Simple but tasty recipes wanted for beach vacation
Good morning, kitchen companions. We have a request for menus and recipes for a weeklong house party to be held this month. The planner explained, “I will have to take everything to a beach kitchen. There will be mostly recent college graduates and their friends. I want easy, but I want tasty. I can take my slow cooker as I have a big one.” So, please menus as well as recipes.
‘CATASTROPHE’ CAKE
Clifford Burdette spoke of a hurricane cake by other names. “The request for Duff’s Restaurant cake has many names — Hurricane Cake, Earthquake Cake or Texas Tornado Cake. This is a copycat recipe for it.”
Duff’s Hurricane Cake
1 1⁄2 cups granulated sugar 2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour 2 cups canned fruit,
drained (see note) 2 teaspoons baking soda 1⁄4 cup packed brown
sugar
1 cup chopped nuts
Note: You can use 1 cup canned peaches and 1 cup canned pears cut into large dice, but you can also use fruit cocktail or pineapple.
Heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 9- by 13-inch glass baking dish.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, add granulated sugar, eggs, flour, canned fruit and baking soda. On low speed, mix until just combined, scraping the bottom of the bowl as needed. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish, spreading evenly in the pan.
In a small bowl combine brown sugar and nuts.
Sprinkle nut mixture over the batter in the baking dish.
Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until the cake is firm in the middle. Top with coconut icing (recipe follows). 8 tablespoons (1 stick)
butter
1 cup sweetened flaked
coconut
3⁄4 cup packed brown
sugar
1⁄2 cup canned evaporated milk
While the cake is baking, prepare the coconut icing by combining the butter, coconut, brown sugar and evaporated milk in a medium saucepan.
Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and allow to boil for 2 minutes.
Turn heat to low and keep the icing warm, stirring occasionally, until the cake is done baking.
Once the cake is done, remove from the oven and pour the icing over the top of the hot cake.
Allow the cake to cool, then cut into squares.
A COUPLE OF CHILIS
More chili sightings: William B. Thomas of Cleveland, Tenn., found Charlie’s Chili at Food City and at Ingles.
SEVERAL SOUPS
As we have gathered in several recipes for split pea soup, so also one arrived for a squash soup made with cream — a very different category except for texture. Thank you Linda Leake of LaFayette, Ga. Although the type of squash is not given, a survey of recipes for soup containing maple syrup would suggest that any winter squash will work well.
Sugar Shack Squash Soup
1⁄3 cup butter
3⁄4 cup chopped leek
(white part only)
2 1⁄2 tablespoons chopped
spring onions
4 cups squash, cut into
small cubes
1 3⁄4 pints chicken stock 1 cup diced potatoes 3 tablespoons maple
syrup
Salt and pepper to taste 1 cup heavy cream (35
percent)
1⁄2 tablespoon chives or grated carrots
Heat butter in a pan, and sweat the leek and spring onions at low heat with the cover on for 3 to 4 minutes. Add squash and sweat. Add stock and potatoes, and cook for 1 hour. Add maple syrup. Remove vegetables, puree in blender
and return to stock. Adjust seasoning, and add cream. Strain mixture through a strainer. Serve hot, garnished with chives or grated carrots.
Helen Cooper of Signal Mountain had just been reminiscing as she thumbed through “a facsimile of the 1931 first edition of Irma Rombauer’s ‘The Joy of Cooking,’ and I remembered the Split Pea or Bean Soup recipe,” which follows. She also sent a version made with salt pork. She noted that Rombauer’s classic cookbook recommends boiling eggs for 30 minutes, quite different from the current practice, and adds, “It is great fun to read.”
Split Pea or Bean Soup with Turkey Carcass or Ham Bone
1 cup split peas or beans 8 cups water
1 turkey carcass or ham
bone
1 onion
1 stalk celery 2 tablespoons butter or
soup fat
1 tablespoon flour Seasoning of your choice
Soak the peas in the water for 12 hours. Add the turkey carcass or ham bone, and simmer the soup, covered, for 4 or 5 hours. Add the vegetables for the last hour of cooking. Strain the stock, and chill it. Press the peas through a colander or ricer, and add the puree to the stock, from which the grease has been removed. As the ingredients will separate, they must be bound. Melt the butter or fat, add the flour, and when they are bubbling, add the stock. Season the soup well, and serve it with croutons. 1 cup dried split peas or
beans
8 cups water
2-inch cube of salt pork
(optional)
1⁄2 onion, large
1 cup celery
1⁄2 cup carrots
2 cups stock or milk (see
note)
4 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour
1 1⁄2 teaspoons salt
1⁄8 teaspoon pepper
Note: The water in which a ham bone has been cooked may be used in place of other stock, or a ham bone may be added to the water; in either case, omit the salt pork.
Soak the peas in water for 12 hours or more. Drain them, and add the 8 cups of water, the pork and the vegetables. Simmer the soup for 3 or 4 hours, until the peas are very soft. Drain the peas, reserving the liquid, and rub them through a colander. Combine the reserved liquid, the strained peas and the stock (or milk). Melt the butter, add the flour and pour the soup on slowly. When thick and smooth, add the seasonings and serve the soup.
COOKING UP MEMORIES
Talk of classic oldtime cookbooks reminds me of a wonderful StoryCorps episode (https:// storycorps.org/listen/ chloe-longfellow-151211/). A granddaughter was speaking of her grandmother, with whom she loved to cook. One day her grandmother’s treasured cookbook (in this case, maybe Fannie Farmer’s) was opened to a recipe they were stirring up together. The little one left a messy print on the page and looked up in fear that she would incur this beloved mentor’s displeasure. Not so. Her grandmother simply put her finger in the same colorful bowlful, then put her own fingerprint touching the smaller stain on the once-pristine page. “There,” she told the little one. “Now it’s perfect.” I want to be that kind of grandparent, and cook. And human being.
So now, to get to work on just that.