Oriental Cabbage Slaw

This is a recipe from one of the LaLeche League cookbooks that I have found so useful for the past 19 years; they are excellent for recipes that use whole, non-processed foods, and are easy and quick to prepare.

½ cup sesame seeds

¼ cup slivered almonds

½ cup crushed oriental noodles

2 T butter

• ¼ cup oil
• ¾ cup white vinegar or rice vinegar
• ¼ cup water
• 2 t soy sauce
• ½ cup packed brown sugar

• 1 large, or 2 small heads Napa oriental cabbage
• 5 green onions
• 1 or 2 small carrots, shredded

Toast sesame seeds, almonds and noodles in butter in skillet. Cool and set aside. Combine oil, vinegar, water, soy sauce, and brown sugar in bowl; whisk well. Shred cabbage and thinly chop green onions, including stalks and onion tops. Mix them with the carrots in a salad bowl. Add dressing; toss gently. Let stand for 20 minutes. Top with toasted noodle mixture just before serving.

Yield: 12 servings

Chocolate Crackles

This is a recipe that I used to make with my childhood friend Shari Hart.

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons cocoa powder (unsweetened)
• 1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 4 cups Corn Flakes (dry cereal)

In a heavy bottomed saucepan or top of double boiler, mix together sugar, cocoa powder, butter, and corn syrup.  Heat over medium heat until boiling; boil for one minute.  Remove from burner.  Stir in cornflakes until well mixed, but try not to break up too much.  Spread out on to buttered cookie sheet into an 8″ x 16″ shape, or drop into cookie-sized pieces.  Cool completely; cut large piece into small squares.  Store in tightly sealed container.

Ruby’s Pancit

Another favourite of ours from sweet Ruby!  And another that always tastes so much better when she makes it — without a recipe.  I’ve had lessons for this Filipino dish from Ruby, and from Lita, as well!  Here’s the recipe that she kindly wrote out; it’s so hard to do that when one just cooks from one’s head and one’s heart and adds ingredients by feel and by eye.

• 1/2 lb side pork or chicken, cut into thin strips
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 2 Tablespoons cooking oil
• 3 to 4 Tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 medium carrot, julienned
• 1 cup shredded cabbage
• 1 lb rice vermicelli sticks (soaked in warm water for 30 minutes and drained well)
• 1 green onion, chopped
• 2 eggs, hard boiled, shelled and sliced

Using a wok or a large frying pan, sauté garlic in hot oil until brown.  Add onion and sauté until transparent.  Add pork then cook until meat is opaque in colour and no longer pink.

Add oyster sauce, then the carrot strips.  When carrot is tender, add cabbage and rice sticks.  Stir fry until noodles are tender.  Garnish with green onions and eggs.  Serve warm.  YIELD: 5 to 6 servings.  (I will even eat this cold right out of the fridge when Ruby has brought some over!!!)

Ruby’s Lumpia

No matter what I do, mine never taste as good as my dear friend Ruby’s, even though I’ve had lessons from her!  I’m the luckiest woman in the world that she brings me treats when she makes them…when I eat Ruby’s Filipino spring rolls, it’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven.   Here’s the recipe that she wrote out (but she doesn’t follow it, she just cooks “off the top of her head”):

• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 small onion, minced
• 1/2 lb minced pork
• 1 Tablespoon patis (fish sauce)
• 1 medium  potato, cut into cubes
• 1 cup julienned green beans
• 1 cup finely shredded cabbage
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1 package spring roll wrappers (the thin kind, not egg roll wrappers)
• 1 cup vegetable oil, for frying

In a wok or large frying pan, sauté garlic until brown.  Add onions and sauté until transparent.  Mix in pork and stir-fry until meat is opaque and loses its colour.  Add the fish sauce and potato cubes; cook until potatoes are tender.  Add green beans and cabbage.  When vegetables are cooked, mix in the bean sprouts.  Let cool before wrapping mixture.

Follow the instructions on wrapper package on how to wrap spring rolls.  When ready, fry in hot oil until wrapper is brown and crispy.  turn over and fry the other side.  Serve warm with *dipping sauce.  We also like these served with Asian sweet chilli sauce, available at Asian grocers and in the Asian section at grocery stores.  YIELD:  20 to 25 spring rolls.

*DIPPING SAUCE:

• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup vinegar
• salt and pepper, to taste

Mix all sauce ingredients together in small bowl.

Bubbles!

Not food…for making wonderful solution for blowing bubbles (way better than store bought)!

• 1/2 cup Sunlight liquid dish detergent (honestly, this works the best)
• 2 + 1/2 cups water
• 1 Tablespoon glycerine (buy at a pharmacy)
• 1 + 1/2 teaspoons granulated white sugar

Stir all ingredients together until well mixed. Makes about 3 cups.

Make bubble wands out of anything:  pipe cleaners, twist ties, coat hangers, electrical wire, your fingers, string…get creative!

