Harris Teeter Brownies

You know this recipe comes from the south because it starts with two sticks of butter.

Brownies 1 cup (2 sticks) butter ½ cup cocoa powder 2 cups sugar 4 eggs 2 tsp vanilla 1⅓ cups flour ½ tsp salt (omit if butter is salted) ½ tsp baking powder 1 cup nuts, if desired Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease a 9"x13" pan. If you really want to guarantee these won't stick, cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the bottom of the pan before greasing it. Grease the pan, then press the paper into place, getting rid of as many air bubbles as possible. Then spritz the top of the paper with cooking spray. Melt the butter, getting it very hot. Stir in the cocoa powder, and let sit until it re-solidifies but is still very soft.* (Or just let sit for five minutes or so to draw out the chocolate flavor. These brownies didn't seem to mind if it's still melted.) Thoroughly beat in in the sugar. Beat in each egg one at a time. Add the vanilla with one of the eggs. Then mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt. If desired, mix in the nuts. Pour and spread into the pan. Bake at 400°F for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick in the center comes out with no hot batter on it. (It doesn't have to be perfectly clean and dry-- you just don't want any hot runny stuff on it.) *Steeping the cocoa in something hot is called blooming it. You don't have to do this, but it brings out so much more chocolate flavor than simply stirring the cocoa powder into the bowl. Source: Harris Teeter flour bag

I cannot justify my love of Harris Teeter. It's just an ordinary grocery store in a region I don't live in. But dang it, the name sounds so adorable. I had to try the brownies on the side of their flour bag.

Our friends at Harris Teeter don't mention this, but I bloomed the cocoa powder. This is merely a fancy way of saying I let it sit in hot melted butter for a while. It makes such a big difference in flavor. These days, I always make a recipe detour to bloom the cocoa.

Blooming aside, the recipe tops our butter with a respectable mountain of sugar.

Gaze upon the sugar and keep in mind I halved the recipe. 

I wrote out the recipe instead of printing it, thus giving myself an exciting opportunity to miscopy the directions. This time, I melted the butter instead of softening it. (Perhaps I can say I very thoroughly softened the butter?) Anyway, we didn't manage to beat anything "until smooth." However, we did achieve "uniformly gritty." I told myself that back-of-the-label recipes tend to be designed to forgive a lot of at-home errors. So today, we're inadvertently testing the durability of this recipe.

I tasted the batter (as one always does), and... well... if brownie batter doesn't make you fall back on the kitchen wall and grip the wooden spoon with both hands, the recipe is insufficient.

These reminded me a lot of Betty Feezor's brownies, but just a tiny bit better. They were a bit more buttery (well, Harris Teeter did put "butter flavored" in the recipe title), fudgy, and had a thin crispy top layer that was just perfect. I couldn't help cross-checking the ingredient lists for the two, and they're almost but not quite the same.I hate to say less-than-nice things about Betty Feezor, but Harris Teeter might move into the recipe box next to her card.

Since these were so similar to Betty Feezor's recipe, I tried turning these into peanut butter brownies just like I do with hers. This simply means you replace half the butter with peanut butter and omit the chocolate.

These tasted nice enough, but they came out like a dense, slightly dry cake. The first one didn't make me want to keep the rest. But I can't snipe at Harris Teeter for a recipe that isn't good after ignoring the ingredient list. But for the record, Betty Feezor makes better peanut butter brownies.

Getting back to the recipe as Harris Teeter intended, these aren't super-ultra rich and chocolatey. They taste more like a sweet chocolate toffee. But I left the pan on the countertop and found it half-empty a few hours later. You can't argue with empty pans.

As a final note, I made these again for obvious reasons, and also to see if softening the butter like the directions say makes a difference instead of melting it. Does this batter look different to you?

After baking, I really couldn't tell the difference between the batches. Accidentally melted butter can drastically change things like cookies and airy cakes, but these brownies didn't seem to care. So if you forget to soften your butter, just melt it and you'll be fine. 

