Crock-Pot Italian Beef + Secret Info

I know—you've made Italian beef in the Crock-Pot a thousand times. But I have some earth-shattering information for you:

You can put a frozen roast in the Crock-Pot!

Now, maybe that is not news to you, but it sure was to me. I had no idea until I was clued in by Rayne, who pointed me to a recipe for French dip sandwiches on the Midwest Parents blog. Is that the easiest recipe you've ever seen, or what? Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, so I added some stuff and made it into Italian beef. Still super easy, and something you can do before work on a week-day morning without breaking a sweat. Certainly nothing like the rigamarole of my regular Italian beef method.

If you don't use the wine called for below, you'll probably want to put in more broth—just whatever amount looks right for the size of roast that you have, so that you have some dipping sauce at the end of the day.

Crock-Pot Italian Beef
Adapted from this recipe on Midwest Parents

2 1/2 pound beef roast (I used a round roast), FROZEN
Beef broth (I used 2 or 3 cups made from Better Than Bouillon)
2 to 3 sweet peppers (I used one green bell and two red frying peppers), sliced or chopped
1/2 to 1 cup dry white wine (optional, but if you have part of a bottle sitting around . . .)
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1 medium onion, sliced
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 large bay leaf
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

Remove your beef roast from the freezer, unwrap, and place it in the Crock-Pot. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook on Low all day (8-10 hours). When the meat is tender, take it out of the pot and thinly slice or shred, then return it to the pot.

Serve on rolls or chunks cut from a long loaf of Italian bread. If you like, place a slice of Provolone cheese on the bottom half of the bread, then pile meat on top so the cheese melts.

How to Use That Leftover Turkey: When Cuisines Collide!

Updated Sunday, November 29: I'm revising and republishing my post from Friday because I want to share another recipe that can be made with leftover turkey before we leave Thanksgiving behind. That recipe would be Jamie Oliver's turkey Tetrazzini. It's actually called spaghetti Tetrazzini in his book Jamie's Italy, but you and I, Americans that we are, will call it turkey (or chicken) Tetrazzini. Wink wink.I'd seen Alanna Kellogg's turkey Tetrazzini recipe on Friday (the recipe I link to at the bottom of this post), and it reminded me that I'd wanted to make the version in my Jamie Oliver book for a couple of years. If you saw the photo of the dish in Jamie's Italy, you'd know why I'd been longing to try it; the photo is gorgeous.

Even without seeing a photo, this creamy, cheesy dish would have appealed to me. I had never made turkey T. before, but I'll surely make it again. Mr. Oliver's recipe calls for chicken, not turkey, and uncooked chicken at that; I'm going to give you his original recipe so you can try it even if you don't have leftover cooked turkey around.

Spaghetti Tetrazzini
From Jamie's Italy, by Jamie Oliver

1 ounce/a small handful of dried porcini mushrooms
Olive oil
4 chicken thighs, boned, skinned and cut into bite-sized pieces
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
2 handfuls of mixed fresh mushrooms, cleaned and torn
1 cup white wine
1 pound dried spaghetti
2 1/4 cups heavy cream
7 ounces Parmesan cheese, grated
A sprig of fresh basil, leaves picked
Extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400 °F. Put your porcini mushrooms in a bowl and pour over just enough boiling water to cover them (approx. 5 ounces). Put to one side to soak for a few minutes. Heat a saucepan big enough to hold all the ingredients, and pour in a splash of olive oil. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and brown them gently in the oil. Strain the porcini, reserving the soaking water, and add them to the pan with the garlic and fresh mushrooms. Add the wine, with the strained porcini soaking water, and turn the heat down. Simmer gently until the chicken pieces are cooked through and the wine has reduced a little.

Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling salted water according to the packet instructions and drain well. Add the cream to the pan of chicken, then bring to the boil and turn the heat off. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add the drained spaghetti to the creamy chicken sauce and toss well. Add three-quarters of the Parmesan and all of the basil and stir well. Transfer to an ovenproof baking dish or non-stick pan, sprinkle with half the remaining cheese and bake in the oven until golden brown, bubbling and crisp. Divide between your plates, drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese before serving.

Serves 4.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Since I was using leftover roast turkey, and since I also didn't use the dried mushrooms, I did this dish a bit differently. I first briefly sautéed one very large portobello mushroom (which I had chopped into smallish pieces) and the garlic in the olive oil. Then I added the wine to the pan, stirred in 2 cups of cooked, chopped turkey meat, and simmered it gently while the pasta cooked (I used spaghettini). From there I followed the recipe as shown—well, almost. I made only a half-recipe, so I cut down the ingredients accordingly.

From Italy we move on to India! The names of both countries start with I, and both dishes are creamy and delicious, but that's where the similarity ends. If you like Indian food, this dish is a must-try.This year we had a pastured turkey from Stan of Triple S Farm——for the third year in a row now, I think it is. It was delicious as usual. We roasted it simply, and, per a tip from The Barefoot Contessa, we didn't baste it at all! Isn't that crazy? Basting the turkey was a mainstay in both Keith's and my childhood homes, but this year, we blithely abandoned the flush-inducing, grease-splattering, oven-heat-dissipating process. And it worked out great. Of course, we had slathered an entire stick of butter over the birdie before putting him into the oven. And we'd filled him with two halved lemons, fresh thyme, a quartered onion, and a whole head of garlic. What we got was a moist and flavorful roast turkey with browned and crispy skin.

