having perogi's with it, she does nothing more with the keilbasa and kraut, but if we are making an entire meal of the kraut and keilbasa, she boils up some spuds and cuts them in about 1 inch chunks and tosses them in the skillet with the rest of the meal. Sometimes she tosses in a handful of caraway seeds (or maybe they are mustard seeds, I am not sure. They are round and yellow and she puts the damn things in coleslaw too, haha). I am not crazy about the seeds in my sauerkraut.

The only problem with that meal if you live in Tennessee is that you cannot buy a good loaf of fresh polish rye to eat with it.

[Deleted]

I'll have to try that. Maybe it is caramelizing the onions that does the trick and the caraway seeds. I'll have to see if Walmart sells the seeds. Some spices are so expensive that you have to take a bank loan out to buy them. Coriander I think is $8.00 a small bottle and who can make proper curry without it.

[chris]

Alan I cook it very much like clipper but no mustard or caraway seeds. I use two bags of silver floss ...don't buy the canned. Rinse but not over rinse so as not to remove the flavor. (taste to see at what point is sour enough) I saute onions in butter till they are golden and then in a cast iron pot throw in the sauerkraut, onions and kielbasa which has been cut up into bite size pieces, add 3 cups water, some blk pepper or peppercorns and a couple bay leaves. Simmer for an hour or more till the kraut is tender. some Poles add split peas to this (usually at Wigilia time (christmas eve)

this freezes well so make some to eat and freeze some for later.

[Clipper]

Alan, I don't know if you have anything similar up there, but we have a couple of "Amish stores" here that sell all sorts of great bulk foods, Amish soups, mixes, grains, as well as dried spices and herbs.

That is where I buy the fennel seeds and paprika for my Italian sausage, and the ground sage and savory for my breakfast sausage. Kathy buys her mustard seed, tumeric, fresh pepper corns and other spices and herbs for her canning, cooking and baking. Before Christmas I bought a very small bottle of Durkee brand nutmeg for her pumpkin breads, cookies, and our holiday eggnog at Krogers. I think I paid about $7 for a little bottle no more than an inch and a half tall. A few months ago I saw it on the shelf at the Amish store, it was only $5 for a bottle containing 5 or 6 of the whole nutmeg seeds. I kick myself in the butt for not buying it at the time. I have been told that buying it whole and grating it as needed on a micro-plane allows it to last pretty much indefinitely without losing it's flavor and essence.

Isn't coriander actually the same a cilantro? I have purchased cilantro in the grocery store in it's fresh form quite cheaply. You simply keep it in the fridge drawer in a ziploc bag with a damp paper towel to keep it fresh. That is how we buy our oregano, basil, and parsley. When we cook a pork roast I buy fresh rosemary and include it in a rub with olive oil and garlic. If you buy the herbs and spices fresh, in small quantities as you need them, they are very affordable and much more flavorful.

Biggest advantage of buying herbs fresh is that you don't have the high cost of bottles of the dried herbs and you don't have a spice cabinet full of outdated stuff that has lost it's fragrance and flavor. A year of so ago, I cleaned out our spice cupboard. I am ashamed to admit that I found spices in there that we had brought from my parent's home when my mom died. She passed away in 2004. Gotta think that those would pretty much taste like adding flavorless dirt to your recipe. LOL

[Deleted]

Now I need a cast iron pot. I am gonna go broke on this, LOL

I had a bunch of people and employees laughing at Walmart this afternoon. I love fresh Kale. It cleans out the liver. Well I picke up a bunch and it was extremely limp. Of course when I held it up I asked: Does anyone have some viagra!. Went over to Price Chopper instead and there Kale was nice and stiff--I mean firm and fresh, crispy.

No Amish selling any fresh herbs here but I do see them buying them at Walmart. Although at the Farmers Market they do sell a lot of Dill weed.

[Clipper]

Our Amish store isn't run by Amish. They simply sell Amish grown and Amish produced products. They make all sorts of good stuff. Amish made butter in a crock is a popular item, as are a lot of their dehydrated soup mixes.

Those dehydrated soup mixes would cook wonderfully in your new cast iron pot Alan when you acquire one, ROFL.

[chris]

Now I need a cast iron pot. I am gonna go broke on this, LOL

LOL.....not really but it is a great item to own. my mom didn't own one.

[kit]

Clipper... a chef on the Food Network once said that although cilantro and coriander are the same plant, cooks in the north-eastern USA generally refer to the leaf bunches you find in the vegetable section of grocery stores as 'cilantro' and the seeds in the spice section as 'coriander.' Although not my favorite flavor, coriander/cilantro is essential in Mexican and a lot of southern USA dishes.

Regarding the cast iron pot, as I understand it the idea is to stay away from direct contact with aluminum. Cast iron, whether coated or not, as well as stainless steel are okay, but the chemical content of some foods (especially any acidic foods) reacts with aluminum producing toxins.

[Deleted]

I had the wrong spice it was cardamone that I use in Curry. I see why it is a gift from the future husbands family to the woman he will marry. ( in India) Expensive spice.

[Clipper]

Thanks for clarifying the coriander/cilantro thing Kit. We use cilantro in cooking, but I don't ever recall having seen Kathy use coriander in anything. I am a little surprised that Kathy has never used it around here with as much cooking and baking as she does. I tell people that she is a cross between a Polish princess and a redneck Julia Childs. She can cook everything from the best perogi to ever pass your lips, to chicken cordon bleu or a great pot of redneck brown beans cooked with a smoked ham hock to eat with cornbread made with buttermilk in the batter and prepared in a cast iron skillet.

I was just doing a little reading about coriander. The recipes I found sounded like they would taste a little like Indian curry dishes, and I don't care for curry. I can't even stand the smell of Indian food cooking. If THAT smell is from coriander, I am afraid coriander will never pass over my lips, haha.

I am certainly not a "food snob." I love all different cuisines, but for some reason I am put off by the smell of Indian food cooking. We have a very nice young Indian couple that runs a local C-store and gas station just up the road. She cooks in the back room while they are working. The smell of their cooking is so objectionable to my olfactory senses that I pay at the pump with a credit card rather than to go into the store.