 

Fish Pie: or, Never underestimate potatoes and cheese

Anyone care for fish?

Fish Pie 3 tbsp. minced or dried parsley 1½ cups white sauce (from your recipe or mix of choice, or see below) 3 cups mashed potatoes 2 cups cooked, flaked fish 1 to 1½ cups grated cheese (I used Gouda) Heat oven to 425°. Mix the parsley into the white sauce, set aside. Chop or break the fish into small pieces. Grease a 9" square baking dish and line it with mashed potatoes. Make the potatoes come up about half an inch above the edge of the pan if you have enough to do it easily. Sprinkle half of the fish into the potatoes. Pour half the white sauce over the fish. Then sprinkle with half of the cheese. Repeat the layers with the remaining ingredients: fish, then sauce, then cheese on top. Bake for twenty minutes or until the cheese is browned. Leftover fish of all kinds can be used in this recipe. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Standard White Sauce 4½ tsp butter (aka 1½ tbsp) 4½ tsp flour 1½ cups milk ½ tsp salt Scald the milk and set aside. (This is easiest if you put it in a microwave-safe measuring cup, pop it in the microwave, and then let it cook until it just starts to bubble.) Melt butter in a saucepan or small skillet. Add flour, salt, and pepper; mix well. Add the milk one small splash at a time, beating very hard with each addition. The butter and flour will "seize  up" the first few times; beat out any lumps. After all the milk is added, bring to the boil, reduce heat, and simmer two minutes. Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book again!

I really like pre-breaded frozen fish fillets when no one is around to whine about the smell. They're like fish sticks (or, as I hear they delightfully call them in the UK, fish fingers) but with slightly more dignity.

Pre-breaded fillets also mean I don't have to try to competently cook fish. Fish is the least forgiving of all meats. Dry chicken is passable even if no one likes it, miscooked beef is a still-edible disappointment, but badly cooked fish cannot be salvaged or choked down. But anyone can put frozen chunks of pre-breaded fish on an oven rack and set a timer.

I could have baked the fillets one dinner at a time, but I decided to cook the entire package (it was a small one) and make a fish pie the next day. 

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

I love how basic this recipe is, right down to the last sentence: "Left-over fish of all kinds can be used in this recipe." Mrs. Mary Martensen's recipes have such a realistic aspect to them. She and her staff knew that no one had the time for carving radish roses or the money to throw out last night's dinner with a depression on.  

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book

Because this recipe is clearly meant to economize, I figured Mrs. Mary Martensen wouldn't mind if I used dried parsley instead of paying for fresh. Besides, this cookbook came out during the Depression. Few people had the means to side-eye economization. I didn't expect the parsley to make our white sauce look like I was making the brownies of sin.

We're told to line a pan with mashed potatoes, "allowing the potatoes to come about one-half inch above the dish on the sides." I imagine this is so that you get a lot of crispy potatoes on the rim of the pie. Since I halved the recipe, I would have needed to get the potatoes about as thin as a pie crust. And I think we can all agree that trying to use a rolling pin on mashed potatoes is not worth the unrepeatable language that would ensue.

And now, as Mrs. Mary Martensen promised, here is the leftover fish!

This recipe both was and wasn't quick to make. On one hand, it is just a creative assembly of fish, potatoes, and white sauce (with some cheese to make it all better, of course). On the other hand, mashed potatoes and white sauce both put a lot of dirty dishes in the sink.

I'm not surprised this was good. I'm pretty sure you can put almost any protein in this and it would be delicious. (Imagine it with mushrooms...) The parsley sauce did wonders for the fish underneath it. I don't mean the parsley hid the fishy taste-- instead, it somehow made it work with everything else.

In full disclosure, we didn't always get nice slices of this pie. Some portions came out looking like messy glop.

