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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Easter stories

April 7, 2013 by Mary Frances 15 Comments

Easter table set with sugar eggs, orange tulips and antique Easter toys.Why is it that Easter is the shortest holiday, that one Sunday only? All the days leading up to it are sad and then it’s just that one day and then back to work on Monday. Thanksgiving has the long weekend afterwards. Christmas has the week between Christmas and New Years. Even Passover gets at least two days of attention, but Easter is one.

Easter was my mother’s favorite holiday. She was a devout Catholic so no wonder. I remember her scrubbing the house spic‘n span in the days leading up to it, washing windows and all the sheer drapes, sending the rest out to the cleaners. That fresh clean smell was intoxicating to me, so memorable even now, her Spring cleaning was deep. And then Easter. She even had me wear a hat when I was little, a new one every year, along with her new hat for church. She passed away the Monday after Easter, that year in April, 1995. One of her last words to me were, “Did you color eggs?” She wanted to make sure I was keeping up traditions with with my boys. She used to color eggs the old fashioned Polish way with onion skins. (Don’t ask me how!) Well that year, did I color eggs?? I colored six dozen of them! We lived in New Jersey at the time and two of my brothers were visiting, each of them having two boys each, plus our two, and our neighbor across the street (they had six kids) always held a neighborhood Easter egg hunt and you were required to deliver to them a dozen eggs for each child hunting. So there you have it – six dozen eggs – yikes! Easter table set with Pierre D

We had 9 people for Easter dinner this year, a lovely party with extended family, roommates and girlfriends. One guest saw my table and said, “Oooo what fun!” Exactly what I loved to hear. But I didn’t color eggs this year. With no little ones around, I don’t, but I do like to decorate the table with the antique Easter baskets I inherited from my mother. The rectangular box even plays “Here Comes Peter Cottontail.” It skips a few notes around the hippity-hoppity part but we all get a kick out of it every year. The food ended up to be a bit of a pork fest.

My sister-in-law and her mother brought the appetizers – deviled eggs and a red pepper dip with crudités and delicious homemade sesame crackers made with almond flour – gluten free!

We started our dinner with a yummy traditional Easter Polish soup that our youngest son made. It was vegetable broth based with bacon and two different kinds of garlicky Polish sausage. The broth was light and lemony, perfectly paired with a New York Finger Lakes Riesling. We then moved on to a baked, organic free-range ham (from Mike and Cindy’s Thunderhill farm in upstate NY) with a clove, honey, mustard and dark rum glaze, Italian beans with pancetta, chrzan, and roasted asparagus. The chrzan was rousingly potent with German horseradish from Greenpoint, Brooklyn and the beans were such a hit. I believe everyone had seconds on everything except the asparagus. I got a thank you note on Friday from a guest requesting the bean recipe and describing them as “silky”, which is apt. You kinda want to wrap yourself in them. I promised this recipe to you all after Christmas and I have yet to get off my butt and do it. It is complicated, which is why I haven’t done it, but I promise I will soon. My brother, Steve brought some amazing California Pinot Noir, (rare and unavailable outside of the vineyard in California – he and his wife just spent eight weeks nearby as test living arrangement) which paired beautifully with the meal. For dessert, I made a sour cream topped cheesecake and some chocolate dipped strawberries. One guest said the top of the cheesecake was so smooth, it looked like a skating rink! She took the one piece left over home – along with the jelly beans. One problem here, I was having such a good time, I forgot to take photos of the food!Eadter table set with sugar eggs, tulips and antique Easter toys.

Hope you had a fantastic celebration, whether it was Passover or Easter, filled with family, friends and LOVE.

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: antique Easter toys, cheesecake, chrzan, Easter stories, Easter Sunday dinner, ham, Italian beans, jelly beans, silky beans

Happy New Year to you!

January 7, 2013 by Mary Frances 6 Comments

These days after New Year’s Day last week have been so hectic. Good hectic – so maybe it’s foretelling of a great business year ahead!

We had a wonderful small dinner party on New Year’s Eve. Just six of us, with a couple of kids around through the soup course. My brother, Steve, and his wife, Trish, joined us along with our good friends, Margaret and Wayne. Steve brought along some Petrossian caviar (divine) and served it up on homemade blinis with a touch of crème fraiche – heaven! Our dinner started with a family favorite from the Zuni Café cookbook – asparagus & rice soup with pancetta and black pepper, paired with an excellent champagne – Georges Laval. I then served pan–roasted loin lamb chops with garlic and ginger together with a carrot, parsnip and tarragon puree with oven-roasted tiny Yukon gold potatoes. We finished with holiday cookies and tea and missed the ball dropping.

