Recipes

Weather a little brisk for you these days? My story in today's Orange County Register extolls the virtues of - you guessed it - soup! Enjoy the recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup. For a kosher version, use nondairy sour cream. Read the story.

From “Golden Door Cooks at Home” by Dean Rucker

Grapeseed or canola oil spray
1 large onion, diced (1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
1 pound russet or Yukon Gold Potatoes, peeled and sliced
4 to 5 cups homemade chicken or vegetable stock or store-bought low sodium broth
1 1/2 cups corn kernels
2 poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded and diced or 1 can (4 ounces) green chiles, drained and diced
1/2 cup light sour cream
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

1. Spray a large saucepan; heat over medium-low heat. Add onion and
cook, stirring, until translucent but not brown, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir
in chili powder, cumin, oregano, and salt, and cook, stirring, for 20
seconds. Add potatoes and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and
simmer, partially covered, until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

2. Spray a medium skillet and heat over medium-high heat until hot
but not smoking. Add corn and cook, stirring occasionally, until
lightly browned, about 3 minutes.

3. Transfer potato mixture to blender and process until smooth, in
batches if necessary. Return soup to saucepan, stir in chiles and corn,
bring back to simmer, and remove pan from heat. Whisk in sour cream and
chopped cilantro. Serve hot. Serves 6

Join the discussion as I blog about Hanukkah on project foodie and Workman Publishing's website.

I’m scared. I’ve been toying with the idea of making all new dishes for Thanksgiving this year, but I keep hearing that old mantra in my head: “You don’t mess with Thanksgiving!” Why fix something that’s not broken?

Former long-time Fullerton resident, Linda Gomberg, seconds the notion. The five Gomberg children and their four spouses, plus 12 grandchildren, will gather in the Gomberg home, as they do every year, to enjoy a menu that seldom varies.

“One time I switched out and bought a different kind of squash for my apple stuffed squash, and they went crazy,” she recalled. “I have so many people, and they all know what to expect.”

Daughter-in-law Glenda will bring the mashed potatoes. Daughter-in-law Carolyn will make her fat-free, sugar-free pumpkin pie. Linda will serve two kinds of stuffing with homemade croutons.

“I stuff the bird with giblet stuffing and make an extra vegetable stuffing with no drippings for my vegetarian granddaughter,” she added.

“(Husband) Ray likes candied sweet potatoes, and I love turkey, especially the wings. I buy extra wings and legs and have been making it the same way for forty years.” Green beans with almonds rounds out the menu.

“We’ve got one diabetic, one fat-watcher, various weight-conscious people and a vegetarian,” Linda noted.

The weight-conscious will need all their will power to resist the desserts: “I’ll make a chocolate fudge pie, pecan pie, key lime pie, and I always do a chocolate chip bundt cake. I buy a sugar-free apple or cherry pie.”

But Thanksgiving dinner is just the beginning of the Gomberg celebration. On Friday the whole gang (all 23 of them) will take off for Desert Springs, leftovers in coolers, as they have been doing for years, for a weekend of family fun. Full story with recipe

Okay I lied. I did make one new dish and it is in the freezer as we speak. I didn't add the pistachios - I will do that last minute.

The original recipe was from Julie Sahni, but I combined it with a bunch of things I saw in other recipes. Julie called for a whole teaspoon of cayenne. I used 1/4 teaspoon and it still has quite a kick, so I'm suggesting you start with 1/8. I added the lemon juice, honey, pomegranate molasses, preserves and cumin and substituted apricots for the raisins. Sahni has you cook the pistachios in the chutney but I like the crunch of adding them last minute. Also, it was my idea to saute the shallots first. That little bit of margarine gives a nice flavor. Anyway, I thought it was delicious!

Here's the recipe:

Cranberry-Fig Chutney with Cinnamon and Pistachios
makes about 7 cups

You’ve done it again, haven’t you? It’s Thanksgiving and you’ve made way too much food. Again. That beautiful bird getting its final basting today will be tomorrow’s turkey mole or turkey pot pie. The bones will become a hearty soup, and by next week your family will be singing in chorus, “Oh, no, not stuffing and sweet potatoes again!”

Every leftover will find a home, but where will the cranberry sauce end up, in the disposal?

If you’re like me and can’t stand waste, here are some fresh ideas for recycling today’s gleaming red relish into tomorrow’s tasty treats.

Whether you are using canned whole berry cranberry sauce or making your own, use it instead of sweetened applesauce in your favorite cake or bread recipe. Try adding some instead of ketchup next time you make meat loaf (1/2 cup to 2 pounds meat). Use the whole berry or the melted jellied mixed with chili sauce for a zippy topping for chicken or meat balls or mix either with some honey or maple syrup (2/3 to 1/3) as a glaze for a roast.

After today’s cooking extravaganza the thought of preparing any of these may leave you breathless. Freeze the leftover cranberry sauce in ice cube trays so you can use what you need later.

To most of us the name Ocean Spray is synonymous with cranberries, and indeed 70% of the world’s
cranberry consumption comes from Ocean Spray. Once we had our own Ocean Spray bottling plant right here in my home town, Fullerton. Full story with recipe

Thanksgiving is around the corner, and even those who count the can opener as their favorite (and only) kitchen tool are planning to pull out all the stops for this feeding frenzy of a holiday. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Fresh turkey or frozen. Free range or…not. To brine or not to brine. And that’s just the main dish. Come to the side of the plate, and the real confusion begins. What on earth is the difference between sweet potatoes and yams? Well, when it comes to potatoes I know whom to turn to.

Distinguished cookbook editor Roy Finamore, with Fine Cooking magazine's Molly Stevens, offers 300 exciting, spud-studded recipes from appetizers, soups and salads through main courses, breads and even desserts in One Potato, Two Potato (Houghton Mifflin), an encyclopedic, lavishly photographed guide to everything you ever wanted to know about this humble vegetable.

Sweet potatoes, botanically unrelated to the potato, but included in the book nonetheless, are often mislabeled as "yams," Finamore explains. The true yam is more like the potato and not nearly as sweet as the sweet potato. Its texture upon cooking is also more like that of the potato, rather than the custardy texture of the sweet potato. Chances are your candied “yams” are really candied sweet potatoes.

“It’s an American thing, this confusion,” writes Finamore, who credits vegetable authority Elizabeth Schneider for tracing the mix-up to the African slaves, who began calling the American sweet potato “yams” because of their resemblance to the yams they remembered back home. “But the resemblance ends there,” continues Finamore. “Yams and sweet potatoes come from different families and have different flavors and different uses.” Full story with recipe