RECIPE: Best Darned Tartar Sauce Ever

I suppose I could have taken a picture of the tartar sauce I made to go with our baked tilapia last night, but when I looked at it there in the bowl, I had a sudden intuitive moment that told me that tartar sauce tastes better than it looks: it's not one of those photogenic foods like a crown rib roast or even a simple bowl of glazed carrots. No, tartar sauce just looks pretty bland and dull and would continue looking like that even if I posed it in a bowl made of diamonds with rare orchids around the rim, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it is ANYTHING but bland and dull. It's so good, my husband swore that he could have eaten it out of the bowl with a spoon. Now that's a sauce to be proud of!

So here it is, the superlative, ultimate, yay-for-Lent-and-fish-on-Fridays tartar sauce.

Best Darned Tartar Sauce Ever

Ingredients:
1 cup mayonnaise (use light only if you must, and if you use non-fat mayo, I have it on good authority that the piece of fish you're having for dinner? It will COME BACK TO LIFE and bite your head off, so...)
2 tablespoons minced sweet onion, three if you're fond of onion
1 tablespoon sweet pickle relish, slightly drained
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice

Directions:
Mix all ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow the tartar sauce's flavors to blend in the fridge for at least an hour before serving, two hours would be prime. Makes six servings. Keep tightly covered in fridge for up to three days.

The mayonnaise wars

Ordinarily, I would consider it an act of unforgivable impertinence to disagree with Julia Child. But I like my recipe for homemade mayonnaise better than hers. So there. Let the lightning strike me, if it will. I have spoken.

Julia's recipe is widely available, like, all over the internet, so I don't feel that I'm violating any super-special secret by listing her ingredients here:

1 whole egg, at room temp
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil, salad oil, or a mixture of both

Here are mine:

1 whole egg, at room temp (or place one egg in a cup of lukewarm water and allow to sit for 10 minutes)
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus an extra pinch or two
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup olive oil, but not extra-virgin; use the type that's called "lighter" or "light" or just plain "olive oil" for reasons I'll explain in a moment.

You may have noticed that the main differences between Julia's recipe and mine are the amount of salt (I think her recipe is bland) and the amount of lemon juice (I think her mayonnaise tastes way too lemony.) Also, I can't condone the use of regular vegetable oil or corn oil, but even canola oil gives homemade mayonnaise a taste that's....not quite quite. I find it difficult to describe, but false or cheap would probably be the best ways to put it. Canola oil just doesn't impart that rich, deep creaminess that olive oil does.

So my vast preference is for olive oil, although I don't like using extra virgin olive oil because it makes the mayonnaise taste too olivey, which, well, what else could you expect? I like to use the plain olive oil designated as "pure" or "lighter" or "lighter tasting" or sometimes even "for cooking," which has nothing to do with color or calories, but rather with what's left after the first pressing of the olives. The first pressing, of course, yields extra-virgin olive oil. The next grade is virgin olive oil and the one following is commercially graded as "pure." It's the pure olive oil that makes the best and freshest-tasting homemade mayonnaise, in my opinion.

I always use my food processor for making mayonnaise and it is foolproof, really. Just throw your egg, mustard and salt in there and whir them around until they're thick and foamy, around thirty seconds. Pour in your teaspoon of lemon juice and whiz around to combine. Follow that buy adding your olive oil with the processor running, just a wee drop at a time, to give the egg a chance to absorb the oil and emulsify. After those first few drops, you can pour the oil down the processor's spout in a slow, steady stream while the machine runs at top speed while thanking heaven that you don't have to accomplish this task with a bowl and a wire whisk. As the egg and the oil combine and thicken -- emulsify -- you should start seeing a lovely, creamy substance forming. You can see mine in the picture up there. You'll find that homemade mayonnaise is a bit more yellow than what you can buy in the store; that's not only because of the egg yolk and the mustard powder, but also because of the olive oil.

And that's your delicious, easy homemade mayonnaise with a taste that will make your tuna or chicken salad or turkey-tomato-and lettuce sandwich or your deviled eggs just stand up and holler "Magnifique!"

