Though I ended up making most meals this year, I wasn't particularly creative. Mr Minx gets home from work about 90 minutes after I do, which should leave me plenty of time to cook. But once I walk home from the bus stop, then take the dog for his walk, I am not really in the mood to get creative. It's great when I've remembered to defrost something pre-made, like a quart of Cajun Kate's gumbo, or some chili, but most of the time I'm ordering Indian food and reheating it. I feel like I'm in a real culinary rut. I have done a decent amount of baking this year, despite being on Whole30 from about May on. I can't eat the goodies that come out of the oven, and Mr Minx shouldn't, so I've been passing them on to a friend with a sweet tooth. He gets snacks (but hopefully not diabetes) and I get to bake, so win-win.

I do end up cooking every Sunday though, and have tried the vaguely creative thing here and there. Like the golabki I made in July. I'd never made them before, and I don't remember my Grandmother making them at all (though she apparently did before I was born), so I didn't have a go-to recipe. My cousin Dianne had sent me a few, so I took what I thought were the best parts of all of them and then added my own spin. I think they turned out pretty well, and the recipe made enough that I was able to put three more dinners-worth in the freezer for other times.

I always think my crab cakes are pretty good, and was able to make those a few times this year. I like using leftover meat from steamed crabs, but have even stooped to using imported crab. The best ones, of course, use the meat from Callinectes sapidus, as these did.

For Valentine's Day, my sweetheart made me a heart-shaped meatloaf. Mr Minx's meatloaf is the best. He uses the recipe from The Joy of Cooking, but adds a festive tunnel of cheese. Doesn't this look great?

Shakshuka is a hot thing these days. Typically a tomato-and-bell pepper stew, it's often topped with eggs and served for brunch in the US. I am partial to the Lebanese version, shakshouky, which contains eggplant but not tomatoes and pomegranate molasses. In the dish pictured, I combined the two recipes to make my own, delicious, thing.

Some years ago, I had a creamy tomatillo soup at SoBo cafe. I reverse-engineered it in 2014, and then I made it again in 2019, this time adding toasted pumpkin seeds and sauteed shrimp. And perhaps too much yogurt, but it was still a great light dinner on a hot summer night.

Last, but certainly not least, as they are my primary substitute for pasta these days: zoodles. I bought a spiralizer so I can make them myself, but sometimes I resort to using a Y-peeler to cut thin pappardelle-like strips from green or yellow squash. Topped with fresh ripe tomatoes from the garden, toasted pumpkin seeds, fresh pesto, cheese, and parsley, zucchini noodles are like the best cross between a pasta dish and a hearty salad. I hope to eat a lot more of them in 2020.

And that's it. See? Boring and mostly uncreative. But tasty.

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One of the first things I learned to cook was Polish mushroom soup. My Aunt Stasia would occasionally share a batch with my family, and I enjoyed it enough to badger her for the recipe. It was pretty simple--onions, mushrooms, stock, and cream--and easy enough for a kid to throw together.

I can't remember when I last made mushroom soup, so I decided to rectify that situation. The recipe below is largely my aunt's, with a few modifications. It's creamy, but not overly rich, and has a nice mushroom-y flavor.

Polish Mushroom Soup (Zupa Grzybowa)

1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 1/4 lbs mixed fresh mushrooms, including shiitakes, portobello, and white, chopped
2 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken, beef, or mushroom stock (or a combination)
2 cups peeled, diced potato (from 2-3 large new or yukon gold potatoes)
1 cup whole milk, light cream, or sour cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Soak porcini mushrooms in hot water to cover. When mushrooms are soft and pliable, drain, rinse, and chop finely.

In a large pot set over medium heat, saute onion in butter with a pinch of salt until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add fresh mushrooms and cook, stirring regularly, until they start to release their liquid, about 5 more minutes. Stir in chopped porcinis.

Sprinkle flour over mushrooms and stir well to combine. Add stock, bring soup to a boil. Cover pot and turn heat down to low. Allow soup to simmer for 15-20 minutes, then add the potatoes. Cook until potatoes are done, another 10-15 minutes, then stir in milk.

Serve in big bowls with freshly baked bread. Makes about 3 quarts.



