Meal No. 3529: Beef Bourguignon for the Crew

A belated birthday celebration for the esteemed Mr. McGown, with six of us at the table last Sunday night, was a call for something befitting of the great occasion: beef bourguignon, hearty and meaty and richly flavored. The cook's luxury of accomplishing so much of the prep early in the afternoon, and the glorious silkiness of a long-braised wine-soaked stew that enticingly scented the kitchen in the hours leading up to serving time, certainly had me all the more ready to plunge utensils into the bounteous bowls of bourguignon, bolstered by the marvelous company of some of my favorite people. All that and cheddar bay biscuits? You bet!

While this entry is posting on the final day of January, it was written on the month's final Sunday afternoon, when the latest extensive rainy spell was just not quite through with us, and I knew that the cellar had standing water from one end to the other. Nearly two inches of rain the day before, following several days of rain, not so long after there'd been another extended set of rainy days: we were soaked and wetted and dreared and misery-ed. Spring cannot get here quite fast enough.

But hey: at least we're also flooded with sweet pooch love as well, as captured in a moment of repose as Sumner and Scarlett enjoyed the view from the third floor pool table area window:

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"Beef Bourguignon (Julia Child Recipe)," from Karina Carrel of CafeDelites.com. [Published 18 February 2018]

"Copycat Red Lobster Biscuits," from Kristina Razon of TheKitchn.com. [Published 05 September 2023]

Meal No. 3528: Chicken with Coronation Sauce

Not that you have to know the ins and outs of how a menu is chosen, but: I asked myself what I might make with fresh chicken breast last Friday night; I did not go far into my catalogue of possibilities and once I'd thought of chicken with coronation sauce, that's all she wrote. Fresh steamed rice for its base, an overabundance of the coronation sauce, tender chicken morsels, and perhaps a generous glass of red wine on the side: it closed out a fine week in Winston-Salem.

Friday offered an unexpected reprieve from the depressing and unsettling multi-day rain stretch promised by the weather forecast. A mix of clouds and sunshine became easier to appreciate since it was in partnership with the soothing warmth of a 71°F high temp, which I absolutely relished. Not so much that I tackled some standard January yard tasks as I ought to have—instead, I let the enticing afternoon outside time serve as pleasant breaks from the educational literature I was wading through.

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"Coronation Sauce for Chicken," from 400 Sauces, by Catherine Atkinson, Christine France, and Maggie Mayhew. Hermes House (2006, 2008), p. 155. Recipe is a variation on "Coronation Chicken," created by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume for the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Meal No. 3527: Smothered Covered Baconed Onioned Potato Hash

I have no actual idea of how they do the variations of hash browns at the Waffle House, and what all the clever name conventions mean. But it's still what I had in mind when I did an inventory of the larder here at the house last Thursday, locked down and sequestered while we endured a miserable multi-day rain event. I have very deliberately chosen not to live in the Pacific Northwest and regret that it has instead decided to move to me.

Giant Sugar Cookies

Following a fine day two hours away in Vance County with aspiring administrators participating with me in the Instructional Leadership Institute, it was a supper of leftovers happily supplemented next by a fresh amazing batch of giant sugar cookies. A few to share with neighbors down the street, and the rest held onto and jealously guarded for home consumption, these sweet treats were a testament to the magic and alchemy of a fine recipe and the luck that made me stumble across it.

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Based on "Mardi Gras Sugar Cookies," from Kelly of AmericanCupcakeAbroad.com. [Published 20 February 2012]

Meal No. 3526: Vegetable Plate

In hopes I'd not lose from neglect some delicious fresh produce lurking in the fridge and in the storage bin, and after a full day of work last Monday, the retreat to a plate of roasted vegetables was Monday night's default choice. Roasted broccoli florets, cumin-and-coriander cauliflower, and potatoes roasted with blackening spices were a hearty combination for the appetites at table.

National Blonde Brownie Day

While a bit of research might cause me to rethink how generously I ought to apply the label, the idea of "blondies" as a variation on brownies—or as what amounts to a pan cookie, perhaps?—will always be an appealing option for an evening's sweet treat. Since last Monday was designated as the national day to recognize these, I put together a batch on Sunday night, with walnuts and white chocolate, and took most of the pan's offerings to share with the High Point University Leadership Academy group I spent my day on Monday with. I wish I could have given them the full Applebee's treatment, with a maple butter sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but I'll just have to make that the magic some future day at home.