Then on New Year’s Day, after everyone woke up late, we had a traditional Polish breakfast with fresh Polish sausage, chrzan, scrambled eggs, homemade bread and fruit salad. The kids played St. Petersburg all afternoon and then we moved into our first dinner of the new year.

We started with artichokes simmered in a bath of water, lemon, crushed garlic, bay leaves, salt, pepper and crushed juniper berries, with a mayo-Dijon dipping sauce. Our oldest then wanted to make a pasta course. He made this Mark Bittman recipe that was so easy and SO GOOD!! Watch the video here.
Mark Bittman's homemade handkerchief pasta with plum tomato red sauce in a bowl, topped with parmesan cheeseThe pasta was delicate and toothy at the same time, so very satisfying and delicious! And really, it was easy. Making these large sheets – handkerchiefs as Mark calls them – adds further ease. The sauce was a simple fresh plum tomato sauce with a little olive oil, garlic and two anchovies, which adds big, big flavor. Topped with some grated Parmesan, this was one fine dish. I really encourage you to make this – it will not disappoint!

Our main course was a Melissa Clark recipe of pan–seared center cut pork chops that had been marinating in olive oil, mashed anchovies and minced garlic, along with some beautiful sautéed escarole, substituting her Swiss chard.

The anchovies were so good in that dinner, I continued with them through the week and shoved some under the skin of a chicken I roasted, along with some rosemary and roasted garlic. My husband and I loved it. Our youngest, not so much. I used six fillets on that chicken, maybe four would have been better to get the big flavor but not the recognizable fishy anchovy taste. I grew up on anchovies. My father loved them and used to serve them to us on saltines!! Talk about salt! And we loved them, so you know how big of a fan I am. (Of course in those days, the variety of crackers available today, just didn’t exist then.)

I hope that your New Year’s celebrations were wonderful and fun. Please write and let me know what you did.

Wishing you an awesome and inspiring New Year that is love-filled and delicious!

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: anchovies, artichokes, carrot parsnip puree, chrzan, fresh plum tomato sauce, Grilled pork chops with anchovies and Swiss chard recipe, loin lamb chops, Mark Bittman's homemade pasta, Melissa Clark, New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, Petrossian caviar, Zuni Café

Chrzan

April 4, 2012 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

Beets and horseradish on a white plate. Chrzan on a white plate.

No, it’s not a spelling mistake. This is the Polish word for horseradish, but my family used it to mean a dish with beets and horseradish. Chrzan is always a family favorite for Easter morning, served with fresh cooked Polish sausage (not smoked, but fresh or white kielbasa – find a Polish deli in your area), scrambled eggs, and homemade bread with rich butter. My father would always serve a little champagne as well. Somehow we have not kept up the champagne tradition but the bubbly with all of this is a great combination. As my brother Mark used to say, you need the fizz!

This is for you, Julie!

Julie is one of my nieces who made a special request for this recipe and I must tell you, I have a brand new great niece, Morgan, just born on the 27th! Food traditions are wonderful. I hope all you girls keep them up!

Now we all like this a bit hot. Actually the hotter the horseradish, the better. Everyone likes to nearly cry with their nostrils flaring, but these days, it’s hard to find really great horseradish. If you can find some Polish imports, those are best. Horseradish from Poland is a really pristine white, so pretty, not like the Gold’s you can readily find here. Ba-Tempte is another horseradish manufacturer from Brooklyn that is definitely acceptable.

Of course, it’s always about the ingredients. Get the best that you can and it’s best to roast your own beets and slice them thinly on a hand mandolin. Although my mother always used canned whole red beets and sliced them thin with a knife.

Here’s the recipe:

CHRZAN
One bunch of red beets, scrubbed, dried, sprinkled with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, wrapped in aluminum foil and roasted at 400° for about an hour, until very tender when pierced with a skewer
OR one can of whole plain red beets, drained (not pickled)
2 tbs. sugar
1 tbs. white wine vinegar or plain white vinegar
Pinch of salt
Fresh ground pepper
1 jar of horseradish

If using fresh roasted red beets, peel them while still warm. Slice the beets very thinly, preferably on a hand mandolin. Sprinkle on the sugar, vinegar and salt. Toss carefully to combine (don’t break up your beautiful slices) and cover with a plate and let sit at room temperature for one hour. Drain the juice and save. Add the horseradish to taste (I usually add the whole jar) and toss carefully to combine. If you feel it’s dry, add back in some of the juice you saved, although I never do.

Enjoy!!

Filed Under: Sides Tagged With: champagne, chrzan, Easter breakfast, food traditions, fresh kielbasa, holiday traditions, homemade bread, horseradish, Polish, red beets, scrambled eggs

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

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