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Herbert Hoover’s Sour Cream Cookies

07.31.2017 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

In the opening scene of the musical Oliver!, the orphan boys are served a meal of gruel, then watch hungrily as the well-fed gentlemen who administer the workhouse tuck into a luxurious repast of Food, Glorious Food. I love that movie, and all the songs in it, as much as I love a good meal – possibly more, given that good movies, unlike good meals, have no calories.

I haven’t watched Oliver! in years, but I thought of it recently, when I made Richard Nixon’s Chicken Casserole. Good food was not unknown in 1968, the year in which Nixon was elected, and though I can’t attest to this fact from personal knowledge – I was born in 1968, and not yet able to eat even my mother’s notoriously terrible food –  I submit the Food Glorious Food movie sequence as evidence. Good food existed, and was being paraded in front of movie orphans that year.

Why, then, was Nixon eating that casserole?

What is the point of being leader of the free world if you’re stuck eating bad food?

As leader of the free world, wouldn’t Nixon have had both knowledge of what might be considered good food, as well as the ability to arrange some for himself?

It occurred to me that perhaps there was some correlation between the quality of leadership, and the quality of the food they ate – you know, garbage in, garbage out. With this in mind, I sought out a recipe from another notoriously bad president, and U.S. history being what it is, had no difficulty finding one.

Herbert Hoover, to the best of my recollection, was the president who promised voters a chicken in every pot if elected, and delivered instead the Great Depression (oops). The Depression was hardly his fault – he was elected in 1928 and the stock market collapse occurred the following year – but it occurred on his watch, and to describe his handling of the crisis as poor is to be generous. He rejected the idea that government intervention could help, and some of the steps he did take, such as signing the Smoot-Hawley Act, only served to make matters worse.

I thought I knew it all about Hoover, but after a bit more research, I uncovered a far more complex picture. Hoover’s World War One record was probably the most interesting and unexpected reading:  As chairman of the Commission for Relief of Belgium, he obtained and distributed millions of tons of food, negotiating with the Germans to allow food shipments. When the United States entered the war, he became head of the U.S. Food Administration, securing the nation’s food supply, and when the war ended, the USFA became the American Relief Administration, which Hoover continued to head, and which provided food to millions in central and eastern Europe. He headed a similar program after the second World War, providing food to school children in post-war Germany.

It is no small irony that the man who is today remembered for failing to put a chicken in every pot was, in his day, widely known for securing a food supply for millions of people.

My book of historical and presidential recipes – Eating with Uncle Sam – contains a number of chicken recipes, but rather disappointingly, there isn’t a Herbert Hoover chicken recipe among them. Instead, the book contains a cookie recipe from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library – for the rather unusual-sounding Sour Cream Cookies. So, I gave them a try.

The recipe is a bit oddly written, in that it doesn’t actually tell the cook when the key ingredient, sour cream, should be added. I resolved that by simply adding it in the order listed in the ingredients, which worked out fine. I expected a slight sourness to the cookies, but there was none at all. The cookies turned out soft and moist, almost like little cakes, with a delicate flavor of vanilla and brown sugar. They could be frosted, as the recipe suggests, with a bit of vanilla frosting, or anything, really – but they are lovely on their own, simple and the perfect complement to any beverage they are served with.

It’s a nice recipe, easy to make on a moment’s notice, requiring no unusual ingredients, no significant effort, and no pre-planning from the cook. In that sense, it’s similar to the Nixon recipe, which also relies on ingredients the average cook would have on hand. But the Hoover recipe stands apart, in using fresh ingredients – and the resulting cookie is one that I liked enough to make several times, for different occasions, and for just having around the house when someone wants a cookie.


Herbert Hoover's Sour Cream Cookies
 
Print
Author: From the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum
Ingredients
  • ½ lb unsalted butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
Instructions
  1. Preheat over to 375° F.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until light, then add the eggs and beat another two minutes on medium speed. Add vanilla and sour cream, and mix until thoroughly incorporated.
  3. In a separate bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. Add to the other ingredients in the mixing bowl, beating another minute or two, until incorporated.
  4. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until cookies are lightly golden on the top and spring back when touched.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // cookies, presidential recipes, vintage recipes

Ricotta, Lemon, and Blackberry Muffins

07.15.2017 by J. Doe // 2 Comments

Most people can tell when it’s rhubarb season because they go in their back yard garden, and see rhubarb growing. It’s a good method, and it goes without saying, a fairly obvious one.

