Hump-Day Quickie: A Wonderful Breakfast has multiple check marks next to the title, so it must be good

Edit: Have you heard of the Weekend Potluck? A lot of people who do fancier things than I do are in it, and as of last night so am I!

We on A Book of Cookrye have had a long night. You see, being tired of the oven smelling like something's burning every time we turned it on, I decided it clearly needed cleaning, so I started the cycle at night (when it's cool enough to open the house). It wasn't thirty minutes before the smoke turned yellow and the kitchen was in a deep fog. The little window on the oven door got so smoked it turned opaque. Vaguely remembering that yellow smoke is a sign of something or other that I'm pretty sure is ominous, I turned it off and accepted that I'd be scouring it myself.
Have you ever cleaned an oven? I don't mean wipe up a spill or two, I mean scoured off a really stuck-on layer of burnt, rancid grease while muttering furiously how the hell did my oven get this nasty? Well, if you spend 2 hours, 2 boxes of baking soda, every rag in the house, and half of the big jug of vinegar before it's clean enough to make it clean itself, you'll decide you deserve...

Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

Heck yes.

I deeply regret discovering slice-and-bake blonde brownies

Apparently I'm easy to buy for. Some friends of mine went traveling, and at an antique store, their daughter thought of me and pulled "the most ancient cookbook" (her words) she saw off of the shelf.

I was flipping through the book and most of the recipes looked really good. I may try some of the dated-but-probably-good recipes later, but today I went with a recipe we already have everything for.

Butterscotch Cookies Why yes, I did cut it in half. I only need so many cookies at once. 2 c brown sugar ½ c shortening 3 cups flour 2 eggs ½ tsp baking soda 1½ tsp baking powder ½ tsp salt ½ tsp vanilla, or a slight splash if you can't be bothered to measure Heat oven to 400°. Cream the shortening and brown sugar. Stir in the baking soda, baking powder, salt, and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly. Mix in half the flour after each egg. Shape into 2 logs, wrap, and refrigerate them. When ready to bake, heat oven to 400. Grease a cookie sheet and slice the dough thinly. Leave plenty of room for each cookie to expand, and bake 10 minutes or just until cooked through and barely browned at the edges (they may look a bit underdone but they're fine)- too long in the oven and they go hard.

Aaand right away, it's terrible for you!

I've said before that I really like digging recipes out of odd and forgotten places. It's an interesting way to learn more about... something or other. I'm sure it's a cultural insight somehow. Although a lot of the time, it seems like older recipes just find their way to me. Either I accidentally find a digital archive of public-domain cookbooks, or something like this literally gets handed to me.

Just as unhealthy, but now you can't see the shortening slab.

I also get a kick out of making things that have been forgotten; it's fun to rediscover things. Afterward, you get to eat them. I don't go out of my way to try the really scary stuff (although if I could spare the grocery money it does look fun), but I like trying out things that haven't been seen in most kitchens in a long time.

That's a lot of leavening.

Cookbooks like this one really appeal to me. More so than the expensive cookbooks with slick production behind them, they are a really nice insight into what everyday people were eating in previous decades. There are plenty of cookbooks from major publishing houses and magazines that show how a group of editors thought we should cook, but recipe books like this seem to better represent what food you'd find once you stepped out of the industrial test kitchen and into someone's house.

Given how stiff the dough's getting, all that baking soda and powder now makes sense.

The inside cover notes that this is being published by popular demand after the author's cooking classes held in the city two previous years. According to this article, she got her start demonstrating how to cook their way around the food shortages of WWI. By the 1930's, was doing cooking classes in sold-out music halls across the country. Given that half of this book is desserts, I'm not surprised at how popular she was. It is interesting to note that for someone who did shows to sold-out theaters, she's so thoroughly forgotten that I really only found a few old newspaper pages mentioning her and a couple of blog posts about "our city back in the day."

It's surprisingly little dough after it nearly overflowed the bowl.

Every time I make icebox cookies I think of a friend of mine who worked with little kids for a while. As a lesson in waiting for things to pay off, learning to follow directions, etc, she made chocolate icebox cookies with her kids. She timed it so the dough would be firmed up in the fridge just in time to lure the kids back in from recess. Well, she took this chocolate cookie dough and shaped it into a brown log on the table. Inevitably, it wasn't 5 seconds before one of the kids giggled and shouted "It looks like poo poo!" Thus ended order in the classroom.

It was kind of crumbly when I sliced it.

