What I ate today—or how boring is that?

Sauerkraut skillet supper tasted a lot better than it looked.
Besides, I forgot the picture until I'd eaten half the sausage.
But it's here for the algorithms

Sometimes I feel, especially on dull days of which there are a lot, that this blog deteriorates into “and then I did this …. And then I did that … and then I ate that.” Especially the “what I ate” part because so much of my focus seems to be on food. But tonight I have to say I nailed it with a dish that I cooked off the top of my head, with suggestions from an anonymous friend who apparently wrote me a note about it.

When I was a child, my mom made a skillet supper of ground sausage and apples. I remember liking it a lot. But when I tried to duplicate it recently, it didn’t work. The dish had no cohesion, nothing held it together. It was just two separate things cooked in the same skillet. Along the same line, my brother’s ex-wife used to caramelize sauerkraut—I can see her yet with a sugar bowl in her hand, patiently shaking a bit at a time into the skillet, while turning the kraut endlessly—it was wonderful to us, two kids whose German mother despised sauerkraut and never ever served it. I didn’t taste it until I was grown and out of the house. But we could never duplicate what John’s ex did.

Recently I came across a recipe for a sausage, apple, and sauerkraut skillet supper. I must have mentioned it to someone because I have some notes about how someone else did it. Meantime, Mary V. who comes for supper occasionally and is a willing subject for my experiments—she told Jordan tonight that she really enjoys dinners of all the things my kids won’t eat—was scheduled for supper. I wrote and asked if she eats sauerkraut (sometimes it is best to ask these things ahead of time rather than have an unpleasant surprise). She wrote back that she loves sauerkraut. But then weather interfered—the night she was to come was one of those when it got down to ten degrees, and she didn’t want to venture out. I was left with a lb. container (a plastic tub, not a glass jar) of kraut in the fridge, and four lovely plump veal and pork sausages in the freezer.

Our schedules didn’t mesh, and tonight, almost three weeks later, we had the skillet supper. Here’s what I did: I browned two sausages in plenty of butter in the skillet and then added thinly sliced onion, peeled apple slices (I think they were McIntosh), and several forkfuls of drained (but not squeezed) sauerkraut. I poured white wine over all and stirred in about two Tbsp. dark browns sugar. I started to simmer this with the lid on but realized all that liquid needed to cook off if things were to caramelize, so I set the lid aside. And that’s exactly what happened—after about half an hour on a 220^o burner (knowing the temperature is an advantage of an induction hot plate), the liquid was gone and the kraut, apples, and onions nicely caramelized. I turned it off, put the lid on, and let it sit.

Mary arrived, Jordan came out to drink a glass of wine, and we visited. Finally I turned the burner on for about ten minutes and served supper. (Jordan left at this point lest the kraut jumped out of the pan at her.) The caramelized things were terrific, the sausage mild and good with a bit of Dijon. I think maybe Mary liked it better than any supper I’ve given her, and I liked it a lot myself. When I was heaping apples and onions and kraut into the skillet, I thought I was making enough for Coxie’s Army and would have leftovers no one wanted, but they do cook down dramatically, and between the two of us we ate it all. So that’s what I ate.

A word about gratitude—and groceries. Every week I place a fairly lengthy order to be delivered from Central Market (you have no idea how I long to be able to shop there in person). This Saturday, as I was unpacking five paper sacks and thinking what a boring, exasperating chore it was, I suddenly realized how many people in this world would feel so blessed to have so many groceries. My attitude changed immediately. And so tonight, I am grateful for the good food we ate, the company of friends with whom I often dine, and the comfort of my cottage.

May you all enjoy good meals and the bounty of God’s blessings.

Shortcut cooking

 

Last night I made a good, light summer supper—turkey tonnato (tonnato is a tuna/anchovy/caper sauce served on cold meat) and panzanella, a bread salad (no lettuce). Refreshing, different, and not a lot of work. But since I’m deep into food research into the 1950s and what they called convenience cooking, preparing that meal made me think about the difference. Everything I used last night was “from scratch”—or the meal was what some all “scratch cooking.”

By contrast, the 1950s saw the rise of convenience food, packaged food, frozen food. Everything from TV dinners to cake mixes. The goal was to have the housewife spend as little time and effort in the kitchen as possible. This was an era when women were easing into the workforce, not to replace men gone to war but on their own. Two female journalists recognized that women were stressed to cook dinner after a long day at work, and they determined to make cooking easier. You may never have heard of these two: Peg Bracken and Poppy Cannon. Each one is known today, if at all for one cookbook title, though they had varied writing careers  

You could say that Peg Bracken, a free lance journalist, lucked into a niche when she started writing about food. Her best-known book is The I Hate to Cook Book. Her recipes assume that the reader knows something about cooking and might even enjoy it. Bracken herself denied hating to cook. But she wanted to help women spend less time creating a really good meal. Taste was not inconsequential to her. One recipe I remember was Stayabed Stew—you threw stew meat, carrots, sliced potatoes, celery, onion into a crockpot. Add a can of condensed soup—tomato, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, your choice—and dilute with two cans of water. No need to sauté the vegetables first nor brown the meat. You put it all in a Dutch oven, put it in a slow oven, and cook five hours. Probably at that time Bracken did not have access to those packages of frozen stew vegetables we see in the groceries today—remember despite the introduction of frozen food, not many homes had freezers. Bracken also apparently did not have a crockpot or slow cooker.

The fiftieth anniversary edition of The I Hate to Cook Book was published in 2010 and is still available.

Poppy Cannon wrote several cookbooks, including one for brides, but she is remembered for The Can Opener Cookbook. Whereas Bracken wrote for the housewife and really left her in the kitchen, Cannon, in person a sophisticated and well-traveled diner familiar with good food, wrote for the career woman who might be hosting a gentleman for dinner or a small cocktail party. Cannon knew that woman didn’t want to dally in the kitchen. So she invented shortcuts—a vichyssoise made with mashed potatoes and cream of chicken soup or espagnole sauce made of Franco-American canned gravy with a dash of Kitchen Bouquet and a splash of brandy. Cannon’s recipes often lacked exact measurements and gave vague directions such as “stir like crazy.” She believed that presentation was important—I can hear my mom telling me food is half eaten with the eye—and she particularly loved flaming dishes and those she could prepare at the table. Sometimes at dinner parties, she’d bring the necessary appliances—a mixer, an electric skillet, whatever—to the table so that she could cook before guests.

These cookbooks today are pretty much read for amusement rather than actual cooking directions though I maintain that some of Bracken’s recipes are pretty good. It’s like the Facebook page titled Disgusting Vintage Foods—what some find disgusting is a treat to others, salmon croquettes being a case in point. At any rate it occurs to me that the era of convenience food and shortcut cooking paved the way for the dramatic foodie revolution that followed, led by such luminary cooks as James Beard and Julia Child. Perhaps another blog about them another time.

Meantime, happy cooking!