I alluded to this in the post, but I spent some time this weekend getting the recipe and cocktail archives back up to date -- that's every dish and every drink featured in previous ACBN Friday Newsletters, nearly 200 of each:
Just before the hellscape that is 2020 set in, the Great State of Maine was preparing for its bicentennial and some noble folks thought it would be a great idea to create a statewide community cookbook that drew from all 16 counties in the Pine Tree State.
My grandparents (on my dad’s side) grew up in Aroostook County which is waaaaay at the top of the state (specifically Fort Kent and Eagle Lake), but after WWII grandma and grandpa moved to Connecticut which had a large French Canadian population and thankfully, grandma kept her cooking roots. Years later, growing up in Southern Maine we’d make the trip to CT every month or so - we’d get to their house just around dinner time and there’d be a platter on the table waiting for us: C’est Pot - an Acadian chicken and dumpling meal with a stack of ployes (a savory buckwheat crepe/pancake that was instrumental in sopping up the sauce left behind). This meal was a favorite of the lumber camps grandpa worked in prior to the war and it was clear why. It suck with you and kept you full for most of the day.
Fast forward to 2019: we’re mourning the passing of Grandma and I see the call for recipes to the community cookbook. I submit the recipes and give a background about them and now when meal is served, it’s like a warm embrace from them.
The recipe is selected for the book and now it sits on page 143 of the Maine Community Cookbook: Volume 1.
Scott, hate to break the news but you ARE a food writer and a wonderful storyteller too. I appreciate the shoutout and look forward to sharing stories with you this Thursday night in Louisville!
My grandfather was a tinkerer, as most good grandpas are, and started making his own scrapple. The recipes were written down- plural, because it was never exactly the final draft and because it would change slightly every year as he tinkered with it. He’d give everyone a block of it at Christmas, and it was a staple of everyone’s holiday to have some Pop Scrapple. There was usually enough black pepper in it to clear out any respiratory issues that the holiday may have brought your way.
When his Alzheimer’s finally rendered him incapable of making it anymore, my grandma gave me a folder of the recipes to make sense of. (She was counting on my profession and the fact that I’m the eldest grandchild). I’ve been in charge of making the Christmas scrapple for almost a decade- even though we lost my grandpa a few years ago, my versions got his blessing. And just like him, I don’t make it the same every year, but it always tastes right.
TBH, I couldn't get past the first sentence. Scrapple is one of those things that you hear so much negative that you almost imagine it tasting awful, it's probably no more harmful than Skyline, though.
No negativity intended, sorry. This is one of those menu options that I would love to try just to see if the stories I've heard were wrong (examples include brussels sprouts, fruitcake, black licorice). Given my omnivorous palate, I seriously believe I would find it enjoyable, especially if it were prepared by someone who knew how and loved to make it.
Brussels sprouts are fascinating. I mean, it was a huge leap when we learned as a society that they should be roasted instead of boiled, but I recall reading recently that modern Brussels sprouts genuinely are less bitter than the ones of a generation ago.
For what it’s worth, scrapple has a lot in common with hot dogs- everyone assumes it’s some mystery meat hellscape and it’s kind of just…meat (and, in scrapple’s case, corn meal and some buckwheat).
At least locally, it’s a side option at IHOP if you want a low risk way to try it.
I won't be sharing a story, but I *will* enthusiastically endorse Anne Byrn's book. It's fantastic; Mrs DG is off to a pretty good start baking her way through it, and every recipe has been terrific. (In related news, I need to start stretching out my running mileage again.)
My grandparents (specifically my mom's grandpa) were fantastic cooks. They were depression kids, so they were taught to always use up everything and never waste a drop of anything. It's why I have a soft spot for what my grandpa called "Kickapoo Joy Juice" -just the remnants of whatever was left at the bottom of the orange juice/apple juice/grape juice/lemonade/whatever's left in the fridge- all mixed up into a jug. A kid's dream cocktail.
