Tim McGraw's Chicken and Dumplings

Hallelujah! I have converted you to the True Religion of Cornbread!! No sugar, no soft fluffy cake, just that Good Old Fashioned Cornbread.

You mentioned Faith Hill and her Cornbread, so I thought of her husband Tim McGraw. I read an article recently that said he made his grandmother’s Chicken and Dumplings for Faith Hill back in the days when they were dating. It must have been good stuff–she married him!

His hit song, “Live Like You Are Dying,” is a good description of life in general, and his Chicken and Dumplings in particular. You need to savor this homey dish for who knows when you may eat it again.

Despite that Scots-Irish name of McGraw, these dumplings have a German noodle touch to them. I grew up with biscuit dough as dumplings, and I won’t tell you how many times my dumplings turned out to be sodden blobs of dough instead of light, fluffy dumplings. Tim’s are certainly easier.

Tim McGraw’s Grandmother’s Chicken and Dumplings:

1 small chicken
Water
Pinch of salt
2 cups flour
3 tablespoons Crisco butter shortening
½ cup buttermilk
1 egg

Boil the chicken in a large Dutch Oven pot with salted water until the chicken is falling off the bones. Remove chicken from the broth and when cool, tear into small pieces. Return chicken–sans bones–to the broth.

Pour the flour into a bowl, leaving a hole in the middle. Add the egg and enough buttermilk to make a biscuit dough consistency. Sprinkle flour on a cutting board, and roll out the dough with a rolling pin. Roll out fairly thin and cut in to squares. Carefully drop one square at a time into the boiling broth. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until the dumplings are tender. The dumplings will thicken the broth until it is a creamy consistency.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Looking through my Shaker cookbooks yesterday, I saw a recipe for Apple and Prune Stuffing, and I thought, how German/Danish/Swedish. There is nothing like a good Prune Stuffing for a duck or the Christmas Goose.

Then I began to read the recipe. Cracker crumbs? No biscuits or bread?

Then I got to the end and realized that it wasn’t the goose that the Shakers were stuffing. It was squash and onions and cabbage!

Bingo! I realized that this was one of those recipes from the meatless period. What an interesting blend of flavors this must produce. And how modern.

Naturally I had to laugh at the first part of the directions of cooking the prunes. Storing your prunes in brandy, like I ALWAYS recommend, means your prunes are nice as moist to begin with. With the packaging today, you probably don’t need to cook them either, but imagine how hard prunes must have been back in Shaker days.

Shaker Apple and Prune Stuffing:

Soak 6 whole prunes in boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain and pit. Chop well. (If using prunes that have already been marinated in brandy as I suggest, you can omit the soaking.

Measure the prunes and add an equal amount of peeled, chopped apple. To this add 2 tablespoons cracker crumbs, 2 tablespoons butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Use this to stuff squash, onions, or cabbage. If you like a sweeter stuffing, add a tablespoon sugar and a beaten egg.

Yields about a cup and a half stuffing

Danish Apple Dessert

Cod with apples and celery? Hummmm. Maybe.

The Scandinavians have some unusual twists to their cooking. It is sort of German, but with a Scandinavian accent. Like this recipe for Danish Apple Bars. The secret ingredient is crushed corn flakes of all things. When it cooks up, you never would guess that there are corn flakes in the filling, but it adds a different touch to a familiar apple bar recipe.

Beware, these are rich and fattening!!

Danish Apple Bars:

2 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup shortening
1 egg yolk
Milk
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup corn flakes, crushed
6 apples
1 cup sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 egg white

Mix as if making a pie crust the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar and shortening. Mix egg yolk, milk and vanilla to equal a generous ½ cup of liquid. Add to dry ingredients and mix well to form dough.

Divide the dough in half. Roll out to fit a 12 x 15 jelly roll pan. Over top of the dough sprinkle the corn flakes. Then make a layer of the peeled and sliced apples. Over the apples sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mix.

Roll out the remaining piece of dough for a top. Cut slits in it and seal the edges. Beat the egg white with a hand whisk until frothy and then use pastry brush to spread over the top of the bars.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes and then reduce the heat to 350 and bake another 35 minutes. While still hot, drizzle on the glaze below. Let cool and cut into bars while still somewhat warm.

Glaze:

1 cup confectioners’ sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup hot water–more if needed for spreading

German Apple Dish

It can’t be fall without my making an apple cake we first had when we were living in Germany. I call it Bavarian for it was down in Bavaria at a country inn that I first had this treat. My German being what it isn’t, I couldn’t ask the innkeeper for the recipe. Which started the Great Bavarian Apple Cake Quest. I found out that there are hundreds of recipes for Apple Cake in Germany. Every cook over there has an Apple Cake recipe, but none of them were quite what I had eaten in Bavaria. I eventaully found a recipe close to the original from Bavaria in all places, a children’s cookbook from Rhode Island. The children had collected ethnic recipes from their families and published them in a little fund raising cookbook.

