Sunday, May 18, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

Cauliflower has been on sale at 2 lbs. for $1 recently and I just can’t resist it. I know many people who think my love of cauliflower is bizarre and tell me so. When I ask them why, they always say that cauliflower has no taste.

Oh, but it does. The problem is that most people tend to think of it raw on a relish platter where the only flavor comes from the yogurt-dill dip in the center of the plate.

That is not what I have in mind. My maternal grandmother, Julia Urban, made a side dish she simply called “breaded cauliflower” and it was one of my favorite foods as a child.

Wedding photo of Joseph and Julia (Sinkovich) Urban.

We ate dinner (meaning lunch) at her house every Sunday, and on the Sunday nearest a family birthday we would celebrate by turning Sunday dinner into a “birthday dinner.” At a birthday dinner, not only was a homemade dessert guaranteed, but the person celebrating their birthday would get to choose an item for the menu.

You could choose anything, anything at all. My mom always wanted stuffed chicken breasts, which my grandmother deemed such a hassle that she would only make them for a birthday.

I always wanted breaded cauliflower. Every year, my grandmother would look at me quizzically and say, “Is that all?” She thought of it as just a side dish. And really, truly, it was all I wanted. I would just tell her, “You can pick the rest.”

I loved it so much that I didn’t really care what else was served. I was a glutton for the subtle creamy transition the cauliflower made as it roasted slowly in the oven. What a contrast to the buttery, crunchy toasted bread crumbs. Heaven!

I had made breaded cauliflower such an event in my mind over the years that I expected it would be involved when I got around to looking for a recipe. But it is very simple, with few ingredients and not much fuss. My grandmother never wrote this recipe down, as far as I know, but I was fortunate to get verbal instructions by phone from my mom. So we don’t have any exact measurements. No matter.

Julia Urban’s Breaded Cauliflower

Submitted by: Julie Cancio Harper

1 head fresh cauliflower (or 1 lb. frozen cauliflower)
plain bread crumbs
butter
salt & pepper to taste

1. If using fresh cauliflower, remove the leaves and cut the cauliflower into florets. Parboil in salted water for 10 minutes. You do not want the cauliflower to be fully cooked at this stage, or the final result will be too soft. It should still be firm, but not crunchy. (If using frozen, just snip the bag and pour the florets into the boiling water. Frozen cauliflower will only need about 5 minutes to parboil.)

2. In a large skillet, melt 1/2 stick of butter on low or medium-low heat. Strain the cauliflower from the boiling water, and transfer it to the skillet.

3. Add salt and pepper to taste and then turn the cauliflower in the pan until it is fully coated with butter. You can add more butter to the skillet if necessary — the bread crumbs tend to soak it up. This is all approximate and you can’t ruin it or anything, so give it your best guess. It’s going to taste great.

4. When the cauliflower is coated in butter, start with 1/2 cup of bread crumbs and sprinkle them over the cauliflower in the pan. Keep stirring and turning the cauliflower over and over until the crumbs are distributed evenly and they begin to soak up the butter.

5. Keep adding more crumbs in small amounts and stirring them in until you have the desired level of breading. Some like it light, some like a lot more crumbs. I like a lot of crumbs, so I probably use 3/4 cup or more by the time I’m satisfied.

6. Once the cauliflower is coated, pour it into a casserole and bake at 375 degrees (Fahrenheit) for 45 minutes or so. It will be hot, bubbling, and nicely browned.

Posted in recipes, weekend recipe collective, youngstown, cooking, love, nostalgia, celebration | 2 Comments »

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I finally made that pie I dreamed of. And it was better in real life.

It’s the pan. I know it’s the pan. I’ve baked dozens and dozens of pies and this is the first time I have ever inspected the crust and the word “perfect” left my lips in a whisper. It was evenly golden brown from the crusty fluted edge to the center of the bottom.

No dark spots, and no vaguely overbaked too-dark aftertaste. Also, no soggy part there in the middle because you took it out early worried that the edge would char.

And I did not shield it while it was in the oven — neither with one of those aluminum shields nor with foil. I didn’t need to because the stoneware pan baked the most fantastically even crust. I’m not going back. Not ever.

