The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook (7 page)
Read The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook Online
Authors: Georgia Varozza
In the morning, take the casserole out of the refrigerator and let set on the counter for a half hour while oven is preheating. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let set for several minutes before cutting.
This breakfast casserole gets put together the night before and refrigerated until morning
.
1½ lb. ground pork
5 cups water, divided
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. sage
1 cup cornmeal
Break up the ground pork into small pieces in a large saucepan. Add 4 cups of the water and stir, separating the pork well. Heat to boiling, reduce to simmer and cook 30 minutes. Remove meat from stock, reserve 3 cups of the stock, and add to it salt and sage.
Combine the cornmeal with 1 cup cold water (you can make part of this liquid milk, which will make the scrapple brown better when fried). Add this cornmeal/water mixture gradually to the hot stock; bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, cover, and cook 15 minutes. Stir in cooked ground pork. Pour into a loaf pan (9½ × 5 × 3-inches) and chill well for 24 hours. Slice ¼- to ½-inch thick. Fry pieces in hot oil quickly, turning only once. Allow room in the pan to turn. Serve hot either plain, with Tomato Gravy, or with syrup.
1 T. butter
2 slices bread, torn up
½ lb. sausage, browned and drained
⅔ cup Cheddar cheese, shredded
½ cup fresh spinach, chopped
4 eggs
½ cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a skillet that has a lid and turn to cover the entire bottom of pan. Add torn bread and stir a bit to distribute evenly and completely cover the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle on sausage, cheese, and spinach.
Beat together the eggs and milk that have been seasoned with salt and pepper and pour over the sausage mixture. Cover and cook on medium-low heat for about 15 minutes or until eggs are set.
¼ cup onion, diced small
2 T. bacon drippings
3 T. flour
1½ cups tomato juice or canned, stewed tomatoes including liquid, chopped fine
½ cup milk or light cream
2 tsp. brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
Cook onion in bacon drippings until the onion is golden in color.
Add the flour and stir constantly for 30 seconds. Add the tomato juice or tomatoes and liquid in a steady stream, stirring constantly. Next add the milk or light cream and brown sugar and continue to stir until mixture thickens. Salt and pepper to taste.
Tomato Gravy is great served over Scrapple, cornmeal mush, biscuits, or fried eggs and toast
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1 28-oz. can stewed tomatoes (or 1 quart home-canned)
½ cup sour cream
3 T. flour
1 tsp. sugar
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
In a medium saucepan, cook the stewed tomatoes uncovered for about 10 minutes or until the liquid has been slightly reduced.
In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the rest of the ingredients. Add about 1 cup of hot stewed tomatoes and mix well. Pour this mixture back into the hot tomatoes, stirring while adding, and cook until the mixture thickens.
Serve over cornmeal mush, Scrapple, or mashed potatoes.
2 cups flour
4 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
5 T. shortening
¾ cup milk
In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut the shortening into the flour mixture until it is completely incorporated. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk all at once. Stir with a fork until the dough comes clean from the sides of the bowl.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it gently about 10 times. Roll or pat to ½-inch thickness and cut the biscuits using a biscuit cutter or the top of a glass. Place biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake in a preheated 450° oven for 15-20 minutes.
Amish housewives grow many of the fruits and vegetables their families eat and preserve large quantities for the long winter months. Since few homes have refrigerators or freezers, the summer is busy with canning and drying. It’s not uncommon for a woman to can as many as 2000 jars of food each summer.
T
here is almost nothing better than the delicious scent of homemade bread rising and baking. Large Amish families eat many loaves of bread in a week, and it’s not uncommon for as many as a dozen loaves to be baked at one time. Bread baking is an art form as much as a culinary skill, and Amish women take great care when baking their loaves, learning from their mothers how the dough feels when it has been kneaded long enough, how high to raise the dough, and the perfect oven temperature used to produce a loaf of bread that is high but doesn’t fall, with small air pockets and a moist interior.
Bread baking takes some practice, but once the fundamentals are learned, it can be highly satisfying to add ingredients or tweak a recipe and make
your
bread a signature masterpiece. And before long you may find yourself making a number of loaves at a time, because once your family has a taste for warm bread fresh from the oven, they’ll never want “boughten” bread again.
Give us this day our daily bread
.
M
ATTHEW
6:11
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life
.”
J
OHN
6:48
Lord, in Your Word You teach us to ask for our daily bread so that we might be nourished and fed. Thank You, Father, that You daily meet the needs of my loved ones. And when I’m in the kitchen preparing meals for my family day in and day out (and especially on those days when I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself because the work seems endless and underappreciated), remind me that there is a deeper truth here: You are the Bread of Life, and You satisfy all our needs
.
So as I go about my tasks, Lord, help me to put a smile on my face and a song in my heart, because when I’m honest with myself I realize there is no place on earth I’d rather be than here in this kitchen, with You right alongside me, preparing meals for those I love most
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1½ cups flour
1½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. mace
1 cup sugar, divided
⅓ cup oil
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
½ cup milk
6 T. melted butter
1 tsp. cinnamon
In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and mace.
In another mixing bowl, beat together ½ cup sugar, oil, egg, and vanilla on medium speed for 30 seconds. Add flour mixture and milk alternately to egg mixture, beating on low after each addition, just until combined.
Fill 10-12 greased muffin cups
⅔
full with batter. Bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes or until done.
Meanwhile, in a shallow bowl, place the melted butter. In another shallow bowl, combine the remaining ½ cup sugar and cinnamon.
When the puffs are done, remove from cups and, while still hot, roll the tops in melted butter and then in the cinnamon sugar. Serve immediately, either plain or with butter and jelly, if desired.
4½ cups flour, approximately
4½ tsp. (2 packages) active dry yeast
1½ cups warm water
3 T. sugar
1 T. salt
In a large mixing bowl combine 1½ cups flour and yeast.
In a separate bowl, combine the warm water, sugar, and salt; add to flour mixture. Beat at low speed for about 30 seconds, scraping sides of bowl constantly. Beat for 3 minutes on high speed.
Stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can mix in and then turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead while continuing to add enough flour to make a moderately stiff dough. Continue kneading until smooth and elastic; then cover and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
Cut dough into 12 portions; shape into smooth balls. Punch a hole in the middle of each with a floured finger. Pull gently to enlarge hole to about two inches across.
Place the bagels on a greased baking sheet; cover; and allow to rise for 20 minutes. Dip the bagels in the boiling water for about 10-15 seconds and put on a greased baking sheet.
Bake for 8-10 minutes at 350°; then broil for about 90 seconds on each side to brown.
⅔ cup sugar
⅓ cup shortening
2 eggs
3 T. sour milk or buttermilk
1 cup mashed bananas (slightly overripe bananas work best)
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ cup chopped walnuts
Mix together sugar, shortening, and eggs (an electric mixer works best). Stir in sour milk and mashed bananas.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and blend into the banana mixture. Then add the walnuts.
Pour batter into a well-greased loaf pan. Let stand for 20 minutes before baking.
Bake at 350° for 50-60 minutes.
All milk used in yeast bread recipes should be scalded and then cooled to lukewarm before using. Using milk instead of water usually gives a softer crust which becomes a richer brown when baked. When taking bread from the oven, grease the top with butter to make the crust softer.