My favorite thing they made though was "Gaffney Brown Chicken." Basically, one night they were making Chicken Marsala, but didn't have Marsala wine. Rather than go out and get it, my grandpa declared that he'd just use dry vermouth (they were BIG on their martini's, so there was always vermouth lying around.) So in it went, and with some other minor tweaks (more breading on the chicken, like a chicken parm cutlet,) came out INCREDIBLE, and the meal is now a staple for everyone in the family when we get together once or twice a year.
The funniest part: the debate that would rage between a thinner sauce (my grandpa's preference) and thicker (grandma's.) It would be funny to watch grandpa walk away to make a drink, only for grandma to sneak over and try to thicken the sauce, and to watch grandpa notice when he came back and cuss up a storm & fuss over trying to thin it back out. Always served over spaghetti, with a TON of parmesan cheese.
The recipe isn’t actually mine; truthfully, cobbled together from a couple of online recipes, it’s barely even hers. But my late wife’s apple pie is, along with our children, one of the truly great things she left behind.
My oldest has taken over making it and it’s perfect.
I spent most of my formative youth working in kitchens. I worked at a BBQ place in high school, working shifts after football practice. I worked at the on-campus bar/restaurant and the University of Miami, prepping food for lunch rush, serving pitchers of beer at night. And post-graduation, I spent another five or so years working the grill in the kitchen of a posh dinner spot nearby.
It's there that I met and befriended some real characters. I learned a lot about their lives through stories of their past and present. Very different people, coming together to earn a paycheck and cook some of the best food you've ever tasted. I cooked with musicians, alcoholics, drug addicts, students, medically ill, career chefs, black, white, poor, American, Honduran, Mexican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, tall, short, tatted, clean cut, bearded, pierced, educated, funny, serious, kind, and rude. It's a cornucopia of the human experience making $15 an hour and serving up 400+ tables every night. "I ever tell you about the time I got robbed by Bones Thugs N Harmony?" is the beginning of a fantastic story that will always make me laugh. I've threatened coworkers with knives and rushed out after shift with those same coworkers to protect one of our own from their abusive partner. I can tell you how Pat Riley likes his roast chicken, or how Eric Spoelstra likes his steak. I can even tell you how Iggy Pop's puppy likes its Kobe beef sliders. I was taught many recipes from very gracious cooks over the years, and tons of tips for how to work efficiently and cleanly in the kitchen. Here's a recipe for any fruit curd, courtesy of my old pal Dave:
1c lemon juice or other fruit pureed and strained of seeds
12 egg yolks
1c sugar for citrus fruits, 1/2c for non-citrus fruit
1 lb cold butter, cut into small pieces
Over a double boiler, whisk juice, egg yolks, and sugar until it thickens. Pull off the heat and slowly whisk in the butter. Chill.
My "family" recipes unfortunately are bespoke to a set of circumstances that are no longer replicated and quite honestly aren't that great, except for nostalgia...a turkey dressing from my grandmother (the mean one) that was notable in the 60s because it included raisins, a "scalloped" pineapple recipe my mom took from the back of a Parade Magazine in the mid 90s, and my dad's dry rub for ribs and pork butt...
I am forced to work most Thanksgivings now (hospitals don't close for the holidays and I would rather have Christmas off) and so as the designated cook in our home I can't manage to pull together a Thanksgiving dinner. The scalloped pineapple is delicious but really only pairs with a honey baked ham, which my kids and wife refuse to eat, and the dry rub was overly complicated with pointless additions compounded by dad's insistence on using years old dry spices ("I don't think that dry mint that expired 5 years ago is doing much lifting, Dad"..."it's fine") that I have since well surpassed.
I don't mind the stories before the random recipes I find online and even had the delight once of realizing one was written by an old lifeguard coworker of mine from undergrad.
I don't really have a recipe for this because it literally changes each time we make it, but one weekend during high school, we went to visit my grandparents who lived on a mountainside outside Asheville. My grandmother was always prone to wild ideas in the kitchen, some of which worked, and some of which bombed miserably (like trying to feed my now-wife who has a strong distaste for okra some especially okra-laden gumbo on her first visit). On this particular visit, she had acquired a paella pan and your bog-standard spice blend in a bag containing stale paprika and very old saffron. She also got some _very_ good shellfish from a local fishmonger, and without having any idea what the hell we were doing, we set out to make paella on that spring afternoon.