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The stream of food trucks cruising Baltimore City seems never ending. And that's a good thing. Recently several more popped up, including Noodlerolla. While it doesn't sell noodles, it does serve Korean/Japanese fusion lunches including this "banto" box filled with chicken, rice, pickles, dumplings, and California roll.

Even better is the Korean burrito filled with bulgogi beef or marinated short ribs and a dash of kimchi.

And then there's my new favorite truck, Busia's Kitchen. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the candy-striped truck outside my building. "Busia" is an Americanized-Polish name for "grandma," and I was excited that a truck would serve the cuisine of my people. I tried a sampler of three items of my choice (a fist-sized pierog, a potato pancake, and one of the stuffed cabbage rolls called "golombki").

They were all pretty terrific, very grandma-style. I was impressed and very pleased. For those folks who aren't quite ready to experience the food of Poland (wimps), there are egg salad and tarragon chicken salad sandwiches and a very un-Slavic Mediterranean chicken pita.

Another truck making the rounds is Karlita's, which serves Latino food like burritos, tacos, and quesadillas. I had a steak quesadilla that was very simply made with lots of melty cheese and found it to be extremely satisfying. Next time I'm trying a burrito, or maybe the tacos. Or maybe something else will catch my eye.






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Occasionally I get a real pang of nostalgia for my grandmother's cooking.

Grandma lived with her son, Frankie, my uncle, in the downstairs apartment of our house in Fells Point. My immediate family - Mom, Dad, and my brother - and I lived upstairs. While Mom made dinner most nights, Grandma occasionally gave her the night off by cooking for the house. By the time I came along, Grandma had stopped making more complicated Polish specialties like gołąbki, pączki, krusciki, and pierogi, and pared her culinary repertoire down to a fairly limited number of things - smothered pork chops, kotlety, placki - most of which were cooked in a heavy cast-iron skillet. Some things she made in a big, white, enameled stock pot. Among these were her rosół, szczaw, and spaghetti and meatballs. The latter also required the skillet and was one of the few dishes she made that used more than one pot.


My Uncle had rather plebian taste in food. The only time we ever ate Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was when he requested it. He also liked to eat canned shrimp sautéed in butter with lots of chopped onions. It was incredibly salty and screamed out for an accompaniment of rice or other starch, which occasionally was mac & cheese, but was most often merely buttered rye bread from the giant loaf we always had on hand. My Aunt Stasia's spaghetti and home made meatsauce and meatballs was too fancy for Frankie, but he loved Grandma's plain Jane version. I did too. There was something very comforting in her seven-ingredient recipe, and on a recent evening, I recreated it.

Although she normally used ziti and occasionally rigatoni, we always called it "spaghetti."

Grandma's Spaghetti and Meatballs

1 lb ground round
vegetable oil
2 onions, chopped
4 tablespoons of butter
1 6-oz can tomato paste
1 lb box ziti
salt

Form ground round into balls the size of a quarter. Fry in vegetable oil until dark brown on all sides. Set aside.

Grandma used a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, so her  meatballs were even darker than this.

In the same pan in which you cooked the meatballs, sauté onions in butter until translucent and very slightly browned.  It's very important that you use all 4 tablespoons of butter and lots of onions - these are the major flavor components for the sauce.


Stir in tomato paste and cook for a minute or two. The sauce will be very thick.


While onions are cooking, cook pasta in boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and place pasta back into its pot.

Pour sauce over pasta. Add meatballs. Mix well over low heat until everything has a thin veil of tomato paste. Salt generously.

Eat.
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Yeah - told you it was simple. Simply delicious. It's all about the onions.

Sure, you can get fancy and add cheese or basil or whatnot, but it won't be my Grandma's pasta.

Grandma and me, circa 1966.

I usually sauté things in olive oil, so when the onions hit the butter, it immediately took me back to my childhood, when most meals started out exactly that way - onions cooked in butter. And when I added the tomato paste, it just smelled so right. As I ate it, I was able to revel in a little bit of my childhood, something I'll never recapture time-wise, but can always remember with food.

Thank you, Grandma.