With Triple S, you can't pick the exact turkey that you want; you tell Stan about how many pounds, and he does his best. He told us that his turkeys grew bigger, faster than expected this year, so ours was a few pounds larger than we'd bargained for. That's OK, though, because between the usual sandwiches, the Mexican turkey stew I've made in previous years, this curry, and the Tetrazzini, we'll polish it off without tiring of it.

This recipe is from Mark Bittman, author of several cookbooks, including How to Cook Everything, and the food column The Minimalist and blog Bitten in The New York Times. I just love the title of the column related to the recipe: "The Turkey That Went to India," and I wish I'd thought it up myself.

Turkey and Spinach Curry
From Mark Bittman via The Minimalist, with a couple of minor additions from me

1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/8 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste (I used probably 1/2 teaspoon)
1 cup tomatoes, chopped (canned are fine; include their juice)
1 cup coconut milk
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 pound fresh spinach, trimmed of thick stems, washed and roughly chopped
2 cups leftover turkey, white or dark meat or a combination, roughly chopped
Juice of half a lime
Freshly chopped cilantro for garnish

Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat; add onion, garlic and ginger and cook until they begin to soften, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add cumin, coriander, turmeric and cayenne and cook, stirring, until spices are fragrant, about another minute.

Add tomatoes and their juices and coconut milk and sprinkle with salt and pepper; bring mixture to a boil and reduce heat to medium. Simmer for another 8 to 10 minutes, or until tomatoes break down. Stir in garam masala to taste.

Add spinach and turkey to pan and continue to cook until spinach wilts and turkey is warmed through, another 3 to 5 minutes. Squeeze in the juice of half a lime and stir. Adjust seasoning, garnish with cilantro, and serve.

Yield: 4 servings.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
This was a really delicious dish, warming and wonderful over rice. And, as Mr. Bittman says in his video, "completely different from what you ate on Thanksgiving day."

For a slew of other ideas about how to use roast turkey, see "Turkey Leftovers" on Elise Bauer's blog Simply Recipes. (Turkey tacos with cranberry salsa sounds like a winner to me.)

And then there's a dish that Alanna Kellogg of Kitchen Parade calls "good ol' plain home cooking and proud of it," turkey Tetrazzini.

Ooh—and how about turkey enchiladas? There's a good-looking recipe for those on Epicurious.

That ought to keep us busy for a while.

Food Poetry 10: Cranberry-Orange Relish

Here's a poem for the holiday from John Engels. The book the poem appears in is called Sinking Creek.

Cranberry-Orange Relish

A pound of ripe cranberries, for two days
macerate in a dark rum, then do not
treat them gently, but bruise,
mash, pulp, squash
with a wooden pestle
to an abundance of juices, in fact
until the juices seem on the verge

of overswelling the bowl, then drop in
two fistsful, maybe three, of fine-
chopped orange with rind, two golden
blobs of it, and crush
it in, and then add sugar, no thin
sprinkling, but a cupful dumped
and awakened with a wooden spoon

to a thick suffusion, drench of sourness, bite of color,
then for two days let conjoin
the lonely taste of cranberry,
the joyous orange, the rum, in some
warm corner of the kitchen, until
the bowl faintly becomes
audible, a scarce wash of sound, a tiny
bubbling, and then
in a glass bowl set it out
and let it be eaten last, to offset
gravied breast and thigh
of the heavy fowl, liverish
stuffing, the effete
potato, lethargy of pumpkins

gone leaden in their crusts, let it be eaten
so that our hearts may be together overrun
with comparable sweetnesses,
tart gratitudes, until finally,
dawdling and groaning, we bear them
to the various hungerings
of our beds, lightened
of their desolations.

© The Lyons Press, 1998. Reprinted with permission.

Happy Thanksgiving, all. Be back on Friday with a few ideas for easy dishes made with leftover you-know-what.

The Art Mart's Oatmeal Cookies

Emily from Champaign requested the recipe for these cookies, and so, cautiously and with much trepidation, I approached owner Brian McKay one recent Saturday morning to ask if, uh, there was any way on earth they would consider sharing what I knew to be a treasured family recipe with all of us. He seemed pretty enthused and said he'd speak to the ladies whose recipe it was and would get back to me. A day or two later, there it was in an e-mail and I was thrilled.

The Art Mart, as you may know, has been in business in C-U since 1958. The variety of items and services the store offers is rather mind boggling. The store now carries everything from dinnerware and home furnishings to kitchen and bath products to fun gift items and cards, and even clothing (check out the whimsical nightshirts and pajamas they currently have—very cute).Art Mart Foods stocks fine food products from all over the world, as well as cookbooks and kitchen equipment. In the deli you'll find high-quality meats and cheeses, nuts, olives, and much more. The bakery area offers breads, homemade croissants, coffee, and gelato. And of course, COOKIES.The Art Mart's Oatmeal Cookies
From the kitchen of Etta Davis (founders Linda Ballard & Carol Ann Hurt's mother, current owner Courtney Ballard McKay's grandmother)

Note from Brian McKay: Almost all of the items we make in the store—salads, sandwiches, soups, etc.—are from Mrs. Davis. She owned a catering business in White Hall, IL.