As with so many things, it doesn’t work quite like that at my house. It could, of course, but when I started my little garden, I immediately filled the planting beds with every type of herb and four or so zucchini plants; later that year, I had learned the answers to important gardening questions, such as:  What Does Slug Damage Look Like?  How Do You Get Rid of Powdery Mildew? and the all-important, Why Shouldn’t I Grow Four Zucchini Plants?

When the main beds were full, The Child requested a spot to grow strawberries, and located an unused sunny spot right next to the similarly unused shed. The shed once had a function – it stored gardening equipment owned and theoretically used by The Departed, but left behind when he departed and subsequently discovered to be unusable (weed whacker with missing cords, leaky gas can for use with nonexistent lawn mower), expired (10-pound bags of moss-be-gone and fertilizer, each with a few handfulls missing), or simply unrelated to gardening (half-full cans of latex paint, an outgrown bicycle). When the beds were put in, I put a few useful-seeming implements into a small box, which I stored in a convenient location, near the beds. So the large shed sits, mostly empty and completely out of sight. 

We put a small bed next to the shed, and the cleaning lady gifted several strawberry plants, and since there was a little space left, I added a rhubarb plant. I made muffins the first year, and posted the recipe here.  Each year since, I notice one day that my blog suddenly has a lot of traffic, most of it coming from pinterest and all of it going to that one recipe.

When this happens, I go outside and discover I have rhubarb, and lots of it. Then I make muffins, too. And jam. And cookies. And a pie, if I feel like pie, or a cake, if I feel like cake. If my neighbor has brought apples from her tree, I make rhubarb applesauce and share it with her.

I give rhubarb away to neighbors, and when they’ve had enough, too, I freeze some. Sometimes I use it during the winter, and even then, I often still have some when winter becomes spring and rhubarb muffin bakers re-appear on this blog, and my rhubarb re-appears outside.

Blackberries are a somewhat similar story, or at least, they were until this year. They grow wild in the area, by which I mean, untended spaces are quickly overrun with masses of thorny bushes. They crowd out everything else, and make nice homes for bunnies and rodents. There are service companies that have entire businesses based on removing blackberry bushes, some of which employ herds of goats to deal with the problem.

We live next door to a community college with a large property, some of it undeveloped, and while this means that there are an assortment of critters that live there and pay us occasional visits – a regrettable assortment of moles, rats, raccoons, as well as, more pleasantly, rabbits and the occasional deer – it also means that every year, in August, I can walk the college grounds on my lunch hour and pick blackberries for baking, for eating, and of course, for freezing.

That is, until last year. The the bulldozers appeared; the blackberries disappeared. Bunnies appear in my back yard, to the delight of my cats; rats appear in my neighbors’ garage, to the dismay of everyone on our block.

I could have found another blackberry-picking spot last year, but there was no urgency about it, since I was still working through the numerous bags in my freezer, not to mention an ample supply of blackberry jam, so I didn’t. This year, I made muffins, and upon discovering the muffins were quite delicious, decided to make a second batch, only to find I had finally exhausted the seemingly inexhaustible supply of frozen wild blackberries.

Finding the recipe – like having endless, free wild blackberries – was a bit of good fortune; I received a review copy of The Harvest Baker, by Ken Haedrich. I had previously enjoyed a book he co-authored with the late, great Marion Cunningham, the Maple Syrup Cookbook, so I was pleased to receive another of his books and give it a try.

As baking books go, it’s pretty straightforward, which is one of the things I enjoy about Haedrich’s books: They are meant to be cooked from. Yes, there are a couple of recipes that veer off into Look At Me Being Unique territory, notably a recipe for Whole Wheat Blueberry Beet Muffins, which are certainly colorful, if not enticing.

I showed the photo of those to The Child, who remarked, You know, we can all learn something from Jurassic Park: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Still, that was just one recipe, and there are numerous others that we found incredibly enticing. As it happens, The Child’s favorite cookies – which I have, oddly, never shared on this site – are Lemon Ricotta cookies, soft, tender, and tart, so I was delighted to find a similar offering, in muffin form: Ricotta, Lemon, and Blackberry Muffins.

