Since I mentioned biscuits and gravy in another thread, I thought I'd mention another favorite southern food of our family, Brunswick stew. There are many, many recipes, but my wife makes it with chopped pork, tomatoes, and corn. She uses a vinegar-based flavoring; we traditionally made it with a barbecue sauce named Randall Dennard's, from a little town Washington, Georgia (where my wife's mother is from).

It's one of my daughter's favorites -- one birthday, she was asked what she wanted and she asked for "left-over steak and Brunswick stew"!

It's a good side dish to a meal or can be the meal itself. I like to put it over a slice or two of bread and have the bread soak up some of the juice.

If there's enough demand, I'll get my wife to write her recipe down and I'll post it. Or, just google it and you'll find a million recipes. Or, post your own recipe.

I'm a fanatic for lima beans, so one of these days I'm gonna add lima beans to the recipe. My grandma (who was out of the hills of Arkansas) used to make me lima beans and ham hocks -- something to die for...

 

How about red eyed gravy,you got that recipe. I know the meat
but I will let explain. While you at it give the guys the recipe for
mountain oysters.

 

-- something to die for...

Well, you are killing me. I'm at work and it's almost 6:00 PM. I was so busy that I skipped lunch, and need another hour before I can go home to eat whatever my wife is cooking now.

I'm sooooo hungry and now you are describing such delicious food while I'm taking a 2 minute break to read the latest here at AAC. I should have kept working !

Did you ever think about writing restaurant advertisements as a sideline? It seems you would be very good at it.

 

@someonesdad - Sounds like what an old neighbor of mine used to make, never knew what it was called. She would give me the leftovers because her husband didn't like leftovers If your wife will write out recipe I'd like it.

Maybe AAC should have a new forum - Favorite foods.

 

Well, if we're talking favorite foods, I'm gonna list my absolute three favorite meals in the whole world. I don't think I'd be able to rank them in order of favorites -- that would be like being asked "OK, which kid should I kill first?".

Turkey dinner: roast turkey with fresh mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and my wife's turkey gravy. Sage dressing is appreciated, but I rarely get it because my wife is allergic to sage and doesn't like it.

German meal: bratwurst cooked, then baked on a bed of sauerkraut. My wife drains the juice of the sauerkraut and adds a bit of chopped apple to the sauerkraut. Then she makes a warm German potato salad that makes my mouth water just talking about it. The third component is her German cole slaw. Her father was German and she has refined these recipes over the years.

Ma Po Tofu: this is a slightly spicy Szechuan dish with chopped beef or pork, green onions, tofu, and a sauce. I've had it all over the US, but my favorite is at a local restaurant. He adds extra red peppers and then slices a couple jalepenos over the top. It's my favorite restaurant dish in the whole world, bar none. Served over steamed rice.

If I could only have one food before an asteroid hit, it would be my wife's warm German potato salad. It's one of the best things I've ever tasted. I'll try to get her to write down the recipes for these things.

Hopefully, this'll make more people than just steveb hungry...

 

Sauerkraut,drain all the water using a teflon pan (unstick) Cook
sauerkraut until dry and brown,eat it hot...great dish..good taste.
Try it. High heat until brown.

 

I just made my sause pan pasta to eat at the computer.The angel hair
spagetti was cooked in olive oil,15 min.Strained of starch and heated
with spagetti sause(garlic and onion) Bring to boil the Spagetti in sause
pan,add spagetti sause and let the water boil off so the sause thickens
to taste,sit and eat,monitor the computer,add garlic bread If needed.
What away to spend an hour,then rinse sause pan and repeat until you
have to cook more spagetti.The good part,you can heat the spagetti
quickly from the frig in the sause.Using the water nothing stick to the pan.

 

One of my favorites is chicken and dumplings. Tends to hurt my stomach nowdays, but I do love the taste. One of mom's comfort foods.

 

It's funny what we consider comfort foods. In the 50's, I had a friend who spent a year in New Delhi because his father was a doctor. When they came back, his mom made me a lamb curry dish that I fell in love with. For some reason, my mom then started making a shrimp curry dish that became one of my favorite meals. So that became one of my comfort foods.

When I was a student, I shared an apartment with another student who was from India. It was a great partnership because he loved to cook. I didn't like to cook, so he did the cooking and I did the dishes. He made some fantastic meals. One favorite was hard-boiled eggs with ground beef surrounding it, all in a curry sauce. It was fantastic with naan. He made a chutney with cucumber and buttermilk that was a good condiment with it. He'd also have Indian friends over and we'd have a variety of meals. One of my favorites was sitting on the floor and eating with my fingers, as that was one of their customs with some of the guests. Some day I'd love to visit India and sample the incredible variety of foods. When my wife and I visited England in the 90's, I had a memorable meal at an Indian restaurant there. I had a wonderful condiment that was made with coriander and some type of mint. It went great with the curry dish I had. Unfortunately, my wife hates coriander (I love it) and she also hates anything with any touch of spice like cumin or red pepper, so I don't get these types of food very often at home.

