Main Dishes

Contents

• Meat 'N' Biscuit Squares
  • Rich Biscuit Dough
• Pork Chops, Sunny Side Up
• Albóndigas (Meatballs in Red Wine Sauce)
• Hamburger-Corn Pie
• Cheese Strata
• Chicken Rosanne Rosannadana (Chicken Rosato)
• Fried Snakeskins
• Virginia Chickypoo Pudding
• Chicken Rosemary's Baby
• Chicken Tetrazzini
• Easy Chicken
• Chicken Crèpes
  • Crèpes
• Glumki
• Quiche
  • Pâté Brisée
• Comforting Cafeteria-Style Macaroni and Cheese
• Kichari

Meat 'N' Biscuit Squares

Rich Biscuit Dough

Pork Chops, Sunny Side Up

Bread chops in seasoned flour. (Try pepper, garlic powder, coriander, ginger, dry mustard, nutmeg, cinnamon?, clove?) Fry in butter ~5 min. Bake chops on cookie sheet with peach half on each, at 350°F, half an hour for thin chops, longer for thicker. Place thick slice of cheese (~1/2 in.) on top of each peach and chop 5-10 min. before done.

If you substitute peach slices, you have pork chops over hard.

Works equally well with chicken. Substitute one half chicken breast, pounded flat, for each chop. Try gruyère cheese.

—Sue

Albóndigas (Meatballs in Red Wine Sauce)

From Gourmet Magazine, Nov, '85

Serves 6-8

For the meatballs:

1	onion, minced	2	large eggs, beaten lightly
1/4 c.	veg. oil	1/2 c.	raisins
1	tomato, peeled, seeded & chopped	2 c.	bread crumbs
1	jalapeño chili, seeded, peeled & omitted	1/3 c.	fresh grated Parmesan
3/4 lb.	ground veal		seasoned flour
3/4 lb.	ground chuck

For the sauce:

1-1/2 c.	brown stock
1	onion, minced	1-1/2 c.	dry red wine
2 T.	veg. oil	1 t.	cumin (omit)
1 T.	flour	1	bay leaf

In a small saucepan cook the onion in 2 T. of the oil over moderate heat, stirring, for 3 minutes, or until it is softened, add the tomato, (the jalapeño chili,) and a pinch of sugar, and simmer the mixture, stirring, for 10 minutes, or until thickened. Let the mixture cool.

Make the sauce: In a large skillet cook the onion in the oil over moderately low heat, stirring, for 3 minutes; add the flour and cook the roux, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add in a stream the stock and the wine, stirring, and stir in the cumin, the bay leaf, and salt & pepper to taste. Bring the liquid to a boil, stirring (yes, still), and simmer for 10 minutes.

Back to the meatballs: In a large bowl combine well the veal, chuck, eggs, raisins, Parmesan, bread crumbs, tomato mixture, and salt and pepper to taste and form the mixture into 2" meatballs. Dredge them in seasoned flour, shaking off excess, and brown in batches in a skillet in the remaining 2 T. of oil over moderately high heat, transferring as browned to skillet containing sauce. Bring sauce to boil & simmer meatballs covered for 30 min. Transfer meatballs to serving dish (serve on noodles) & keep warm while reducing sauce over high heat by 1/3. Pour sauce over meatballs.

Cook and stir hamburger, pork sausage (can subst. hamburger), onion and garlic until meat is brown; drain. Stir in tomatoes, with liquid, corn, olives, pepper, and chili powder (if omitted use lots of pepper). Heat to boiling. Pour into ungreased baking dish, 9x9x2 or equivalent size (tends to overflow; I used a 9x13 pan to good effect, increasing the cheese somewhat —Sue).

Mix cornmeal, milk and eggs; pour over meat mixture. Sprinkle with cheese. Cook in 350°F oven until golden brown, 40 to 50 minutes. Garnish with parsley sprigs and black olives if desired. 8 servings.

—Betty Crocker

I typically greatly reduce the hamburger (often to nothing), omit the corn, and add lots of other veggies. Spinach, chopped kale, more onion, sautéed mushrooms, roasted or riced cauliflower, sliced beets, a base layer of pumpkin purée or butternut squash (makes a wonderfully horrible color contrast with beets); whatever. Precook all the veggies—even lightly steam spinach so that it loses its volume.

Cheese Strata

Trim crusts from 5 slices of the bread; cut in half diagonally. Use trimmings and remaining 3 slices untrimmed bread to cover bottom of 8- or 9-inch square baking dish. Top with cheese. Arrange the 10 trimmed “triangles” in 2 rows atop the cheese. (Points should overlap bases of preceding “triangles.”) Beat eggs; blend in milk, mustard, onion, salt, and pepper; pour over bread and cheese. Cover with waxed paper; let stand 1 hour at room temperature or several hours in fridge. Bake at 325°F for 1 hour or until knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Let stand 5 minutes before serving. Makes 6 servings.