Did anyone watch Emeril's new show on Ion last night? The first episode of the variety-show format Emeril Lagasse Show was a real snoozefest that featured Emeril and Martha Stewart patting each other on the back, the vocal stylings of Michelle Williams (the homeliest Destiny's Child, whose torso is only as wide as her head), and an audience participation game that seemed to confuse the host (probably not that hard to do). Emeril was at his awkward worst, and the show was a pain to watch, especially with all of the obvious product placement for Macy's and Reynold's Wrap.

That said, I thought the best part was the cooking segment in which Emeril prepared a big pot of kapusta i kielbasy for Martha, in honor of her Polish heritage. He used fresh sausage and sauerkraut, but also added smoked pork products and apples. Not as plain and simple as my Grandma's recipe, but it looked good. I would have liked to have learned the name of the thin sausage he added to the pot. It looked like kabonasy, but it could have been any number of varieties. It certainly wasn't that nasty Eckrich smoked "kielbasa."

When asked what she would call the dish, Martha said, "kielbasa and sauerkraut." BZZZZZT! Wrong! She also pronounced "pierogi" wrong. It's "pyeh-rhogi" (roll the r) not, "pie-rogy." It's ok if a French/Portuguese guy from Massachusetts says it wrong, but not someone who is a life-long Pollack. Hmpfh.

Did you watch? Will you watch? I enjoy a train wreck as much as the next guy, so I may give it a shot for a couple of weeks, especially since there's nothing else worth watching at 8pm on Sunday night.

I grew up in a Polish-American family, speaking Polish and eating Polish food. My grandmother was 39 when my mother was born, and my mother was a few weeks shy of 30 when I made my appearance in the world. That meant by the time I came along, for the most part, Grandma's days of cooking were behind her. No more home-made pierogi (ravioli-like dumplings), pączki (donuts), or krusciki (bow-tie cookies). But, she still made some things: soups like barszcz (borcht), szczaw (sorrel soup), and rosół (chicken soup); placki (potato pancakes); for the holidays there was always kapusta i kielbasy (sauerkraut and fresh Polish sausage); and when I was very small there were gołąbki (stuffed cabbage). Eventually, that became too labor-intensive, and Grandma didn't like to have "help" when she was in the kitchen. She grated every beet and potato herself, despite having four other adults in the house. For this reason, her recipes didn't get passed down from generation to generation and I have none.
Ze Mean Bean
1739 Fleet St
Baltimore, MD 21231
(410) 675-5999

Having grown up in a Polish-American family, I am no stranger to those fried confections topped with a blizzard of powder sugar known as chrusciki. Before I was born, my maternal grandmother made them regularly, along with paczki (donuts), pierogi (filled dough pockets), and gołąbki (lit. pigeons; stuffed cabbage leaves). Once I came into the world, however, her time was taken by babysitting (me) and consequently, I got very few of those home-made treats. But...we lived in what once was a Polish neighborhood, and there were still bakeries in the area that could provide us with reasonable fascimiles of home-made. To my tastes anyway. My mother always liked to remind me that Mommy's were better, and having never tasted them, I couldn't argue.

When Mr Minx and I shopped at Wegman's the other day, I spotted boxes of White Eagle chrusciki in the bakery aisle and bought one, for nostalgia's sake.


Unfortunately, these did not turn out to be my madeleine. Fresh and tasty, they were not as fried/greasy as I recall, and there was perhaps a little too much powdered sugar.


And most had broken in transit, leaving none in the actual familiar "bowtie" shape.

I've had some nasty chrusciki in my day. I remember, with no fondness whatsoever, those that our next-door neighbor, my grandmother's first cousin, brought us one afternoon. Her daughter made them, she bragged. Well, her daughter must have kept her powdered sugar next to a box of mothballs and a bag of dirty laundry, because that's what they tasted of. It was like eating deep fried gym socks. I choked down part of one to be polite, and Grandma discreetly trashed the rest of them once cousin Mary shuffled back home.

(And that leads me to an aside: don't even try to store powdered sugar for any length of time, as it absorbs the flavors of everything around it. One of my co-workers made a chocolate cake with completely inedible icing. She evidently stored her confectioner's sugar in the same closet with her Yankee Candle collection.)

Does anyone out there know where to get truly tasty chrusciki in the Baltimore area? (And anything else Polish as well, besides the Krakus Deli on Fleet Street.)