(no subject)

[which_chick]

Dinner tonight is chicken pot pie, recipe here. It's not the kind with crust, gravy, and peas. This is the OTHER chicken pot pie, the ethnic one. I expect it was responsible for generations of solid, stolid (judging from extant pictures, both adjectives apply in equal measure) Pennsylvania Dutch women of a general size, build, and disposition suitable for taking over the plowing if, y'know, the mule died. In typical PA-Dutch fashion, it has two starches and a protein. The two starches are boiled potatoes and boiled egg noodles (home made from scratch, do not roll your eyes, they only take half an hour or so). The protein is boiled chicken. (I do not, as it happens, actually eat the chicken part. I feed it to the cat.) Everything's white, so if you're one of those people who wants their food to all match, you're in luck. However, if you feed it to people who are not of the blood, they get irritated and ask where the vegetables are. (Silly rabbits.) It's a comfort food at my house, a wintertime comfort food. It makes me feel better when the days are getting shorter and the sky is grey and there are flurries.

There are people who could save me from the two-starch-one-protein nature of PA Dutch cooking. Karl, husband of cousin_sue, could rescue me with a fine recipe for squash soup. Yes, he could! Also, toanstation promised me a sag paneer recipe and that has not yet materialized in my inbox. People. Please. Think of the hips!

Until such time as they see fit to save me, though, I'll be over here with my big, floppy egg noodles and my boiled potatoes, both tasting of chickeny goodness.

Comments

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

Please tell me you're not a scrapple eater, too. My mom's side of my family is from that area, and my grandmother is always tryi8ng to get me to eat a bunch of PA-Dutch food. Scrapple is nasty, nasty stuff.

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

Tryi8ing? What the hell is that? Bah!

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I am not personally a fan of scrapple. My brother (the attorney one) will eat it, though. As I understand it, scrapple is a processed pig-based food item that contains cornmeal and is fried up for breakfast. If I'm having a pig-based food before noon, it is going to be ham, sausage, or bacon. I do have *some* standards. :)

The rest of my PA-Dutch food awareness spectrum is as follows: I adore pickled beets-n-eggs, which I make at home according to this recipe (http://www.bedford.net/teep/beetnegg.htm). I'm a fan of chicken-flavor pot pie but not ham or squirrel pot pie. I don't like shoo-fly pie but I have a kick-ass recipe (Aunt Minnie's) if I need to produce one for some reason. I like proper strawberry shortcake. (Proper strawberry shortcake is slightly sweet biscuit dough, baked until done, served hot from the oven with sliced raw strawberries, sugar, and about a cup of cold milk on top. Yes, the milk DOES make the shortcake soggy. It's supposed to be like that. (A large portion of the eateries that offer strawberry shortcake serve some fucking room-temperature abomination made out of sponge cake cuppy things, strawberries, and whipped cream. I found this out the hard way.) I like sour cherry pudding. (It's a steamed thing, cooked in a double boiler. It's actually more biscuit-y than pudding-y and you serve it hot, in a bowl. The eater adds sugar and pours cold milk overtop, same as for shortcake.) I like oyster pie if I'm allowed to pick the oysters out and you let me make the crust because mine is better than yours. I will happily eat rivels in stuff other people make, but in my own kitchen, I prefer big, floppy egg noodles and make those instead. I don't think we've got much else in the family repetoire that counts as authentic PA Dutch... I mean, yeah, I eat pork and sauerkraut, but everybody (barring those who refuse pork for assorted reasons) eats pork and sauerkraut. It's not ethnic any more than corned beef and cabbage is... er... is... Uhm. Okay, maybe pork and sauerkraut is ethnic, but it's not EXOTIC ethnic. It's only ethnic like lasagne and nachos. It's tame ethnic.

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

I have several recipes for scrapple, but grew up being forced to eat it.

I will not eat it by choice.

There is, by the way, nothing horrendously disgusting in scrapple. It's the cornmeal that makes it the texture it is.

I make just as good pie crust, missie. I am an excellent pie crust maker.

And yes, that's the way to really eat REAL short cake. Also, apple dumplings should be served with milk, not ice cream, as well.

Next time we cabal, I shall bring Turkey corn soup with rivels for you. Im' excited about the quality of my rivels!