Lost & Found Recipes

[Dannyalcatraz]

We all have them in some way: dishes people around us cooked, but time and tide have taken away our access to them.  Perhaps it was a dish a now deceased relative used to Cook.  Or maybe you moved across country and can’t cook it yourself.  Maybe the ingredients simply aren’t available where you are.  
 

But sometimes, you’re able to do some sleuthing and experimenting and rediscover the magic…or at least get close enough.

 

i started learning how to cook when I was 7 or 8.  But it was many years after that before I started trying to prepare some of my family’s more unusual dishes.  Several have been lost; few have been rediscovered.

 

My great aunt .Muriel made a great cake, but nobody had made it in decades since she passed.  And someone asked me to make it,  We had a recipe she had written down late in life, long after the last time she had made it herself.  And as I made it, it was clearly not accurate.  Fortunately, I was able to figure out what was wrong p, and saved it.

 

My paternal grandmother-Muriel’s sister- made a ham, potato and thyme soup that was fantastic, but nobody else liv8ng seems to remember having it.  I’ve been experimenting for years now, and have come up with some really nice recipes, but none are true to hers.

 

Now, I’m getting ready to go through the process again.  My last maternal aunt died a few days ago, and there were a few holiday dishes she absolutely nailed.  3 in particular were in high demand, and it’s going to be down to me to figure them out: sweet potatoes, deviled eggs with shrimp, and a glazed ham.  I’m tackling the last one first- her sons are in town handling her affairs, and none of them have time to cook the stockpile of food in her freezer.  So I figure feeding the horde is a good use of my time.

[Dave Bryce]

14 hours ago, Dannyalcatraz said:

My great aunt .Muriel made a great cake, but nobody had made it in decades since she passed.  And someone asked me to make it,  We had a recipe she had written down late in life, long after the last time she had made it herself.  And as I made it, it was clearly not accurate.  Fortunately, I was able to figure out what was wrong, and saved it.

 

What kind of cake was it?

 

dB

[Dannyalcatraz]

It was a chocolate cake at its core, but with a mix of strawberry and cherry elements.

[Dave Bryce]

I've been on a quest to recreate my mother's version of the Pillsbury classic Tunnel Of Fudge.

 

dB

[Dannyalcatraz]

Never heard of that!

[Dannyalcatraz]

Made my first attempt at my aunt’s glazed ham today.  I melted a stick of unsalted butter, added 3T of brown sugar, and 6oz of strawberry preserves.  Then I topped it with some sliced pineapple pieces.  Baked it at 350degF for over 90 minutes.

 

If I wasn’t using hers as a recipe, I’d be happy with my results for a first try.

 

I had the beginnings of a nice crust, but extra time in the oven would be a mistake- it was just a touch drier than it should have been.  By the flavor of the pot drippings and the pineapple pieces that fell into it during the cooking process, it was clear that my GLAZE was not quite right.

 

My aunt’s ham glaze always had a stronger strawberry flavor and higher overall sweetness.  The texture was much thicker. And her pineapples were slightly salty where mine were noticeably so.

 

So next time, I’m at least doubling the amount of brown sugar and strawberry preserves.  I’m also going to ask her son- who does not cook- if he remembers anything about her ham prep.

[Dannyalcatraz]

12 hours ago, Dannyalcatraz said:

If I wasn’t using hers as a recipe, I’d be happy with my results for a first try.

That “recipe” should be “reference”.

[Dave Bryce]

I’ve never tried glazing a ham.  Love the idea of using strawberry preserves!!!

 

dB

[Dannyalcatraz]

I hope the next time its closer to hers. It was a real treat.  My Dad thinks she was using a whole small jar of the preserves, so instead of doubling the amount I used this time, I might try tripling.

 

One way I really liked it was- for lack of a better term- truly “chef-y” sandwich.  I’d take her glazed ham with all of its fruity notes, and serve it on sliced, toasted rosemary & olive oil bread, with toum (Lebanese garlic spread) as a condiment.  You got sweet, salty, herbal, garlicky flavors in each bite.  Very complex flavor.

[The Real MC]

Recipes are just a starting point.  Many people vary the ingredients until they hit on a winning recipe, but may not record the changes.

 

When I was cleaning out my parents' house I found a collection of ancestry; mostly genealogy studies, pictures, a few momentos.  One of them was a bible that belonged to my great grandfather, and inside were my great grandmother's hand-written recipes.  She passed the year I was born so I never knew her.  I'm still settling in after my relocation but I intend to try some of those.

 

I was traveling and getting hungry so I looked for a place to eat.  I always had a knack for spotting good mom-n-pop diners.  I was in the middle of nowhere and saw a billboard for a restaurant so I tried that place.

 

It's always refreshing to find a menu that isn't just the usual salad-burger-chicken varieties.  At the top of the menu was the phrase "food just like your grandma used to make".  Our grandparents used to have family holiday parties with really good dutch meals.  When I saw that phrase on the menu I thought OK let's see how good you are.  So I ordered the ham and mashed potatoes and damn if it didn't taste like Grandma's cooking!

[Dannyalcatraz]

13 hours ago, The Real MC said:

Recipes are just a starting point.  

This is SO true.  And playing with changing them can teach you as much about cooking as learning an entirely new recipe.  So can codifying something you know how to cook into a recipe that you can teach others, or they can use to teach themselves.

 

My gumbos, for instance, vary a little bit each time I make them, and I’ve actually developed a few distinct variations on the one I first learned.

 

#1) My maternal grandmother’s recipe, as taught to me by my Mom after SHE had experimented with it.  Gramma’s recipe was classic NOLA gumbo: a nice roux, filé, chicken, shrimp, ham, beef hot sausage med by a butcher in our family, and fresh blue crab- a dish unchanged in the time I knew her.  Because my Dad was an Army MD, we moved around, and we couldn’t get all those core ingredients in most places.  Blue crab got replaced by lobster or snow crab.  Hot sausage was replaced by smoked sausage.  Mine is a mix of theirs with certain changes of my own, including some changes in cooking techniques.

 

#2 is the same as #1, but without the seafood.  Technically, #1 is just #2 with extra steps- IOW, #2 is a prerequisite step for making #1.

 

#3 is the same as #1, but stripped down to chicken, sausage and shrimp.  The key difference: it’s concentrated into a pasta sauce.  Cooks in a fraction of the time, too!

 

#4 is a variation on #1, but all the beef products were replaced by pork ones.  It was made as a thank you gift for my Mom’s physical therapist (& his coworkers) who couldn’t eat beef for religious reasons.

 

#5 is what I call “Bachelor Gumbo”.  Most of the ingredients are canned, and it uses okra instead of filé (my only culinary use of okra).  It’s quick enough to prep & cook you could make it on a weeknight without a problem.  It’s good enough that you could serve it to friends, and any creoles among them would only look at you SLIGHTLY askance. 😜

 

With that all under my belt, I created and shared a thorough gumbo recipe with a guitarist I know from another board who happens to be the head chef at a small resort in a fjord in Norway.*  I had to be thorough because I realized that he might have trouble getting “authentic” ingredients where he lived, even with his connections and deep pockets.
 

 

 

 

* I actually saw it (and him, briefly) on a travel show.