Michellepedia

How to Make Authentic Kentucky Cream Candy

Author's Diary, Day 4: Every book is missing something. Mine left out all the top-secret recipes -- for candy and desserts mostly, because we have a real sweet tooth in my family --  that my great grandmother  and her daughters used to make a long time ago in Kentucky.

My mother somehow got her hands on my Aunt Butch's recipe for cream candy (left), a taffy-like concoction that is not something the faint of heart should try to make because, according to the instructions, you must "heat to 260 and run like hell to a cold countertop" to start pulling the mixture into a rope as it cools. Oh, and, "Butter hands and watch out for blisters."

I need my hands to type. So you can see why I haven't tried to make cream candy.   Even my mother, a cream candy expert, is happy to get her supply these days from Ruthhuntcandy.com, which she says is "fine for store-bought."

After I wrote a newspaper column last week about cream candy, readers wrote to suggest another blister-free source of old-fashioned cream candy, Rebeccaruth.com (thanks to Martin and Galen).  I'll be sampling some next month in Kentucky.

Husband out of town: Pasta!

He's not what I would call a typically picky eater, but my husband has developed some unusual food aversions in recent years, the most inexplicable being a reluctance to eat pasta five nights out of six.

The virtues of pasta are many: cheap, filling and delicious. Its drawbacks remain a mystery to me. So yesterday, after my husband boarded a plane for a business trip, I rushed out to the market. I decided to fulfill every recent craving with one dish. Here's what I made:

Forbidden Linguine

1 bunch broccoli rabe, stems trimmed
olive oil
1/2 lb. Italian sweet sausage, casing removed
3 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 lb. linguine
1/2 cup bread crumbs, lightly browned
salt and pepper to taste

First, blanch the broccoli rabe (I always do this to eliminate bitterness). Then saute it  for awhile with the garlic in olive oil over medium low heat. Meanwhile in another skillet, crumble the sausage and brown it over medium heat (to make the smaller bits crispy). In a toaster oven or a small, dry skillet,  lightly brown the bread crumbs.

(If this seems like a lot of simultaneous  activity, keep in mind that the broccoli rabe is pretty much taking care of itself on one burner, and the bread crumbs will brown in about two minutes. There is actually plenty of downtime during which to fill a pasta pot with water and set it to boil).

After the pasta is cooked and drained, toss it with the broccoli rabe and the sausage. Stir in bread crumbs. Serve immediately.

An easy, spicy beef stew

My friend Stephanie went back to the original Silver Palette cookbook the other day to look for something to make for dinner and what she came up with was a delicious recipe for beef stew with cumin and olives. Since I was too busy to go shopping for the pearl onions it called for, I adapted it to use the yellow onion I already had. The beauty of any beef stew recipe is that it's forgiving. Use as much or as little red wine as you have left in the bottle on the counter. Put it in the oven at 350 degrees (as this recipe calls for) or simmer it, covered, on a burner (this is what I usually do because it's easier to keep an eye on a situation that's developing on top of the stove). Here's what I did:

Put 2 cups of flour into a large plastic freezer bag, along with salt and pepper to taste and a tablespoon of dried thyme. Add about three pounds of beef stew cubes to the bag and shake to coat. Then brown the beef on all sides in olive oil in a deep pot; remove beef and pour out excess oil. NOTE: Although the original recipe said not to wash out the pot at this stage, I always find that the bits that adhere to the bottom are so burned that they taste burned, so I give the pot a quick rinse in hot water, removing the most blackened stuff. Return pot to medium heat, pour in a cup or so of red wine and scrape up the remaining bits. Then add a cup or two of beef broth, a cup of crushed tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of ground cumin and a teaspoon of chili powder. Bring to a boil and return the beef to the pot. Cover the pot and either put it in a medium oven or simmer on a burner for an hour or so. Meanwhile, saute a sliced medium yellow onion and six chopped cloves of garlic over medium low heat until they soften and just start to turn gold. Add the onion and garlic mixture to the stew.  A few minutes later, add a half cup of chopped parsley and a cup of chopped green olives to the stew. Take off the cover and reduce the liquid. Then serve in bowls.

Note: I served the stew in bowls over noodles (but would have preferred to serve it over couscous, if that hadn't required a trip to the store) with  sauteed pea shoots on the side.

Old fashioned cherry cake

European maraschino cherries arrived in America's fanciest restaurants and hotels before the 20th century. But it took  longer for them to make their way to tiny towns in eastern Kentucky, like the one my great grandmother Hesta lived in. If she could get her hands on a jar, she would bake a maraschino cherry layer cake, then frost it with white icing tinted pink by cherry juice, and that was as good a birthday present as any of her eight children expected.