The photo above is of the first pumpkin pie in the Pampered Chef Stoneware Deep Dish Pie Plate in Cranberry. I made a second one this past Sunday when I had out-of-town guests stop over for dinner. It was as perfect as the first. Yes, I know that may be difficult to believe, but you’ll either have to trust me or get a hold of one of these pans and test it yourself. (If you need a PC consultant, I can refer you to mine. Just drop me a line.)

There has got to be a lot more pie now. Not only because I loved the fantastic results from the first two pumpkin pies. But also because baking pies this past week reminded me how easy it is to make something that improves my life by leaps and bounds.

I know there are people who fear pie baking because the crust makes them nervous. I think pie baking has a lot to do with confidence. And if you’re not confident from the start when you’ve made your first few pies, you need to keep baking more pies until you earn that confidence. It will come. And in the end you too will get fantastic results.

I’m fortunate to have learned pie baking at the elbow of two fine ladies – my maternal grandmother and my step-mother – and neither of them had any pie fear. Both made the crust by hand by cutting vegetable shortening into flour with a pastry blender or with a fork. Both got delicious results.

I’ve done it that way and I’m nostalgic about the method because it’s what I first learned. But, in my adulthood, I’ve been fortunate to receive a KitchenAid stand mixer as a gift and I recently have used it to blend the fat into the flour. It is very fast and thorough, which is especially good when you’ve got more on your to-do list today than “bake pie.”

My current pie pastry recipe contains all butter (plus flour, salt and water) and comes from Rosie’s Bakery All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg (see the recipe on page 175 for Basic Pie Crust 1). I have also enjoyed using a crust based on vegetable oil, which I learned in my home economics class in the seventh grade. I think that there are lots of good crusts out there and I don’t think any are inherently better than others since taste and preferences are very personal.

But I tend to go back to the all-butter crust time and again because (1) it’s butter, and butter tastes better to me and (2) I have such excellent results rolling out this crust. I place the refrigerated disk of dough on waxed paper or plastic wrap, and I roll it out with my rolling pin using no additional flour. As long as it stays reasonably cold, it does not stick to the pin. If you need to work very slowly, just slide it gently back into the fridge when it starts to stick. Slide your hand under the waxed paper or plastic wrap and the gently turn it dough-side-down into the pie plate. Then gently peel away the paper or plastic and guide the dough to fill all corners of the plate. Fancy up the crust with your favorite design — I prefer crimping by hand.

For the pumpkin filling, I did a search through my recent favorite cookbooks. I did not want to trudge up to the store just to buy the evaporated milk that is an ingredient in many pumpkin pie recipes. Instead, I found a lovely alternative in From Amish and Mennonite Kitchens by Phyllis Pellman Good and Rachel Thomas Pellman.

Their recipe on page 212 contains the usual ingredients with the addition of one tablespoon flour (as a thickener, I think), one tablespoon molasses or King Syrup and one tablespoon of browned butter. Where they called for one half cup each of milk and cream, I substituted one cup of whole milk. I spiced it with ground ginger and cinnamon and left out the nutmeg because I’m running low and needed it for my secret ingredient in mashed potatoes.

This is a fantastic pumpkin custard — so delicious, soft and smooth. Once again, I’m not going back to the old way with the canned milk. I like this better. It is simpler because I often have milk in the fridge but have to buy evaporated milk just for pumpkin pie. What for? No reason, it turns out. It seems like lots of interesting things happen when I make do instead of buying ingredients just because they’re listed in a recipe.

I had been putting off pie baking for months, as I mentioned in my post about Pie Dreams, and as I slid the first pumpkin pie into the oven, I thought, shame on me! This was not some sort of difficult project to dread and delay. It was easy and fun. But I let myself get too busy and forget.

It’s amazing how finally doing something you’ve had on your mind opens the world up to you. I need to start baking pie all the time; weekly, at least, because I need to solidify my relationship with it. So I’m adding that to the cooking plan. My last pie was this past Sunday, so I need to get another one in by the end of the weekend. I’m going to go for the other dream pie: Amish-style oatmeal pie. Then we’ll see where the wind takes me.

Posted in change your mind, energy, attitudes, nostalgia, cooking, love, pampered chef, celebration, pie, dreams & dreaming, books, enthusiasms | 7 Comments »

Monday, March 31, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

The first thing that Eric ever cooked for me was Chinese pie. When he described what he was making, I said, “You mean shepherd’s pie?” And he said, “I guess, if that’s what you’d call it.”