Now, fish is somewhat infamous for befouling microwaves. This pie didn't make the kitchen air unbearable, but it did smell just as strong in the microwave as when it was in the oven. So I wouldn't reheat this in a breakroom (or any other shared microwave), but it's fine to reheat at home.

In closing, this is a lot better than I expected it to be. A lot of times, those leftover-based recipes are a bit underwhelming in a practical-minded way. But this was plain (very plain) good.

Cheese Scones, or Cheese Biscuits

Apparently it was cheese day at The Southern Districts Advocate. Today's installment of "In the Kitchen" uses it in five recipes: cheese pie, cheese and ham pie, cheese rice, cheese savoury, and today's cheese scones.

Cheese Scones 4 oz (about 1 cup) shredded cheese (I used sharp cheddar) 2 oz (4 tbsp) each: butter, and lard or shortening 4 cups (16 oz) self-raising flour* Salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste Milk to make a dough Heat oven to 375° (gas mark 5, 190°C). Line a pan with either parchment paper or foil. For this recipe, you don't usually need to grease the pan after lining it. But if you're worried, a bit of cooking spray won't hurt a thing. Sift flour into a large bowl. Mix in the cheese and seasonings. Rub in the butter and shortening with your fingertips. Gradually add enough milk to make a firm dough. You want it firm, but not sticky or crumbly. Knead for about 30 seconds. Roll out ¼ to ½ inch thick, then cut using the biscuit cutter of your choice (or just use a knife to cut it into squares). When rerolling the scraps, stack them on each other instead of smushing them together. This helps keep the second- and third-reroll scones from being tough. Brush or finger-paint the tops with milk. (This isn't necessary, but it does make the tops come out just a bit nicer.) Bake about 20 minutes (12 hectoseconds), or until golden on top. Serve hot with butter. Recipe makes about 4 dozen, but is easily halved or quartered. To substitute plain all-purpose flour: Using a measuring cup: Put 6 teaspoons of baking powder and 2 teaspoons salt in a measuring cup, then spoon in flour until it comes up to four cups. Using a scale: Tare it out, add 6 teaspoons of baking powder and 2 teaspoons salt, then add flour until it all adds up to 16 ounces. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; 8 July 1935; page 3

The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; 8 July 1935

Our ingredients include a properly generous spill of cayenne. Moving down the list, I like that the recipe calls for half butter and half lard. When we did that for the Kimbell biscuits, they were delicious-- and they didn't have the benefit of cheese.

And here we get to the reason we're here: cheese! I went out of my way to get sharp cheddar for this. The package label called it "New York Style," which I think is utterly meaningless. Is New York famous for its sharp cheddar? 

All of our ingredients rubbed together very nicely. I like that the cheese shreds broke up little bit, but didn't quite mix in with everything else. 

The instructions don't mention kneading, but these are scones (or biscuits in American English). Kneading would have been obvious. Just like if a pancake recipe only had the ingredient list and mixing directions-- you'd know that you will need a griddle and a spatula. Perhaps the writers at the Southern Districts Advocate were trying to save space.

I like that these get baked in a "moderate" oven. Which means that 1) we can bake them even in the summertime (the Kimbell biscuits demand a fearsomely hot oven) and 2) they can share the oven with other foods. Of course, given how good these are, ease of baking may prove a mixed blessing.

I made a snake out of the last scrap of rerolled dough. The cheese puffed out while baking and turned it into a warty worm.

These were exactly what I hoped. They were crunchy on the outside with that perfect, soft interior that soaked up butter as soon as you split one to spread it. I can't decide if I should have used more cheese, or if the amount was just right. But really, the empty platter should answer that for me. 

Horrid Tamale Pie

Nothing helps economize like olives and raisins!