Anyway, the recipe said they bake quickly, and that was true. Rarely do I ever have a batch back out of the oven in 10 minutes. Also, these expanded a lot.

These turned into some seriously big cookies- they were the size of the ones in the Mexican bakery by my grandparents'. I broke each one in half, and look at how big half of one is in my hand.

As for the taste- have you ever had blonde brownies? This was blondies in cookie form. They were so good I had to take them to work lest I eat them all.

Thanks, Mrs. George Thurn!

The best cheesecake ever for power outages and hot days

Today on a Book of Cookrye, it's the middle of the night and and so we (that's Marcus and myself) are once again busting out the electric mixer cookbook and making...

Is there anything better than cheesecake in the middle of the night? Aside from brownies in the middle of the night, of course. But tonight, it's cheesecake night.

This is 20 crackers. I counted them.

Cheesecake is one of those really polarizing dishes. People either really love it or call it things like "a pan of sugared congealed grease." I fall into the former category (well, duh, I'm making one at 2AM) but find with a lot of recent recipes it's really oversweetened. Also, a lot of people have been adding all sorts of random things to cheesecakes to the point where you can't taste the cheesecake for all the other stuff put in it and on top. Which... why bother making the cheesecake?

The multiple-colored lights make the eggs look oddly theatrical.

Every time I make cheesecake, I must stare at a bowl containing bricks of cream cheese and think "We're going to... eat that."

This is one of the easiest cheesecake recipes I've seen. It's also got one of the shortest ingredient lists. Unlike certain other recipes, using the mixer actually made it easier (while it's possible to make one with a wooden spoon, it'll be a long time stirring).

"It looks like a white turd." -Marcus

I suck at even cinnamon distribution.

As has happened before in Marcus' oven, the cheesecake was a teeny bit overdone. I may make a belated housewarming present of an oven thermometer. The cheesecake had a second degree burn.

Uh... does dessert usually get a blister from being overdone?

Nevertheless, we were very impatient to try it.

After picking off all the blackened stuff (fortunately, it lifted off nicely) and replacing the cinnamon that went with it, I had this appetizing sight.

"How big a slice do you want?"

Fortunately, this recipe calls for a topping. I had misgivings about dumping sour cream on top (though my mom said she used to get them like that), but it took it from sad-looking to tempting.

Although it did go kind of scaly after baking.

Even if you take into account the cheesecake being a bit overcooked, the top seemed a bit excessively white to me. Whatever. Into the freezer, the refrigerator's taking too long!

Although bleached scaly topping doesn't look so bad as burn victim cheesecake.

So, six hours after I first dumped some really unhealthy stuff into the mixing bowl, how was this? ...Anticlimactically bland. Tasted like it needed something in it though I'm not sure what. The topping tasted like vanilla yogurt- not bad, but it didn't really do anything. More than anything, I was surprised at how bland this was because the batter was amazing and delicious. It provoked reactions like this:

It was like 2AM which is why it seemed normal to give a speech with a cheesecake batter spatula.

Suddenly, everyone in the kitchen felt a running gag coming on.

"Are you going to need this again?"
"It's in the oven already."

Note the scrupulously cleaned spatula.

As for myself...

Contemplating the fact that the joined-up beaters means I don't have to share.

As you can see, the batter was every bit as good as the cheesecake was not. Therefore, I wholeheartedly endorse just making the batter and serving it- just think how much you won't be heating the house in the summertime! Or if the power's out- it's bad enough to have to ration how much you use your cell phone until you can charge it again, just stir this together, get everyone a spoon, and suddenly being without electricity won't seem so bad.

As American as Chop Suey

Today on A Book of Cookrye, we're digging into the world of passé "foreign" foods. Actually, we're making something that changed American history a lot more than you may realize. We are making the dish that changed Chinese food from something weird and foreign to something so popular America that there are more Chinese restaurants than McDonald's, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Wendy's combined.

Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

I couldn't find "chop suey vegetables" or "chop suey sauce" anywhere short of special ordering.

