Posted on 06/14/2017 5:54:44 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
My husband and I no longer have anyone in our families to celebrate on Fathers Day; but I got to thinking of things that our Dads liked to eat.
My father-in-law, being Pennsylvania born-and-bred, was very fond of Chicken Corn Soup. We used to make big batches of it, and take it up to stock his gigantic freezer. It was at least a small comfort to us that when he was dying of cancer but still able to eat, he could enjoy this soup.
We never made rivels, the traditional tiny dumpling that goes into this soup; but the following recipe from Taste of Home is very like the one we have always made, and includes instructions for rivels:
http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/chicken-corn-soup-with-rivels
One of my favorite writers on the history of food and eating - and Pennsylvania Dutch cooking in particular - is William Woys Weaver:
https://www.amazon.com/William-Woys-Weaver/e/B000APZL4A/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1497487363&sr=1-2-ent
My own father was very fond of Chinese (or American-Chinese :-) foods, which he learned to like while living for a time in the San Francisco Bay Area right after his WWII service as a Marine in the Pacific. He especially liked Egg Foo Yung, which was my own introduction to Chinese food when we began to have Chinese restaurants in our community in the late 1950s. Its easy to make this at home, almost as fast and a lot less expensive than calling up for delivery ;-) Here's a good recipe from Food.com:
http://www.food.com/recipe/egg-foo-yung-24687
-JT
Well...chubby works!
G’Nite, mylife! Sweet Dreams.
Oh! There are messes and THERE ARE MESSES!
“Can’t you smell that smell”...
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Should have named her, “Harrah” but it didn’t occur to us.
Let’s just say I hope she doesn’t learn to cook from her mom.
Of course, I didn’t marry her for her cookin’.
I've also thrown them on a pizza too....pretty tasty.
I don’t think any man marries a lady for her cooking ;-)
(But it’s nice if the cooking turns out good!)
G’Nite!
-JT
I still hate green lima beans. Somewhere along the line I had or made something that had a lot of the pale white lima beans and they were fine tasting.
FAMILY RECIPE FOR CHOPPED CHICKEN LIVER:
First, make chicken skin cracklings and rendered chicken fat.(I save skin and fat in the freezer until I have A LOT before making this).
Cut chicken skin into 1” pieces; place in frying pan with raw chicken fat, cover with cold water, cook over low heat until water evaporates, fat is liquid and skin fries to a crisp. Remove cracklings. Drain. Salt. Cool. Reserve rendered fat for later cooking use. Besides the livers, it makes wonderful roux for chicken gravy.
You can use the same pan, but usually it is fairly encrusted with bits of stuck skin. I prefer to clean the pan. Into the clean pan, put 1-3 TBS or so of rendered chicken fat. Add drained chicken livers that have been patted dry before cooking. Over medium heat, gently turn livers in hot fat until cooked through. Only cook until no longer bloody. They can be a bit pink inside. Drain livers on toweling until cooled.
While livers cool, boil 1 egg per 1.25 lbs livers. Finely chop a little (1/4 cup) sweet onion. By the time egg is boiled and cooled, it is time to chop. Use a wooden bowl and a hand chopper. I actually use a pastry cutter. First, place onion in bowl and chop until minced. Next, add livers,diced egg and generous amounts of crushed chicken skin cracklings (you can chop them separately first) and chop and turn quickly. Don’t go for paste. You want this sort of crumbly. It should hold together without being mush. Salt to taste every 2-3 chops. IF it’s dry, you can add melted chicken fat by the 1/4 tsp &/or more cracklings. Taste for salt and dryness. This takes practice. Entire process goes very quickly. Actually, making cracklings takes the most time.
Now, refrigerate for several hours, preferably overnight, so liver, onion and chicken fat flavors meld. Pack mixture firmly in container. Serve with crackers or just mounded on a lettuce base and eat with a fork. It is quite mild.
My husband hates this. I make it when he’s not home and air the house out after. Then I ration myself to maybe 1/4-1/3 cup at a time. It won’t keep and I’ve never tried freezing it, so I usually finish it off in a few days. If you are prone to heartburn, this dish may not be for you.
Both the extra rendered chicken fat and the cracklings can be frozen separately. The cracklings are great in mashed potatoes. I make a fried cabbage dish that is based on bacon-fried cabbage, only I use chicken fat instead of bacon grease and lots of cracklings instead of bacon.
I’m not sure of the difference. I only know that Lima Grands and Baby Limas are different ‘critters’.
I like them both, in different applications. But the ‘babies’ are probably more universally acceptable.
animal organs - yuck. growing up, my family would be “gifted” deer meat including the liver. my Nana would prepare it and my parents made us all eat some. Chicken necks and insides, or turkey ones, cow tongue, (I could go on with more examples) all gross, yuck and double yuck!
LOL! I used to know an old farmer down on the Bay Hundred in Maryland who always carried around a dried beef tongue in his pocket to snack on, while he did his chores.
He offered me a taste once, but I just couldn’t get past the looks of it.
My husband, who likes a lot of those weird ‘innards’, balks at tongue: he always says that he just can’t eat something that can ‘taste him back’ :-)
YUM!
*BUMP* for morning coffee and recipe printing! :)
I love limas. I have a great recipe I”ll post.
Ping for later..thanks for the recipes every week...
Tongue, all of it, is displayed in most NYC delis. I think it is very popular among Jews and possibly other ethnic groups.
I see it in my local ethnic store. My farmer friend cured it like jerky.
I always go to this site when I want retro recipes. My Dad loved so many of these things!
http://allrecipes.com/recipes/17541/everyday-cooking/more-meal-ideas/retro/?page=2
I have a great liver pate recipe I’ll post it in an hour or so. I used to use chicken livers but now I get livers from a turkey farm where they are naturally raised. They sell them in one pound packages vacuum sealed and frozen.
I remember a lot of those.
(LOL! I’ve never seen so many chicken pot pie recipes in one place ;-)
My mother made a version of this for years. My Dad loved this with his spam sandwiches!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/corn-casserole-recipe-1943617
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