1/4 lb butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup corn oil
1/2 pound flour
2 eggs
1 tsp Nielsen-Massey vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup raisins

Blend butter and sugars together until light & fluffy. Add eggs, oil, and vanilla. Continue beating until very light in color. Add flour, salt, and soda and mix well. At this point scrape the bottom of mixer bowl to make sure all ingredients are well incorporated. Add remaining ingredients and mix until just blended.

Use a #16 scoop (about 1/4 cup; a standard ice-cream scoop will work) and flatten to about 1/2 inch. Garnish each cookie with a slice of maraschino cherry. Bake at 350 for 6 minutes, then rotate and bake for 6 more minutes. Should yield approx 17 cookies.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
The Art Mart owners recommend using a stand mixer for the cookie dough because it's thick. If you don't have a stand mixer, I'm sure you can make do with a hand-held one and some muscle.

Also recommended is a silicone baking sheet liner. The Art Mart carries the Silpat brand, shown below.Oh, and I want to mention also that you'll find fabulous gelato in a variety of flavors in the bakery area. The gelato comes from Palazzolo's Artisan Gelato & Sorbetto in Saugatuck, Michigan. The apple-pie variety was a winner with the oatmeal cookies!So many fun flavors: malted milk ball, spumoni, spiced hazelnut fig, root beer, chocolate almond fudge. Mmm.

Caramel sauce on your gelato? Good idea. They have that, too.

Sweet.

Many thanks to Brian, Courtney, Linda, and family for sharing the oatmeal cookie recipe with Emily and the rest of us. Emily says not to worry, because if she makes the oatmeal cookies at home, she'll "just buy more M & M cookies and gelato" at the store!

Art Mart, Art Mart Foods, & Art Mart Toys
Lincoln Square Village, Urbana
217-344-7979
See the store's Web site for more info and store hours

Is there a recipe from a local food establishment that you'd love to have? E-mail me at champaigntaste AT gmail DOT com and I'll do my best to get it for you.

To check out recipes from C-U chefs that have appeared previously in this column, see my companion blog, More Champaign Taste (scroll down to the recipes section).

Weeknight Takeout: Annapoorna Indian Grocery

I know that some of you are familiar with Annapoorna, the Indian grocery in Royal Plaza on Neil Street. If you don't—it's at the west end of the plaza, so it actually borders Randolph Street; it's right across Randolph from the Champaign Public Library.

I used to be a little afraid to go in, years ago. Guess I felt like I had to be Indian in order to enter or something. If you've been in the same boat, never fear. No one is going to bite you in there; in fact, Rakesh Honda, the owner, will be happy to help you in whatever way he can. It was at Annapoorna that I found the green mango and necessary spices to make the chutney-esque concoction for doubles, the West Indian street food I attempted to replicate in June of 2007. And he shared tips from his grandmother on that occasion regarding the "curing" of the concoction (called kuchela).

In any case: I shop pretty infrequently at the Indian store because I simply don't make Indian food all that often. That must be why, in all the years I've been going in, I didn't know until yesterday that takeout food is available. Thank heavens I do now. I see the frequency with which I go in increasing.

On Thursday afternoons, ready-made foods are delivered to the store, so you can stop by after work that day, or at lunchtime or in the evening on Friday, or on the weekend, and pick something up. Last night I got chicken biryani ($6.99) and achari gosht made with goat meat ($6.99). Put some on a plate, heat it in the microwave, and there you are—dinner.Biryani is a rice dish, and the rice in the takeout I got last night had red, green, and yellow peppers in it, among other things, and was quite tasty. It also had seven or eight small pieces of chicken on top, as well as a hard-boiled egg.It came with three small containers of sauces: red (not super spicy, very flavorful), green (a cilantro-based sauce), and brown (a sweet tamarind sauce). It was enough food for two people.

The other dish, the achari gosht, was stellar. Achari gosht is a curry that's made with whole pickling spices like fenugreek, fennel, and black mustard seeds; thus, the gravy has a wonderful crunchiness to it.It's often made with lamb, but in this case, it was goat meat. My only complaint was that there were far more bones than there was meat, but I'm telling you, the flavor of the gravy-like sauce was so good that, as Primo says in Big Night, when you taste it, you go crazy, you have to—you have to kill yourself! I'd love to try this dish made with boneless goat, or lamb, although the bones of course add flavor and body to the gravy.Because of the bones, you have to be willing to get in there with your hands, picking them up and getting at whatever meat is there. As for the sauce, buy some naan while you're at the store and sop up the gravy with it.

There are other takeout items to be had as well; just check out the cooler on the right-hand side of the store about halfway back. Fresh produce comes in on Thursday afternoons, as well, so if you need cilantro or garlic, peppers or mangoes, okra or plantains, that's when you'll find the largest selection (and there are many more veggies available than the ones I've named here).

You can also find any number of frozen prepared foods ready to heat and eat.

Luckily for me, the store is right on my way home.