—Cindy

Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Combine flour, paprika, and garlic salt in shallow dish. Dredge chicken in flour, shaking off excess. Add to skillet and cook until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Remove from skillet. Increase heat to high. Add wine, basil, and rosemary, and cook, stirring frequently, until liquid is reduced to 1/2 cup, about 10 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-high. Return chicken to skillet and cook until tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove using slotted spoon; keep warm. Add sour cream to skillet and stir until sauce is heated through, 1 to 2 minutes. Mound rice (or use noodles) in center of serving platter and sprinkle with parsley. Pour sauce around rice. Arrange chicken atop sauce. Serve immediately.

—Some cooking magazine of Stuart & Catherine's

Well, you see, Jim asked me what I thought I was making for dinner, and I said, what I think I'm making, is I'm taking 4 boneless, skinless, split chicken breasts, pounding them flat,* dipping them in egg, breading them in about a half cup each flour, breadcrumbs and parmesan with some black pepper, garlic powder, coriander, basil and marjoram, and then frying them about 1 minute on each side, and then I'm putting them on a cookie sheet with a half a piece of bacon and a nice thick slice of cheese on each one, and then I'm broiling them for 5 minutes until they're done. But what I'm actually making, said I, is fried snakeskins. It was the first thing that popped into my head. So there you are.

—Sue

*Pound the bejeebers out of chicken breasts with the flat side of a bejeeber hammer, as even the finer toothed end of these hammers is too rough for chicken. Or use any other blunt instrument (carpentry hammer, two-by-four, the lead pipe in the conservatory...) that comes to hand.

3 lb. chicken cut in serving pieces, rolled in seasoned flour, fried 15-20 min. 'til brown on all sides. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, make batter: sift together 1-1/2 c. sifted flour, 1-1/2 t. baking pdr & 1 t. salt. Beat 4 eggs, add 1-1/2 c. milk & 3 T. melted butter. Gradually add to dry ingredients, beating slowly until smooth. Turn batter into generously greased shallow baking dish ~10" diameter. Put chicken into baking dish with pieces only partially covered by batter. Sprinkle top with black pepper and bake one hour in moderate oven. Serve at once.

(from Sue's Omi, from her book of Koch Rezepte)

Coat 8 pieces of chicken in 3/4 c. flour, seasoned with 1/4 t. salt, 2 t. paprika, and 1/4 t. thyme. Melt 1/2 c. shortening in baking pan. Arrange chicken, skin side down, in a single layer in pan. Dot with butter. Bake in hot oven (425°F) for 25 to 30 minutes. Turn chicken. Dissolve 1 chicken bouillon cube in 1/3 c. hot water, add 1 T. lemon juice; pour over chicken. Sprinkle with 1 T. rosemary and 1/2 c. parsley. Continue to bake for 30 minutes or until chicken is tender. Makes 8 servings.

—some random newspaper

Chicken Tetrazzini

Cook chicken in water with garlic, bay leaf and salt to taste, 45 minutes or until tender. Strain and reserve broth. Remove meat from bones, and cut in bitesize pieces. Heat butter; add onion and celery tops; cook until golden. Blend in flour, add broth, and cook until slightly thickened, stirring constantly. Add chicken, 'shrooms, (olives,) spaghetti, and parsley. Turn into large shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with cheese and garnish with four zzinis. Bake at 350°F., 30 minutes, or until thoroughly heated, and cheese is melted and browned. Serves 6.

—some random newspaper

Variations: Crock the chick in the spiced water all day to cook it. Or boil boneless chicken breasts and used purchased broth. Use white or brown rice, cooked in the broth—you can cook it in the oven, in the baking dish, if you have a cover for it, and save a dish.

—Sue

Easy Chicken

Combine all ingredients except chicken to make marinade. The herb you choose will determine the flavor of the chicken. Put chicken in large bowl and pour marinade over it. Allow to marinate at room temperature for an hour or two. Place chicken on rack in large roasting pan. Brush with marinade. Bake uncovered, basting every 10 to 15 min. with bulb baster (or just spoon), until golden brown—about one hour. Chicken may be served hot or cold.

