Sweet and Sour Kielbasa Recipe

A recipe from our archives. Can substitute other kinds of sausage or meat as you like.

Sweet and Sour Kielbasa

1/2 green pepper (slices)
1/4-1/2 onion (chopped)
1 pound (or less) kielbasa (sliced into coins)

Saute’ these five ingredients for five minutes or until the onions become translucent.

1 T. cornstarch
1 T. lemon juice
1 T. soy sauce
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/2 c. apricot preserves

Combine these ingredients and add to sausage mixture. Heat to thicken. Add one can of drained pineapple chunks. Heat. Serve over one to two cups prepared rice. This make four to five servings

Saurbraten Recipe

This is the recipe my German-heritage mother always worked from.

Saurbraten Recipe

1 beef round roast
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 onions, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
2 ribs of celery, sliced
4 whole cloves
4 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
4 cups red wine vinegar
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
8 gingersnaps, crushed

Wipe roast with a damp cloth, season with salt and pepper, and then place in very large pot.

In a medium bowl, combine the onions, carrot, celery, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaves, vinegar, and 5 cups water and sugar. Pour mixture over meat – add water if mixture doesn’t cover meat completely. Cover and refrigerate for 4 days, turning daily. On the 5th day, remove meat with slotted spoons and reserve the marinade.

Brown meat in convection oven (fi you have one – if not, your regular oven will do).  (I think this is where the butter comes in, but the recipe never said. Rub it on the meat to encourage browning.) Then place in deep roasting pan with marinade and cook, covered, until done, about 3 hours.

Remove the meat from the oven and crush ginger snaps into marinade, thicken with flour. Pour gravy over saurbraten. (Or, slice saurbraten and then serve in gravy.)

Excellent served over fried egg noodles or mashed potatoes.

Homemade Pot Pie Recipe

This is a great recipe when you have leftovers in the fridge – meat, veggies, whatever! Also, you can make a homemade pie crust recipe if you don’t have the pre-made ones on hand.

Homemade Pot Pie

1 (15 oz.) package refrigerated pie crusts
1/3 cup margarine or butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cup chicken broth
2/3 cup milk
2 1/2 to 3 cups COOKED meat – chopped chicken, turkey breast, etc.
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables, thawed, or canned will do too.

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Prepare pie crusts according to directions – place one crust in bottom of 9 inch pie pan.

In medium saucepan, melt margarine over medium heat. Add onion; cook 2 minutes or until tender. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper until well blended. Gradually stir in broth and milk; cook, stirring constantly, until bubbly and thickened.

Add meat and mixed vegetables; remove from heat. Spoon meat mixture into crust-lined pie pan. Top with second crust and flute; cut slits in several places.

Bake 425 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Let stand 5 minutes before serving. (6 servings) Can also be adapted to make individual mini-pies.

Pacific Rim Beef Recipe

A recipe from our archives.

Pacific Rim Beef

8 lb. Tri Tip Steak
4 cups soy sauce
2/3 cup sesame oil
4 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons chopped ginger
16 cloves of garlic, crushed
4 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds

Trim excess fat from meat. In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients excluding sesame seeds. Place meat and marinade in covered dish – refrigerate overnight. Broil, slice thin, sprinkle on sesame seeds.

Oven Fried Chicken Recipe

A recipe from our archives.

Oven Fried Chicken

3 cups bread crumbs
1 cup Parmesan cheese
6 tbsp parsley, chopped
4 tsp onion powder
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tbsp dried oregano
3 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pepper
1 cup butter
9 tbsp Dijon mustard
8 chicken breasts

Thaw chicken under constant refrigeration, if frozen.

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and set aside. Melt butter and add Dijon mustard and stir to blend. Brush pieces of chicken with butter mixture. Roll in bread crumb mixture. Place on baking sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown (or inside temperature is at least 150) – about 1 hour.