Annapoorna Indian Grocery
505 South Neil Street (in Royal Plaza across from the Champaign Public Library)
Champaign, IL
217-355-5215
Annapoorna Web site
Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Empire Chinese Restaurant

Location—Campus
Average price for an entree—$6.00
Atmosphere—Bright and airy cafe
Service—Friendly and quick
Patio seating—No
Vegetarian-friendly—Yes
Child-friendly—I haven't gone with children, but I think yes

Got another Chinese place for you to check out. Empire Chinese Restaurant, or ECR, is located in Skylight Court, at the corner of Fifth and Green streets on campus. For whatever reason, I hadn't tried it, in all the years it's been there, until recently. Now it seems I can't stop going. I've found the food to be fresh, tasty, and generally non-greasy. It's a pretty little place where you order, pay for, and pick up your food at the counter. There are printed menus there, and many, many dishes are also listed in Chinese and English on laminated paper lining the walls of the entrance hallway (the following photo shows but a detail of that menu). The pepper graphics next to the names mark the spicy dishes.Here are some of the dishes my friends and I have sampled. First off, there's the mapo tofu. Now, it wasn't what I had expected, exactly, because mapo tofu I've had in the past has always had ground pork in it (and was spicier, with Sichuan pepper in it). This was a vegetarian version, and it was very good.Lotta tofu on that plate. Mildly spicy. And at $4.75, with a large serving of rice, it's not a big hit on your wallet (Empire offers small and large sizes of most dishes; this was the small).On another visit we tried eggs with Chinese sausage (one size; $6.25). Scrambled eggs, a few veggies, lots of sliced sausage; this would make a nice brunch dish.We also ordered Singapore chow mei fun. Singapore-style noodles are curry flavored, so if you like curry you'll probably like this dish. Rice vermicelli is stir-fried with shrimp, chicken, pork, and veggies—$4.75 (again, this was the small portion, which I found just right for lunch).Last but not at all least—entrée-wise, that is—we tried the marinated duck with rice. It was a standout. What the menu didn't tell us was that it also comes with bok choy; thus, you get a healthy serving of greens along with your duck and rice (the small goes for $5.55).Apparently we were feeling ravenous that day, because in addition to the three dishes I just described, we decided we'd better have some dumplings as well. Another standout. We got them steamed, but you can also get them fried. Tender, puffy wrappers encased a delicious meaty concoction, and the dumplings come with a tasty dipping sauce ($3.95 for 8 dumplings).

And finally, I must tell you about the pork noodle soup I had on another occasion. A large bowl of steaming-hot broth is filled with (wheat) noodles and bok choy and is topped with a pile of barbecued pork.It'll cure what ails you, without question, and it'll only set you back $5.55. (As noted, I had wheat noodles in my soup, which seem to be the default since I didn't specify, but you can get rice noodles if you prefer). I used chopsticks to pick up the noodles and pork, and broth flew everywhere; it was on my glasses and in my hair. This didn't bother me overly much, but what you need to do, I realized at some point, is pick up the bowl and just shovel and slurp the noodles and pork into your mouth, sipping the broth from the side of the bowl as you go. Don't be embarrassed; if I can do it, so can you.

The only things I've had at Empire that didn't thrill me were the hot and sour soup, which I found neither very hot nor very sour, and the house special lo mein, which wasn't bad, but just wasn't anything to write home about. All the other dishes I've tried have been extra-good.

In addition to the small- and large-sized stand-alone entrées, there's a list of dishes you can get as lunch specials, meaning they come with steamed or fried rice and an egg roll. Drink-wise, hot tea is free, and the usual sodas are also available.

If you go, let me know what you think.

Empire Chinese Restaurant
410 East Green Street (corner of 5th and Green, in Skylight Court)
Champaign, IL
217-328-0832
Open daily at 11 a.m.
Eat in, takeout, and delivery

Fried Italian Sausages with Peppers and Onions

The recipe for this classic dish comes, if you can believe it, from the August 1991 issue of Elle. I haven't bought an Elle in eons, but in perusing the magazine's Web site recently, I saw no recipes, so I don't think they're into food anymore.

The feature in which the recipe appeared, titled "Hollywood and Vino,"centered on movie director-writer-producer Francis Coppola. Coppola also produces wine in Napa Valley, as well as pasta and jarred pasta sauces under the brand Mammarella (and by the way, you can find both the pastas and the sauces at World Harvest grocery in Champaign, where I like to get my olive oil).

Coppola shared recipes for five dishes in the Elle feature: tomato sauce with mussels al bianco, braciole with rich tomato sauce, seafood salad, fried zucchini (with fresh mint and red-wine vinegar), and the sausage-and-peppers skillet dinner that follows.

Our sausages were from Triple S Farm—the hot Italian variety. Stan has been working with the people at The Spice House in Chicago, and the flavor of the sausages is really great. If you get the hot ones, they will be spicy! (Triple S also sells sweet Italian sausages.)

Fried Italian Sausages with Peppers and Onions
From Francis Coppola, in Elle magazine, August 1991 issue

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 medium onion, sliced thin
6 Italian sausages
2 green peppers, sliced thin
1/2 cup red wine
Chopped parsley
Salt and pepper

Brown onions in oil and set aside. Fry Italian sausages in same oil until browned on all sides. Add browned onions and green peppers. Add red wine and increase heat to evaporate. Lower heat, salt and pepper to taste, and add chopped parsley. Serves 4.