They were everything I hoped they would be: Tender and light muffins, brightly flavored with lemon and studded with sweet-tart blackberries. They don’t require any special equipment, just a mixing bowl, and if you happen to have blackberries in your freezer, you can toss them into the batter still frozen.

The Child adored them, and they were gone in just a couple of days, leaving me with the problem I never expected to have: I had no more blackberries with which to make another batch. There were other recipes of interest, so I did make more muffins, notably a batch of strawberry rhubarb muffins that were made special by the addition of some cardamom to the batter – rhubarb and cardamom, like rhubarb and strawberries, are made for each other.

But what The Child wanted most was more of these lovely muffins, so we’ve already begun to keep an eye out for the white blackberry flowers that, in August, will replenish our stock, even if we have to venture a bit further away to pick them.

 


Ricotta, Lemon, and Blackberry Muffins
 
Print
Author: adapted from Ken Haedrich, The Harvest Baker
Ingredients
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • ¾ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp nutmeg
  • 1 cup ricotta cheese
  • ½ cup sour cream
  • ½ cup milk
  • 5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
  • 1 egg
  • grated zest of one large lemon
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 cups blackberries (fresh or frozen)
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 400° F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners, and set aside.
  2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. Set aside.
  3. In a different large bowl, whisk together the ricotta, sour cream, milk, melted butter, egg, lemon zest, and vanilla. Gradually add in the sugar, blending thoroughly. Make a well in the dry ingredients, and pour in the liquid mixture, stirring thoroughly. When there are still streaks of flour in the batter, add the blackberries, folding gently just until the batter is evenly mixed.
  4. Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups, Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the muffins are nicely risen and the tops are golden brown.
  5. Cool the muffins for 5 minutes in the pan, then remove and finish cooling on a wire rack.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // baking, blackberries, muffins

Deborah Madison’s Potato and Chickpea Stew

06.26.2017 by J. Doe // 1 Comment

We were invited to spend Christmas with friends, and since we’d had loads of fun celebrating a very English style Christmas with them the year before, we accepted. There would be trivia games with questions we could not answer, and Christmas crackers, and silly paper crowns, and for dessert, traditional English mince pies. I would have two pies: The one I was served, and the one left behind by The Child after she ate the scoop of ice cream served alongside it, then discovered she was Too Full To Eat Another Bite.

I asked what I could contribute to the meal and was told: anything, as long as it’s either gluten-free or vegan, ideally both, but that’s not always possible, and really, anything is lovely.

I spent many hours searching my cookbooks and the internet, and arrived at a disheartening conclusion: There is very little food that is both vegan and gluten-free that I personally want to eat, much less make and serve to others. I consider bringing a platter of decoratively arranged vegetables – an actual recipe from a cookbook I bought on a layover in Iceland – but eventually settled on some simple baked apples, which turned out okay, which is about the most I can say for them.

I’ve made baked apples before, many times, with quite some success, so I pondered my failure at some length the next day. The problem, as I see it, is this: It is easy to find a good recipe when you are searching for something you want to enjoy. Oh! you think, This should be good, and you go off and make it and maybe make little adjustments to suit your taste or align with the contents of your pantry.

The process of choosing a recipe because it isn’t something is a different one. It begins with a firm statement: No. I looked at and rejected dozens of recipes because of some butter or some eggs or, god forbid, a pastry crust.  I know that some baked goods can be modified to be gluten free, but I’ve learned from the hard experience of heart-rendingly bad banana bread that the process is not simply a one-to-one substitution of gluten-free flour for plain. Rather more frustratingly, at the end of the process, an imperfect effort to be inclusive of someone else’s dietary choices will be greeted not with thanks, but with a large serving of disappointment followed by a chaser of regret.

Such was the fate of my baked apples, eaten without the enthusiasm that greets my usual dessert offerings (Oatmeal Pie, Sugar Cream Pie). To be fair, it was also the fate of this year’s mince pies, or more specifically, the subgroup of mince pies made with store-bought gluten-free crusts.

