Chicken Stroganoff

Although there were twenty or thirty bottles and cans of dried herbs and spices in my mother’s kitchen cabinet, I can remember only four that she grew herself One was mint, which she tended in a flower bed near the house. As I recall, she used it only to make mint jelly, though I may be wrong about that.

On one side of the garden were several chive plants, which grew in the same row with the winter onions. Because of her I still love cottage cheese flavored with chopped chives. Mom also used chives in soups and roasts, and she added them to lettuce, tomato and cucumber salads.

She planted two or three parsley plants, which provided important flavors to soups, meats and other vegetables like boiled and buttered new red potatoes. The fourth herb was dill. On the same day we planted the hills of cucumbers, we planted a long row of dill seeds. Dill was of course the primary flavoring ingredient in her dill pickle recipes, and she used it occasionally in other dishes.

Although dill is grown and used in countries as far apart as India and Iceland, I have always associated it with northern European cooking. I even think of dill pickles primarily as a way German and Slavic housewives preserved the cucumbers they grew in the short summers of the northern hemisphere. However, dill may have actually been brought to northern Europe by Roman soldiers and settlers. Archeologists and food historians have found evidence of dill being cultivated in Celtic Britain after the Roman invasion.

Since dill was thought to have medicinal properties it was added to wines and other foods to cure diseases or give people more energy and strength. Roman gladiators are said to have rubbed their bodies with fresh dill to give them more strength and it was added to wine as an aphrodisiac.

However, I like dill for the subtle flavor it adds to many of my favorite foods including pickles, potato salad, cabbage rolls, poached salmon, fish soup and this recipe for chicken stroganoff derived from the Use It All Cookbook by Jane Marsh Dieckmann.

INGREDIENTS:

1 medium onion (about 3 inches in diameter)
3 T butter/margarine
1/2 lb. mushrooms
1 T flour
1/2 salt
2 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. basil, crumbled
1/4 tsp. thyme, crumbled
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup dairy sour cream
1/4 cup Swiss cheese
2 cups diced cooked chicken
2 tsp. lemon juice
2 T chopped fresh dill
8 oz. noodles

PROCEDURE:

Clean and chop the onion into a quarter-inch dice. Clean and thinly slice the mushrooms. Chop the chicken into a half-inch dice. Grate the cheese and wash and chop the dill. Start heating water to cook the noodles.

Melt the butter over medium heat in a large saucepan or Dutch oven and sauté the onion until it just begins to turn gold. Add the mushrooms and cook for three or four minutes, stirring constantly. Blend in the flour, salt, paprika, basil and thyme and cook for two minutes. Lower the heat and gradually stir in the chicken broth and wine. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture bubbles and thickens.

Reduce the heat to very low, cover, simmer for five minutes and remove the pan from the heat. Blend in the sour cream and cheese. Add the chicken, lemon juice, and dill. Heat thoroughly over low heat, but do not boil.

Serve over hot cooked noodles with a cucumber and tomato salad and good bread.

NOTES: You can substitute leftover turkey for the chicken. I use rounded tablespoons of dill. Sauvignon blanc or chardonnay wines are both good choices for the recipe and to serve at the table. This recipe makes four generous servings.

Hilda Ploof’s Cole Slaw Dressing

At least once a month, we visited the Ploof family in Hayward. Dad and Pete were good friends who fished and hunted together and Mom and Hilda also shared many of the same interests. One of those interests was card games, and the wives made sure that their husbands joined them for a night of serious card play at least a couple times a month.

Their favorite game on those nights was Smear. I have never played the game, but it is said to be related to Pitch, the card game of choice with Jerri’s parents. While our parents played cards, we kids, including Pete and Hilda’s daughter, Maureen, were treated to a movie or a root beer.

In the winter, we would go to a movie at the Park Theater. As I recall, kid’s tickets were a dime to start with, though they gradually increased to a quarter. Dad and Pete would give us money for our tickets and popcorn, and when they were feeling generous, we even got enough extra for some candy to share. The theater was about four blocks from Pete and Hilda’s. That may not sound like very far, but they were long blocks along highway 63, and when the wind was from the north with snow falling, it felt like we were polar explorers.

In the summer, we played Hide-and-Seek and Anti-I-Over outside and then went to the A&W Root Beer stand, which was only a block away. Our parents gave each of us a nickel for a small mug of root beer, and I was made custodian of the jug and money to buy a gallon of root beer to take back to the card players. Of course, we kids got our share from the jug as well, and sometimes we made root beer floats during a recess at the card table.

In one of my mother’s recipe boxes I found Hilda’s recipe for cole slaw dressing. It makes enough dressing for a really large cabbage, but it keeps well. Having a batch of dressing in the refrigerator makes it easy to put a bowl of cole slaw on the table in just a couple of minutes.

We like Jerri’s recipe for cole slaw, which is made with sour cream and mayonnaise, but Hilda’s recipe includes horseradish, which adds a little spice to the dressing. It also has a tiny bit more sugar which makes it slightly sweet. My sister Patsy says that this is one of her favorite cole slaw dressings, and Jerri likes it nearly as well as her own.

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
1 T cider vinegar
1 T regular mustard
1 T minced onion
1 T grated horseradish
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. white pepper
1/2 tsp. celery seed

PROCEDURE:

Stir all the ingredients together until well mixed and smooth.

To make cole slaw, wash the head of cabbage and discard any damaged outer leaves. With a sharp knife, cut the head in half and then one half into quarters. Remove the core and slice one quarter very thinly. Then cut the slices into pieces that are no more than a half inch long. Do the same with another quarter until you have as much finely chopped cabbage as you need.

Blend dressing with the shredded cabbage to the consistency you want. Store any extra dressing in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

NOTE: You may also peel or scrape a carrot, grate it with a kitchen grater and mix it with the cabbage. We nearly always do this to give some color to the slaw.