Tag: vegetarian

Jerri’s Cherry Torte

Over four thousand years ago, a scribe in Sumeria (modern-day southern Iraq) wrote down the recipe for beer on a clay tablet. He composed it as a hymn to Ninkasi, the goddess of beer and brewing. The name means “The Lady who fills the mouth,” and the hymn may have been written to help apprentice brewers memorize the ingredients and method to make one of the staple foods of early civilizations.

About four hundred years later, the first known cookbook was written during the time of Hammurabi, famous for the Code of Hammurabi. Thus, this famous king of Babylon (also in Iraq) is responsible not only for giving us the first law book but also for a collection of twenty-five recipes probably enjoyed by him and his court. Twenty-one are meat stews and four are vegetable stews.

The recipe for Jerri’s Cherry Torte is not as old as those from ancient Iraq nor was it stamped in cuneiform on clay tablets, but nevertheless, it has an interesting history. I found the recipe while reading The Krehbiel Family Cookbook compiled by Lynne, Jerri’s oldest niece, to preserve recipes that she and her three sisters enjoyed while growing up near Medicine Lodge, Kansas. Concluding the recipe was a note that Jerri served this dessert when Jerri’s oldest brother, Lynne’s dad, brought his family to visit us in Murray, Kentucky.

When I asked Jerri where she got the recipe, she said it had to be from one of her older cookbooks, since I did not begin my cookbook buying binge until we had left Kentucky. We checked that small collection beginning with The Joy of Cooking, Liz Specials, and Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two. Nothing even close. Then she exclaimed, “I’ll bet it was from the cookbook I got from my Home Ec teacher in high school.”

Sure enough. It took some doing to find the old book since the spine is gone and it is hard to spot on the shelf, but on page 250 of Food From Famous Kitchens is the recipe for Cherry Torte. In Jerri’s neat handwriting is a note: “Very good.” That is true enough, but it is also very simple to make, which may help explain why Lynne included it in their family cookbook.

I value simple recipes that taste good too. If you feel the same way, give this easy recipe a try.

INGREDIENTS:

For the torte:
16 oz. can of red sour pitted cherries
1 large egg
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 T butter
1 tsp. almond extract
1/3 cup chopped nuts
6 oz. cream cheese
2 T milk

For the cherry sauce:

1/4 cup sugar
1 T corn starch
1/8 tsp. salt
Water
Reserved cherry liquid
2 tsp. lemon juice
1/8 tsp. red food coloring

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 350º and grease and line an 8 by 2-inch round cake pan with waxed paper.

Drain the cherries and reserve the liquid. Beat the egg until lemon colored, gradually add the sugar and beat thoroughly. Stir in the well-drained cherries.

Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon into the cherry mixture and mix well. Melt and stir in the butter and almond flavoring. Turn the batter into the cake pan and sprinkle the nuts evenly on top.

Bake at 350º for forty to forty-five minutes. Check for doneness with a toothpick. If the toothpick comes our clean, the torte is done. Invert the pan on a rack and cool the torte .

Make the cherry sauce while the torte is baking.

Mix the sugar, corn starch and salt together in a small saucepan. Add enough water to the reserved cherry juice to make one cup. Stir the liquid gradually into the sugar mixture and put the pan over medium heat. Stir constantly until the mixture comes to a boil. Boil for one minute. Remove the sauce from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and food coloring.

To serve, cut the cooled torte into wedges. Blend together the cream cheese and milk. Put a spoonful on each wedge and and top with cherry sauce.

Cottage Cheese Salads

Growing up in Wisconsin, I learned to appreciate good cheese before I started school. Grandpa Hopp introduced me to Beer Käse and Limburger and my mother served us Cheddar, Swiss, Brick, Butterkäse and cottage cheese varieties. My father did not like cheese, but he ate a little under protest and finally came to enjoy pizza even if it was made with cheese.

Cottage cheese was a regular element of meals at our home. Depending on how she planned to use it, Mom bought either small or large curd cottage cheese. Much of it was dry cottage cheese that she used to make lasagna, macaroni and cheese, frostings and various kinds of desserts.

She bought creamed cottage cheese or added milk to the dry version when she wanted to make cottage cheese salads. Jerri makes a number of the salads I remember from my childhood, and I still like them, When I told Jerri I planned to post the recipes for some of her cottage cheese salads, she told me that everyone already knew how to make them.

She is probably right, so I will not argue the matter, but just in case there are a few people who don’t, here are some salad ideas that we like. The recipes are short and simple, but the salads are tasty, nutritious and inexpensive, three good reasons to start serving some of them.

Cottage cheese and chive salad consists of only two ingredients: For two servings, put a generous cup of small curd cottage cheese in a small mixing bowl. Wash and chop two tablespoons of chives medium fine, about a quarter inch dice. Stir the chives into the cottage cheese and serve.?
Cottage cheese and tomato salad also consists of only two ingredients: Wash and slice tomatoes or simply use grape tomatoes. Arrange the slices on salad plates and top them with cottage cheese or put cherry tomatoes on top of the cheese. Make as many plates as you need.

A third version combines these first two salads: Top the tomato slices with cottage cheese and chive salad or put grape tomatoes on top of the cheese and chives. This is an especially good combination for an unlimited number of diners.

Cottage cheese also goes well with fruit. The simplest and one of our favorites consists of crushed pineapple stirred into cottage cheese on a bed of lettuce. Jerri eyeballs the quantities but says that you should aim for about a three or four to one ratio. For two generous servings of this salad, start with a cup of cottage cheese and a quarter cup of pineapple stirred in a small mixing bowl. Taste the mixture and add more pineapple if you think it needs it.

When the peach man showed up at the house, Mom always bought two or three pecks of peaches. We ate some fresh and she always made at least one fresh peach pie, but she canned most of them. Canned peaches for dessert were a regular menu item, but she also made peach and cottage cheese salads.

Put lettuce leaves on salad plates. Place canned peach halves on the lettuce and top each half with two or three tablespoons of cottage cheese. When she didn’t have any lettuce, Mom omitted that ingredient. This does not significantly affect the taste, but peach halves do tend to slide around on bare plates.

Fresh wild raspberries crushed and sugared and spooned over cottage cheese make a low calorie dessert that you could put on a bed of lettuce and call a salad.

I hate to admit it, but my mother also made various jello salads that included layers of cottage cheese. You can find recipes for salads like this elsewhere. I have a very short list of foods common in the United States that I do not like. Topping the list is any kind of jello salad. Sorry about that.

I have eaten jello salads in the distant past, and cottage cheese does, as I recall, improve them, but if you are looking for a salad that is cool, refreshing, low in calories and attractive, try a simple cottage cheese salad.

NOTES: If you have a friend with a chive plant, you can start your own very simply by transplanting a piece of that plant to your garden. Water the transplant every couple of days, but don’t drown it. Soon you will have your own source of a versatile herb that requires almost no care. Chives even survive the long winters of northern Wisconsin. By late spring you will have new shoots that are tender and especially delicious.

A little more complicated than these simple salads is Dorothy’s Cottage Cheese Salad. It’s made with cottage cheese, mayonnaise, hard-boiled eggs and sweet pickles. If you shut your eyes, you might think that you’re eating potato salad.