The recipe appeared in the magazine as shown above; when I made it, I used a whole onion and double the peppers (two green bell peppers and two red frying peppers I'd gotten from Blue Moon). And I used only four sausages (about a pound), which I cut in half crosswise before frying. In addition, I cooked the peppers along with the onions in step 1, and I browned the sausages for about 15 minutes so that they were pretty well cooked through before I added the vegetables back to the skillet along with the wine.

Fairly simple, and completely delicious.

P.S. The plate and tea towel shown in the top photo are from the Art Mart in Urbana.

Quick Bite: Empanadas at Manolo's

Stopped by Manolo's Pizza & Empanadas recently with some coworker friends, because we had empanadas on the brain. You know empanadas, right? They take different forms, depending on which country you eat them in (they're popular in Spain, Portugal, and South America); the ones at Manolo's are smallish half-moon-shaped pastries stuffed to bursting with savory or sweet fillings. Aren't they cute, all lined up in their little box?

The classic South American empanada dough is made with lard (which we don't have to be afraid of anymore, now that we know lard isn't particularly bad for you, containing, as it does, more unsaturated fat and less saturated fat than butter), flour, and salt. Manolo's uses puff pastry dough to hold the various fillings, which isn't traditional but is very tasty. Probably the most popular traditional filling is ground beef with onions, olives, hard-boiled eggs, and raisins and flavorings like garlic, cumin, paprika, and hot sauce.

Manolo's beef empanada (called the San Telmo Carne) has "sautéed beef, onions, and bell peppers" in it, and, according to the menu, is "spiced with traditional Argentine flavors." We had some delivered during a football game last Saturday, and they were delish. Get the queso picante sauce to dip them in if you like (other dipping sauces available include Ranch and Marinara—not that you have to dip; the empanadas are quite good all on their own).

When my coworker friends and I had lunch at Manolo's, we tried the chicken empanada (San Telmo Pollo; you can see inside that one in the photo at the top of this post), the Mushroom Thyme (sautéed mushrooms, onions, and thyme, with Gorgonzola cheese), and the Potato Cheddar (mashed potato, Cheddar cheese, roasted garlic and green onion). Have a look inside the mushroom thyme empanada.We enjoyed every single last one. I could easily become addicted to the San Telmo Carne, the Mushroom Thyme, and the Potato Cheddar varieties, especially.

We also went out on a limb and sampled a dessert empanada: the Raspberry Cheesecake. They put raspberries, graham crackers, and cream cheese inside the puff pastry and dust it with powdered sugar. Dyn-o-mite! Really, what's not to like about fruit and cream cheese baked inside puff pastry?Now, there's nowhere to sit inside Manolo's; apparently if you eat in, you sit in the Canopy Club, but I'm not sure how that works (has anyone gone for lunch and eaten their food in the club?). If the weather's warm, there are several tables outside you can sit at; otherwise, you'll take your food to go.

And go you should.

Manolo's Pizza & Empanadas
1115 West Oregon Street (across the street to the south from Krannert Center—behind Espresso Royale at Goodwin & Oregon)
Urbana, IL
217-365-0110
Hours are "11 a.m. to late night"
You'll find the entire menu on their Web site

P.S. Manolo's is soliciting food donations for the Eastern Illinois Food Bank during the month of November. Here's a blurb from their Facebook page: "Donate your canned goods and other non-perishable food items at Manolo's Pizza & Empanadas in support of the Eastern Illinois Foodbank from Monday, November 9th to Monday, November 30th. Bring in a food item and get a dollar off your purchase! EIF supports over 44,000 people; almost half are children!"

P.P.S. You night owls should know that Manolo's often runs a special wherein all of their food items are half-price from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Look for announcements on Facebook or Twitter.

Serebyanka, a.k.a. "Lecsó"

Here's a recipe from the archives. I'm putting it back up in honor of the fact that it's featured in the News-Gazette's "Tried and True" column today. Meg Thilmony, who writes the column, invites community members to send her their recipes at mthilmony AT newsgazette DOT com.

Keith's mother, Elizabeth Mayer, was Hungarian—the first of her siblings to be born in the United States—and he has fond memories of her making this dish of peppers, tomatoes, and sausage. She didn't teach it to him per se, but he watched her make it many a time, and he makes it for us on a regular basis.

Although Keith was born and raised in Iowa, his mother's family lived in Chicago, so there would be road trips to the Windy City from time to time. On those visits he remembers eating around a large table in the Mayer family's south-side kitchen. He and his brother would sit on a "bench" at one end of the table—a board set on top of the radiator. Many of his mother's relatives would be there, and they'd all be speaking Hungarian—which neither he, nor his brother, nor his dad could understand a word of! The Mayer family was obviously proud of their heritage, and they clung to it, as do immigrant families everywhere, via food, language, and custom. Here Keith's mother at about 16 years old in her folk-dance costume:Keith wasn't sure about all of the ingredients in the dish he remembered so fondly and in fact didn't even know how the name of the dish was spelled. His mother, unfortunately, passed away some years ago, so we couldn't ask her more about it. I poked around on the Internet and found that there's a Russian town named Serebyanka, but no recipes for a dish by that name turned up.