While my mother, grandmother, and I were trying our best to follow the poorly translated recipe that was packed in and doing everything we could to make sure the pan didn't overflow, my dad and grandfather were sitting at the kitchen table enjoying a beer and "stupidvising" (their words, not mine) our antics. After several hours of chopping, sauteing, and finishing the pan in the oven, it was delightful.
It eventually became part of the semi-regular rotation at her house and we made it at least once every couple of years or so. After my wife and I set off on our own, we picked up a paella pan (and used spices from Penzeys) and set off to make it our own way, loaded with shrimp, chicken, chorizo, rabbit (when we can get it), peppers, onions, tomatoes (from our garden when possible), green beans, chicken stock, white wine, and more. I also cook it on my kamado grill (and usually we have to have an overflow pan that I cook on my outdoor propane burner; yes, we own two pans) instead of finishing in the oven. It has become our traditional Christmas Eve dinner somehow.
Before you ask, we didn't think we have any significant Spanish ancestry but it does turn out that there's some Sephardic Jewish ancestry way up there somewhere.
So my grandmother - and my mom and her sisters - have a cookie recipe that is so beloved in our family that my mom had it printed on a platter for my cousin's wedding shower present and the cousin started crying when she unwrapped it.
This is not about that recipe; it is in fact, the opposite. In my neighborhood in suburban Philly, my mom's chocolate chip cookies were this incredible prize among neighborhood children. I still love them; my dad is a lifelong fiend. But one neighbor kid was so obsessed with them, my mom once burned a batch and dumped them in the snow for the birds, and we looked out our windows to see [name] eating one out of the snow. At one point, after getting "my mom's recipe" his mom even tried baking her own in our oven to "get them right" (sidenote: shut up and eat your mom's cookies, kid).
My mom's magical, unreplicable recipe was from the back of the Toll House bag. Maybe an adjustment to softening butter or a tweak in brown sugar, but she wasn't doing alchemy. I've never figured out what the difference was, but I stand by it. I can't wait to grab a bunch at Thanksgiving.
My family food traditions are all Pennsylvania Dutch in origin, including chicken pot pie which is not actually a pie, more of a stew with homemade noodles. My grandma and mom insisted the noodles had to be rolled out very, very thin but my brother hated those and wanted thick doughy noodles. so we'd playfully fight every year over the thickness of the noodles. Grandma is gone now and my brother lives across the country so no more noodle fights. I don't even really like the dish that much (it's kind of bland and god forforbid you put pepper in something!!) but I miss the time spent together over it.
Leek soup on St. David's Day is one of our Welsh family traditions, and in college I attempted to make it for the first time on my own. It's hard to mess up, and I didn't - it was good! - but I also made the same amount that my family usually makes for a whole group because I had no concept of proportions - probably like 20+ servings. My eight other college housemates dutifully each ate a little bit, but without the rest of the fixings (rarebit on fresh bread, welsh cakes, etc.), third and fourth servings were a hard sell. I put myself on a 3-soup-a-day diet for a week. I've since mastered the rest of the SDD meal and it is much easier to give away now.
Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of passed-down recipes, but my dad can get WILDLY inventive with his “banana” breads. He throws all kinds of fruits into the same base recipe and it’s often a mix of pears, cranberries, apples, whatever he has lying around. We often have lots of overripe bananas since we buy bananas for the toddler and forget about them on the counter. But my wife has the basic outline he described to us taped on the inside of our spice cabinet and will consult it each time she makes one, tinkering just like my dad does. My daughter will affectionately call any banana bread “papa bread” and gobble it right up.
I alluded to this in the post, but I spent some time this weekend getting the recipe and cocktail archives back up to date -- that's every dish and every drink featured in previous ACBN Friday Newsletters, nearly 200 of each:
https://actioncookbook.substack.com/s/recipes
https://actioncookbook.substack.com/s/cocktails
Just before the hellscape that is 2020 set in, the Great State of Maine was preparing for its bicentennial and some noble folks thought it would be a great idea to create a statewide community cookbook that drew from all 16 counties in the Pine Tree State.
