Thanskgiving Ideas

You are right, Max, Thanksgiving is our kind of holiday. I’m already cooking and hunting up favorite recipes. I don’t know about your house, but try a new recipe for Thanksgiving (in hopes that you can drop another dish) and it instantly becomes a “must have” dish. So the menu just keeps getting longer and longer.

You know how I am about Thanksgiving pies. There must be Mincemeat, Pumpkin and Bourbon Pecan–and only three of us for dinner!! We often don’t even get to the pies until late that evening or sometimes the next day after all the other stuff on the menu.

I’m thinking about adding a Kentucky Lemon Pie this year. One of the great aunts used to always bring it and with its nice tart lemon taste, family members would often eat a bit of this directly after the main meal. This is an old recipe from at least the 1930’s, and it travels well since it isn’t runny or covered with a meringue. Quite different than what most people think of as Lemon Pie.

Kentucky Lemon Pie:

6 eggs
Juice of 2 lemons
1 ½ cups light corn syrup
¾ cup sugar
1/8 cup butter
Grated rind of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon cornstarch
One unbaked pie shell

Beat eggs well in mixer. Add syrup and continue beating. Mix cornstarch and sugar and slowly add to the eggs. Grate the lemon with a grater. Juice the lemons with a citrus juicer. Add lemon juice, rind and melted butter to eggs.

Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake on lower rack of the oven at 375 degrees for 15 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 300 degrees for 40 minutes until pie is set. Remember that pies will continue cooking after they are removed from the oven.

Serve chilled and in small slices as it is rich.

Comfort Food Buttermilk Pie

I tried your Mennonite Cabbage Salad yesterday and it is great. As you know, Max, I love tart sweet and sour salads. With the current price of lettuce (it was $1.69 for a miserable little head Saturday), we will be eating a lot of cabbage for salads around here.

Since we are talking about Comfort Food, and who personifies Comfort Food better than those German Mennonite cooks? Let’s not forget their rich, simple desserts Max.

There is never a time when any cook could not whip up a Mennonite Buttermilk Pie. The ingredients are kitchen staples, the prep time is minimal. Like you can stir it up while the oven is heating. If you don’t have real buttermilk on hand, you can substitute regular milk soured with a little vinegar or lemon juice until it curdles.

I like my Buttermilk Pies just a bit richer than most, so I use bourbon instead of vanilla which would probably cause some older Mennonite cooks to roll over in their graves. The choice is yours. It must be a regional thing. Southern cookbooks often use the bourbon while other regions of the country stick to the vanilla.

Mennonite Buttermilk Pie:

1 egg
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup buttermilk
¼ teaspoon vanilla (I substitute bourbon and increase it to a tablespoon)
Unbaked pie shell

Cream the egg, sugar and butter in a mixer. Add baking soda and flour to creamed mixture, Add buttermilk and vanilla/bourbon. And place in an unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Pie will continue cooking after removal from the oven. Let cool completely before cutting.

Another Crowd Pleaser–Bourbon Baked Beans

So, you want to know what side dishes we had with the Creamy Chicken Casserole? Several molded fruit salads, a huge tossed lettuce salad, trays of hot rolls, and baked beans.

I can hear you now Max, where are Erma’s signature alcohol recipes? Well, it wasn’t just any old baked beans, it was BOURBON Baked Beans. All Kentuckians know that bourbon goes with just about everything.

This Rehearsal Dinner was a backyard picnic, and believe me, these Beans were a hit. Rich, dark, and manly.

Bourbon Baked Beans:

4 (1 pound) cans baked beans
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 cup chili sauce
2 tablespoon dark molasses
1/2 cup bourbon
1/2 cup strong coffee
Medium onion
Bacon

In a food processor, turn the onion into a near pulp. Mix all but the bacon in a large covered container for at least 4 hours or overnight in the refrigerator so the beans have a chance to absorb the molasses and bourbon flavors.

Place in a very large baking casserole like the CorningWare Casserole that has a lid, or in several smaller ones. Bake covered at 300 degrees for 40 minutes. Remove the lid, add bacon slices and continue baking for another 40 minutes at 375 degrees.

Serves a lot.