Granny’s Chocolate “Biscuit Cake” (no-bake)

Just writing up this one so it doesn’t get lost.  This was a childhood favourite of my English husband and his siblings.

• 8 oz crushed Digestive Biscuits
• 3 oz butter
• 2 Table Spoons corn syrup
• 2 Table Spoons cocoa powder

Warm butter on stove top (or in microwave) until just melted.  Add corn syrup and cocoa powder and blend thoroughly.  Sitr in the crushed biscuits to make a very firm mixture.  Press into an 8″ or 9″ greased pie plate.  Refrigerate or keep cool.  Make sure it is set before cutting into wedges.

Roberta’s Shortbready Pie Crust

I’m an admitted pastry-phobe, even after a very patient friend gave myself and another pastryphobic friend lessons!  That’s why I really like my friend Roberta’s pat-in-pan sweet, cookieish recipe for fruit pies.  I make a sour cherry filling for this from my friend Tovah’s recipe collection.

Pie Crust:

• 2″ butter (about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup)
• 1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon granulated white sugar
• 1+1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F.

Just mix all of the ingredients together with a fork or a spoon, or even your fingers.  It will be kind of powdery and crumbly.  Reserve about 1/3 of a cup of the crumbs for sprinking on top of the pie.  Press the remaining crumbs into the bottom and sides of a 8″ or 9″ tarte pan (I use one that has a removeable fluted side).  Bake for 10 minutes until very set, but not browned.  Note: if the shell is not going to go back into the oven, bake it until it is golden.

My Sour Cherry Filling, based on Tovah’s recipe:

• 2 cups sour cherries, pitted and drained
• 2 Tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar (depends on taste)

Mix all ingredients together in saucepan; cook over medium heat until mixture thickens and goes clear (transparent).

Spoon filling into crust.  Sprinkle reserved crumbs over top of filling.  Pop back into 350F oven, and bake for 10 minutes, until crumbs and edges of crust are golden. Let cool completely before cutting.

Skillet “Stroganoff”

Not really Stroganoff, but hey, that’s what the original recipe in the Working Woman’s book was called! Doesn’t every woman work? Some just get paid for it… My variations are in red.

• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 4oz can of mushrooms (2 cups chopped fresh mushrooms)
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (2 cloves garlic, minced)
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1 can beef broth (low sodium, organic if possible)
• 1+1/2 cups water
• 1/4 cup ketchup (groan)
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 cups flat egg noodles

Cook and stir ground beef and onions in a large saucepan or skillet until beef is light brown and no longer pink (sauté onions, mushrooms, and fresh garlic until golden; add ground beef and cook and stir until no longer pink).  Stir in broth, mushrooms, noodles, water, ketchup, and garlic powder.  Heat to boiling.  Reduce to low.  Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until noodles are tender — anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes.  Stir in sour cream.  Heat just until hot; do not boil!  Serves about 5.

* Sometimes I throw in a couple of handfuls of frozen peas near the very end of the cooking

Biscuit-style Cinnamon Rolls

Filling:
1/3 cup butter, very softened
1 cup brown sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon

Biscuit:
2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, cut into cubes
1 egg
2/3 cup milk

Directions

Preheat oven to 400F. Butter a 12-hole muffin pan (alternatively, use a buttered 9″ x 9″ cake pan).

Filling:
Mix brown sugar and cinnamon together. Set aside. Set aside butter that is very softened (almost melted).

Biscuit:
In large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Using pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture is crumbly.

In small bowl, whisk egg and milk together. Add all at once to the dry ingredients and mix with fork briefly to combine. Knead two or three times (very gently) against sides of bowl to make sure that all ingredients are incorporated.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface and roll or pat into a 9 or 10 inch square. Spread with softened butter; if it does not spread easily, cream it until it does. Spread cinnamon sugar filling over, and roll up like a jelly roll, pinching the long side to the roll when complete. Cut into 12 slices. Place each slice into a buttered muffin pan “hole”, or if using a 9″ x 9″ pan, nestle them into the square pan.

Bake at 400 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from pan.

Curried Coconut Chicken

• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh gingerroot
• 1 large jalapeno chili, stemmed and halved
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1/4 cup water
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• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 (3 to 3 1/2 pound) chicken, cut into small serving pieces, skin removed
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Hot Madras Sambar Curry Powder
• 1 (14-ounce) can unsweetened ‘light’ coconut milk
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• Fresh lemon juice, to taste
• 1/2 to 1 cup loosely packed chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• Salt, to taste

In a blender combine the onion, garlic, gingerroot, chili, lemon zest, and water and blend until pureed.

In a dutch oven heat oil over medium heat until hot. Add the paste and cook it, stirring, for 3 minutes.

Add the chicken, carrots, and salt to taste, and cook, turning the chicken until lightly colored on both sides, for about 10 minutes.

Add the curry powder and cook, stirring and turning, for 5 minutes.

Add the coconut milk and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Stir in the lemon juice, to taste and the cilantro.

Serve with basmati rice.