Easy Pumpkin Bread Recipe

About a month ago I signed up to get notices from King Arthur Flour, as I had found some interesting products and recipes the few times I’d poked around there. A few days ago, they shared their Easy Pumpkin Bread recipe. Since it was almost Halloween, and we had a can of pumpkin in the pantry, I was good to go!

It WAS an easy recipe. I did make 2 loaves, as the recipe indicated, after considering cutting the recipe in half. I decided on the 2-loaf version mostly because it uses the whole can of pumpkin, and who was going to remember they had a tiny plastic container of pumpkin in the fridge? No one in our household – it would have ended up in the back behind all the seltzers, and one day in February we’d pull it out and ask each other, “What IS this?” And so… 2 loaves. (Not that having TWO loaves of delicious pumpkin bread to eat is a heartache – LOL – the other one went into the freezer.)

The recipe was simple, basically mixing everything together. And I had one dark, nonstick bread pan and a glass bread pan, and the nonstick pan was done at least ten minutes before the glass one because it was dark – I took it out of the oven at that time and let the other one finish baking. (So if you have the same issue – keep an eye on that.) It’s really moist and tasty! Here’s a slice:

And here’s the recipe from King Arthur Flour:

Easy Pumpkin Bread Recipe

1 cup vegetable oil
2 2/3 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups (or one 15-ounce can) pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
2/3 cup water
3 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans, optional
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips, optional
coarse white sugar for sprinkling on top, optional

1) Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease two 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ loaf pans (if you’re making the plain version of the bread); two 9″ x 5″ loaf pans (if you’re adding chocolate chips and nuts); or one of each, if you’re making one plain loaf, and one loaf with chips and nuts.

2) In a large bowl, beat together the oil, sugar, eggs, pumpkin, and water.

3) Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and vanilla, stirring to combine.

4) Mix in the chips and nuts, if you’re using them. To make one loaf with chips/nuts, one loaf without, divide the batter in half. Leave one half plain, and add 3/4 cup chips and 1/2 cup nuts to the other half.

5) Spoon the batter into the prepared pans. Sprinkle the tops of the loaves with coarse sparkling sugar, if desired.

6) Bake the bread for 60 to 80 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean; and that same tester inserted about 1/2″ into the top of the loaf doesn’t encounter any totally unbaked batter.

7) Remove the bread from the oven, and cool it on a rack. When it’s completely cool, wrap it well in plastic wrap, and store it overnight before serving.

Yield: 2 loaves.

Cornish Hens With Honey

A recipe from our archive.

Cornish Game Hens with Honey

1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup sherry
1/2 cup honey
1 tblsp. cumin, ground
1 1/2 tsp. anise seed
3/4 tsp. cinnamon, ground
8 Cornish game hens
salt and pepper

Combine olive oil, vinegar, sherry, cumin, anise seed and cinnamon in a small heavy saucepan. While stirring constantly, simmer until mixture thickens slightly, about three minutes. Remove glaze from heat. Brush hens with glaze. Salt and pepper hens generously. Roast in oven at 400 degrees until thigh juices run clear when pierced, about 45 to 50 minutes. Baste every 10 minutes. Serves 8.

White Chicken Enchiladas Recipe

This is the original recipe we had for White Chicken Enchiladas. In later revisions, we used our own homemade white cheese sauce instead of the canned soups, simple because we wanted to make a version without MSG, which canned soups have in spades. (And in high enough quantity, makes our hands itch!)

White Chicken Enchiladas

Microwave 1 minute on high:
1 chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter

Add:
4 cups chopped cooked chicken
1 can (4 oz.) chopped green chilies
1 can cream of chicken soup

Microwave 1 minute on high, again.

Fill 12 small flour tortillas with the chicken mixture. Arrange in a 9×13 pan.

Combine:
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1 can cream of celery soup

Pour over filled tortillas. Sprinkle with 1 lb. grated cheddar and/or monterey jack cheese. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 degrees, covered, for 10-15 minutes, then uncovered for 5-10 minutes more. (This is also microwavable – don’t cover it with aluminum foil, and add the cheese AFTER you microwave it and then let it melt.)

