Norm Matthews

When I started teaching, I became friends with a teacher who became sort of a mentor in non school things. He made wine, smoked meats and threw great parties. One annual party was his birthday party and he smoked a whole pig for that occasion. About as often as not I was the bartender. At one party, I overheard two other teachers tell him that their years long quest was to find the restaurant that made the best Country Fried Steak. I can't describe what I thought about that but Don Quixote and Sanjo Panza who set out on a quests with little chance of reward came to mind. Now decades later my son has started that same search for the Chicken Fried Steak they had at the high school cafeteria and I am old enough to understand why people crave food they had while growing up. I found a reciipe that had the right taste but still something was not just right. Charlie found a school cafeteria cookbook with Country Fried Steak in it. The revelation was that instead of using a cheap, tough but tenderized piece of meat, they used seasoned ground beef pressed out on sheet pans and baked, then cut into individual sizes. It was seasoned with salt, pepper, dehydrated onions and some flour. I am baking hamburger paddies and then treating them like the recipe below. Probably the last thing to do is find the right thickness for the meat. So far it has been too thick for his liking, but otherwise it seemsllike we are on the right track. Chicken Fried Steak recipe from Threadgills - Recipe By : Threadgill's - The Cookbook ISBN 1-56352-277-2 Threadgill's meat seasoning mix 1/2 cup kosher salt 4 tablespoons black pepper 2 tablespoons white pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper 2 tablespoons granulated onion 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin 4 tablespoons granulated garlic 2 tablespoons paprika Mix ingredients well. Store in a glass jar or plastic container. Keep tightly sealed. Shake before each use to prevent settling. 8 6 ounce tenderized beef cutlets -- at room temperature 2 eggs 2 cups milk -- at room temperature 3 cups flour 2 teaspoons Threadgill's Meat Seasoning 2 cups frying oil -- preferably canola Whisk eggs and milk together in a bowl and set this egg wash aside. Combine the flour and meat seasoning in another bowl and set aside. Heat the oil in a heavy 14-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat to 350 degrees F. Use a 550 degree thermometer to check temperature. The oil should pop loudly when a drop of egg wash is dropped in. Dip each of the first 4 cutlets in the egg wash mixture. Dredge them in the flour, then dip them back into the egg wash, and very gently place them in the hot oil. As you carry them one at a time from the egg wash to the skillet, hold a plate under them to catch the dripping egg wash. There'll be a regular explosion of noisy oil a-popping. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until breading is set and golden brown. Gently turn them with a long-handled meat fork or long metal tongs. Be careful. Cook another 3 minutes. Carefully remove them from the skillet and drain on a platter lined with paper towels. Let oil reheat and repeat process for other 4 cutlets. Serve with White Cream Gravy and Mashed Potatoes.

Charlie has been painting the living room and dining area so the table is covered with a tarp, rollers, buckets, etc., so we have been eating wherever we find the space. I have done nearly nothing with the smoker this summer. I feel like I need to experiment with different foods and recipes. I did a chicken today and got some ideas for where to go next. I just seasoned it with a rub and sprayed it with a fat for the last hour to help crisp the skin. it took two hours.

Charlie wondered if we could have chislic today. I said that would entail getting some lamb and the only place I know that has it are the Mexican groceries and they only sell it by the quarter, like a whole leg or shoulder and it would be frozen. So he said how about some marinaded steak then. I said I saw a Kabob recipe a few days ago that was grilled and basted with a compound butter. That is what we decided to do. The recipe is just for the meat. I added the vegetables and cooked them on the gas grill for 30 minutes and the steak in the smoker firebox for about ten minutes over charcoal. Charlie really liked it and wondered of it was an Asian recipe. I didn't know. He looked at the recipe and the last line identified it as coming from a Viet Phu Inc. cookbook. That is the Red Boat Fish Sauce company in California.

We had Mongolian Beef tonight.

We had Korean fried chicken wings. This recipe is easier to make than the one I used to use but it still is as messy to eat. We had it with rice and kim chi.

