If You Give A Girl a Kitchen

05/01/2023

You can get the scoop on Drop In visitors and the recipe for these at GiveAGirlAKitchen.com

04/22/2023

Have some pancakes tomorrow!!

These are most definitely not my father’s pancakes. My Dad was a wiry, quick moving guy who worked hard, physically. He didn’t have a job that required him to carry a briefcase. He didn…

04/18/2023

How to behave like a civilized person when you have a dietary restriction AND what the restaurant could and should be able to do for you

Photo by Eva Bronzini on Pexels.com This is not a cutesy story about my happy go lucky childhood or my mom’s heart in the right place way of cooking. I don’t think I’m going to st…

04/17/2023

Don't let the fish or the name deter you from making this. This is fabulous. Don't forget to wear red.

I gotta tell you, it’s not a great idea to tell a kid, a kid who would rather eat macaroni than ice cream, that dinner has sardines in it. And it looks kinda blackish brown. And there’…

04/15/2023

How to color raw eggs

04/13/2023

Actually, soup is very much a meal; especially if you grew up in my house. We did not have soup every night, like you would a first course in a restaurant. At my house, the first course was being told to set the table. The second course was a prayer memorized since we were old enough to speak. Thinking back on that, 'blessusohlordandthesethinegifts' was literally the first word of the prayer....

Actually, soup is very much a meal; especially if you grew up in my house. We did not have soup every night, like you would a first course in a restaurant. At my house, the first course was being t…

04/13/2023

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy!

To begin, let me sat that if my mother didn’t like or know hot to prepare a vegetable, we didn’t eat it. Brussel sprouts immediately spring to mind. In that list of seen but never taste…

04/05/2023

Lent, Easter, Palm Sunday, growning up Italian in Northern NJ, in the mid 60s to mid 70s, part one.

For the record, I don't know how to pronounce this bread. It's true, mea culpa. I don't know how to pronounce it because my grandparents spoke broken english, which translates to using an italian word or two, and then a couple of 'med-i-GAHN' words, and then more italian, and a couple of hand gestures. Then, there's the fact that each region of Italy has it's own dialect and lexicon. That's why words like BASILICO, which is Italian for BASIl, sounds like BUZZ-i-la-gaw. As a child, if someone asked me to get a SKOOL-a-bahst, I knew to get the strain-y thing we used to drain the macaroni water out of the hot pot. I was working my first job in a professional kitchen when I asked someone to get me a Skoolabahst. I understood the quaintness, the sheer provincial-ness of my childhood, at that moment. The cook had no idea what I was talking about, and frankly, I was disturbed. That I had to continue by describing the fuction of this piece of equipment only added to my confusion. How did this cook get to his elevated position in this esteemed kitchen, not knowing what a Skoolabahst was. When the cook finally had his 'aha' moment , he instructed me that this piece of culinary necessity was actually called a colander. Here is where I had a 'come to jesus' moment. To suggest that I was floored by this new knowledge is quite possibly the understatement of 1990s. So, the question of how that cook got to his position not knowing what a Skoolabahst was, is easily surmounted by how I got into my late 20s never knowing what a colander was. For the record, it's not like you are talking about Skoolabahstas with people outside the family. We don't even buy them in stores. Every single cooking relative I have, and I truly mean every single one, has the same skoolabahsta they got the day they moved into their first kitchen. Some old relative would give you one as a housewarming gift. If my Mom was still alive, I know that her skoolabahsta would be almost 70 years old, and still in use. I wouldn't be surprised if my sister took it when Mom passed.
That's why I don't know how to pronounce this bread. I grew up calling it BOO-ba-ga-loff. I have no idea what it means, or what a correct name would be, and there is no one left alive I can ask. I can look at the pronunciation of many of my culinary words and figure, or estimate, or guess, what word they truly represent in the italian language, and then I can make a connection for you 'med-i-GAHNS', (which is how we grew up saying 'Americans'). My parents were first and second generation Americans. That makes me second generation, born American. However, and that's a big however.....it generally takes till our 25 birthday or so before we stop identifying with out Italian citizenship, and start feeling more Medigahn'ish'.
So, you can imagine my chagrin when it occurred to me that the majority of my friends drained their 'noodles' in 'colanders' while we drained our rigatoni, or mostaccioli, or penne rigate in skoolabahstas; and that none of them ever heard of Boobagalof.
These same friends didn't give up stuff like candy or cookies or cake for Lent. [and oh sister, do I have tomes to say on the subject of giving stuff up for Lent]These friends didn't have to remember to get palms on Palm Sunday for Mrs Jones, who lived next door; and for some reason never ever went to church....yet we always had to bring her the palms. WTF? These friends didn't have to sit in morbid church on Good Friday making promises we didn't understand and blaming everyone that wasn't catholic for killing jesus. These friends didn't spend Friday evening in quiet contemplation about previously mentioned murder, and then eating my Mom's watery as possible Spaghetti Vongole (clams). These friends didn't spend all day Saturday cooking for the upcoming Easter feast that would start with breakfast of hard boiled eggs, sausages, cheeses, fruit, nuts, and the star of the show, the Boobagalof. Dinner, which began at 2 or 3pm would have courses of ravioli, or stuffed shells, or manicotti or even lasagna; then, 'ga-GAUTCH-a-la' (artichoke) stuffed with breadcrumbs, cheese, garlic and parsley, followed by roasts of beef, or pork, or lamb. There would be those sneaky PEETS-a-gayn pies, that looked like they were filled with something wonderful, but, instead, were just filled with the same salami and provolone we ate for lunch almost every damn day. [again, volumes more to say on that particular dish.]
No, my Medigahn friends experienced a very different Pasqua. And to be clear, they didn't get any of my Boobagalof, either.

