Hawaiian Chicken with Ginger and Peach is a chicken and rice dish with vaguely tropical sensibilities. If you’re expecting a traditional plate-lunch style chicken you’ll need to look elsewhere: this dish is more Nixon-era casserole than luau food. very salty rice pilaf topped with pan-seared chicken breast. The only thing even remotely Hawaiian about the……
Ingredient: ground ginger
Chinese Pork Balls and Cabbage (1968, adapted from Myra Waldo’s Chinese Cookbook)
Chinese Pork Balls and Cabbage is a hearty dish suitable for a cool autumn weeknight. If you’re after an authentic Chinese main dish keep looking. This recipe is adapted from Myra Waldo’s Chinese Cookbook, first published in 1968, and reflects Americanized Chinese sensibilities adapted to the tastes and ingredient availability of the 1960s. Like most……
Fruit ‘N Filbert Pork Chops (adapted from A Treasury of Prize Winning Filbert Recipes, 1973)
Fruit ‘N Filbert Pork Chops is easily my favorite recipe from A Treasury of Prize Winning Filbert Recipes, transforming a usually bland and dry pork loin into a delicious weeknight meal. The fruit is arguably central to the flavor profile, but the recipe still showcases the toasty bitterness of roasted hazelnuts. It’s also deliciously old……
Caffeine-Free Espresso-Cardamom Rub (adapted from Grill Every Day, 2007)
Sometime in the late 2000s the coffee-rubbed steak was a minor trend in our local restaurants, not at the steak and chop houses so much as the upscale restaurants that feel obligated to have a steak on the menu. The most common pairing was coffee and chili, usually rubbed on an inexpensive butcher’s cut like……
Grandmother’s Ginger Nuts (adapted from Mennonite Community Cookbook, 1950)
The recipe in Mennonite Community Cookbook that I find most entertaining is Grandmother’s Ginger Nuts. This book designates the recipe as “very old”, presumably from the late nineteenth century. This recipe was submitted independently by two different women. The first was Grandmother’s Ginger Nuts, the other Ginger Balls. I shudder to think what internet……
Apple Pudding Bread (Wisconsin, 1989, adapted)
Apple Pudding Bread is a spiced dessert bread recipe from Ascension Lutheran’s 1989 community cookbook. The recipe’s author was a longtime member and mother of three. She was an avid bridge player and teacher and her husband served in various lay leadership positions at the church. In the recipe description she brags that Apple……
Sunshine Carrots (Tennessee, 1978, adapted)
Sunshine carrots is a simple, tasty glazed carrot recipe. I was originally drawn to this recipe by the cheery name – who doesn’t love sunshine? – but it also serves a practical purpose for the members of our family who don’t like cooked carrots. Sunshine Carrots hides their funkiness with a sweet ginger orange glaze.
Chicken and Mushroom Cream Soup (Egypt, adapted from Together: Our Community Cookbook, 2018)
Chicken and Mushroom Cream Soup is one of the more enjoyable recipes in Together: Our Community Cookbook. The original recipe was submitted to the cookbook by one Amaal abd Elrasoul, who came to London to help her sister-in-law after the Grenfell Tower fire. She credits the recipe to a neighbor in Cairo. In her own……