 

Bagna Cauda for me

 

@ VooDoo,around the mountians of Virginia..ham country,you must have heard
of red eye gravy.I will have to get the real recipe.

 

@ VooDoo,around the mountians of Virginia..ham country,you must have heard
of red eye gravy.I will have to get the real recipe.

Ham, not lamb or bacon.
But Ham in Raleigh
And ham in Macon.
Ham for Plutocrats,
Ham for pore folk,
Ham in Paducah and ham in Norfolk;
In Memphis, ham and in Chapel Hill,
Chattanooga and Charlottesville.
Ham for the missy,
Ham for the Colonel,
And for the traveler, Ham Eternal.
Oh, patriotically, I implore,
Look away Dixieland, from the smokehouse door.

Adapted from a poem by Phyllis McGinley.

 

My wife gave me the outline of her recipe for Brunswick stew. She uses canned diced tomatoes, canned corn that she chops up (important -- and don't used creamed corn), and macerated pork. The whole thing is then flavored with a vinegar-based barbecue sauce like Randall Dennard's from Washington, GA.

 

Grandma's Pot Roast.

Cheapest cut of roast you can find. 1 inch/1.5 inch thick seven bone is usually about 1.50 to 2.00 a pound around here, so I use that. You can substitute any kind of thick cut beef you want however.

Thick coating of black pepper and garlic powder... NO SALT
Sear both sides until dark brown and crispy in olive oil in a large skillet.
Add 4 to 6 cups of water; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 3 to 4 hours, add more water as needed to keep meat covered.
Remember - NO SALT.

Remove the meat from the broth(careful- it will fall apart as you try to get it out)
add rough cut potatoes and carrot. Boil for another 30 minutes.
Serve.

We like to mash the potatoes up and add some butter and broth them.

Once it is on your plate you can add the salt, if you do it when you cook the meat it will come out as dry as old shoe leather.

 

One more thing my wife makes for the family that is another favorite: pickled eggs. We have chickens and ducks that lay eggs, so we always have more eggs than we can use. My wife hard boils a bunch of eggs, peels them,then puts them into a big plastic jar with vinegar and pickled beets (and pours the pickled beet juice in too). When the eggs sit in this mixture for a month or two, the white of the egg and the yolk will take on a purplish tint and the vinegar firms the egg white a bit. Of course, the beets are good to eat too.

 

What is the real science that keep the eggs from spoiling,is it the same as
dried ham and other meats,it would help every one to think about how good they taste.Store counters are the only place you see these Items.You see less and less of them.The process is not being passed on,the jellies and jams also. You give the feel of the family table for breakfast and dinner.I'm eating a grilled pork chop at the computer.

 

These pickled eggs keep for a long time in our refrigerator -- probably indefinitely I'd say. I've had pickled quail eggs in a pub in England and they were kept at room temperature, so that's probably a good storage method.

I get another good meal tonight -- my wife calls it Guadalajara. It's a little pork with rice and kidney beans and some salsa; mix it all together. Then she opens a can of green chiles and puts that over the top. I get a special treat tonight -- our only pepper plant has given me one jalapeno pepper this year, so this is the night I get to eat it!

 

So you have a home garden,I would say you are middle America,
but your logo says the great North West,how about growing climates.
A bout the pickled eggs on counters It is not the cashier top assignment
to watch people select eggs,taking several out and putting them back to
make a choice.That my number reason for leaving pickled eggs alone.

 

We made my wife's recipe she calls Guadalajara tonight. It's an easy dish to make and would be good for a single person, as you could get a number of meals from the leftovers.

My wife cooked enough rice to fill her rice cooker about half full of rice after cooking (maybe it was 1/3 full). I dumped in a can of black beans and a can of kidney beans (these cans hold about 400 g). Then I added an 800 g can of diced tomatoes and a 100 g can of green chiles (I'd add lots more chiles, but my wife wouldn't like it). Mix up and add salt to taste. I serve it up for myself with a lot of red pepper flakes on the top. It's cheap and easy to make. We'll put in some meat if we have it, but you can eat it without meat too like we did tonight.

 

American Chop Suey! Pasta with a sauce made from ground beef, caramelized onions and diced tomatoes (canned)...