Most people call this bread Pane di Pasqua, or Easter Bread. How boring is that name? Oh, another thing..my first husband, Ivan, would laughingly call the bread 'bo***es galore'. Pretty sure my kids do, too.

This isn't an easy bread, and there's tons of steps. However, if you take your time (about 5 hours or so), it's soooo worth it.

For 6 loaves you are gonna need:
1 1/4 c whole milk
1T dry yeast (you could use a packet if that's all you have)
2 room temp eggs
1/4 c sugar
Zest of an orange and lemon. You could use extract but go easy, because it's not supposed to taste of those flavors. Essence is what you want.
1 t vanilla
Almost 1 t anise (see, this is what you are supposed to get a bigger taste of)
4-4 1/2 c AP flour
spray oil for the bowl

6 colored easter eggs (DO NOT COOK THE EGGS FIRST, KEEP THEM RAW)

Eggwash of 1 beaten egg and 1t water

Simple Syrup made of equal parts water and sugar (1/2 cup) and 1/2 t of anise extract
Colored Non parels

Take a deep breath and begin

Heat the milk till it's 110 degrees
Add the yeast to the milk and let it proof for 5-10 mins
Beat the eggs and sugar with a paddle until pale colored.
Add the salt, zests, butter, vanilla; mix
Add half the flour with the mixer on it's lowest speed
Switch to a dough hook
Add the remaining flour, slowly. You may not need all of it. Tacky or slightly sticky is what you want. If it's really sticky, add the rest. Move the speed to medium and knead for about 5 minutes.
Place the dough into a large bowl sprayed with something like pam. Roll the dough around so it's all covered in pam.
Cover the bowl completely, let it rise in a warm place till double; about 2 hours.

Make the simple syrup by boiling all the syrup ingredients till the sugar is dissolved. Cool until needed.