Chop Suey 1½ pounds beef 1 stalk celery, cut into 1" pieces 1 sliced onion 1 can sliced water chestnuts 1 can bamboo shoots 1 can baby corn 1 tbsp flour 1 tbsp molasses 1 tbsp sweet chili sauce ½ c water 1 tsp sugar Generous shake pepper 1 generous handful (about 1½ c) bean sprouts Slice meat thin and cook in a little oil until nearly done. Reduce heat to medium-low, add the onions and celery and cover. Cook until the onion is tender- the celery will probably still be fairly crunchy but if you cook it longer the rest of everything will be overdone because celery takes forever.  Add the drained canned vegetables, pepper, sugar, and a little water. Cover and cook 15 minutes. While you're waiting, mix the molasses and flour. Add the soy and chili sauce, and when mixed add the water.  Add the sauce and bean sprouts. Bring it back to a boil for a few seconds and it's done.

 
Chop suey today is really out-of-date food, but it used to be a really big deal. Chop suey restaurants even made their way into fine art (this is from the same artist who did that diner painting).
In this amusing talk, a writer who did a fascinating book about the history of Chinese food in America called chop suey --and I really love this quote-- "the biggest culinary joke one culture has played on another, because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means tsap sui, which, if you translate back, means 'odds and ends.' So, these people are going around China asking for chop suey, which is sort of like a Japanese guy coming here and saying, 'I understand you have a very popular dish in your country called "leftovers," and it is particularly popular after that holiday you call Thanksgiving.'"
I've seen a lot of writing about how chop suey is not an authentic Chinese dish, and saying that since we know it's barely if at all Chinese, we should move on to real Chinese food. And as you know, the food you get from a Chinese takeout in our more gastronomically enlightened times is so much like the home country that you can order some sweet and sour chicken and have your Chinese immigrant friends sighing and wiping away a tear for the home country.

I'm not being lazy with a knife; the recipe said to leave them this big.

Chop suey went out of style because people realized it's not Chinese. I do love the urban legend from around that time about a visiting Chinese dignitary (or prince- it depends on who's telling it). He and his retinue were in New York some time around 1905. The Americans assigned to do whatever kissing-up and stuff you do with visiting foreign dignitaries announced they were pleased and proud to announce a banquet in their honor in one of New York's best hotels. Furthermore, it would be an honor to serve that national dish of their country, chop suey. The Chinese dignitary, mildly confused, asked "What is chop suey?"

Well, the recipe did say imported canned vegetables.

While I could find chop suey sauce and canned chop suey vegetables online, no one sold them in the stores by me. And who wants to pay shipping to order canned vegetables online? Also, because beef is expensive, I got trimmings instead. As an added bonus, I hardly had to do any cutting. Some friends of mine will point out that I'm really lousy at chopping. If ever I'm cooking for someone who wants things finely chopped, I usually hand over the knife because I can't be bothered.

I may well be using the same type of wok Mrs. Arthur Goetz had.

It occurred to me that for all people say chop suey has gone out of style, it looks a lot like the beef stir-fry you can get at 10:30 at night from that drive-thru takeout up the street. I think they just renamed it once "chop suey" became synonymous with "totally not foreign so don't fall for it."

And since this really is just making a stir-fry, it's far more interesting to point out that China has built the highest bridge in the world. The canyon under it is so deep that the usual methods of stringing the two main cables across wouldn't work. They strapped them to rockets and shot them across the river.

Judging by the pictures I've seen, it's nearly impossible to get the bridge and the river under it into one frame.

While the Chinese are building incredibly high bridges, I'm in my kitchen making really brown "Chinese" food.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't smell really good.

And I know it's not at all authentic, but it tastes exactly like what you're thinking of when you crave Chinese takeout. This is not what you eat when you're adventurously trying food from around the world for fun and cultural insight. This is what you order when you've got all your friends over or when it's 10 at night and you just got home.
The sauce was a bit runny, though. The modern-day way of thickening it with cornstarch works a lot better than flour.

Pieathlon! Is that an Upside-Down Chicken Pie or do we have a gas leak?

UPDATE July 9 2014- I finally got everyone else's pictures!

Guess what today is!

You know how people will sometimes joke that something's so bad you'd serve it to guests you really want to get rid of? Well, today I made something that bad and then deliberately invited some of my closest friends to eat it.

Better Homes and Gardens Prize-Tested Recipes, May 1952

This comes to us from RetroRuth at Mid-Century Menu. At first I was really excited because I really like reading her blog, have made a few things from it, and thought it was absolutely spiffy to make something out of her collection. Then as I was waiting to get my scan of the recipe, I started to dread that this would have lots of American "cheese" or an entire jar of mayonnaise in it. Then I got the scan and was relieved. As far as scary 50s recipes go, this one looked relatively benign. Yes, it's got canned chicken in it, but if that's the worst thing, this'll be just fine.
For this adventure, I invited over my cousin T, her girlfriend Kelly, and Austin who has been featured before. I would like to say that this lovely concoction will be the first time Kelly's had my cooking. T arrived early and we made this thing together, then later that night we all tried this thing.