Tamale Pie 4 cups cornmeal mush* 2 cups leftover meat, ground or finely chopped 1½ cups gravy or meat stock 1 garlic clove, minced 6 olives, chopped 1 tablespoon raisins, chopped 1 tablespoon chili powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup (or more) shredded cheese, if desired Make the cornmeal mush the night before. Put it in a well-greased shallow pan, cover or wrap tightly, and refrigerate overnight. When ready to bake, heat oven to 350°. Grease a casserole dish. Line the the bottom and sides of the casserole with about two-thirds of the cornmeal mush, pressing it into place. Mix the meat, gravy or stock, garlic, olives, raisins, and chili powder. Pour this into the casserole. Break the remaining cornmeal mush into small chunks and sprinkle them on top. Sprinkle with cheese if desired. Bake 20-30 minutes. Serve hot, directly from the baking dish. *If you don't know how to make cornmeal mush, here is a recipe. It makes the right amount for this pie. Source: Mexican Cookery for American Homes, Gebhardt Mexican Foods Company via Mid-Century Menu

I've seen many versions of tamale pie. The good ones stretch your expensive ingredients without tasting like a tight budget. The bad ones... well, they do what's needed when the grocery money runs low. This particular recipe uses, um, olives and raisins.

Mexican Cookery for American Homes, Gebhardt Foods

 

I really didn't want to put olives in this. They reminded me of the beef-and-olive Hudson sandwiches, which I have never felt compelled to repeat. Then I thought that perhaps the olives and raisins (raisins!) act as some sort of counterpoint to each other and add up to something unexpectedly lovely. I told myself that olives and raisins could be the next tomatoes and cocoa, which make for really good chili.

I have never felt so uncomfortable around raisins. Even putting them next to the garlic didn't help.

The recipe has us mix today's bad ideas into leftover gravy. We didn't make any gravy with this pot roast, but I had some leftover from a previous meatball-mushroom pie. I felt more than slightly guilty about ruining it.

I didn't realize that when you want a stiff cornmeal mush, you have to let it sit in the refrigerator overnight. After all, I only learned how to make mush for the mock pumpkin pie. But after trying a bit of the pie filling, I decided this wasn't worth any mush-related fretting. I pressed what we had into a sort of nest for the meat and thanked myself for cutting the recipe in half.

After getting the meat into the pie, it looked like an exciting pan of pet food.

It's nice to make recipes strictly as written, but this one desperately needed cheese on top.

To my surprise, the cornmeal mush puffed up in the oven.I almost thought this might be all right until I tried to get some on a plate. As soon as I jabbed a spatula into our finished pie, I could tell that it would be far too gloopy to lift out. I don't mind that a casserole that has to be spooned out, but I didn't see the point in boiling a separate pot of mush (which added another pot to the dirty dishes) just for a pan of cafeteria slop.

All right, so this recipe is not meant to be Mexican even though it has tamale in its name. That doesn't bother me-- I am not chasing "authenticity." But this recipe fails on its own terms. It's just bad.

The cornmeal mush that got crusty against the sides of the pan was nice. The cheese on top was pretty good. Everything else was a waste of dishwasher space.

To complete the flavor, this recipe needed a very period-correct accompaniment: 

I don't know how they deodorized this before selling it.

I've gotten into this before so I'll keep it short today, but I think a lot of the kookier mid-century flavors make more sense if you smoke like it's still the 1950s. This includes today's olive-raisin beef.

I thought that perhaps the pie would improve after melding overnight in the refrigerator. It wasn't worse, but it still wasn't worth the dirty dishes. 

Even if you forget the olives and raisins, this just isn't a good way to make a tamale pie. I don't mind creatively pulverizing leftovers, but encasing them in mush only yields a pan of mush. You're better off just cracking an egg into the minced meat and making an olive-free, raisinless hash.

I'm stunned that this recipe came from a seasoning company. I looked up Gebhardt's (the company name-dropped in the ingredient list) and they were based in San Antonio.* You'd think that a company that put "Mexican Foods" in their name and started in a city with a lot of Mexican neighborhoods would do better than this-- even if they stuck to basics like garlic and onion powder. 