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Based on "Applebees Copycat Maple Butter Blondies," by Momma Cyd of Six Sisters' Stuff. [Published 20 February 2016 / Updated 10 November 2022]

Meal No. 3525: Cheddar Potato Soup

Boy howdy, has it been a very January-styled January thus far. Quite a bit colder, as will be grumbled about in subsequent paragraphs, but let’s be clear about how appropriate was the determination that a pot of potato cheddar soup was ideal for last Sunday night. A long-held and regularly-resurrected recipe originally from a now-defunct cooking store in Indiana, this rich creamy fully-flavored bowl of deliciousness is consistent and loved and consistently loved.

This past Friday and Saturday were work days for me, when I led the pair of sessions designed to commence an instructional leadership institute with the newest cohort in the High Point University Leadership Academy. Over the last seven years, this has been a pretty phenomenal experience, with amazing educators preparing to be school administrators, and this eighth group was no exception. They were engaged and responsive, thoughtful and reflective, and offered the double bonus of being both gracious and fun. I’m excited about my next 18 months with them.

We experienced a pretty significant deviation from normal temps as we moved into the latter half of January. Last Saturday we maxed out at 29°F for the briefest moment mid-afternoon, and then overnight dropped down to the mid-teens (18°F at the house; 16°F at our airport.

That’s why a fire was called for as Sunday got underway, following coffee time and a bit of work up on the third floor. [Fire No. 92, in my endless need to tally things.] That way I could turn my attention to delightful kitchen endeavors, like that big pot of soup and, later, a special dessert (catalogued in tomorrow’s blog post).

And look at my delightful sidekick for Monday morning's coffee time:

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"Cheddar Potato Soup," from the Roediger House. Adapted from "Potato and Cheese Soup," from KitchenArt: The Store for Cooks [now closed] in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Southern Cast Iron Skillet Peach Cobbler

A full day of work Saturday and dependence on delicious leftover beef chili for dinner left me time to figure out a dessert befitting a 22°F evening with whipping cruel winds. I settled on an untested recipe for cast iron skillet peach cobbler and gave it a try. The bowl was sufficient for a fresh-from-the-oven sample but the recipe itself and the bulk of what I made from it went to the trash.

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"Southern Cast Iron Skillet Peach Cobbler," by Erin Gierhart of State of Dinner. [Published 21 July 2020 / Updated 12 July 2022 / Modified 13 July 2023]

Meal No. 3524: Hamburger Supreme

It helped with meal-planning over a busy set of work days to prep a casserole of hamburger supreme, tuck it away in the fridge, unroll the top crust while the oven heated up, and be seated to dinner only about 45 minutes later. And what a fantastic dinner at that, on a bitterly cold Friday evening while winter whipped cruelly around us.

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"Hamburger Supreme," from the late Mrs. John T. (Glynn) Johnson of Buies Creek, North Carolina, via Janice Jones Bodenhamer.

Soft and Chewy Eggnog Cookies

Here at the happy RoHo, we were still not ready to let go of holiday-oriented treats, so the last of a carton of eggnog was perfect for helping me pull off another batch of eggnog sugar cookies last Thursday evening. Warmly spiced and perfectly sweet, soft, with that nice bit of chew at the edge, these were quickly dispatched with.

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"Soft & Chewy Eggnog Cookies," by Lindsay Conchar of LifeLoveandSugar.com. [Published 26 November 2019 / Updated 30 November 2021]

Meal No. 3523: Simple Beef Chili with Beans

An especially packed calendar just past the middle of January influenced meal planning, along with those strangely-portioned packages of organic ground beef from Costco that were nearing the end of their shelf life. So a huge pot of beef chili was the feature Thursday night, along with shredded cheddar cheese and sour cream, as one might wish. Hearty and soothing on another sub-normal winter's day, with the marvelous benefit that leftovers would be available on a subsequent night when I would not be able to cook.

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"Simple Beef Chili with Kidney Beans," from Cook's Illustrated, Number Sixty-One [March-April 2003], p. 10-11.

Meal No. 3522: Moravian Chicken Pie

Weather-driven meal-planning took center stage early this past week, as mizzling cold mist and sprinkles under leaden skies in just-above-freezing temps dominated the start of Tuesday. While I've made many a Moravian Pie based on a classic Moravian church recipe book, I thought it was time to pilot a version tested and verified by the folks at America's Test Kitchen. Shortcutting with a rotisserie-style chicken in the Instant Pot, as well as needing to use up a couple of store-bought crusts I'd grabbed to have on hand over the holidays, the heart of the dish still depended on that new guidance. Some canned green beans seemed a reasonable ride-along, but I also brought out some leftover broccoli and mac and cheese as minor add-ons. A lightly creamy gravy poured over the top, the main attraction of this meal was to be found in chicken pie full of (almost) nothing but chicken, just the way the Moravians perfected it.