My grandparents (on my dad’s side) grew up in Aroostook County which is waaaaay at the top of the state (specifically Fort Kent and Eagle Lake), but after WWII grandma and grandpa moved to Connecticut which had a large French Canadian population and thankfully, grandma kept her cooking roots. Years later, growing up in Southern Maine we’d make the trip to CT every month or so - we’d get to their house just around dinner time and there’d be a platter on the table waiting for us: C’est Pot - an Acadian chicken and dumpling meal with a stack of ployes (a savory buckwheat crepe/pancake that was instrumental in sopping up the sauce left behind). This meal was a favorite of the lumber camps grandpa worked in prior to the war and it was clear why. It suck with you and kept you full for most of the day.
Fast forward to 2019: we’re mourning the passing of Grandma and I see the call for recipes to the community cookbook. I submit the recipes and give a background about them and now when meal is served, it’s like a warm embrace from them.
The recipe is selected for the book and now it sits on page 143 of the Maine Community Cookbook: Volume 1.
I love this. (I know you told me about this recipe a few years ago, and I keep meaning to give it a try.)
It’s perfect for a chilly Sunday evening meal
Scott, hate to break the news but you ARE a food writer and a wonderful storyteller too. I appreciate the shoutout and look forward to sharing stories with you this Thursday night in Louisville!
My grandfather was a tinkerer, as most good grandpas are, and started making his own scrapple. The recipes were written down- plural, because it was never exactly the final draft and because it would change slightly every year as he tinkered with it. He’d give everyone a block of it at Christmas, and it was a staple of everyone’s holiday to have some Pop Scrapple. There was usually enough black pepper in it to clear out any respiratory issues that the holiday may have brought your way.
When his Alzheimer’s finally rendered him incapable of making it anymore, my grandma gave me a folder of the recipes to make sense of. (She was counting on my profession and the fact that I’m the eldest grandchild). I’ve been in charge of making the Christmas scrapple for almost a decade- even though we lost my grandpa a few years ago, my versions got his blessing. And just like him, I don’t make it the same every year, but it always tastes right.
I love the idea of Christmas Scrapple.
TBH, I couldn't get past the first sentence. Scrapple is one of those things that you hear so much negative that you almost imagine it tasting awful, it's probably no more harmful than Skyline, though.
Please keep the comments positive.
No negativity intended, sorry. This is one of those menu options that I would love to try just to see if the stories I've heard were wrong (examples include brussels sprouts, fruitcake, black licorice). Given my omnivorous palate, I seriously believe I would find it enjoyable, especially if it were prepared by someone who knew how and loved to make it.
Brussels sprouts are fascinating. I mean, it was a huge leap when we learned as a society that they should be roasted instead of boiled, but I recall reading recently that modern Brussels sprouts genuinely are less bitter than the ones of a generation ago.
This might be a fun newsletter topic to run with, "foods that got a bad rep through no fault of their own".
For what it’s worth, scrapple has a lot in common with hot dogs- everyone assumes it’s some mystery meat hellscape and it’s kind of just…meat (and, in scrapple’s case, corn meal and some buckwheat).
At least locally, it’s a side option at IHOP if you want a low risk way to try it.
I won't be sharing a story, but I *will* enthusiastically endorse Anne Byrn's book. It's fantastic; Mrs DG is off to a pretty good start baking her way through it, and every recipe has been terrific. (In related news, I need to start stretching out my running mileage again.)
My grandparents (specifically my mom's grandpa) were fantastic cooks. They were depression kids, so they were taught to always use up everything and never waste a drop of anything. It's why I have a soft spot for what my grandpa called "Kickapoo Joy Juice" -just the remnants of whatever was left at the bottom of the orange juice/apple juice/grape juice/lemonade/whatever's left in the fridge- all mixed up into a jug. A kid's dream cocktail.
My favorite thing they made though was "Gaffney Brown Chicken." Basically, one night they were making Chicken Marsala, but didn't have Marsala wine. Rather than go out and get it, my grandpa declared that he'd just use dry vermouth (they were BIG on their martini's, so there was always vermouth lying around.) So in it went, and with some other minor tweaks (more breading on the chicken, like a chicken parm cutlet,) came out INCREDIBLE, and the meal is now a staple for everyone in the family when we get together once or twice a year.