Really. That is what my recipe says, “Serves a lot.” Nothing like being precise, and honest. Actually, if you have a male crowd this does not, “Serve a lot.”

A Paris Hilton Cake for Her Jail House Tea

Max, you have missed your calling in life: Shrink to the Stars. First, you diagnose Paris without even talking to her, and then you come up with a “cure” like Paris “rehabilitating her fellow criminals” by teaching them the proper way to conduct a High Tea.

Flaw with your plan, dear. It assumes that Paris herself knows how to lay out a proper Tea. If she did not graduate high school, and she goes around wearing little in the way of clothes, it is unlikely that she bothered to learn how to Preside at Tea. Can’t you imagine Paris, Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, all in dresses and white gloves, sitting around Paris’ jail cell sipping tea that Paris is pouring from her silver tea service? The conversation? Certainly not of attending the Flower Show next week!

Perfect for that crew is Wild Turkey Bourbon Chocolate Cake.

True, the alcohol disappears when it is cooked, but there is nothing to keep one from sprinkling a little extra over the cake after it cools. If you are a Paris Hilton type, you know that you can’t trust even a well-known brand like Wild Turkey, so you will need to test the bottle before using it. It often takes several drinks to determine if the proof is what the distillery says it is.

For a High Tea, presentation is everything. This cake should be sitting on a tall cut glass cake plate and cut with a silver cake knife. The pieces are supposed to be quite small, although jailhouse gals probably would demand huge pieces, and topped with fresh raspberries.

Erma’s Egg Tip: While cookbooks sometimes remind the cook to have eggs at room temperature before beating, most of us forget to take the eggs out of the fridge long before we begin to bake. So, when you forget, simply place the eggs in a large bowl and run hot water straight out of the tap over them for a few minutes. By the time you have the rest of the ingredients ready to mix, the eggs should be at room temperature.

Not only do room temp eggs whip up much higher, they separate much easier. You don’t believe me? Try separating and beating a cold egg, and then compare it with a room temp egg. You won’t believe the difference.

Wild Turkey Bourbon Chocolate Cake:

2 tablespoons butter
6 ounces chocolate
pinch of salt
8 eggs, separated
3/4 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 cups pecans ground in a nut grater
2 tablespoons Wild Turkey Bourbon
pinch of cream of tartar

Butter and flour a 10-inch cake pan, and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a double broiler, place the butter, chocolate and salt in the bowl and stir until the chocolate melts.

With a stand mixer beat the egg yolks and 3/4 cup of sugar until the mixture is a pale gold color. Stir in the slightly cooled chocolate mixture, the pecans, and the bourbon.

In your large mixer bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Add the 2 tablespoons of sugar and continue beating until the whites are stiff, but not dry.

Fold in with a spatula about a third of the egg whites to lighten the batter. Then fold in the remaining whites until the batter is smooth. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 55 minutes. Test the center with a skewer until the skewer comes out clean. Set cake pan on a cooling rack.

After the cake has cooled, unmold the cake and store in a covered cake storage container.

Serve this cake plain with fresh fruit such as peaches, raspberries, or strawberries, or dust with confectioner’s sugar. Or pour over some white chocolate or raspberry syrup. And don’t forget to sprinkle on a bit of extra bourbon.

Bourbon Honey Mustard

Max, no Derby Breakfast would be complete with thin sliced Country Ham and Biscuits. In the old days that would have been Beaten Biscuits and real Country Ham, but let’s face it, not many people today have the time or the inclination to prepare either of these time and labor intensive recipes. Most people substitute a regular or spiral cut ham with a brown sugar type glaze and regular baking powder biscuits or tiny yeast rolls. With these Ham Biscuits some hostesses serve another Kentucky favorite: Bourbon Honey Mustard.

Bourbon Honey Mustard:

¾ cup Dijon style mustard
¼ vegetable oil
¼ cup honey
2 tablespoons dry mustard
2 tablespoons good bourbon

Bring all, except bourbon, to just a boil in a sauce pan, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, add bourbon and cool. Spoon into a heavy crock with tight lid. Store in the refrigerator, but serve at room temperature.

This makes about a cup and a quarter and is both spicy and sweet. This is also good on turkey or chicken sandwiches. Heck, this would make even a bologna sandwich taste good!