Take the doubled dough onto a floured surface.
Cut it into 12 even sized pieces. Roll each piece into snakes about 12-14 inches long.
Place 2 snakes in front of you. Attach them to each other at one end, leaving the rest of snakes unattached. Twist one snake over the other, till you get to the end. Pinch the two ends together, forming a double snake.
Form the snake into a ring, tucking the ends under themselves.
Place the round, shaped loaf onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Just put 3 on a pan. Don't put them close.
Do this with the remaining 10 pieces of dough, till you have 6 loaves.
Take a colored egg and gently nestle it in the raw dough.
Take the egg wash and a brush and gently paint the wash onto the dough only. Don't get any wash onto the egg.
Carefully cover the loaves with plastic wrap.
Let rise in a warm place till double again, little more than an hour.
Uncover and bake 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees
Hey, I don't know your oven....keep an eye on them. Remove when they are a golden brown.
When cool enough to handle, move them to baking rack.
Brush with syrup glaze and sprinkle non parels on them
If you can actually serve them immediately, more power to you. These are magnificent right out of the oven.
If you want to be able to eat the egg, you will have to refrigerate these till you are ready to serve. If you don't want the egg, the counter is fine.
They get stale quickly. Day olds may need some time to warm back up.
If you are having breakfast (naturally after a painfully long mass that smells wonderful, but kills your spirit by it's sheer length) at Aunt Mary's house, you won't get the susage. You'll get keilbasa and pierogies because she married a Polish guy. But you will get the bo***es galore.

04/02/2023

All of New Orleans smells of jasmine!! It’s intoxicating!

03/31/2023

Now this is a salad!!