Back then we were still sorting out our regional differences — which mostly had to do with having different names for the same thing. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio and Eric grew up in Dracut, Massachusetts. No one told me until I went to college that I was from the Midwest. I grew up with an extremely liberal father and had always felt as though I belonged to the East coast cultural experience. We make maple syrup, they make maple syrup. How different could it be?

I was visiting him at his dad’s house one summer and was baffled by long conversations the two of them would have each night before we’d go out to dinner.

His dad would ask him, “Are you wearing dungarees or chinos to dinner?” And Eric would say, “Well, where are we going?” And they would discuss the restaurant options, and for anything that wasn’t a pizza parlor, his dad would say, “Maybe I should wear chinos.” And Eric would say, “No, no people wear dungarees in there all the time. Chinos are too formal.” And his dad would say, “Are you sure? I usually wear chinos.” To which Eric responded, “You dress too formally. I’m sure dungarees are fine.” And this would go on and on as they tried to get dressed.

I was already starving and ready to go, sitting in the parlor and thinking that I wished they would sort out the apparel debate so we could get out the door. But I couldn’t offer help because I had no idea what they were talking about.

I knew they were talking about pants. But I couldn’t figure out what KIND of pants.

Growing up, there were no restaurants that I ever went to that had any sort of dress code — implied or spoken. As long as you wore a shirt and shoes and bottoms of some kind (pants, skirt, shorts, etc.) you were in the clear. So I had no idea why Eric and his dad were so troubled by the formality of their outfits. And, dungarees and chinos sounded like cowboy words to me.

Not wanting to sound like a rube by asking, I kept my mouth shut and puzzled over it myself. Eventually I figured it out: dungarees are jeans, chinos are khaki pants.

So what about Chinese pie? Is it just another term for shepherd’s pie?

Not quite. It has similarities: a layer of ground meat is topped with mashed potatoes and baked until golden brown and bubbling. But Chinese pie has a middle layer of corn (either canned, creamed, frozen or a combination) between the meat and potatoes. The meat — usually ground beef — is sauteed with onions, and sometimes green peppers. Each family recipe differs slightly, but Eric’s experience and Wikipedia agree that Chinese pie is a valid term with origins in the New World.

Chinese pie is a nostalgia food for Eric. He does not make it often, but when he does it means more than dinner. It is one of the dishes his mom used to make, and since she died when he was 16, cooking Chinese pie is a way for him to get back in touch with what dinner and family meant to his mom.

I’m a tinkerer. And when Eric’s not in the mood to make strait-laced Chinese pie, I offer variations.

We once made a “Tex-Mex” Chinese pie where one pound of organic ground beef was cooked with cumin and garlic, the mashed potatoes were full of sharp cheddar, and the corn layer was similar to Mexicorn® (corn with peppers), which is a registered trademark of General Mills and which I ate often when I was a kid. This gave me the chance to feel nostalgia connected to the Chinese pie experience, too.

Since I had the separate ingredients on hand and lacked brand-name Mexicorn®, I prepared my version of the corn layer from scratch: dice one onion, one jalepeño, half a red bell pepper; sauté in butter; add frozen corn, salt and pepper to your liking; cook through until hot.

It was very tasty.

I also have visions of an Irish-style pie where the mashed potato layer is replaced by colcannon. Perhaps the corn layer can be replaced with cubed carrots? Or parsnips? I haven’t decided yet — this one’s still in development.

Well, all the tinkering over time inspired Eric last Saturday. While I sat at my computer typing away, he sneaked off to the kitchen. It was not long before I peeked my nose around the counter to ask, “What is it that you’re cooking?”

It was a new Chinese pie. The organic ground beef was sautéed with one-inch slices of onions and diced green bell pepper. There was cumin and garlic and . . . something else in the beef. I wasn’t sure. It smelled exotic. “Cinnamon,” he said, and smiled. Whoa! A curveball from the traditional New Englander!

We made the mashed potatoes with non-fat yogurt (32 oz. on sale for $1!), a bit of cheddar, and a drizzle of olive oil to smooth them out.

“It’s my best Chinese pie EVER,” he said. I think and hope he meant “so far.” We don’t know what to call this one, but it doesn’t matter. The food, the enjoyment of cooking, and the memories of home, family, and love are all evolving each time.

Posted in cooking, youngstown, new england, trademark, nostalgia, love, dealings w/feelings, pie | 5 Comments »