You might say, "But why would I want to go to all the trouble to make my own mayonnaise when it is so easy to buy at the store?"

My answers to that question are threefold:

1. Homemade mayonnaise is just a nice food. It doesn't have preservatives, so you have to use it immediately, but that's not such a bad thing because hello, preservatives? Do you ever wonder why a product made of eggs can stay in your fridge for months on end without going bad?

2. Homemade mayonnaise is very inexpensive to prepare, which makes it a great money-saver when you have to make, say, a bucket of potato salad for a picnic, or three-dozen deviled eggs.

3. Homemade mayonnaise tastes incredible, better even than Hellmann's, which is the only store mayonnaise I've tasted that comes close to the home version. You can tinker with it yourself to adjust it to your taste: maybe you'd like a pinch of sugar, or maybe you'd prefer white wine vinegar to lemon juice. You could use either less or more salt. You could make the recipe your very own and then make it whenever you need it. It's so fast and simple, why not?

I know I can be kind of preachy about mayonnaise, but I learned all this mayo-lore at my grandma's knee while we watched Julia together on television and then went out to the kitchen to play. I remember this mayonnaise best on bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches and it changed my life. I am an evangelist for homemade mayonnaise, although I'm sadly aware that most people, like my own mother, don't give a rip. "I can't taste any difference at all," she says frankly, looking bored by the whole thing.

Leave her and her feeble taste buds to the store brand, then, loaded with preservatives and with a shelf life of two thousand years, and let the rest of us experience creamy indulgence from real, pure mayonnaise. I will let her share my sandwich if she asks very, very nicely.

RECIPE: Taco Seasoning

We really love spicy Mexican food around here and we eat all kinds of Mexamerican things: tacos, quesadillas, burritos and enchiladas, not to mention the ever-popular nachos, queso sauce and bean dip. To season the meat and/or beans that go in these dishes, I've been accustomed to buying those little envelopes from the store, the ones that season one pound of ground beef (or one can of refried beans) and make them very tasty, although probably not even close to anything authentically Mexican.

The other day, however, I was surfing around on the internet and came across a recipe for homemade taco seasoning, and since I was intrigued by the idea of making it myself and since all the ingredients were readily available, I gave it a go and used it to season the meat we were going to be eating for dinner that evening.

I have to say, it was good. Really good. Everyone complimented the taste of the nachos and my husband even said, "There's something different about the taste, and it is soo good."

That sealed it for me: a new recipe for my blog file!

Homemade Taco Seasoning

Note: I doubled the recipe below and put it in one of those plastic canisters that grated Parmesan cheese comes in; you know, the kind with the green lid. I tried storing it at first in a heavy-duty plastic bag, but it was even more irritating than all those little envelopes I used to buy that kept falling out of the cabinet every time I opened the door.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon chili powder
1 1/4 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/4 teaspoons onion powder
1 1/4 teaspoons oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper (I doubled this amount because we like it spicy)
2 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 tablespoons + 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

Directions: Mix all ingredients together in a small mixing bowl. Be very careful not to be all inhale-y right over the bowl because you will cough and cough and cough. And then you'll sneeze. A thousand times. God bless you.

Yield: Use three tablespoons per one pound of meat, slightly less for a can of refried beans

We think that this is just simply better than any little seasoning packet you could buy at the grocery. Plus, since you put it together with your own sweet hands, you know what goes in it. You can control the salt, and there's no MSG. You can make it as mild or as my-nose-hairs-just-caught-on-fire-hot as you'd like.

RECIPE: Oodles of noodles

This is my VERY FIRST foodie post here on InsomniMom. Oh, how I love my digital camera, even though this picture looks weirdly blurry. Why is that? I'll have to ask Kayte. She has the same camera I do, only it is her play camera, not her real, serious camera. Anyway, maybe she can tell me why the eggs in this image look like giant cotton balls.

I also want to point out that all of the ingredients for this recipe came from ALDI except for the salt. The book is an old church cook book with the best noodle recipe in the world, which I am fixin' to share with you any second now.