The funniest part: the debate that would rage between a thinner sauce (my grandpa's preference) and thicker (grandma's.) It would be funny to watch grandpa walk away to make a drink, only for grandma to sneak over and try to thicken the sauce, and to watch grandpa notice when he came back and cuss up a storm & fuss over trying to thin it back out. Always served over spaghetti, with a TON of parmesan cheese.
It's so good.
This is all amazing.
The recipe isn’t actually mine; truthfully, cobbled together from a couple of online recipes, it’s barely even hers. But my late wife’s apple pie is, along with our children, one of the truly great things she left behind.
My oldest has taken over making it and it’s perfect.
I spent most of my formative youth working in kitchens. I worked at a BBQ place in high school, working shifts after football practice. I worked at the on-campus bar/restaurant and the University of Miami, prepping food for lunch rush, serving pitchers of beer at night. And post-graduation, I spent another five or so years working the grill in the kitchen of a posh dinner spot nearby.
It's there that I met and befriended some real characters. I learned a lot about their lives through stories of their past and present. Very different people, coming together to earn a paycheck and cook some of the best food you've ever tasted. I cooked with musicians, alcoholics, drug addicts, students, medically ill, career chefs, black, white, poor, American, Honduran, Mexican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, tall, short, tatted, clean cut, bearded, pierced, educated, funny, serious, kind, and rude. It's a cornucopia of the human experience making $15 an hour and serving up 400+ tables every night. "I ever tell you about the time I got robbed by Bones Thugs N Harmony?" is the beginning of a fantastic story that will always make me laugh. I've threatened coworkers with knives and rushed out after shift with those same coworkers to protect one of our own from their abusive partner. I can tell you how Pat Riley likes his roast chicken, or how Eric Spoelstra likes his steak. I can even tell you how Iggy Pop's puppy likes its Kobe beef sliders. I was taught many recipes from very gracious cooks over the years, and tons of tips for how to work efficiently and cleanly in the kitchen. Here's a recipe for any fruit curd, courtesy of my old pal Dave:
1c lemon juice or other fruit pureed and strained of seeds
12 egg yolks
1c sugar for citrus fruits, 1/2c for non-citrus fruit
1 lb cold butter, cut into small pieces
Over a double boiler, whisk juice, egg yolks, and sugar until it thickens. Pull off the heat and slowly whisk in the butter. Chill.
My "family" recipes unfortunately are bespoke to a set of circumstances that are no longer replicated and quite honestly aren't that great, except for nostalgia...a turkey dressing from my grandmother (the mean one) that was notable in the 60s because it included raisins, a "scalloped" pineapple recipe my mom took from the back of a Parade Magazine in the mid 90s, and my dad's dry rub for ribs and pork butt...
I am forced to work most Thanksgivings now (hospitals don't close for the holidays and I would rather have Christmas off) and so as the designated cook in our home I can't manage to pull together a Thanksgiving dinner. The scalloped pineapple is delicious but really only pairs with a honey baked ham, which my kids and wife refuse to eat, and the dry rub was overly complicated with pointless additions compounded by dad's insistence on using years old dry spices ("I don't think that dry mint that expired 5 years ago is doing much lifting, Dad"..."it's fine") that I have since well surpassed.
I don't mind the stories before the random recipes I find online and even had the delight once of realizing one was written by an old lifeguard coworker of mine from undergrad.
I don't really have a recipe for this because it literally changes each time we make it, but one weekend during high school, we went to visit my grandparents who lived on a mountainside outside Asheville. My grandmother was always prone to wild ideas in the kitchen, some of which worked, and some of which bombed miserably (like trying to feed my now-wife who has a strong distaste for okra some especially okra-laden gumbo on her first visit). On this particular visit, she had acquired a paella pan and your bog-standard spice blend in a bag containing stale paprika and very old saffron. She also got some _very_ good shellfish from a local fishmonger, and without having any idea what the hell we were doing, we set out to make paella on that spring afternoon.