—some random newspaper

If pressed for time, a prepared salad dressing, such as Italian or French, may be used as the marinade. You can skip marinating the chicken. Just put the chicken in the pan, pour the marinade or dressing over it, and bake 1 hour. You needn't baste it. Following these shortcuts, even if you make a proper marinade (using dried garlic and onion and purchased lemon juice), preparation time is less than 5 minutes, including the time it takes to put on brown rice, which you might as well do since that takes an hour to cook, too.

Chicken Crèpes

Make butter and flour into roux. Stir in broth. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute.

Mix chicken, apple, celery, onion and 3/4 c. of the thickened broth. Place scant 1/4 c. chicken mixture on center of each crèpe; roll up. Place crèpes seam side down in ungreased oblong baking dish, 13 1/2x9x2 inches. Pour remaining broth over crèpes. Cook uncovered in 350°F oven until crèpes are hot, about 20 minutes.

—Betty Crocker

Works equally well with left-over roast pork or leg of lamb. Try increasing onion to substitute for celery. Season with garlic, nutmeg, cinnamon, and maybe clove.

Crèpes

Mix dry ingredients. Stir in remaining ingredients. Beat by hand until smooth. Lightly butter 7- or 8-inch curved-sided skillet; heat over med. high heat until bubbly. For each crèpe, pour scant 1/4 c. batter into skillet; immediately rotate skillet until thin film of batter covers bottom. Cook until light brown; flip; cook other side. Slide into baking dish and fill.

—Betty Crocker

Glumki

Core cabbage. Cook cabbage (boil 'til half gushy). Fry onion in vegetable oil. Mix hamburg, pork, rice, egg and onion. Add salt, pepper, etc., to taste. Roll up fistfuls of meat in cabbage leaves. Put nicely in pan. Pour tomatoes on top. Add water to cover rolls. Cook at 350°F in oven until done. Makes enough for 12+.

(from Jan)

You can substitute hamburger for the ground pork. Don't cover leftovers with foil to store, as the tomatoes will eat right through it. Glumki (which is spelled with a slashed l) is pretty much pronounced gwumky; just one little cabbage roll is a glumbek. Make sure you put those glumki in nicely, now!

—Sue

Quiche

Mix all together & pour into 8 or 9 inch well-pricked, unbaked pie crust. Pâte Brisée is a good crust recipe. Leftover quiche nukes well if made with this crust, which is quite dry.

—condensed from the Joy of Cooking

For quiche Lorraine use bacon & swiss cheese; for Alsacienne use cooked and cooled onions with a grating of nutmeg—try adding parsley and cooked and cooled sausage to this. Whatever is in fridge goes! Put your chosen ingredients in the crust before pouring in the egg & milk mixture.

Bake at 450°F for 15 minutes, 325° until set (10-20 minutes) or at 375° for 25-30 minutes and then 350° for 25 minutes.

Pâté Brisée

Work together with fingers or cut together with a pastry blender:

1/2 c.	chilled butter plus 3 T. lard or veg. shortening
2 c.	flour
1/2 t.	salt

Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in gradually

5-6 T.

cold water

stirring the liquid in. The dough should be soft enough to gather up into a ball but should not stick to the fingers or the board. Allow the dough to rest refrigerated from 2 to 36 hours, covered with a damp, wrung-out cloth for the shorter period or foil for the longer. The resting of the dough breaks any rubbery reactions it might develop when rolled and handled.

—condensed from the Joy of Cooking

I use this recipe for Quiche crust and omit refrigerating the dough—the crust comes out just fine.

—Sue

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Cook the macaroni until tender but still firm, about 8 minutes. Drain well.
3. Meanwhile, in a small heavy saucepan, bring the milk to a simmer over moderate heat. Remove from heat and stir in powdered mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and hot pepper sauce. Set the seasoned milk aside. Only heat the sauce enough to mix the ingredients; if this means no heating, that's fine. If you overheat it, it will separate.
4. In a buttered shallow 2-quart baking or gratin dish, mix the egg and 1 1/2 tablespoons of the butter. Stir in 3 cups of the Cheddar cheese. Spread the macaroni evenly in the buttered baking dish. (If you have a pot which you can use both on the stove and in the oven, cook the macaroni in it, drain the macaroni in a strainer, butter this pot and mix the egg and butter in it, and return them to this pot.) Pour the reserved seasoned milk over the macaroni and sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup grated cheese.
5. In a small skillet (or reuse the sauce pan), melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter over moderate heat. Stir in the bread crumbs until well coated. (If you're in a hurry, skip buttering the crumbs, though it won't taste quite as nice.) Scatter the buttered crumbs evenly over the macaroni and sprinkle with the paprika.
6. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the macaroni is bubbling and lightly colored. Transfer to the broiler and broil about 6 inches from the heat until the bread crumbs are golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes.

Kichari

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