The German grandmother called her recipe Bavarian Apple Dapple Cake, but I don’t know what the Dapple refers too. Substitute Delicious for Dapple and you get the idea. This bakes up in a tube pan with a nice glaze that makes is so rich and fall-like.

Bavarian Apple Dapple Cake:

1 ½ cups oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
3 cups peeled apples
1 teaspoons vanilla

Beat oil, sugar and eggs in mixer. Stir in the flour, soda, and salt. Coarsely chop the raisins, nuts and apples in a food processor. Add to batter with the vanilla. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 ½ hours in a tube pan.

While the Apple Dapple Cake is still warm brush on with a pastry brush, the icing. ½ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup butter and ¼ cup milk. Boil the icing mixture for 3 minutes.

German Heritage Red Cabbage and Apples

Since we are in such an apple mood (Great since apples are not very juicy this year), I thought of one of my grandmother’s special dishes: Cooked Red Cabbage and Apples.

Now, Max, this wasn’t the “alcohol enhanced” grandmother, but the one who learned to cook from her German mother-in-law. She spent the first year of her marriage living with the mother-in-law (not me, baby) and learning how to fix all my grandfather’s favorite dishes. This was one of them. Most Germans around home only used the red cabbage, but Grandmother insisted that her mother-in-law “insisted” (read demanded) that this dish must have the sweetness of apples. Note that this recipe is for 12 servings. Grandmother only cooked in large quantities.

This is a staple winter dish in homes of German heritage. Usually served with mashed potatoes or dumplings, and a beef roast that has lots of rich, brown gravy.

Red Cabbage with Apples:

1 head red cabbage
2 apples
½ cup onion
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup red wine vinegar
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt

Using the slicing attachment of your food processor, but the cabbage in to 1/8 inch strips. Peel and core the apple and also cut into 1/8 inch slices. Chop the onion in the processor.

In a large skillet or a Dutch oven, cook the cabbage, apples, and onion in the butter for bout 5 minutes.

Add vinegar, bay leaf, sugar and salt. Cover. Bring mixture to a boil; then reduce the heat and simmer 35 minutes until the cabbage is tender. Remove the bay leaf before serving.

Makes 12 servings.

Homemade Sauerkraut

I have read about Spoon Bread in Southern Cookbooks, Erma. Thanks to you, I have a number of them on my shelf, but I have never tried to make it. We had it at Williamsburg, I think, and I remember thinking that it was sort of a cornbread soufflé. I think you’re right, this must have been invented as a way to serve cornbread at fancy dinners.

Have you ever made Sauerkraut? Yesterday we used up the excess garden cabbage that was threatening to split open and ruin.

I still have my German great-grandmother’s kraut cutter. Wicked tool it is too. Get a little careless, and you will have thin sliced fingers. Guess that is why they never let me shred the cabbage. I just got to mush the cabbage and pickling salt together. We made it in 10 gallon stoneware crocks and stored it in the underground well house while it “worked” or fermented. It was a rather heady smell.

Today, of course, with our mania for food safety, everyone cans the kraut, but before the days of canning, kraut was just stored in big stone crocks in a cool place. My husband’s father used to tell of being in Germany during World War II and going into abandoned farmhouses and feasting on the jars of kraut. Soldiers were told to not eat food they found as it might be poisoned, but he ate it any ways. It was a welcome relief after days of G.I. rations.

Homemade Sauerkraut:

Shred the cabbage finely with an old fashioned wooden kraut slicer, or in a food processor with a fine slicing attachment. You want fine threads of cabbage. For every 5 pounds of shredded cabbage use 3 ½ tablespoons of pickling salt. Mix well with your hands in a large pan. Gently press into a large stoneware crock. Repeat until the crock is filled to 6 inches of the top.

Rule of thumb is for every gallon in your crock, you will need about 5 pounds of cabbage. So, the standard 10 gallon crock uses about 50 pounds of cabbage.

Press the cabbage down firmly enough with your hands to extract enough juice to cover. Cover crock with a clean cloth. Place a pottery plate or dessert plate (something that will fit down inside the crock, directly on the kraut) and weight it down with a jar filled with water.

Keep the crock at 65 degrees so it will ferment. Check the crock daily, and remove any scum as it forms. Wash and scald the cloth often to keep it free from scum and mold.

The fermentation is complete when no bubbles rise which is usually about 10 to 12 days.

If you have the space, like an extra refrigerator, pack the kraut into heavy plastic bags with the zip lock storage fasteners, and keep the fridge. It will keep for months that way.

For canned kraut, pack the kraut into hot, sterilized quart or pint jars to an inch of the top. Add enough juice to cover the cabbage. (If more juice is needed, you can make a weak brine by mixing 2 tablespoons of salt and 1 quart of water.) Screw the bands on tight and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Fifty pounds of sauerkraut makes about 15 quarts.