While my mother, grandmother, and I were trying our best to follow the poorly translated recipe that was packed in and doing everything we could to make sure the pan didn't overflow, my dad and grandfather were sitting at the kitchen table enjoying a beer and "stupidvising" (their words, not mine) our antics. After several hours of chopping, sauteing, and finishing the pan in the oven, it was delightful.
It eventually became part of the semi-regular rotation at her house and we made it at least once every couple of years or so. After my wife and I set off on our own, we picked up a paella pan (and used spices from Penzeys) and set off to make it our own way, loaded with shrimp, chicken, chorizo, rabbit (when we can get it), peppers, onions, tomatoes (from our garden when possible), green beans, chicken stock, white wine, and more. I also cook it on my kamado grill (and usually we have to have an overflow pan that I cook on my outdoor propane burner; yes, we own two pans) instead of finishing in the oven. It has become our traditional Christmas Eve dinner somehow.
Before you ask, we didn't think we have any significant Spanish ancestry but it does turn out that there's some Sephardic Jewish ancestry way up there somewhere.
This is great. (I love paella, I even have a paella pan, but I've never quite mastered it.)
One does not simply master paella
*frantically looks for the “Jump to Recipe” button*
[button is actually an ejector seat] YOU FOOL, YOU FELL RIGHT INTO MY TRAP
bond villain ass newsletter
"EJECTO SEATO CUZ" was right there
you misspelled "Dog photos"
Scott, we are going to need TWO new buttons for the Friday posts
So my grandmother - and my mom and her sisters - have a cookie recipe that is so beloved in our family that my mom had it printed on a platter for my cousin's wedding shower present and the cousin started crying when she unwrapped it.
This is not about that recipe; it is in fact, the opposite. In my neighborhood in suburban Philly, my mom's chocolate chip cookies were this incredible prize among neighborhood children. I still love them; my dad is a lifelong fiend. But one neighbor kid was so obsessed with them, my mom once burned a batch and dumped them in the snow for the birds, and we looked out our windows to see [name] eating one out of the snow. At one point, after getting "my mom's recipe" his mom even tried baking her own in our oven to "get them right" (sidenote: shut up and eat your mom's cookies, kid).
My mom's magical, unreplicable recipe was from the back of the Toll House bag. Maybe an adjustment to softening butter or a tweak in brown sugar, but she wasn't doing alchemy. I've never figured out what the difference was, but I stand by it. I can't wait to grab a bunch at Thanksgiving.
My family food traditions are all Pennsylvania Dutch in origin, including chicken pot pie which is not actually a pie, more of a stew with homemade noodles. My grandma and mom insisted the noodles had to be rolled out very, very thin but my brother hated those and wanted thick doughy noodles. so we'd playfully fight every year over the thickness of the noodles. Grandma is gone now and my brother lives across the country so no more noodle fights. I don't even really like the dish that much (it's kind of bland and god forforbid you put pepper in something!!) but I miss the time spent together over it.
Leek soup on St. David's Day is one of our Welsh family traditions, and in college I attempted to make it for the first time on my own. It's hard to mess up, and I didn't - it was good! - but I also made the same amount that my family usually makes for a whole group because I had no concept of proportions - probably like 20+ servings. My eight other college housemates dutifully each ate a little bit, but without the rest of the fixings (rarebit on fresh bread, welsh cakes, etc.), third and fourth servings were a hard sell. I put myself on a 3-soup-a-day diet for a week. I've since mastered the rest of the SDD meal and it is much easier to give away now.
Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of passed-down recipes, but my dad can get WILDLY inventive with his “banana” breads. He throws all kinds of fruits into the same base recipe and it’s often a mix of pears, cranberries, apples, whatever he has lying around. We often have lots of overripe bananas since we buy bananas for the toddler and forget about them on the counter. But my wife has the basic outline he described to us taped on the inside of our spice cabinet and will consult it each time she makes one, tinkering just like my dad does. My daughter will affectionately call any banana bread “papa bread” and gobble it right up.
"Papa Bread" is adorable, I love this.