Oddly, although my mother used to bake a maraschino cherry cake for my birthday, I never knew it was a family ritual until one day last fall, when I was visiting Kentucky, sitting in an unfamiliar kitchen listening to a very old woman who I had never met before reminisce about the days when the train brought exotic supplies like jars of jewel-colored cherries to town. "I have Hesta's recipe here somewhere," Mrs. Dingus said. And she did.

It's not an uncommon recipe, after all; I found many similar versions on the Internet. But if you make this cake, think of Hesta in her apron, beating the batter with a wooden spoon, quarreling at whichever child was sticking a finger into the batter.

New Maraschino Cherry Cake

2 c. plus 2 tbsp sifted flour
1 1/3 cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 c. soft shortening
1/4 c. maraschino cherry juice
4 egg whites, unbeaten
1/2 c. chopped nuts

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Sift dry ingredients except nuts together in a bowl. In another bowl, cream shortening and cherry juice. Add egg whites to shortening. Gradually stir in dry ingredients. Stir in nuts. Bake in two layer pans (8- or 9-inch are fine) for 30-35 minutes. When cool, frost with white icing tinted with cherry juice.

My favorite pot roast

If I have been holding out on you when it comes to recipes, it was only because of the time I gave my brownies recipe to someone who managed -- by substituting shortening for butter, adding "mini chocolate chips" to the batter and perpetrating various other atrocities -- to create something awful in my name. But after some soul searching, I am ready to trust again. Here, then, is "Pot Roast With Cider," from Jewish Cookery, an old cookbook I found in Nana's kitchen after she died. If you screw it up, please  have the decency not to tell anyone where you got the recipe.

POT ROAST WITH CIDER
2 c. cider                                                  2 tbsp molasses
2 lg onions, sliced thin                          1 clove garlic, minced
2 bay leaves                                            1/8 tsp each ginger and allspice
4 to 4 1/2 lb brisket (1st cut)                3 tbsp shortening
3 tbsp flour                                              1/2 tsp salt
dash of pepper (optional)

Make a marinade of cider, molassess, onions, garlic, bay leaves and spice. Place the meat in this, cover and let stand in the refrigerator overnight. Turn and keep in marinade until ready for roasting in a heavy pot or pressure cooker. Melt shortening in pot. Lift meat from marinade and dust with flour, salt and pepper. Sear meat in hot melted shortening, turning once or twice to brown all parts. Add the marinade and cook over moderate heat 2 hours. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.

The day I tried a new chocolate chip cookie recipe

I was told to bring dessert. I pulled out a new recipe for crispy, flat chocolate chip cookies (I clipped it from the New York Times magazine last week). The recipe required a leap of faith; it called for no eggs but specified milk.  I was willing to go along with anything -- including the step that required me to add a tablespoon of kosher salt to the batter. Major mistake.  I made a test cookie to see if the baking process would miraculously eliminate the hideous saltiness. No. My husband suggested making a second, unsalted batch, then mix the two. I cautiously added salty batter  to the uncontaminated batter one tablespoon at a time. At Marissa's, everyone complimented the cookies just as much as they would have if I'd used the recipe on the back of the tollhouse bag.

What to cook for dinner

Every afternoon -- sometime between 3 and 5 -- I receive an instant message from my husband: "What do you want to eat for dinner?" I stare at the message. I consider possible answers ("chicken," "curry," "beef barley soup"). But I do not really want to have any of those things for dinner. I have two dogs, three children, four carpools and five thousand things I didn't get done today that I should have. What I want for dinner is wine. White wine. Cold white wine. I could stomach a little cheese, too, if it's the stinky, runny kind. Instead, I go upstairs to the kitchen and, resigned to an evening of solids,  flip through my collection of wacky, vintage cookbooks (am I the only one who still turns to The Art of Cheese Cookery when preparing for a cocktail party?) in search of something that might be delicious, unusual and fast to cook. Today I ran across a  gem in  Clementine Paddleford's Cook Young Cookbook, lurking in a chapter titled "MEAT: Spotlight on Thrift." Back in the 1960s, when Ms. Paddleford was known as "America's No. One Food Editor," something possessed her to tout "Hot Ham Buns." The recipe: Combine two cups diced cooked ham, a half pound of diced cheddar, a half cup of sliced stuffed olives, three green onions (sliced), a half cup of mayonnaise and  a third of a cup of tomato paste. Spread the mixture on four hamburger buns. Wrap each in foil and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.
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