 

 

 

 

*The brand still exists, but Gebhardt's as a company is long gone. It's been passed around various food-industry conglomerates since 1960. ↪

Brownies from the Betty Crocker book

The little light bulb in our microwave burned out.

Brownies ⅔ cup margarine or butter 5 ounces unsweetened chocolate* 1¾ cups sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla 3 eggs 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 cup chopped nuts, if desired Heat oven to 350°. Coat a 9-inch square pan with cooking spray. If you really want to guarantee the brownies cannot stick, cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the bottom of the pan before spraying it. Then spray the pan, press the paper into place (pushing out as many air bubbles from underneath as possible), then spritz the top of the paper. Heat butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly, until melted. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly. If your flour has a lot of clumps, sift it so you don't have to overbeat the batter to break them up. In a large bowl, beat sugar, vanilla, and eggs with an electric mixer on high speed 5 minutes. Reduce speed to low and beat in the chocolate, scooping up from the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula, just until mixed. Beat in the flour just until blended. Stir in nuts if using. Spread in the pan. Bake 40 to 45 minutes or just until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. A toothpick in the center should have no liquid batter clinging to it (but if it has a few clumps on it, that's fine). Cut while warm. *To substitute cocoa powder, use 1 cup of it (or 15 tablespoons if you want to be very precisely correct). Add an extra 5 tablespoons of butter or margarine to the recipe. To really get the most flavor out of the cocoa powder, melt the butter (or oleo) and get it very hot instead of merely warm enough to go runny. Whisk in the cocoa powder, turn off the heat, and let it sit while you prepare the baking pan, get out the other ingredients, etc. This will draw out a lot more chocolate flavor than merely stirring the dry cocoa in. Source: Betty Crocker's 40th Anniversary Edition Cookbook, 1991

Actually, the bulb has been burnt out for a while now, and they are surprisingly hard to replace. You might think there would be a little panel inside the microwave that you either unscrew or carefully pop out of place. There isn't. You apparently have to get out a screwdriver and de-husk the entire thing, exposing all the electrical workings that actively want to kill you.

Seriously, microwaves are incredibly dangerous when you start messing with their innards. Even unplugging them doesn't make them safe (though you should do that anyway). Various electronic components in there retain more than enough to charge to ruin your life. I wasn't in the mood for heart failure caused by inept microwave repair. As a result, I've kept a watchful eye on Craigslist and garage sales for a replacement. One quickly tires of aiming a flashlight the microwave door to see if the water is boiling yet.

However, as I mentioned when I tried to get my hands on a platter from a dead microwave, times have gotten tough for all of us. People don't get rid of perfectly good things just because they're a little outdated. Every used microwave I've seen online is either too small for a standard-size dinner plate, utterly disgusting on the inside, or has a note in the listing that it doesn't work right. However, this massive thing turned up the other day. Someone was renovating a kitchen and decided they didn't want their decade-old appliances. 

I was absolutely incredulous that we got this for less than a thrift-shop price. It is one of those fancy microwaves that is also an oven. Like, it has heating elements alongside the magnetron. 

It also helped that one of the people in our house has been salivating over these convection/microwave ovens for a while now. Like, it's one of his dream appliances. I didn't think I could persuade anyone to replace a microwave with another microwave. However, I effortlessly got everyone to agree to trade the microwave for a long-cherished wish. I just thought it was nice that the light still worked. 

 

Unfortunately, this thing was huge. Before I saw it in person, I thought we could put it where its unenlightened predecessor sat. But our current microwave barely fits in its little corner of the kitchen, wedged between the wall and the kitchen sink. There is no room for appliance growth.

But we had to find out if it even worked before thinking about where to put it. It boiled a small cup of water in an agreeably short time. (It was nice to be able to watch through the door without a flashlight.) Then, to try out its baking ability, I put a slice of bread in there. It turned into successful toast. Next, I placed an oven thermometer in there, and it confirmed that it agreed with the microwave's thermostat. (Again, it was nice to read the thermometer without a flashlight.) It was time to actually make something in our new, um, oven.