I usually don't gather up all the ingredients and make them pose like this, but for this little escapade I just had to. Look at them! It's all in a can!

I didn't notice the percolator in the background looking like I randomly put a cremation urn in the picture, but I rather like it lurking behind the ingredients.

At first this seemed relatively benign- although I was surprised that it takes 12 olives to fill 2 tablespoons. Also, did you know how cohesive canned mushrooms are?

But wait- the only cans of mushrooms I could find were six ounces, and the recipe clearly says three!

I wanted to put the other half in the disposal so bad.

If you don't think about how it tastes, it looks kind of pretty.

I'm taking my time leading up to when I actually got out the canned chicken because canned chicken is evil. Even though I went all-out and got "premium chunk chicken," I can't stand the stuff. It is the unholy love child of expired canned tuna and cat food. Every time I see it, I think of those all-day Boy Scout hikes where midway we'd have to stop and eat canned chicken with crackers. And I don't mean chicken salad or something else to cut the taste, it was straight-out-of-the-can canned chicken. If you were vegetarian, you were allowed peanut butter instead. But if you were not, no peanut butter for you. Even after spending all day swatting spiders off your face and lugging the comically oversized backpacks, no one was hungry enough to choke that shit down without begging to have the vegetarian option despite not actually being vegetarian.
The thought of canned chicken makes me have flashbacks to the brief period of trying to be made into an outdoorsy person by means of choking down canned chicken straight out of the can and doing miserable group activities.

Please, imagine having to eat this straight out of the can.

I thought that maybe all the other stuff in this would somehow fix the flavor, but it all got worse. Pimiento, olives, and canned mushrooms taste bland but tolerable. When we dumped the chicken in, the bowl suddenly smelled exactly like that the stuff they add to gas so you can smell if you've got a leak in your house. Despite using an electric stove, I still wanted to check all the burners every few seconds.

That's not just canned chicken, that's premium chunk canned chicken.

When your pie makes you think your house is about to explode, there may be problems with the recipe. It was even worse after mixing it together. Flies were swarming in the kitchen.

It looks like it's a spoonful of mayo away from being a decent tuna sandwich, but that's only because my camera-phone doesn't record smells. I'm not going to try to describe what we in the kitchen felt at the sight and stink of this. Instead, here's T attempting to exorcize the pie-to-be with barbecue tongs and 100 Recipes Every Girl Should Know.

"The Power of Martha Stewart compels you!"

As the kitchen smelled more and more like a gas leak and the exorcism failed to produce any results, I smacked some flies out of the way and checked the recipe to see what the hell I'm supposed to do next. My exact words were "Oh shit, I'm supposed to do one of those white sauces!"

This picture of me trying to gradually add the water and canned mushroom pee to the flour represents how I felt.

I fail at white sauces.

So, like every other cook who didn't want to serve up lumpy gravy, I got out the blender. If you pinched your nose, it passed for mashed potatoes.

Cook until thick, eh?

The fumes had gotten to my head by now and I realized I'd forgotten to dissolve the bouillon cubes in water. And what the hell was I supposed to do with them, anyway? Oh shit, I was supposed to have added them to the sauce!
Also, these people think I should be using two bouillon cubes for this sucker. I didn't think about how much bouillon this was for one pie. Here's Austin holding up an 8" pan (the size the recipe says to use) just so you can all take in what a tiny little pie I'm putting that much bouillon into.

"TWO!?"

Yes, two. Two cubes of bouillon in one tiny cup. They make the water look and smell like pee.

You know what? I'm not going to list off the scatological things being said as we added the pee to the c---- overthickened white sauce. I had a big rant about 1950s food manufacturers making all manner of unspeakable bad recipes thinking it'd make their canned, processed things appealing despite wartime rationing being over. Which is true, apparently. But this... this was submitted to Better Homes and Gardens (I always wondered, better than what?) by a someone who, um, made this at home. Probably repeatedly. Do her children still instinctively look for the nearest three exits when they hear a can opener?

Smelling this as I stirred to thicken was painful.

Furthermore, who at BH & G tested this? Some execs or some young naïve home ec majors? Did they somehow not get swarms of flies like the ones that took over my kitchen? Did they actually taste this? At least they were really nice and didn't put Mrs. JE Hopkins' headshot right next to the recipe.

