Breakfast. Growing up, this was my favorite meal of the day. Grandma making thin pancakes with jam, honey or syrup. Savory crepes with sour cream and lox. Cereal with berries. Omelets or over easy eggs.   That first meal in the morning really set the tone for how I felt throughout the rest of the day. At some point between high school and now, all of that went away. Mornings became hurried and hectic; and there was no time to do anything more then make a quick cup of tea and run out of the door to start the work day.

Passover sucks.

I’m never sure how many people are familiar with Judaism in the world outside of my little urban-suburban East Coast super-Jewish bubble, but to recap, Passover is a week-long festival. During Passover Jews celebrate being freed as slaves from Egypt (though then we went and wandered in the gosh-darn desert for forty years, so I’m not sure it was much of an upgrade).

It’s celebrated by having a seder which is a big, traditional meal that, in a truly Jewish fashion, involves you sitting around and talking about how much your ancestors suffered so you could sit here and eat brisket. That’s not why it sucks. I like that part. I can listen to some stories of suffering if it means I get potato kugel at the end of it. No, the part that sucks is that on Passover, you cannot eat anything that is leavened, or has risen at all. Basically, does it have flour in it? You’re probably not allowed to have it. And this means that every food that has ever made you happy is pretty much cut from your diet for a week. Bread? No. Pasta? Nope. Rice? It depends on where you come from, but most Jews say nuh-uh. No cereal. No crackers. No chips (except potato chips). No pizza. Nothing with a breaded crust. No baked goods. Pretty much all desserts are gonzo.

Fear not, though, because Jews have a (really, really terrible) solution known as matzah. It’s basically a giant, crumbly cracker that’s used in various states of being ground up, and it pretty much instantly dries out everything, including your mouth. Also, if you eat too much of it, it gives you constipation something fierce.

This holiday has always seemed a bit weird to me. It’s never seemed very Jewish to me to limit one’s eating capabilities. The only reasoning I can possibly come up with is that if there’s one thing Jews like more than eating, it’s complaining about how hard we’ve got it, and this holiday ensures that no matter how cushy your life is, once a year, you and the rest of your people will be sitting on the toilet pissed off, or with your nose pressed against a bakery window, or staring at food blogs showing off baked Easter goods like a giant, cosmic middle finger.  At least once a year you will on some level understand the pain and suffering of those less fortunate than you, because you are deeply sympathetic to the feeling of literally being willing to kill someone for some freaking bread.

Every family, though, has various solutions to dealing with this. There are certain desserts every family has and certain recipes (usually involving lots of potatoes and cream or chocolate to mask the taste of matzah) that the use to get them through the week. My mother, for example, whose birthday often falls during Passover, has a truly decadent chocolate nut cake with the world’s best, fudgiest frosting. Since, sadly however, you can’t sit around eating chocolate-covered raisins the entire week (woe), my personal favorite family recipe is one my mother got from a friend about eleventy bajillion years ago that makes what we call Passover Rolls. And these suckers are amazing. They’re not really bread, but they’re so much like bread that by eating them you almost feel like maybe, just maybe, you’re not going to die constipated, bitter, and without good food in your stomach.  They take about twenty minutes and even if you’re not keeping kosher for Passover, I suggest you try them. They’re delicious.

Magical Matzah Rolls
(Makes eight medium-sized rolls)

1 cup matzah meal
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup oil or melted butter
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 tbs. sugar
3 eggs

1. Boil together water, oil, sugar, salt, and cinnamon.
2. When the mixture comes to a boil, immediately take off the flame and mix in the matzah meal. You should mix until your dough is firm and comes away from the sides of your pot, then let it cool for a few minutes.
3. Add and mix in eggs to your dough one at a time — the mixture should be very loose. If it’s too loose and liquid, refrigerate the dough until it’s solidified to a more ideal texture.
4. Heat oven to 400°.  Either grease a cookie sheet or line it with parchment paper. Scoop out about a tablespoon of your dough and place them on the sheet about two inches apart from each other.
5. Put in oven and let bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, turn the oven down to 300° and let the rolls cook for five to ten more minutes, or until they’re brown. Rolls keep well, but are best when they’re fresh.

My grandmother was a wonderful, sweet lady. My grandmother could not cook anything very well — except for potato cakes. I had not thought about Grandma’s potato cakes for a long time when out of the blue the other night my wife asked me if I have ever had potato pancakes. I remembered Grandma’s potato cakes and have been craving them all week. This morning I ended that craving.

My Grandma made potato cakes when ever she had leftover mashed potatoes. She would serve them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner depending  on the amount of left over mashed potatoes and her mood. These potato cakes are so simple and yet tasty and filling I don’t know why I have not made them for years. This is simple comfort food that brings back many fond memories of my childhood. Since I did not have any leftover mashed potatoes I had to make some fresh. I hoped that would not ruin the taste of the potato cakes.