I am really proud of my noodles, ever since the time I made chicken and noodles for dinner one Sunday last winter, having cheated and bought some Amish noodles at the grocery. Those Amish noodles are pretty darned good, coming straight from Das Dutchman Essenhaus in Middlebury, Indiana, a restaurant at which Carol and I once ate, if by the word "ate" you understand that I mean "stuffed ourselves with as much starchy Amish goodness as we could get our hands on."

My husband took one bite, chewed, swallowed, and then said with a decided lack of an instinct for self-preservation, "What did you do to your noodles?"

I bristled immediately, of course. "Let's see. I COOKED THEM."

"They don't taste the same," Meelyn spoke up. "Your noodles are usually really fabulous, but these are just....okay."

I brightened. "Oh! Well, I can tell you, then, that these noodles? They are not mine. They were made up in Middlebury by Amish hands."

"Well, no wonder, then," my husband said jovially. "These aren't your noodles! They're someone else's noodles! And no one -- let me repeat, NO ONE -- makes noodles with the kind of love you do, SWEETHEART."

I am a total sucker for blatant flattery.

So take that, Amish ladies! I make great noodles by hand, better than yours, my family says, and I watch television while I do it.

NOODLES

2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour

Beat the eggs together in a medium mixing bowl. Add the evaporated milk and whisk until the mixture is creamy. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring with a large spoon until combined.

Divide the dough in half. Place half the dough on a well-floured piece of butcher's paper or parchment paper. Roll it out thin, thin, thin, adding more flour as necessary to keep the dough from sticking to the paper or the rolling pin. Repeat with the second half of the dough on another piece of paper.

Allow the noodles to dry, preferably overnight. I usually transfer them, paper and all, from the counter to two baking sheets, covering them lightly with paper towel. If you can't let them dry overnight, give them at least six hours or so. Or turn a fan on them to help speed up the process.

To cook, drop in simmering stock (about five cups, chicken, beef, or even vegetable) over medium heat, stirring frequently until the noodles puff up a bit and start to float. This usually takes about twenty minutes for me. The noodles will absorb a great deal of the broth, so adjust the heat of the stove down if necessary.

Serve with whatever kind of meat you like to eat noodles with. And mashed potatoes. You have to have mashed potatoes with noodles because that's just the way it is and don't argue with me because I don't make these rules. I just pass them on.

RECIPE: Homemade baking mix

This recipe is a handy little money saver for those of you who use it often to make biscuits, pancakes, waffles or little shortcakes to heap with sugared strawberries. Baking mix can be found just about everywhere - there are two well-known national brands and a bunch of knock-offs. This recipe is a very close approximation and it's been around for years: you can find it in every single church cookbook that's ever been published, I imagine. "Time honored" would be a good way to describe it.

I really love the biscuits this baking mix makes. They're light and fluffy and EASY, especially if you make the "drop" variety. If you add a teaspoon of garlic and a handful of shredded cheddar to the dough and then BATHE THEM IN VERY GARLICKY BUTTER as soon as you slide them out of the oven, you have a pretty good cover of Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay biscuits. Which, you know, I could eat my weight in, which is not an inconsiderable amount.


Ingredients:

8 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
8 teaspoons sugar (optional)
1 cup shortening

Directions: Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Using a pastry blender, cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse meal. Store sealed in pantry or refrigerator.


BISCUITS - add 2/3 cup of milk to 2 1/4 cups of baking mix in a medium mixing bowl. Stir until combined.

For rolled biscuits, turn dough onto a floured surface and knead or fold about four times (do not overwork dough). Roll out to half-inch thickness and transfer to lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

For drop biscuits, stir milk and baking mix until combined. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, fold the dough inside the bowl three or four times. Drop onto lightly greased baking sheet by well-rounded spoonfuls. Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

PANCAKES - 3/4 cup milk to 1 cup of mix; stir in one egg. Drop onto hot, greased griddle with a 1/4 cup measuring cup.

For pancake mix - Add a one quart envelope of powdered milk, or 3/4 cup powdered milk to the whole batch when making the mix. Add 3/4 cup water to the mix when making pancakes.