Because with fresh vegetables and meat, you just can't make lovely creations like this.

Does this make you want to make all your dinners come from cans as much as it does me? Oh wait, I haven't put the sauce on top.

Y'know what? Let's shake the pan around so the sauce really gets in there.

All right, the kitchen smells like a gas leak mixed with pee and I'm somewhat dizzy from the fumes. Let's just make the biscuit mix to package directions and cover this up.

The package directions lied about how much milk I needed.

It looks like an innocent pie, but you can see some of the goop oozing out.

I put it in the oven, hoping the bread dough would trap the smells as it baked. At this point I reheated the minestrone I'd made so I could serve something I knew would be good to make up for this. My mom came in, smelled the tomatoes and stuff on the stove, and said "It smells good in here!" Despite T and I shouting "No, no, no!!" she opened the oven to get a big nose-ful. I wish I could have gotten a picture of what she did, but imagine someone staggering back from the oven while politely trying not to look like this:

Anyway, T had to go get Kelly from work and Austin hadn't arrived yet, leaving me all alone with the oven full of pie, and the flies. While I waited, I put on this recording of Moonlight Serenade on guitar to calm myself while I did the dishes.

All right, this sucker's been baked long enough, time to drag it out into public! It looks innocent enough, does it not? Sure, you can see some of the ooze that awaits, but let's ignore that and look at the bread which baked up really nicely.

Or not. After all, this is an upside-down pie. Behold!

We've got pictures of all of us choking this thing down, but unfortunately, due to a mixup of whose pictures are on whose camera, I'm only just now posting them 10 days later. But first, here's what everyone thought upon learning that this was a reader-submitted recipe!

T: "Cruel and unusual punishment."
Austin: "She could almost cook?"
Kelly: "Reader recipe wasn't very inventive. Seems to be born out of necessity rather than creativity."

And, for your viewing pleasure, here we all are!

I volunteered to go first.

Imagine being told "Wait! Hoooold it!" with mouthful of upside-down chicken pie.

This thing gave me some serious shivers after I choked it down.

After seeing how this thing hit me, Austin nevertheless volunteered to go second.

"Doesn't smell that bad, what is it, casserole of death?"

Amused that the pie fell off his fork.

Overwhelmed by the chicken upside down pie.

It only gets worse from here, folks!

Then, the unspeakable happened. He got a second forkload.

T: "He's gotta contemplate the conception of flavors."

Looking concerned...

"Eh, it's not that bad. I think he's [that's me] overdoing it."

 So I'd barely choked this down and Austin had deemed it not all that bad. On these mixed reviews, T and Kelly went last.

Kelly carefully sniffing this.

I think T's asking Kelly why she'd actually want to smell it first.

I think T's face says so much.

I think they're plotting revenge on me for serving this.

Preparing to take the plunge!

Let's take a moment to appreciate what my friends just did for me.

Attempting to rationalize what just happened.

HOLY CRAP THIS THING IS SALTY! We could smell the salt!
But you know what? Austin discovered that for some reason, it was... if not good, passable dropped into the soup.

The only way to eat this is after drowning it.

And after having some of it in the soup, it was so salty that eating the soup without it tasted like nothing. Also, in a wierd way, once you'd put it in soup to cut the salt, it kind of grew on you- even though the chicken was really stringy and it still tasted really off. Believe it or not, this is all that was left:

Then we had minestrone and war cake to make up for it.

I hope you liked this adventure! Be sure to see what everyone else made! If there's an asterisk next to someone's name, I haven't got the link to their post yet, but they've probably got their pies up too. 

Brian of Caker Cooking – Chess Pie    This one's my recipe!
Ruth of Mid Century Menu – Avocado Lime Pie
Mimi of The Retro WW Experiment – Nesselrode Pie
Erica of Retro Recipe Attempts – Curried Egg Pie
Jenny of Silver Screen Suppers --Mile-High Lemon Chiffon Pie
Sarah of Directionally Challenged Cooking --Simone's Pet Strawberry Pie
Kelli of Kelli's Kitchen --Butterscotch Pie
Ashley of A Pinch of Vintage --Schoolteacher Pie
Poppy of Granny Pantries --Black Bottom Pie
Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl --Chocolate "Pie"
Emily of Dinner is Served 1972 --Seafoam Cantaloupe Pie