Potato Cakes

Ingredients:

• 4 to 5 medium potatoes mashed
• 1 egg
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup flour
• salt and pepper

If you are making these potato cakes from leftover mashed potatoes add the egg and the flour and mix well. If you are using fresh mashed potatoes then let them cool after mashing them before mixing in  the egg and flour. Mix in salt and pepper to taste.

In a medium skillet heated to a medium high temperature add either a few tablespoons of vegetable oil or bacon grease. I know that the vegetable oil is healthier, but I, like my grandmother, always use bacon grease. It adds much better flavor and I love bacon.

When the oil is hot, or the bacon grease is melted add a couple of spoonfuls of the potatoes to the pan and flatten with a spatula. Let the cake cook for a few minutes and flip. The cake should have a nice golden brown color just like a pancake.

If the cake does not want to hold together like a pancake add a little more flour to the remaining mashed potatoes to help keep it together. The key to making these potato cakes come out correctly is to make sure that you keep plenty of bacon grease, or oil, in the pan. If you add more grease let it heat up to temperature before cooking the next cake.

As I made these for breakfast I topped them with fried eggs, crumbled bacon, and diced onions also cooked in bacon grease. Did I mention I love bacon? Add some country gravy, salsa, or ketchup and you are ready to eat. If you really want to get crazy you can top them with some pancake syrup like my wife does.

In my continuing quest to discover the ingredients for the Mandarin sauce on my favorite Chinese food restaurant’s Mandarin Chicken, I came across this rather tasty number in the back of my recipe box.

I have a vast array of recipes my Mom collected over the years of her life. It’s fun looking through these old recipes because many are very old and have been handed down from generation to generation. Some of them are handwritten and some were cut from the back of a box of some cooking ingredient. This particular recipe has no other information so I don’t know where it came from. I was somewhat surprised to find this recipe because Mom never cooked anything like this that I can remember.

How many of you out there have a card file full of these old recipes from a relative sitting in a cupboard somewhere? What condition are they in? I have a few that are only partially there now so it will be a lot of work to try and figure out what  the ingredients are and the amounts to use that are missing either from something spilled on them or part of another recipe card sticking to it. I am working on creating a database to store all of my recipes to keep them from being destroyed, and I am also scanning some of the older ones to save digital images of the markings added to them. I hope that you’re also doing what you can to preserve the history of your old recipes too.

Oriental Chicken

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cut into bite-size pieces
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 4 teaspoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger root
• 1/2 cup chopped green onion
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/4 cup ketchup

Directions

Coat the chicken pieces with 1/4 cup of cornstarch; set aside.

Beat the eggs, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl until smooth. Stir in the flour and baking powder until no large lumps remain. Mix in the chicken until evenly coated.

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Drop in the chicken pieces; cook until golden brown and no longer pink on the inside, about 12 minutes. Set the chicken aside; keep warm.

Reduce the heat to medium-high and stir in the sesame oil, ginger, and green onion. Cook and stir until the onion is limp and the ginger begins to brown, about 1 minute. Pour in the water, vinegar, and sugar; bring to a boil. Dissolve the cornstarch in the soy sauce and add to the simmering vinegar along with the ketchup. Stir until the sauce has thickened and is no longer cloudy. Stir in the chicken and simmer until hot.

I like to serve this over pasta, but rice would work just as well. Add some fresh vegetables on the side and you have a filling meal that is fairly light.

One of my favorite meals for breakfast are baking powder biscuits and gravy. I don’t care what kind of gravy you use, these baking powder biscuits make the meal. My wife makes a fantastic sausage gravy most of the time when she makes biscuits and gravy and I have used deer, elk, bear, beef, and even grouse to make gravy for these biscuits.

I also like to eat these biscuits with some butter and homemade blackberry or strawberry jelly on them.

I have used them to make deer steak sandwiches to take along on hunting trips and for lunch at work.

This is another old recipe I got from my Mom. These old recipes are still so much better than anything you can buy in a store, and they are simple and quick to make. My wife and I have been spending more time going through old recipes and finding simple things like these biscuits to take the place of the ready-made or ready-to-bake biscuits you get in the store. These are not full of preservatives and other things that may not be so good for you. We enjoy gathering, growing and making our foods. You can use the refined white flour, whole grain flour, or even grind your own flour to use.

Baking Powder Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sifted flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons cold shortening
• 2/3 cup milk

Sift dry ingredients together and cut in shortening. Add milk to make a soft dough. Place on floured board and knead for a few seconds using as little flour as possible. Roll out 1/2 inch  thick and use a lightly floured biscuit cutter to cut into biscuits. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake in a very hot oven (450 degrees) for about 12 minutes.

For some added flavor, mix in 1/2 cup of shredded cheese to the dry ingredients. For spaghetti, I like to mix in some spicy cheese mix and then after baking the biscuits add some garlic butter to them and toast them lightly in the oven for garlic bread.

If you don’t have a biscuit cutter, increase the milk to 1 cup and drop from a teaspoon onto a greased cookie sheet and bake in a very hot oven (450 degrees ) for about 12 minutes

The other day as I was perusing the isles at the Wal-mart, I spied a package of corn bread mix and thought that sounded good. I have not had good corn bread for a while. I had some left over Manwich Spaghetti and decided to have the corn bread with it.

