From Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist
Christopher Kimball of the MILK STREET TELEVISION cooking
show, recently asked his friend Alex Aïnouz, a Parisienne, to tell the audience
about the recipes a typical French home cook prepares for his/her family during
any given week. Aïnouz replied, “We cook what is available; we don’t cook
recipes.” Come to think of it, our ancestral mavens of the cook stove, and hearth,
and fire-pit have been cooking that way since fire was discovered. Well-stocked
pantries and freezers are contrivances of the modern world.
The conversation between Kimball and
his French friend took me back to memories of my dear mother. While Mom was a
darn good baker of pies, cobblers, biscuits and bread, she wasn’t as skillful a
cook, otherwise. She fried her meats to near leather and creamed just about
everything: creamed peas, creamed corn, even creamed canned tomatoes, a method
of preparing vegetables that never pleased my taste buds. “Al dente” was not only
a term Mom never heard, but the concept would have been completely foreign to
her, for she boiled her vegetables until they were as soft as mush. In another
way, though, she was masterful in the kitchen. I can’t tell you how many times
I witnessed her pulling together a meal on a dime from a seemingly empty fridge
and pantry, because, as was common back in those friendlier old days, someone
unexpected stopped by at right about meal time.
Mom began life as a farm girl during
the early decades of the twentieth century. Her experience in the kitchen was
typical of budding cooks in most farm kitchens back then. There was the benefit
of her mother’s enormous garden, which was replete with vegetables and various
kinds of berries, its harvest canned and stored in the cellar at season’s end;
there were chickens in their dozens in the yard, on the porch, in the barnyard,
and gathered among the apple and peach trees in the orchard. Every morning, the
hen house was a veritable egg-banquet in the offing, and out in the smokehouse,
sides of brined pork and beef suspended from poles, the products of the farm’s
stock of pigs and cows. Never ever was there a sparse larder. All that was
required to pull together a meal when company came around was to gather up some
eggs, wring a chicken’s neck, break open a canned jar of corn, cook up a “mess”
of green beans afloat au jus in hunks of ham or thick slices of bacon, and
throw some wood in the oven of the cook stove and bake a loaf or two of bread, a
blackberry cobbler, and a peach pie.
My mother was nineteen when she and my father
married, and as soon as they could pull it off, they high-tailed it to the big
city and never again entertained the prospect of farm-life. Thereafter, for the
most part, the local grocery store was the equivalent of my grandmother’s
garden and smokehouse. Nevertheless, no matter how long it had been since Mom’s
last trek to the grocery store, she could whip up a meal from thin air.
Macaroni and cheese with sliced ham sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches and
Campbell’s tomato soup were her staples; or gravy and biscuits and fried
potatoes; or bean soup and cornbread, or my enduring favorite: fried bologna
sandwiches and sliced tomatoes on the side. Of course, people in my corner of
the world call them “Fried Bologney Sandwiches.” Mom followed the traditional
recipe of fried bologna, American cheese and mayo slapped between slices of
white bread, but I like to tinker with traditional recipes. Be advised that my version
of a fried boloney sandwich is hearty and filling. I can only eat half of one.
It’s a good sandwich to split with a friend, or to save the second half for tomorrow.©
LINDA’S FRIED “BOLOGNEY” SANDWICH
INGREDIENTS
- 2 slices of your favorite bread
- 2 slices of bologna
- A few tablespoons of a butter and
olive oil blend such as Olivio or Countryside Creamery Butter with Olive
Oil and Sea Salt
- 1 slice
of sharp cheddar
cheese
- A dollop of ketchup
- 2 eggs
DIRECTIONS
1.
Put
1 tablespoon of the butter/olive oil blend in a frying pan (preferably an iron
skillet) and heat to medium high.
2.
Cut
short slits in the bologna around their entire perimeter. This prevents the
bologna from cupping while frying.
3.
Place
the bologna in the skillet.
4.
Brown
both sides of the bologna. When done, scoop them onto a plate with a spatula.
5.
Quickly
crack the eggs into a bowl and whip them as if you were preparing them for
scrambling.
6.
Lower
the flame under the skillet to low. Add another tablespoon of the butter/olive
oil blend to the skillet.
7.
Dip
both sides of the bread into the whipped eggs and place them in the skillet.
Cook both sides to a French Toast golden brown.
8.
While
the second side of the bread slices is browning, place the two slices of fried
bologna on top of one slice of the bread.
9.
Add
the cheese to the top of the bologna.
10.
Drop
a dollop of ketchup on the top of the cheese.
11.
Place
the second browned slice of bread on top to form a sandwich. Flip the sandwich
with a spatula and cook until the bread is slightly charred and the cheese is
melted. The charred consistency adds a satisfying crunch to the sandwich.©
***
Multi-award-winning author Linda Lee Greene’s GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, which is a novel that blends historical fiction and an intimate study of her ancestors, receives rave reviews:
5 stars Wonderfully Written!
“This was a thoroughly enjoyable book. I loved the Americana.
[It] reached out and touched my heart, mind and soul. [It] provided tremendous
insight into what many American families endured during the first half of the
20th century. It captures you and draws you in. This is most certainly a
five-star novel.”
GUARDIANS
AND OTHER ANGELS is available in eBook and/or paperback. Just click the
following link/URL and it will take you straight to the page on Amazon on which
you can purchase it.
Purchase
link: http://goo.gl/imUwKO
#ChristopherKimball, #MilkStreetTelevision, #CookingShows, #Recipes,
#FarmLife, #FriedBolognaSandwich, #GuardiansAndOtherAngels, #LindaLeeGreene
