Courage in the Kitchen

“Have some slaw.” I am certain that I heard my mother offer her cole slaw more than a thousand times to someone at the table. She served it with fish, chicken, pork and sandwiches. When we went on a picnic, we often had cole slaw to go with the hot dogs. Hamburgers for supper came with mustard, ketchup, fried potatoes and slaw, and when we ate bratwurst there was slaw on the table in addition to or in place of sauerkraut.

Mom’s cole slaw was a lot like Jerri’s, cabbage dressed with mayonnaise and vinegar (and sour cream in Jerri’s recipe), but there is a separate tradition of cole slaw made with vinegar and oil dressings. Some are sweet, others sour, but they all taste good to me.

A few weeks ago, I encountered an outstanding member of the vinegar and oil slaw family. We were visiting Carl, one of the ministers who married us a half century ago. He also was the husband of Jerri’s best friend at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. Carl served as president of Southwestern for several years and moved back to Winfield after his wife, Mary Lou, died.

When he bought a home near the college and remodeled it, he included a beautiful kitchen in the plans. The counters, sink, stove and oven seem to murmur, “Come on, Carl, try us out. We’ll help you make some wonderful foods.” Unfortunately, Carl thus far seems deaf to their invitations.

However, he does have a good taste in restaurants, one of which has now served us two excellent lunches. College Hill Coffee was started by Blenda Hoskinson in 2002 and now occupies a lovely bungalow near the college. As the name suggests, the restaurant offers a wide variety of coffees, espresso and other hot drinks plus cold drinks ranging from iced coffees to chocolate milk and Italian sodas.

But College Hill also makes excellent sandwiches, wraps and salads. When I ordered my sandwich, the young woman at the counter asked me which side I would like with it. As I scanned the list chalked on a slate, Summer Cole Slaw caught my attention. When I asked what it was, she said it was really good cole slaw. I am not sure, but she may have added softly that it was awesome. College Hill is that kind of college gathering place.

Trusting youth, I decided to try it. It is awesome and incidentally goes perfectly with the Grilled Cuban sandwich. As the friend of a regular and well-known customer I decided to ask for the recipe. Blenda reached for a cookbook on a shelf next to the counter, leafed through a few pages and showed me how they made that wonderful slaw. For a few seconds I feared that she was promoting a commercial cookbook until she explained that it was a recipe she included in Tried and True Recipes That Measure Up from College Hill Coffee.

When I asked how she came upon the recipe, she told me that she had begged it from a lady who brought the slaw to a potluck at the First Baptist Church in Augusta, Kansas. I tried to buy a copy of the cookbook, while Blenda tried to give it to me. Finally we compromised: I paid her what the book cost her, so I got a discount and we parted as friends. Jerri and I are both looking forward to visiting Carl and College Hill Coffee again.

If you happen to be passing through Wichita, Kansas, I suggest a side trip to Winfield, which is only forty-two miles distant. If you happen to be on your way to Tulsa or Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Winfield is actually on the way. You’ll see a vibrant college in a prosperous small city, and have a lunch to remember. And if they don’t have Blenda’s Summer Cole Slaw on the menu that day, chances are excellent that they will have an alternative that will be just as awesome.

INGREDIENTS:

2 packages cabbage cole slaw mix (from store)
2 cups unsalted peanuts
1 16 oz. package frozen peas
2 T grated onion
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup plus 2 T sugar
1 T poppyseed
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 tsp. salt
1/3 cup cider vinegar

PROCEDURE:

Remove the dry outer layer from the onion, grate two tablespoons and put them into a large mixing bowl. Dump two packages of slaw mix, two cups of unsalted peanuts and a pound package of frozen green peas into a large mixing bowl. Mix everything together.

Make the dressing by whisking together the oil, sugar, poppy seed, mustard, salt and vinegar.

Pour the dressing over the cabbage mixture and stir until everything is well blended.

Put the salad into the refrigerator to let the flavors meld for an hour before serving.

NOTE: I followed Blenda’s recipe exactly. After I made it, I realized that a restaurant might want a bit more slaw than a family. If you are making the slaw for a group of eight or fewer, I recommend cutting the recipe in half.

A friend introduced me to Morello cherries a few years ago. I didn’t know what they were, but he told me that they could be used to make cherry pies. The next time he visited Trader Joe’s in Woodbury, Minnesota, he brought me a jar of the dark red cherries as a gift.

The pie cherries I knew were bright red cherries that my mother bought every summer from traveling fruit vendors. Thanks to the Internet, I learned that the cherries I was familiar with were Montmorency cherries. They belong to the Amarelle family of sour cherries, but I also found out that Morello is the name of another large family of sour cherries that make delicious jams, crisps and pies like those made with Montmorency cherries.

Amarelle cherries were brought to America by settlers from England long before the Revolutionary War, and the Montmorency variety became the most common sour cherry planted by settlers as they moved west from the Atlantic. Morello cherries, on the other hand, are recent immigrants.

The dominant variety grown in Hungary, the Balaton cherry, was introduced first to cherry growers in Michigan by Dr. Amy Iezzoni, a professor at Michigan State University, in 1984. It is now the most popular commercial Morello cherry in the the United States, but some other varieties of English Morello cherries such as the Kansas Sweet and Northstar are grown in backyards or smaller orchards.

Morello cherry trees flower a bit later than Amarelles, which means that Morello trees have an advantage in areas subject to late frosts. For someone who likes to cook and eat, however, the biggest advantage of Morello cherries is that canned Morellos make wonderful cherry pies and crisps any time of the year. You can buy them online or at some supermarkets. In our area, Aldi and Trader Joe’s both carry them.

Here is how to make a delicious cherry pie with Morello cherries.

INGREDIENTS:

For the filling:
1 24 oz. jar Morello Cherries in light syrup
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 T + 1/2 tsp. corn starch
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. butter

For the topping:
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
3 T butter

PROCEDURE:

Soften three tablespoons of butter in a small bowl. If you use unsalted butter, add an eighth teaspoon of salt to the butter when you soften it.

Line a nine-inch pie plate with a crust and crimp the top edge. If you don’t already have a recipe you prefer, you’ll find my recipe for pie crust here. It makes two crusts, so you can line two pie plates and freeze one to use later when you are in a hurry to make a dessert. Take the crust out of the freezer, pour in the filling, and in just a few minutes you’ll have a pie in the oven.

Preheat the oven to 400º.

Drain the juice from the cherries into a two quart saucepan and reserve the cherries. Mix the corn starch into the sugar in a small bowl. Whisk the sugar and corn starch into the juice and set the pan over moderate heat. Use the whisk or a fork to stir the juice often as it heats to make sure that you get a smooth sauce.

Reduce the heat as the juice thickens and becomes clear, and stir in the lemon juice, almond extract and butter. Stir the cherries into the thickened juice, bring the mixture back to a boil and simmer the filling for a minute. Remove the pan from the heat and let the filling cool a bit while you finish the crumb topping.

You can mix together the flour, oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon in a medium-sized bowl while the juice is cooking. Once you have set the filling aside to cool, cut the softened butter into the dry ingredients until you have a uniform mixture.

Pour the filling into the crust, sprinkle the crumb topping evenly over the filling and put the pie on a baking sheet on a center shelf in the preheated oven. Reduce the heat to 375º and bake for thirty-five to forty minutes. When the topping and crust are lightly browned, remove the pie from the oven to cool on a rack before serving.

NOTES: Be sure to put a baking sheet under the pie, as it, like many cherry pies, tends to run over a little as it bakes.

A scoop of good vanilla ice cream goes perfectly with a slice of cherry pie.