Unearthing and re-creating the "company food" of yesteryear! I'll cook it, my husband will eat it, and you'll rest easy in the knowledge that your next backyard party or church potluck will be a success!
Grate apple and onion, then boil apple and onion until soft (about 30 minutes). Strain (to make a purée). Add remaining ingredients and simmer 10 minutes. Serve with croutons.
"It's a delight to serve a light green and vivid red delicacy." -
The Joys of Jell-O
1 package Jell-O Lemon Gelatin
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup boiling water
3/4 cup cold water
1 tbsp. lemon juice
3 tbsp. mayonnaise
1 avocado, pared and mashed
1 pint fresh strawberries (or use 2 packages [10 oz. each] Birds Eye Strawberry Halves, thawed and drained)
Dissolve Jell-O gelatin and salt in boiling water. Add cold water and lemon juice. Chill until slightly thickened. Stir in mayonnaise and avocado, blending well. Pour into a 3- or 4-cup ring mold or individual ring molds. Chill until firm. Unmold and fill center of ring with berries. Makes about 2 1/2 cups gelatin, or 5 servings.
Gourmet Olive Balls! Recipe by Mrs. Robert Stein from The Cincinnati Cookbook (1976)
8 1/2 ounce can black pitted olives
1 8-oz. package cream cheese
1/2 cup halved pecan meats
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
2 tbsp sour cream
1 tbsp mayonnaise
Soften Cheese, blend in sour cream and mayonnaise. Drain olives well. Stuff each olive with half a pecan. Pinch off a small piece of cheese and wrap around olive. Roll in finely chopped nut meats. Chill til ready to serve.
Anchovy Eggs from "Swiss Cooking" by Anne Mason, c. 1964.
6 hard-boiled eggs
1 lb. tomatoes, peeled
salt and pepper to taste
1 small tin anchovy fillets
lettuce leaves
mayonnaise
Cut eggs in halves lengthwise and scoop out yolks, pressing through sieve into a basin. Cut 1 large tomato in halves and scoop out seeds, then chop the flesh very small. Chop three anchovy fillets and add with tomato to the egg yolks. Blend well together, adding a little of the anchovy oil is too stiff, and season to taste. Fill egg whites with mixture and arrange on lettuce leaves. Garnish with tomato slices and remaining anchovy fillets. Serve mayonnaise separately.
JUST when you thought life couldn't get any more exciting, along comes the highlight of the late Summer/early Autumn social calendar, Pieathalon! Pieathalon EIGHT if you can believe it. I am, as always, honored to be counted among the participants, especially considering my last post here was (*checks notes) Pieathalon SEVEN. Thanks to my fellow food bloggers and especially Yinzerella at Dinner is Served 1972 for prompting me to get off my a** and make something for public consumption again.
Because apparently being stuck in the house for a year and a half with literally nothing else to do wasn't enough to get me motivated.
But enough about me, let's make a pie!
The excellent Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers sent me a recipe for "Ann Landers' Save Your Marriage Meat Pie." (Don't panic, my marriage doesn't need saving at the moment. THAT I KNOW OF.)
Being of a certain age, I remember a time when Ann Landers (née Esther Pauline "Eppie" Lederer) and her twin sister, Abigail Van Buren (née Pauline Esther "PoPo" Phillips), in their competing advice columns, dictated the social mores of middle America with their witty, no-nonsense advice. In my early formative years, I had the advantage of living in a home where we received TWO daily newspapers, and so I was doubly-indoctrinated into polite society. (Full disclosure: The morning paper, The Columbus Citizen-Journal, carried Dear Abby and also had a far superior comics' section, so if forced to choose sides I would have to lean towards PoPo).
Ann Landers (left) and Abigail Van Buren
The recipe seemed a bit intimidating at first glance. I'm not much of a baker (I usually recruit Dr. Husband to make my crusts for these things) and the idea of trying to manipulate a crust into a bundt pan made me perspire. (In fairness, my only bundt pan is a pliable silicone thing that makes for easy cleanup but doesn't tend to hold the shape of whatever's in it very well.)
So, my crack Googling skills led me to the idea of little mini-muffin pies.
With my new goal in mind, I made the following modifications:
•I halved the recipe across the board (maybe a mistake – read on)
•I used ground turkey in place of pork – I live in the middle of nowhere and only ever see ground pork as part of a "meatloaf mix" and YES, I could have gone to the butcher and asked for some special order, but everyone is masked and also I don't like talking to people
•I did not use chervil - see above about the middle of nowhere and also I don't know what chervil is and YES, I could have Googled it, but I had already Googled that day and I am awfully lazy
The dough came together very easily and was not nearly as sticky as I was led to believe.
BUT.
The dough didn't seem to rise. AT ALL. Maybe something got mis-aligned in my halving of the amounts? I know the yeast activated before I mixed it in, and the dough retained a delicious buttery, yeasty aroma throughout, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Likewise, the meat mixture was simple enough, my only regret being that I didn't have the Hamilton-Beach meat grinder that my mother received for Christmas, 1963. (Photo evidence below. If you can manage to keep your eyes from lingering on the fabulousness of the Christmas tree and the television.)
As far as I remember, my mother used the meat grinder EXCLUSIVELY to grind up leftover ham for ham salad, and it sat in her kitchen well into my adulthood, and though she's no longer with us I'm pretty sure it still exists, intact and operational, somewhere in my own home or one of my siblings'.
Un-risen dough now rested, I shaped it into a muffin tin with varying degrees of success. Not only did it not noticeably rise, but it retained a very springy texture. By the time I had finished shaping one slot, the dough in the previously-completed slot had pulled back from the edges and begun to pull into itself. It was a race against time.
Once filled, I tried to get fancy with the remaining dough, again with varying degrees of success, as evidenced by the shot glass in the background.
I baked at 400 for just shy of 20 minutes, maybe that was even a little too long as they probably got a little too brown on the bottom.
So how did they taste?
SPOILER ALERT my marriage is safe. FOR NOW
Check out my fellow Pieathletes' creations below, and stay tuned because KITSCHMAS IS COMING