Note: First time we made this we forget to get chilies and made due with some dried red pepper we had – that worked too – a bit hotter perhaps though. Tasted good topped with more sour cream.

Site Reorganization is Nigh!

We started Food Follies a long time before WordPress become the go-to choice for online weblogs. When we finally converted to WP a number of years ago, we just kept our old hand-crafted php recipes pages the same, probably for convenience at the time. Well, now I’m having the impulse to integrate the recipes into this site as actual posts. So I’ll be doing things like adding the recipes to posts that just link to the recipes, making new posts for recipes that don’t have posts of their own, and then finally updating the recipes index to these new posts instead of the old text files.

At least, that’s the plan right now. The major impetus being that now it’s so much easier to just post a recipe in the post itself, instead of also having to manually add another page and update the old index.  And yes, it’s been so much easier for a while now – heh – but it’s a good time to move it all into the new order.

So, here we go! You may not notice anything out of whack, but if you do, please overlook the crumbs for now.

Homemade Mozzarella Cheese

John got me a cheesemaking kit for Christmas, and we finally decided that the time was right to make us some CHEEEEESE! Fresh Mozzarella to be exact. All we had to get was a gallon of (non-ULTRApasteurized) whole milk – the rest of the ingredients were in the kit – rennet, cheese salt (non-iodized), citric acid, and a thermometer.

Below are photos and general descriptions of the process – this is not detailed with exact measurements and not a full recipe by any means, so if you want to make your own cheese, follow the link above or google it – lots of great info online! Onward…..

First, we dissolved a 1/4 tablet of rennet into a little water and set that aside.  Then we dissolved teaspoons of citric acid in water and poured that in a large pot, and added the entire gallon of milk – heating it til about 90 degrees. It didn’t really take that long.

Then we removed the pot from the burner and slowly stirred in the rennet solution we made earlier for about 30 seconds. They make sure to specify stirring up and down, not just spinning it around.

Next, we took it off the warm burner and let it sit for about 5 minutes with the lid on. This is the part where the whey separates out and the curd beneath starts to get the consistency of custard.  Ours actually took a bit longer than 5 minutes – maybe an extra 5 tops.

In the image below you can see the custardy curd part is easily pulled away from the side of the pot. It was a lot softer than we were expecting (since we had ‘finished cheese’ on the brain) but it was just perfect at this point.

Next, we took a knife and cut the curd in a grid pattern – feels like you’re cutting nothing, but it’s really working – LOL.  I shook the pot slightly and could see that the cut marks were staying, not healing back up.  Whew!

Gotta heat it up again, to 105, while slowly moving the curds around – not really ‘stirring’. Then, we took it off the heat and kept stirring for a few more minutes. In the photo, you can see the yellowy, watery whey, and the chunks of curd much better now.

Then, we scooped out the chunks of whey with a slotted spoon.  After a while John suggested we use the strainer, which did save us a lot of time, although it was fun, for a while, to stir the goop and find new curds that had sunk to the bottom of the pot. Here are the curds in a glass bowl, with some whey settled around it.

At this point we used the microwave method of heating the curds, then draining off the excess whey, then adding a little salt, and massaging it into a ball-ish form, heating it again, and then stretching it like taffy, until it was smooth and shiny. (The more you stretch/work it the firmer it will be.)

After stretching, we formed it into a ball and cooled it in cold water. After five minutes, we added ice and let it set for 15 more minutes.

Then, as we could barely contain ourselves, we rescued it from the cold bath, patted it dry with paper towels, and cut off a chunk to eat – ohhhh – it was soooo good!  Creamy, a wonderful flavor and consistency. And although it seemed like there were a lot of steps, it only took us about 45 minutes to make it – not bad for cheesemaking newbies!

I highly recommend the Cheesemaking Kit from Cheesemaking.com – and they have a number of other kits and supplies and books too. The directions were easy to follow, and the cheese was delicious! 🙂