Holiday Recipes 2014

• Maureen’s Divinity (from Maureen’s Grandma A)

 2-1/2 c sugar
1/2 c white syrup
1/2 c water
2 stiff beaten egg whites
1/2 t vanilla
Cook sugar, syrup & water to thin syrup stage (110C).
Pour 1/2 over egg whites, beating constantly.
At thread stage (116C), add another 1/3,
at hard ball stage (127C) add remaining mix.
Add vanilla, and beat until mixture holds shape. (or until the motor burns out )
Drop by rounded teaspoonful onto waxed or parchment paper set on top of newspaper.

 •Andrea Broomfield’s Homemade Irish Cream 

Andrea’s Homemade Irish Cream—so much better than the bottled stuff at the liquor store, and cheaper, too!
Ingredients:
1 cup cream (heavy or half-n-half; Shatto or another high-quality local dairy cream is the best for this)
1 cup Irish whiskey (Jameson’s is terrific)
1 can sweetened, condensed milk (or roughly 3/4s to 1 cup)
2 tablespoons chocolate syrup (I like Trader Joe’s Midnight Moo)
2 tablespoons instant coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
Put ingredients in a blender and blend until fully incorporated.  Pour into a pretty glass bottle ( an empty, clean Shatto milk bottle is great) and chill.   This makes a creative gift for friends and neighbors.

 • Larry Reynolds’ Pralines (He’s from Texas, you know)

PRALINES – not just for the holidays
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 cups Brown Sugar
Mix together/Microwave 9 minutes
Add 2 tbsps unsalted butter/melt
Add 3 cups pecans/stir
Drop onto wax paper/Enjoy
•  Nathan Jones’s Bierocks

bierocks

Context
Before I share this recipe, I need to provide some context, or the whole thing won’t make much sense. My maternal grandparents were immigrants from Russia (Volga Deutsch) who owned a dairy farm in Colorado. I lived with them as a child. My Grandma Lehr was a fabulous cook who knew how to make splendid meals with very simple ingredients.
One day, when I was older and feeling a little smart, I watched my grandmother in the kitchen while she made her bierocks. I wanted to get her recipe, so I asked her about how many cups of flour she used, how many cups of milk, how many teaspoons of salt, etc. I’ll never forget her response. She looked at me with some amusement and said, “This here is cookin, it ain’t chemistry.” She measured her ingredients with her eyes. And that’s pretty much how I cook bierocks, too. If you still need clearer directions about how much of each ingredient to use, beyond what I have provided here, you may rely upon my grandmother’s other sagely advice: “Use just enough to make it good.”
This is a modern version of her recipe for bierocks. I make them during the holidays, when I have more time to play in the kitchen.
Dough
Bread flour
Eggs
Milk
Butter
Sugar
salt
Yeast
Make a sponge by mixing in a large bowl roughly 2 cups of bread flour, 2 cups of whole milk, 2 heaping Tablespoons of sugar, 2 eggs, 3 Tablespoons of melted butter, 1 Tablespoon of yeast, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put in into the refrigerator for at least 24 hours.
Take the sponge out of the refrigerator and add more bread flour, to create a large dough ball. Keep adding flour until the dough is no longer sticky and can be kneaded easily. Now bulk up your muscles by kneading away, for at least 30 minutes.
Flour a large cutting board and divide your dough in half. Using a rolling pin, roll out one dough ball, making it as thin as you can get it without tearing it. Trim the edges to create a large square, about the size of your cutting board. Next, cut smaller squares into the dough, with each square measuring 4 inches per side.
Spoon your filling (see below) into the middle of each square. Then, pull out the other dough ball and repeat the squaring process again on a different cutting board. Place the new squares of dough over the top of the squares with the filling. You may use a thick slurry of flour and water to glue the edges together. You may tuck the seams underneath each bierock, for aesthetics.
Place each bierock onto a large, greased cookie sheet and let them rise in the oven for about 2 hours. To speed things a bit, you could place a pan of hot water into the oven to create a warm, moist environment. Do not turn on the oven at this point; the dry heat will kill the yeast.
After the bierocks have doubled in size, remove them and the pan of water from the oven. Preheat the oven to 375 and return the bierocks to bake. When the bierocks are nicely browned, remove them from the oven, cool them for about 10 minutes, then serve.
Filling
Use whatever
This is where my grandmother and I would probably see things differently. She was traditional. The Volga Deutsch were poor German peasants in Russia who had few options.  My grandmother’s choice of ingredients reflected the realities of how she learned to cook in Czarist Russia. Her fillings for bierocks were simple, traditional: she used fried cabbage, onions, hamburger or chopped ham, salt, and pepper. That’s it. Her bierocks were tasty but, by our modern standards, perhaps a little bland.
This is how I have updated her traditional recipe for 21st century Johnson County, Kansas. For the filling, I freely use whatever tasty combinations that I can find in the grocery store. A breakfast bierock would consist of carmelized onions, chopped bacon, crumbled sausage, sliced mushrooms, provolone cheese, scrambled eggs, sautéed spinach, etc. Be sure to cook these items thoroughly before placing them as filling into the bierocks.
For lunch or supper, I prefer using beef, but instead of using hamburger, I’ll chop up leftover pot roast or barbecued steak. To this I’ll add carmelized onions, sautéed greens (collard, mustard, spinach, kale, dandelions, etc.), sautéed mushrooms, provolone cheese, etc. If you want, you may add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard into the filling of each bierock. Bierocks may be eaten dry or may be served with your favorite meat sauce or gravy. And they go down very well with your favorite beer or hard apple cider.
Commitment
Making bierocks takes some time, which is why I save them for the holidays. But the trouble is worth it. While they are baking, the aroma in the house is incredible and I don’t know of any restaurants where they can be found. They are a holiday treat.