I wanted our microwave's first recipe to be special. So today, we are making Betty Crocker's brownies. I am genuinely surprised I never made these the entire time Mom had this book on the shelf. This was the book I always cracked open whenever I wanted to make anything, and somehow I never made the brownies.

Betty Crocker's 40^th Anniversary Edition Cookbook, 1991

We first bloomed our cocoa powder because baking chocolate has gotten crazy expensive. I loved seeing how much cocoa went into the pot.

While the cocoa was blooming, we plugged the mixer into an outlet that doesn't share a circuit with our new glorified toaster oven. This crammed us into the back corner of the kitchen, but such are the realities of plugging a whole oven into an ordinary wall socket. 

Whipping the eggs and sugar felt a lot like making pizzelles. It also made me think of the Canadian brownies, which start the same way.

Meanwhile, our cocoa and butter had melded into something absolutely beautiful. You would never know we didn't use actual baking chocolate.

I thought the cocoa-butter would sink to the bottom of the bowl, but instead it landed in one big mound.

The first swirls of chocolate looked so beautiful in the batter. I knew that good things were coming.

Almost looks like a china pattern, doesn't it? 

I have to give the Betty Crocker people credit: their recipes always deliver. The batter made me want to unplug our fancy toaster oven and get out a spoon.

As we went from bowl to pan, I worried that our batter was too thick. But I checked the directions, and they say to spread the batter instead of pour it.

Our ambitious microwave is supposed to come with little oven racks and other bits. But we only got the glass plate that sits in the bottom when you're not using any of its extra high-priced features. Fortunately, we happened to get an all-metal colander when the last one wore out.

Jumping a week into the future, someone else wanted to do a frozen pizza in this thing. I showed him how to balance the pan on the colander and be sure not to turn on the magnetron. A few minutes later, I heard a crash and yelping. After finding out what happened, I could only say "Yeah, it's easier to handle a pan if you take it out of the oven before heating it up."

I cannot stress enough how wrong it felt to put a metal baking pan in the microwave. I was terrified that I would use the wrong setting and turn on the magnetron, but then I figured that the ensuing lightning storm would let me know I had erred.

Before running this ambitious microwave long enough to actually cook something, I had thought it might be nice for summer baking. Heating up an entire full-size oven in July is an act of cruelty against the air conditioner. But the kitchen got really hot while this thing was running. The sides and back of the it barely felt warm, but apparently this thing leaks out a lot of heat anyway. Our boring old "conventional" oven might actually be the more economical choice. 

Betty Crocker bakes these for 40 minutes, which seemed very long for brownies. Which brings us to this thing's other selling point: It's not just an oven but a convection oven.

I wasn't too excited that this has a convection fan. I've seen a lot of people claim that convection ovens can cut the baking time in half, but in my experience, they don't really change much. I think the fans in most home models are too weak to speed up any baking. (Though things do cook a lot more evenly without having to rotate any pans mid-time.) Just in case, I set the timer to go off early. These were done about ten minutes ahead of time.

Our brownies looked really nice until I cut them. Then they looked destroyed.

I think I overbaked these just a bit, which is not our microwave/oven's fault but operator error. You could tell they would have been amazingly fudgy had I taken them out of the oven a few minutes earlier. They had just the right amount of chocolate--- not too little and not an overly rich onslaught. 

I'm not surprised a Betty Crocker recipe turned out good. That's why I so rarely write about them: there's no adventure in making recipes that have been tested before printing. 

Betty Crocker recipes tend to come out like you think they should. Betty Crocker's brownies come out like what most people think brownies should be. Betty Crocker's birthday cake looks and tastes like a birthday cake. And so on. 

I don't know that I'll rush to make these again (I tend to favor the brownie recipes that you just stir together with no extended beatings). But I'll definitely keep this in mind for when I want brownies and the meditative experience of a recipe that can't be rushed.