This chicken recipe said Ina Garten liked to make this when she was too tired to cook. Well I felt too lazy to cook so I tried the it. She peels back the skin, brushes it with olive oil, salts and peppers it, spreads goat cheese on, tops it with a fresh basil leaf, replaces the skin and bakes it at 375º for 30-40 minutes. Then she covers it with foil to rest 10 minutes. She said her kids were not crazy about goat cheese but they liked it in this dish. I kinda feel the same way about goat cheese. It was good. Charlie said he liked it too even though he also was skeptical at first. The mushrooms were cooked in sesame oil with some salt and pepper. The tomato was halved, salted, dotted with butter and topped with bread crumbs and broiled until it was browned and bubbly on top. Corn was cooked on the cob and cut off. The broccoli was from a frozen package.

We had Korean food today. Charlie found out that the grocery only has japchae for sale on the weekend so we went and got that and fish cake and some sliced pork shoulder. He heated the tofu and made the rice. I made spicy bulgogi with the pork and cooked the mixed vegetables.

I have ordered three or four things that took a month or more to get here. I wonder what is going on? Anyway, yesterday a long awaited bread pan that holds three hoagie size buns finally came. Today I used them to make some sub sandwiches. The recipe makes eight buns so I froze half of it for another time. I forgot to score them, so maybe that is why they are higher in the middle. The middle loaf was 186º when the other two were 194º but it came out OK anyway.

There were two recipes in the newspaper today that I decided to try. One was Crispy Chicken with Lime Butter and the other one was Ree Drummond's Garlic Parmesan Fries. I didn't get to take a picture of the fries. It was eaten before I got a chance.