As evening came on, and the dry air had moved in, the winds also had picked up and it felt all the more chilling...a harbinger of the dramatic temperature drop that came that night. Wednesday morning's waking was on par with Christmas 2022, with the house weather station registering 15°F. (Hey, that's better than Christmas Eve 2022, when a previous polar vortex pulled our temps down to 4°F.)

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"Moravian Chicken Pie," by Kelly Price. Posted online by America's Test Kitchen. Published in Cook's Country, December 2011/January 2012, p. 20-21.

New York-Style Bagels

Back in the shutdown days of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, I tried making homemade pretzels, which was not a bad little experiment. As we came into National Bagel Day on the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday last Monday, I figured it was time to also give bagels a go as well. And man-o-man, were they fantastic!

For a first-timer, expectations were far exceeded. A spongy light-enough tender interior, and a soft-but-stretchy outer crust with perfect chew, and slathered with another new recipe—for honey-walnut cream cheese—this was one amazing mid-day snack.

Perhaps that exterior really did benefit from adding barley malt to the boiling water bath that preceded the oven bake.

The small threat of winter weather never really materialized, even though there was a brief cascade of scattered lazy-dropping snow flakes, and a few instances of very short-lived sleet shows, and light bouts of minimal rain. The kitchen time with the bagel project and the miserable grey and cold of that day made Fire No. 91 an easy move to make.

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"New York-Style Bagel Recipe," from Kamran Siddiqi of SophisticatedGourmet.com. [Published 12 October 2009]

"Panera Bread Copycat Honey Walnut Cream Cheese," from Stephanie Manley of CopyKat.com. [Published 26 October 2023]

Meal No. 3521: Salmon Croquettes with Garlic-Chili-Lime Aïoli

The house chum Mookie was on board with dinner and hanging out and a bit of intense pool playing this past Saturday night, and our menu included pan-seared salmon croquettes, served with the consistently spot-on homemade garlic-chili-lime aïoli. Roasted broccoli florets, shaken up with olive oil and salt and fresh-cracked pepper, helped balance out the plate.

I had some dessert when we were ready for it later: eggnog tres leches cake, coming in just under the wire before the holiday season completely closes up shop. This year I've had a bit more trouble getting the sponge cake just right, and I did end up with a sunken middle. But all the flavors are there, making this one a true highlight of Christmastime. One variation that night: a gesture toward stabilized whipped cream with a simple shortcut method I only came across that afternoon, and it gave the topping a nice new slant.

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Adapted from "Salmon Burgers" (p. 396) and "Herb Sauce" (p. 395), from Denise Austin, Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, Rodale Books (2003).

"Chili-Lime Aïoli," from David Wald of Princeton, NJ, May 2009.

"Eggnog Tres Leches Cake," from Michele Feuerborn of FlavorMosaic.com. [Published 13 December 2015]

"Stabilized Whipped Cream," from Alyssa Rivers of TheRecipeCritic.com. [Published 02 November 2023]

Meal No. 3520: Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza

While I do think I've got the ideal pizza dough recipe already well-situated in my repertoire, I do get tempted to try other styles or approaches. That's what happened this past Friday, when I looked pretty far back in the recipe magazine archives and dug out this one for Chicago-style deep dish pizza, simply topped with homemade pizza sauce, mozzarella, and grated parmesan. The outcome showed my unpracticed hand, a bit bungling and inept, with some nice flavor resident in that too-thick-and-bready crust. Three pieces later, I was certain this would not become a regular.

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"Chicago-Style Deep-Dish Pizza," by Francisco J. Robert. In Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2010 (No. 102), p. 14-15.

Vanilla Bean Pudding Cake

The experimentation chapter in January’s chronicle of kitchen exploits has a pudding cake theme, previously limited to light luscious lemon versions, expanded with a quick recent foray into a heavy fudgy dish, and happily on over into a vanilla pudding cake last Thursday night. Still not airy and spongy like the glorious lemon style but well worth plunging deeply into for that night’s dessert offering. A rich and heavily bean-specked pudding sauce in the bottom seemed all too scant but the indulgence in this new treat was repeated Friday when the pan was eagerly cleaned out unmarred by nagging regrets.

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"Vanilla Bean Pudding Cakes," from Susan Reid. Published by King Arthur Baking. Recipe printed July 2017.

Meal No. 3519: Roasted Salmon on Caesar-Topped Power Greens

The return of roasted spiced salmon turns up my joy meter, so its crowning position atop a Caesar-dressed bowl of power greens last Thursday evening was a mood boost for sure. Sprinkled with the unnecessary adornment of roasted sunflower seeds, it was a fulfilling meal on a sunny very-nearly-warm day in downtown Winston-Salem.

Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake

After experiencing the marvelous and unique wonderfulness of lemon pudding cake, but dealing at that present moment with a chocolate craving this past Tuesday, I sought out a chocolate pudding cake recipe I might make. The problem is that what I turned up wasn't an airy whipped-egg whites spongy cake but more of the lava-style, heavier, dense, much richer cake...and still delicious. As the 15-plus-hour rain event finally moved off in the early evening, I gladly served up sticky bowls of this new goodness. The fudgy punch was satisfying but I'll hope for more opportunities to indulge in other variations in the future.

Unfortunately, it was just as I was beginning to enjoy my bowl of chocolate pudding cake that I looked down at the carpet up on the third floor and got a bit of a shock.

I've staged these photos, because I'm feeling dramatic in the midst of my anger and frustration, but in spite of a generous collection of chew toys, it seems that the new pup Scarlett thought the better choice was to chew a frickin' hole in the massive carpet of the mancave. I'm writing this several hours after seeing this damage and I am still vibrating in anger, quite frankly.

It was a lot more distressing than finding that the cellar had half flooded thanks to over two inches of rain falling that day.

The watches and warnings that kept rolling in through that day, as that huge, potent, and unpredictable system moved through, allowed us a joyful send-off before dark had fallen, bringing in a hint of late afternoon light from the hopeful western sky, and the promise of some blue as one looks east over the skyline.

Within a quarter hour, the fullness of night had settled in over the city, but with a resurgence of depressing cloud cover.

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"Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake," from Holly Nilsson of SpendwithPennies.com. [Published 13 May 2020 / Updated 07 July 2020]

Meal No. 3518: Willie Mae's Scotch House Mac and Cheese

As will be lamented in just a moment, Tuesday was yucky outside and yet blessedly content inside at the Roediger House. At mealtime, something comforting seemed called for, brought out earlier than normal because there was concern that the harsh weather would be all too likely to cause power outages. A favorable morning weigh-in granted me the privilege of a rare treat: Willie Mae’s Scotch House mac-n-cheese. Normally reserved to play second fiddle as a side dish, it was the main and only feature of lunch. It might have been the best I've ever made.

Once again an extended rain event overtook this area of North Carolina, fueled by strong weather patterns that were accompanied by severe wind gusts and that also sparked isolated tornadoes in various areas of the midwest and southeast. The photo above was Monday’s sunrise; the photo below was that same window’s view the next morning.

Tornado watches and severe thunderstorm warnings popped up through the afternoon, and my weather station regularly alerted me to where lightning was popping up within a 25-mile radius.

Quite a bit of precipitation fell over the long, long hours of this weather event. How nice it was to have the company of a couple of sweet pooches as the day began with hot coffee and soothing quiet.

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"Willie Mae's Mac and Cheese," shared by Willie Mae's Scotch House of New Orleans via Good Morning America. [Published 19 May 2020]

Meyer Lemon Bars with Shortbread Crust

The holiday period had kitchen agendas all their own, so it's been quite a while since I could act responsively to any of the National Day Of features. Last Saturday, when it was National Shortbread Day, I thought it'd be a fine final use of the last of the Meyer lemons and do a quick repeat of Ina Garten's marvelous lemon bars with shortbread crust. As a dessert last Saturday night after the carne adovada dinner, they were grandly terrific all over again.

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"Lemon Bars," by Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. Published in Barefoot Contessa Parties!, Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2001.

Meal No. 3517: Carne Adovada

It was a second night in a row with the always appreciated Mookie over for a hang, thanks to the packed agenda his dear Kristen was following elsewhere, and we tried to make do without her delightful company. With the cold and rainy (but fortunately ice-free!) start to that Saturday, a pot of comforting something seemed wise, so I pulled a good one from recipe obscurity and served up heaping plates of carne adovada, a New Mexico chile-braised pork dish with a luxurious sauce and awesome flavors. I’d avoided making a grocery run as the forecast had certainly bred a likelihood of consumer chaos on those aisles of want. That left us with sides convenient to the state of my pantry: roasted spiced potatoes and canned green beans.

My typical early awakening that cold dark Saturday came with a pressing question: were we to be blessed with a winter glaze from the passing high moisture system overrunning the cold air in place? I’d prepped a built fire ready for its match strike, and the instant transformation to a cozy kitchen with coffee and quiet was delightful. While no icing or glazing happened here, it was nonetheless dreary and cold and rainy until early afternoon, so this old man was quite happy to keep Fire No. 90 going for the duration.

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"Braised New Mexico-Style Pork in Red Chile Sauce (Carne Adovada)," by Annie Petito. In Cook's Illustrated, Number 154 (September/October 2018), p. 6-7.