RECIPE: Chicken Stock in the Slow-Cooker

I was recently reading a really great book titled Not Your Mother's Slow-Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger and I was intrigued by her recipe for slow-cooked chicken stock. She offers two different recipes in her book (pp. 95 and 96) and I formed a new one that consisted of parts of those two, plus a few differences that I like in chicken stock.

I was interested in her recipes because I had been hoping to find an easier way to make chicken stock that wouldn't involve adding back the humidity by boiling a big pot on the stove that we're trying to take out of the house with the central air running. Plus, I was thinking it would be nice not to have to keep adding water -- to just be able to put the chicken carcass and the rest of the ingredients in the slow-cooker and forget about them for many hours.

So this is what I came up with, although I highly recommend Beth Hersperger's book. She has what seems like some good, solid, family-friendly recipes in Not Your Mother's Slow-Cooker Cookbook (Meatballs in Tomato-Wine Sauce; Honey and Apple Bread Pudding with Golden Raisins) that sound really delicious.

Chicken Stock in the Slow-Cooker

This recipe is meant for a large round or oval slow-cooker. It should cook on high for one hour and then be turned down to low for 8-10 hours.

2 medium-sized sweet onions, cut in chunks
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
3 large ribs celery with leaves, washed and chopped
1 meaty chicken carcass, including skin and cooking liquid
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
4 "grinds" of fresh black pepper
1 cup dry white wine
Enough cold water to cover the chicken carcass

Place all ingredients in the slow-cooker and cover chicken carcass with the cold water. Turn the cooker on high and allow to heat everything until hot, an hour or so.

At the end of that hour, skim off any foam with a spoon. Return the cover to the slow-cooker; turn the heat setting down to low. Cook for 8-10 hours. If, during the cooking time, the water level cooks below the ingredients, add enough boiling water to the slow-cooker to bring it up to cover the ingredients again.

When the stock is fully cooked, line a large colander with cheesecloth and strain the broth into a clean pot. Press the vegetables to make sure all juices have been squeezed out. Discard bones, skin, herbs and vegetables. Season with salt if you'd like. Immediately refrigerate the stock.

You can either use this stock immediately, keep it tightly covered in the fridge for 2-3 days or divide it up into several freezer containers and save for later use.

This recipe makes about 3 quarts of stock.

RECIPE: Seasoned Taco Beef

Quick, I have to type this up before I forget it.

I've been trying to make seasoned taco meat that will be a departure from the chili-powder heavy seasoning packets offered by Ortega, McCormack's, Old El Paso and the like. I'm looking for flavoring that is fresher and livelier, and I think I may have it.

This is pretty spicy, so if you try it and you're not as loco about pepper-hot food as we are, omit the jalapeno pepper juice and cut the sliced peppers down by half.

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound ground beef

6 green onions, diced

1 clove garlic, diced

approx. 20 jalapeno pepper slices

1/8 cup jalapeno pepper juice

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

DIRECTIONS:

Put the ground beef in a skillet with the garlic, jalapeno peppers, jalapeno pepper juice and green onions until the onions are soft. Add the salt, pepper and cumin; continue cooking the meat until no pink remains. Use the meat to fill tacos, burritos, quesadillas or in Mexican chili.

RECIPE: Mayonnaise

"To make a homemade mayonnaise," said Julia Child, "you have to know your way around an egg."

She was wonderful for witty, pithy sayings like that, also coming up with this one on her television show while making a cream soup: "First, you take a leek...." and then bursting into laughter. She was, in every sense of the word, a grande dame.

My grandmother was very fond of Julia Child's show and of course, she had the two volume set of the world's most famous cookbooks, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I don't remember my grandmother doing much French cooking, however, although she made lovely mushrooms fried in butter with garlic, which seems kind of Frenchy, and also bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, which doesn't. And Tollhouse cookies, because all grandmothers are required by law to know how to make Tollhouse cookies, reserving half the dough for their greedy, sticky-fingered grandchildren to eat.

One French thing my grandmother did do was make homemade mayonnaise, at least a couple of times. I can attest to the fact from my youth that homemade mayonnaise tastes better than the creamiest, richest jar that Hellman's ever produced, but I don't believe I've had homemade mayonnaise since I was about sixteen or seventeen years old.