The mince pie baker and I were on the same team on the annual trivia contest, and we didn’t fare very well there, either. When we said goodbye, we vowed: Next year, we’ll do better.

With twelve months to plan, I began, but decided that rather than researching recipes that are primarily defined by what they lack, I would simply try to notice recipes that happen to be vegan or gluten-free in the usual course of looking at cookbooks for recipes that I might want to try, if the mood takes me. I theorized that, as with a Google search, phrasing a query slightly differently might produce very different results.

This is a long-winded way of explaining why I was excited to learn that vegetarian food writer Deborah Madison had published a new cookbook, In My Kitchen.  Even without an actual need for vegetarian recipes, I would have been excited, because I’ve appreciated Madison since the day I tried out her Smoky Brussels Sprouts on Toast, a dish that quickly found its way into the regular dinner rotation at my house, either with the cheese toasts when I wanted something substantial, or without them, when a diet banished carbohydrates from my menu. The cookbook from which I sourced that recipe – The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone – is, unfortunately, massive, in a way that doesn’t really lend itself to perusing before bed.

As luck would have it, I received a digital preview copy of In My Kitchen, which readily lends itself to reading whenever I have a few minutes and my iPad handy. The book offers a nice assortment of recipes that are all clearly marked vegan, or gluten free, or if they happen to be neither, suggest modifications that can be made to accommodate dietary restrictions. Perhaps as important – or perhaps more important – it includes quite a few recipes that sound delicious and don’t require any unusual ingredients. So one day, when I felt inspired to try something new, I chose her recipe for a vegetarian stew.

It was easy to make, and easy to modify, which I needed to do, since I didn’t have exactly the number of bell peppers called for, and apparently should have given my supply of saffron a decent burial several years ago. Although these are things that seem like they should be problems, they weren’t; it’s a forgiving recipe if you follow the broad outlines and taste as you go.

The real test of any recipe, of course, is whether it meets the approval of my toughest critic, The Child. She pronounced it a keeper, but rather more reassuringly, helped herself to seconds that evening, and took leftovers to school for her lunch the following day.

Not long after, I was delighted to discover Madison was giving an author talk and signing cookbooks at an event at the local cookbook store. I went with another vegan friend, and made a surprise discovery: Deborah Madison, foremost vegetarian cookbook writer, is not a vegetarian. She signed my cookbook and we chatted about the fact that it’s possible for steak-lovers to appreciate a good vegetable dish, too.

 


Deborah Madison's Potato and Chickpea Stew
 
Print
Author: adapted from Deborah Madison, In My Kitchen
Ingredients
  • 1 lb fingerling or other small potatoes
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 large onion, finely diced
  • 1 large red pepper, diced
  • 1 large yellow pepper, diced
  • salt and pepper
  • 1 tsp (2 cloves) minced garlic
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp hot paprika
  • 3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
  • ½ cup dry sherry
  • 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomates, juices included
  • 1 (14.5 ounce) can chickpeas (garbanzos), drained and rinsed
  • 1 to 2 cups water (or vegetable broth)
  • 1 bunch spinach, rinsed, stems removed
Instructions
  1. Scrub potatoes and cut into pieces (halves or quarters depending on how big they are).
  2. Heat a Dutch oven or other large, deep pot, over medium-high heat, and when the pan is warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion, red and yellow peppers, and potatoes. Lower the heat to medium and cook for about 20 minutes with the lid on the pan, stirring the vegetables every so often.
  3. When the potatoes are tender but still firm, season with 1 tsp of salt and some pepper, and add the garlic. After a few minutes, remove the lid, and add both paprikas, the parsley, and the sherry. Simmer until the liquids in the pan have reduced and are somewhat syrupy.
  4. Add the tomatoes and chickpeas, and enough water to just cover. Put the lid back on the pan and simmer until the potatoes are completely cooked through, another 10-20 minutes.
  5. While the stew is simmering, heat a saute pan. When the pan is hot, add a dash of olive oil and then the spinach leaves. Cook until the leaves are completely wilted, then transfer them to a colander and use a fork to press out all the excess liquid.
  6. When the potatoes are completely cooked through, stir the cooked spinach into the pot, and serve.
Notes
You can substitute vegetable broth for the water, if you prefer.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // chickpeas, potato, vegan, vegetarian

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