03/29/2023

Making Pandan Cake

03/27/2023

Apple Picking in Autumn

I've complimented both Mom and Dad on their desire to maintain traditions. That apple didn't fall far from the tree, pun intended. While there were two fairly local farm markets near my childhood home in Rochelle Park - Tice Farms and Van Riper's Farms, there was nothing like loading up the station wagon for a trip to Masker's Orchards in Warwick, NY. Looking on Google Maps I see it was a 40 mile trip, which took approximately an hour to get there. Pretty sure I could do it in a little over 35 minutes, but then I always did like to push the speeding envelope. We went every year in late September. The weather would be crisp cool in the mornings, but by afternoon, the sweater you were forced to put on because Mom said so would be tied around my waist because I was sweating to death. A picnic was packed for the orchard because you could pull your car right into the lanes between the trees. I seriously doubt that is still permitted today. Imagine some stressed out Dad behind the wheel of his gas guzzling SUV while the entitled Kens and Karens he and his wife spawned are fighting and pointing out the best spot for parking, and picking, simultaneously. Karen Sr. hasn't dressed for the event....she's wearing a strappy wedge with her yoga outfit. Dad just wants to park the car so he can mentally bet himself which kid will get stung by a bee first. You can't pull too far into the apple lane, which is probably about the size of a football field. No, you have to stay at the edge. If you go in too far, someone could pull in behind you. If someone has parked at the opposite edge, you'd get blocked in. Considering the way people are arming themselves, lately, and considering that people have been shot for less than a shiny Red Delicious, I really do doubt that folks are able to just drive into the orchard lanes any longer.
Now, about that picnic. We weren't a picnic type of family. Sure, they showed those people on TV and in movies, and in magazine ads. It just wasn't ever us. When we did eat outdoors, other than our yard, entire meals were packed, complete with pots and pans, jugs, tupperwares, bowls and baking pans. No, we didn't make ham and cheese sandwiches with chocolate chip cookies. Remind me to tell you about dinner at the Swim Club. Our picnic at Masker's was always the same; and it all revolved around cold Shake and Bake chicken. We never made fried chicken at my house. That's what Chicken Delight was for. No, when we were going to eat chicken on the bone it was either Shake and Bake, BBQ (sauce right out of the bottle) or 'with the lemon' (which was fabulous, especially once I started making it). Mom would make the Shake and Bake early, 7am or so, then wrap the entire baking pan in foil. We'd have potato salad, macaroni salad, hard boiled eggs and Entenman's chocolate donuts. I'm not clear why we brought in donuts. One of the best parts of apple picking was getting hot cider donuts, right out of the fryer, and laden with cinnamon sugar. Those donuts would literally melt in your mouth, with just the crunch of the sugar left sticking to your lips. There was always a thermos of hot coffee for my Dad, and a thermos of hot chocolate for the kids. I always loved getting just a sip of my Dad's coffee. I don't think he quite had the milk to coffee to sugar ratio right when it came to his thermos. It was always light and sweet, and delicious. It smelled fabulous when the thermos was opened. Sure, the hot chocolate was good, but the same problem my father had with ratios for his coffee, my Mom had with the hot chocolate. The Swiss Miss was always just a tad too watery. It was hard to stir it in the thermos. You try shaking hot liquid in a closed thermos. Go ahead, I dare you. Don't say I didn't warn you. In addition to all that, there'd be any apple you wanted, once you picked it. Picking that first apple was special. You just knew that you were going to take the biggest bite you could manage, once you polished it with the edge of your sweatshirt. To this day, there is not an apple flavor in the world that tastes like an apple picked off the tree, eaten within a minute of picking it. Even the second bite isn't as good as the first. By the time I got to the third bite, I was already starting to think about cold shake and bake chicken. And chocolate donuts. And the bees. The bees like the apples as much as we did. They didn't bother with the apples on the trees any longer. After all, their job was done up there months ago. Now, those bees wanted to eat the mushy mess that was all over the ground, beneath the trees. Keep your wits about you and you won't get stung.
Once you found a place to park, you could go to the farm stand to get your bushels, a wagon, and a picker tool. It was a small basket-y metal cage-y thing on the end of a long handle. See, they didn't really want you to climb the trees, although if you did, and you fell, you just dusted yourself off, and got back up there. Not like the Karens and Kens of today. Climb a tree that you were asked not to, and if you fall, those entitled parents would sue the cider out of the Masker's people. The long cage-y thing was to help pick the really way up high apples. That's where all the great apples were, anyway. See, they got full sun, all day long. The apples on the lower branches were only red, usually, one one side. The side that faced the trunk of the tree was generally an insipid yellow because that side was never kissed by the sun. Yeah, that's why the orange juice people call their fruit sunkist. If you know, you know. Ya know?
We'd go up and down the lanes with our wagon and bushels. We'd fill up with Red Delicious, Maccintosh, Jonagolds, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith. No one invented Gala, or Honey Crisp or Jazz apples yet. There were 5 varities and they all ripened at different times. We went for the Reds, but would pick anything else that was remotely close to being ripe.
Once the picnic was consumed, and the donuts (both chocolate and cider)devoured, and the thermoses were empty, we'd load the bushels into the trunk to head for the pay lanes. This is when my Dad would start getting all hoodlum-y again. He'd open the spare tire compartment and dump two or three bushels worth of apples into the wheel well. He'd put some into the picnic cooler. They'd be under the seats. Sure, we picked 6 bushels, but he only ever paid for three. For the life of me, I don't remember what a bushel cost. When we got home, those bushels would sit in the garage for months. There were apples of every size out there, all winter long. My mom would make the occasional apple cake with them. When I was older, I was making cakes, muffins, scones, pies and applesauce. In my house, apple sauce wasn't a dessert. It was a condiment meant to be enjoyed with certain chicken or pork dinners, and especially if there was mashed potatoes on the plate. I have theories about why my mother loved apples and potatoes together so much, but that's for another time, and with more booze. I love homemade applesauce. Now, you can, too.

For the applesauce you will need
2 plane tickets to upstate NY
A dozen large apples - mix the variety if you can. Now, I like honeycrisp with gala.
1/2 c white sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
juice of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
1T cinnamon
1t nutmeg
1/2 C water (or more, depends on how juicy your apples are

How to make it
Peel and chop the apples after you core them. A pit or two in applesauce means it's real. Too many and your dinnermates are apt to get cranky
Add everything to a heavy sauce pot and bring to a low heat. Cover for 20 minutes. Remove lid, check for tenderness. Only add more water if you are scorching. Your ultimate goal is soft, mushy apples.
Cook on low, till you get a soft pulpy mess.
Mash with your potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon.
Taste for seasoning.
Make a pot of mashed potatoes, some peas and carrots and a meatloaf. Serve with the applesauce.