But now, I've been inspired by watching Top Chef on the Bravo network, and I decided I'd give it a whirl. Making a homemade mayonnaise was a recent relay challenge on a Top Chef episode and it looked so delicious in high def that I knew I had to try it.

I racked my brains trying to remember my grandmother's recipe, and all I could come up with was egg yolk, a sprinkle of onion powder, a pinch of salt, some lemon juice and a cup of oil, slowly pouring while stirring like a caffeine addict. Of course, there are all kinds of things you can add to mayonnaise: some mashed avocado for avocado mayonnaise, which may be the best thing ever mixed with a can of albacore tuna. Or then there's horseradish mayonnaise, which is so good on a roast beef sandwich, it could bring tears to your eyes. You can make tarragon mayonnaise, parsely mayonnaise, lime mayonnaise....I've always added those things to prepared mayonnaise, though, so I've never enjoyed the flavor or had the satisfaction of consuming a product made by my own dainty hands. But obviously, I thought it would be best to stick to something simple.

Here's the first recipe I made, and I don't think it was a success. (I should have just tried my grandmother's recipe, but I was worried that I'd forgotten something.) It has a lovely creamy consistency, but it is too tangy for our taste and less rich than we like. But is occurs to me that it might be a very nice mayonnaise indeed for deviled eggs:

1 whole large egg

2 scant teaspoons Dijon mustard OR 1 scant teaspoons prepared salad mustard

1 tablespoon lemon juice

a pinch of sea salt

1 "grind" of pepper

1 cup olive oil (or any other oil, really - although it must be the kind that is liquid at room temp)


Directions: Using a mixer on a medium high speed or a food processor, beat the first four items together very, very well in a small mixing bowl. VERY WELL. WELLER THAN YOU THINK THE TERM "WELL" COULD EVER POSSIBLY MEAN. Beat them well enough that they have some body to them; you'll know when this happens because they won't be lying there, liquid-y, in your little bowl.

Gradually add the oil, allowing a very thin, steady stream to fall over the beaters or into the food processor. Beat and beat and beat and thank heaven above that you aren't doing this the old-fashioned culinery school way, which is by hand with a wire whisk. No wonder so many classically trained chefs spend a little too much time gulping down little soupçons of cognac when they think the sous chef is adding finely diced onion to the terrine.

The egg mixture and the oil will begin to emulsify and have a creamy, spreadable consistency that is easily recognizable as mayonnaise. However, due to the egg yolk and the mustard, this mayonnaise will not be cream colored; it will be a lovely pale yellow.

As I said, it would be tasty with deviled eggs on a June picnic, but this one isn't quite us. I plan to make this a project and keep trying different recipes.

RECIPE: DIY Beef Stew Seasoning

We all love beef stew here at our house, although the way we most often eat it is Hobo Soup style, known by Boy Scouts as Campfire Stew. This is where you use ground beef instead of beef chunks for your soup.

I love the traditional seasoning for beef stew and it can be found in packets at the grocery, but I think it's kind of a pain to have those little packets cluttering up my cupboards. They always get separated from one another and I end up with envelopes of taco seasoning here and stew seasoning there and they all fall out unexpectedly, sometimes into the slow-cooker full of chili when I lift off the lid to serve it.

So then I bought a large canister of Kroger's beef stew seasoning and it was really good, but for some reason, I can't find it around here anymore. The only kind of stew seasoning our Kroger sells is McCormack and we find that very, very bland.

I searched on the internet and found several different beef stew seasoning concoctions, so I cobbled this one together in amounts that best suit our taste. I keep in in a glass jar with a one tablespoon scoop inside.

Beef Stew Seasoning

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons ground red pepper or cayenne pepper
2 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 tablespoon celery seed
2 tablespoons salt
2 1/4 tablespoons black pepper
2 1/4 tablespoons paprika
2 1/4 tablespoons garlic powder

Combine all ingredients in small mixing bowl; stir to combine. Store in a small jar, tightly closed. Use 2-3 tablespoons seasoning mix per 1 pound of meat.