I then researched Hungarian recipes in general and finally found what I was looking for. The dish is known by Hungarians as lecsó, and it's apparently a very common and well-loved concoction. It's used as a condiment, sauce, side dish (without meat in it), and main dish (with the addition of sausage or other meat).

Keith makes his version with kielbasa, but he said his mother often used a product I had never heard of and at first assumed was a relic of the 1950s: ring bologna. However, turns out it's still popular; Lancaster County, PA, seems to be the ring-bologna capital.

But enough about ring bologna. Here is Keith's recipe for lecsó. It's a great one for summer and fall, when peppers and tomatoes abound at the farmers' market, but it's just as easily made in winter with canned tomatoes and grocery-store peppers.

Serebyanka, a.k.a. Lecsó
A Mayer family recipe

2 tablespoons bacon fat or oil
1 medium onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon sweet Hungarian paprika
2 green bell peppers, chopped
2 to 3 red bell peppers, chopped
1 pound smoked sausage (kielbasa, ring bologna, or your favorite), in 1/2-inch-thick slices
About 8 Roma tomatoes, or 6 medium regular tomatoes, chopped; or 1 28-oz can chopped tomatoes in juice
Red pepper flakes to taste
Salt to taste

In a 5- or 6-quart Dutch oven, heat the bacon fat or oil. Add the onions and sauté over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes.

Add the paprika and garlic and cook another 2 to 3 minutes. Add the peppers and sausage; cook and stir for a few minutes.

Then add the tomatoes, red pepper flakes, and salt. Cover the pot and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally, so that flavors meld and a nice sauce forms.

Serve over buttered elbow macaroni.

Update November 2009: Over the past few years, we've tried various types of peppers in this dish—Hungarian sweet/hot, banana, regular bell peppers of all colors, Gypsy, Italian frying peppers—and it always turns out great. And since we've gotten into smoked paprika, Keith sometimes uses that in addition to the sweet. It adds lovely depth of flavor.

In addition, we've found that the Jerry's IGA at the Round Barn Center regularly carries ring bologna. Oh, joy! So we usually use that instead of kielbasa these days. But there might be a new kid on the block; last week we put Triple S Farm's smoked sausage into another dish, and I think we might try it in this one next time.

We like this dish not only because it was a Mayer family favorite but also because it's comfort food that's full of flavor, easy to put together, and satisfies the soul of even non-Hungarians.

Novel Food Autumn 2009: Huevos Rancheros

This is my submission (and the roundup) for Novel Food, a literary/culinary event that Simona, of the food blog Briciole, and I started a couple of years ago and now do semi-annually. To see posts from past Novel Food events, go to my companion blog, More Champaign Taste, and scroll down to the "Miscellaneous Treats and Special Events" section.

The book I cooked from for this edition of Novel Food is Jeannette Walls' Half Broke Horses, a "true-life novel," as she terms it. The book is a lightly fictionalized account of the life of Walls' grandmother, Lily Casey Smith.

In the book's first scene Lily, age 10, her younger brother Buster, and her sister Helen survive a flash flood by climbing into a tree and hanging on for dear life, keeping themselves awake all night so as not to fall out and drown. That's how this Wild West story opens, and it never lets up from there. Walls lets Lily tell her story herself, as it were, in the first person. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it.

Lily Casey Smith was born in West Texas in 1901 (in a "dugout," like the one the family in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books lived in—considerably less romantically portrayed). Later her family moved to a ranch in New Mexico, where she started breaking horses at age 6. At 15, she rides a pony 500 miles, all on her own, to take a job as an itinerant replacement teacher in northern Arizona. Though her parents don't like to see her go, her father is philosophical: "Seems you been dealt a card; I guess you better go on and play it."

After many more adventures, Lily winds up living on a cattle ranch in Arizona during the Great Depression with her husband Jim, and they have a daughter, Rosemary. She and her husband hire

about a dozen cowboys, mostly Mexican and Havasupai, to drive the cattle to the ranch and brand them before sending them out to the range. . . . When the cowboys arrived, the first thing they did was head out into open country and round up a herd of range horses, which they proceeded to break—after a fashion—in the palisaded corral. The horses bucked and fishtailed like rodeo broncs, but those hard-assed boys would just as soon bust every bone in their bodies before calling it quits. They weren't much more than half broke horses themselves.

I stood there watching them with Rosemary. "I feel bad for the horses," she said. "They just want to be free."

"In this life," I said, "hardly anyone gets to do what they want to do."

The foods mentioned in the novel are basic: johnnycakes, jerky, biscuits, steak and eggs, beans, more jerky. But seeing as how the bulk of the story takes place on a ranch in Arizona, I didn't think that the classic Mexican breakfast huevos rancheros ("ranch-style" or "country-style" eggs) would be out of place, so that's what I made. Lily's cooking was also basic; maybe she didn't make huevos rancheros for her cowboys, but I'll bet they wished she had.