I got home, put the groceries away, mixed up the corn bread and tossed it in the oven. When the corn bread was done, I heated up the spaghetti and set down for dinner. That corn bread tasted like sand. The only resemblance it had to corn bread was it was mostly yellow. I gave Bo a piece and he wolfed it down. About a minute later he gagged a couple times and puked it back up on my shoes. Then he growled at me and ran in the bedroom. I ate my spaghetti and tossed the corn bread in the trash. I hate to waste food, but I didn’t feel too bad ’cause that shit was not food.

So today I was going through some stuff and came across a recipe that my mom had for old-fashioned corn bread. I do not know where mom got the recipe, but it does say it is a 200-year-old recipe. Just reading the recipe brought back so many fond memories. I can still remember the smell of that corn bread baking in the oven, and the look of shock on my sister’s face when she asked me to pass her the butter and I threw it at her. I remember Mom and Dad trying so hard not to laugh as they yelled at me for throwing the butter at my sister, as I explained that she asked me to PASS it to her. It was not my fault she didn’t catch it. Oh those were fun times.

Old-Fashioned Corn Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 cup corn meal
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3 Tbsp melted shortening or bacon drippings; Come on, do I really have to tell you which one I used?

Do not sift the corn meal. Mix all the ingredients together and bake in a greased pan or skillet at 400 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

This is such a simple recipe and yet it tastes so good. The recipe says it will serve four, but not if I am one of the four.

I’ve got to say, my Nana could cook. Although there would be times she’d serve us something experimental and completely bizarre, we could most often look forward to a wonderful, creative meal cooked from scratch with extra love added to every dish; she was just that kind of lady.

I think the recipe I remember having most often is her Hawaiian Chicken. For better or for worse, I loved it. Whether it was the sweet pineapple chunks or the syrupy sauce that drenched the rice, it was always a hit.

Nana’s Hawaiian Chicken

Ingredients:

• chicken pieces to serve 4 (you can chose boneless skinless or bone-in)
• enough corn starch, paprika and salt to shake the chicken in
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 stalks celery, cut on the diagonal
• 1 can pineapple chunks in juice; drain and reserve juice
• 1 can mushrooms, drain and reserve juice
• 1-2 green peppers, chopped

For the sauce, combine liquids with water to make 2 cups:

• 4 tablespoons soy sauce
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• reserved pineapple and mushroom juice
• 3-4 tablespoons cornstarch with some liquid to make gravy (reserve until the end)

Saute chicken in 1/2 butter  1/2 olive oil until brown, then simmer in liquid sauce until tender (about 20 min). Remove chicken and place vegetables in the pan, then place the chicken on top and simmer for 10 more minutes. Remove chicken and vegetables and add corstarch / liquid mixture to sauce in pan and simmer for five minutes.  Pour sauce over chicken / vegetables and serve over cooked rice.

Now, in all honesty, I don’t remember canned mushrooms, so my guess is she either left them out or used fresh. And I sort of remember onions in there too. Regardless, you can alter the recipe any which way you like, but you won’t be able to get the memories I have that are attached to this dish that make it taste even better.

In my family, we celebrate Christmas Eve Polish style (a/k/a Wigilia).  In the version passed down from my maternal grandfather’s side of the family, we have share five meatless courses:  opłatki, homemade pierogi with cheese and dried fruits (another post altogether), pamouli (bulgur with stewed apricots and prunes), cabbage and red beans and pea soup.

Now, about that pea soup…. I’m sure many of you have had split pea soup before.  To be sure, it’s quite tasty, with or without ham.  But this pea soup starts with whole dried peas and whole cloves of garlic, and it is worlds apart from split pea soup.  Its flavor is full and mild.  The cloves of garlic add a depth of flavor to the dish without being remotely aggressive.  This soup is so very comforting… sleep inducing, even, at the end of a five course meal.

Honestly, I’m not sure why the fam doesn’t eat this pea soup more often during the year.  It’s perfect eating for bone-chilling winter nights, and it really sticks to one’s proverbial ribs.  Doesn’t hurt that it is inexpensive, healthy and exquisitely easy to make, either, though some advance planning is required.  Recipe follows after the jump.

Polish Christmas Eve Pea Soup

Ingredients:

• 3/4 lb whole dried peas
• ~4 whole cloves garlic
• water
• salt to taste
• 1 teaspoon butter

Directions:

• Sort peas to remove any stones and rinse.
• Place peas in a heavy saucepan and cover with at least 4 inches cold water and soak overnight.
• To cook, add whole peeled cloves of garlic to saucepan and bring peas to a boil over medium heat.
• Cover saucepan and tilt lid and bring soup to a bare simmer over low heat.
• Simmer for 1-2 hours until peas are very tender.  Add salt to taste. The soup will still be brothy.
• Before serving, swirl 1 teaspoon butter into soup.