Huevos Rancheros
Recipe for ranchero sauce from The Well-Filled Tortilla Cookbook, by Victoria Wise and Susanna Hoffman

From the headnote to the recipe: "Ranchero sauce is the cowboys' ketchup. On the long rides and cattle drives across the great estancias and ranches, it became the sauce of note and necessity in every chuckwagon rolling or resting."

Makes 2 cups
Takes less than 20 minutes

1 jalapeño pepper
1 medium onion
2 garlic cloves
4 medium tomatoes
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh oregano leaves or 1/2 teaspoon dried
1/4 teaspoon pure chili powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water

In a food processor or using a chef's knife, coarsely chop the chili pepper, garlic, onion, and tomatoes. Transfer to a medium-sized nonreactive skillet. Add the oregano, chili powder, salt, and water. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are soft and the onions translucent, 12 to 15 minutes.

Divide the sauce in half. Purée one half in a food processor, food mill, or mortar. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the remaining sauce. Serve warm, or cover, refrigerate, and use within 10 days.

For huevos rancheros: Make the ranchero sauce and keep it warm. Fry corn tortillas in a little oil in a skillet until they're softened and air pockets bubble up (maybe 30 seconds); remove and keep warm. Melt butter in same skillet and fry eggs sunny side up. Place an egg onto a tortilla and cover with ranchero sauce (runny fried eggs seem to be most common, but you can substitute scrambled or whatever you prefer, of course). Refried or black beans are a traditional accompaniment. Avocado slices would be a bonus!

Now here's the show-and-tell about the books other people who took part in our event read and the dishes those books inspired them to make.

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Amy of Champaign, IL, joined in this time. She doesn't have a blog, so here is her story about the book and dish:

The Help is a wonderful novel about black maids in 1963’s Jackson, Mississippi, and the white socialite women who employ them. The main characters are Aibileen and Minnie, best friends who together with several other black maids help Skeeter, a young white woman, write a book about being a maid in 1963 and the complicated relationships between them and their employers. The women are afraid to tell their stories, fearing retribution from their employers, but Aibileen and Minnie and certain events encourage them to speak out. Skeeter is anxious to be a writer and work for a publisher in New York City, and upon returning from college at Ole Miss, becomes intrigued and somewhat offended observing her childhood friends’ treatment of their maids.

Minnie was famous for two things: her smart mouth and her caramel cake. She was one of the best cooks in the city, which enabled her to get a job, but her smart mouth led to her seeking a new employer fairly often.

I’d never had caramel cake, but being a huge fan of caramels I decided to track down a recipe and try it. The recipe I used was from Gourmet magazine, January 2008, an issue dedicated to Southern cooking. I liked the cake very much; it was very moist and the buttermilk in the recipe cut the sweetness of the caramel glaze. Nothing really cuts the richness of the almost two sticks of butter in the single layer cake, but it was delicious.

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Sara of Heaven on Earth is working on a series about food in the novels of Haruki Murakami. She submitted not one but two interesting posts inspired by Murakami's book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles; Sara makes potato salad in honor of one character's favorite food and honey madeleines to represent the cookies that are served in another scene. Wonderful, and I was happy to be introduced to these books. Though I've heard of Haruki Murakami, I've not read anything by him, and now I'd like to.

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Adele, a.k.a. The Basil Queen, took as her inspiration a short story by O. Henry—that master of the one-two-punch ending. "Witches' Loaves" is the story in question, and Adele made apple-maple brown Betty in order to use the stale bread that plays a prominent role. If you're intrigued, and you haven't read the story, you'll find a link to it in Adele's post.

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Simona, my partner in this event, made a gorgeous fish stew from the novel Tattoo. You must go and read about the connection between the novelist who inspired her (hint: his last name is Montalbán) and the one who inspired us to start this Novel Food event in the first place.

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Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for this edition of the Novel Food event. Please be sure to sample my partner Simona's half of this roundup, to read about several more tasty books and dishes.

Our next Novel Food event will be in the spring, so stay tuned, and keep reading and cooking!

From the Pantry: Texas Pete Hot Sauce

Unless you don't like anything spicy at all, I know you have a favorite hot sauce. My current number-one is Texas Pete. This is the sauce they serve at the Seaboat, and there is absolutely nothing better than Seaboat fried chicken liberally doused with Texas Pete.

Texas Pete is also great on eggs, of course. And in greens. And beans. And soups. And on popcorn. And Fritos. (It's a salt overload on Frito's, I admit, but I like salty stuff.)

Isn't it funny how most hot sauces are made up of just three ingredients—peppers, vinegar, and salt—and yet they can taste so different. Obviously, the type of peppers used contributes much to that difference, as well as the varying proportions of the three ingredients, but still. I find it amazing that each has its own unique flavor and texture.

I find Texas Pete to be very similar to another favorite, Louisiana Hot Sauce (which I always have in my cupboard), but to me TP is hotter, and sometimes I like that. Cajun Chef is another one that's similar in style (that's the hot sauce they serve at Merry Ann's Diner, and I'm always tempted to tuck a bottle into my bag when we eat there, as I haven't seen it in any stores around here). None of the aforementioned sauces are really hot, but that's my style. I don't like those crazy sauces that fry my ears off.

Now, Texas Pete is not from Texas at all; it's made in North Carolina. The story is that the makers of the product wanted to capitalize on the popularity of American movie cowboys during the 1920s and 30s and that's how they came up with the name. Well, false advertising though it may be, I love the stuff.

In Champaign-Urbana, you can find Texas Pete at Schnucks.

Yee-ha!

Holy Land Mediterranean Grill

There are two questions people have been asking me about this restaurant, so I'm going to answer them straightaway:

1. Is Holy Land located in the old Jack's Grill space on Neil Street? Yes.
2. Is it run by the same people who ran Jack's? No.

One other announcement: There's DECOR in there, people! Whew—it was a relief to see that (if you ate here when it was Jack's, you'll know why I say this).There are four large booths and a couple of tables; my only concern about the seating is that most of it seems to be geared toward groups. So if you come with four, five, or six people, it's good, but for a single person or a couple, not so good—unless you get one of the two smaller tables, one of which is right near the door and thus is not prime seating, you'd have to sit at a booth meant for five or six people. Update 11/12/09: Holy Land has added several smallish tables seating two to four people! Thank you!

The family who ran Jack's Grill sold the business to Sam Moukhamer (a Jordanian who's lived in the U.S. for 20 years) and partner Jamal Kahala, and within 10 days of the sale, the restaurant reopened as Holy Land (that was a week ago Monday). The menu features similar foods; you'll still find hummus, baba ganoush, lamb, beef, and chicken kebabs, and falafel.

And there are some items not found on Jack's menu: arayes with cheese (think Middle Eastern grilled cheese) or meat (pitas stuffed with minced beef and lamb, parsley, and spices); chicken tikka (curry-flavored chicken served with biryani); shrimp scampi and shrimp kebabs; flounder filet with lemon & garlic and a tahini sauce; and quail (three baby birds marinated in garlic, lemon, olive oil, and special spices).The first time I went to Holy Land, I got takeout. Though I ordered smalls, we got large portions of hummus and baba ganoush, which were packaged in 6-inch round aluminum containers with paper lids (hooray, no styrofoam!); a great value at $3.99 each. We also tried the quail (tasty marinade, nicely grilled, enough food for a small army, $12.99) and the chicken shish tawook (kebab), $5.99 for the small version (one kebab with rice and a grilled tomato).

On another occasion, I ate in the restaurant with some friends. Soon after we sat down, we were given a complimentary eggplant appetizer with baked pita chips, which we loved.We ordered a bunch of stuff to share, including the fatoush salad (a large salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, red onion, sweet peppers, and baked pita chips with a tangy vinaigrette, $4.99) and hummus (which you can see in the photo next to the salad—they put sumac on their hummus, which is a bonus; the tart, citrusy flavor really adds oomph).And we got the small falafel appetizer (4 pieces with sauce, $2.29). The falafel were wonderful; crispy-crunchy on the outside, heartbreakingly tender on the inside, really perfect, with a tasty sauce for dipping.We also tried the Holy Land mixed grill platter (skewers of mesquite-grilled kebabs of lamb, chicken, and kufta), which comes with side dishes of hummus and baba ganoush (or you can substitute a house salad) and is enough for at least two people, $12.99. The menu description indicated that the mixed grill came with a "shawerma garnish" and grilled tomatoes and onions; none of those items were in evidence, but we gave them the benefit of the doubt since it was only their second day in operation (and what with the rice, meats, hummus, and baba g., this platter was clearly abundant already). As if all of that were not enough, we ordered the arayes with cheese, as well, because when you see pitas stuffed with cheese and grilled on a menu, you have to try it ($6.49). We were not sorry. Loved the pickle slices that were served with the sandwiches.In the beverage department, there are lots of fruity drinks you can try. They have what they call "cocktails," which, by the descriptions, seem to be like fresh-fruit smoothies. There is also Arabic coffee, tea, bottled Coke and Orange Crush, and bottled water.

On future visits I plan to try the kibbeh (bulger wheat and ground beef "meatballs") and the shawarma. I didn't get specifics on how they make their shawarma, but based on the other food I've had here, my guess is it's going to be delicious.

I've had several reports from friends on the food at Holy Land in addition to my own experience; one friend highly recommends the falafel sandwich, and another found the hummus, baba ganoush, and kefta kebab "heavenly."

Welcome, Holy Land Grill. Thanks for keeping the Middle-Eastern vibe going on North Neil Street. I look forward to visiting often.

Holy Land Mediterranean Grill
705 North Neil Street
Champaign, IL
217-355-0599
Open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Credit/debit cards accepted

The Poet's Cookbook: Recipes from Tuscany

Hey, look! I just found out about this book, and I'm ordering it right away. What could be more wonderful for those of us who love both poetry and great (Italian) food?? I'm thrilled to see that Diane Lockward's poem Linguini, which was featured on CT in March of this year, is included in the book.

With 70 recipes—for dishes like Sauteed Porcini Mushrooms with Polenta, Vegetable and Bread Soup, Pork Roast in Chianti, and Chocolate Wine Cake—accompanied by numerous poems celebrating food and appearing in both Italian and English, this book sounds delicious indeed. You can read more about it on Diane's blog, Blogalicious.

Congratulations, Diane, and buon appetito to you poetry lovers out there.