This is also a copy of Hemingway's hamburger with some expanded information. i tried this version a few years ago. It was good. There were images including the original image but they didn't copy. Matt Moore • September 10, 2019 • Last updated: June 4, 2021 How to Make Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Hamburger Ernest Hemingway had a huge appetite for life. Whether pounding away at his typewriter, deep sea fishing off the Florida Keys, hunting from the mountains of the American West to the savannas of Africa, or issuing journalistic dispatches and even running his own reconnaissance patrols on the frontlines of war, he had a outsized hunger for a wide range of interests — and that included food itself. Hemingway’s intimate connection to his food started early in his childhood. When he was just a young boy, his father introduced him to the pursuits of hunting and fishing, as well as their ethics: Ernest had to eat whatever he killed. For most sportsmen, such a rule is practical (and often delicious), especially when the game consists of rabbits, venison, elk, and fowl, all of which Ernest consumed with gusto; he had a particularly punctilious recipe for campfire-cooked trout. Yet he kept his father’s rule concerning less common and conveniently cooked game as well, consuming everything from porcupine to snake to lion. Though Papa found his solace in the wild, he also enjoyed the culinary comforts of civilization — like dining out and sipping a nice wine or refreshing daiquiri. His posthumous masterpiece, A Moveable Feast (1964), showcases Ernest’s appreciation for describing his meals. I remember serving up this specific quote to my wife, to get her to come around to the joy of oysters: As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. And while he wasn’t overly domestic, Hemingway sometimes cooked at home for himself and for others; as a war correspondent, he was known to fry up a pancake breakfast on a portable stove in his hotel room and invite his fellow journalists to partake. Most frequently though, he had his household staff cook his meals, based on recipes he had first meticulously taste-tested and formulated himself. A batch of these re-surfaced a decade ago, when in 2009 a trove of digitized documents made their way into the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Most of these documents came from Hemingway’s time in Cuba, a roughly twenty-year period where he produced some of his literary bests, including For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea. While the majority of the details in this archival material were mundane, there was one particular document, made viral by The Paris Review, that captured even my attention: the recipe for Papa’s favorite hamburger. I’ve long been a burger purist. My philosophy has been well documented: use the best meat you can find, with a nice ratio of fat to meat, and season it with salt and pepper — nothing else. Gently mound the burger into a loose patty, and cook it up in a cast-iron pan to develop a nice char, with a medium-rare center. So I must say that I was a bit taken aback by Hemingway’s instructions when it came to preparing his hamburgers: “ground beef, onions, garlic, India relish, and capers, cooked so the edges are crispy but the center red and juicy.” Though the later cooking technique seemed on point, I felt awash in a slew of additional ingredients, some of which I naively deemed to be unnecessary. Nevertheless, if there is one man who perhaps deserves an immense amount of trust, it is Hemingway himself. So I set about to re-create his recipe, exactly as it was written, ingredients, instructions, and all. I inevitably hit some same snags in resurrecting this three-quarters-of-a-century-old burger formulation, however. One of the Spice Islands seasonings has since gone kaput. And India relish? I checked my local store and online, and while it’s possible to source, it’s not easy. With my beers cold in the fridge and my wife hankering for this burger, I thought it best to find the right substitute (included below). I felt less guilty about not following the recipe to a T, as Hemingway himself, or perhaps a family member, includes a slew of other ingredients scattered on the page. What resulted was honestly one of the best burgers I’ve had in my life. I’m not just saying that. Hell, my wife told me it was bar-none the best burger she’s ever had. The seasoned meat, when cooked exactly as described, provides a savory umami bomb of complexity, and the drippings of the burger absorbed into the bun, making condiments entirely unnecessary. I can see why a man so well-traveled, indulged, and imbibed, would go out of his way to create such a pleasure. And like most of his work, I’m simply glad he took the time to record it for others. The recipe is quoted in its exact form below, and I added a few substitution notes after that. How to Make Papa’s Favorite Hamburger From experimenting, Papa’s Favorite Hamburger. There is no reason why a fried hamburger has to turn out gray, greasy, paper-thin and tasteless. You can add all sorts of goodies and flavors to the ground beef — minced mushrooms, cocktail sauce, minced garlic and onion, chopped almonds, a big dollop of Piccalilli, or whatever your eye lights on. Papa prefers this combination. Ingredients I’m showing you all the ingredients here together so you can see them at a glance. But as you’ll see from the instructions, you add them to the meat in different steps when making the recipe. 1 lb. ground lean beef 2 cloves, minced garlic 2 little green onions, finely chopped 1 heaping teaspoon, India relish 2 tablespoons, capers 1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands Sage Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning — ½ teaspoon Spice Islands Mei Yen Powder — ½ teaspoon 1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork About one-third cup dry red or white wine 1 tablespoon cooking oil Directions Break up the meat with a fork and scatter the garlic, onion, and dry seasonings over it, then mix them into the meat with a fork or your fingers. Let the bowl of meat sit out of the icebox for ten or fifteen minutes while you set the table and make the salad. Add the relish, capers, everything else including wine and let the meat sit, quietly marinating, for another ten minutes if possible. Now make four fat, juicy patties with your hands. The patties should be an inch thick, and soft in texture but not runny. Have the oil in your frying-pan hot but not smoking when you drop in the patties and then turn the heat down and fry the burgers about four minutes. Take the pan off the burner and turn the heat high again. Flip the burgers over, put the pan back on the hot fire, then after one minute, turn the heat down again and cook another three minutes. Both sides of the burgers should be crispy brown and the middle pink and juicy. Substitution Notes/Changes Spice Islands discontinued its Mei Yen Powder several years ago. I substituted with 1 tsp. soy sauce, ½ tsp. kosher salt, ½ tsp sugar, combined and added into the meat mixture. The other Spice Islands seasonings are still available. The Beau Monde is a unique blend, but the sage can be substituted with any other good quality sage. India Relish. You can indeed still get this online, but often in bulk and usually for a pretty penny (for a jar of relish). The taste is described best as right down the middle, not too sour or sweet. I’m personally a dill relish guy, so I just substituted with my favorite dill relish and the result was spectacular.

Periodontist put me on a soft food diet since an extraction on Thursday. That night I had leftover ham and noodle casserole. Last night was Pho delivered and tonight was some Creole Corn and Crab bisque. I mads some garlic toast with sourdough bread. We ate outside.

Yesterday we had a ham dinner. No occasion, just that Charlie said a few days ago that he'd like to have ham sometime soon. A couple days ago, Walmart had some Frick's bone in ham and they are always good City hams and cheap too so that is what we had. Today we went to an Italian restaurant in Overland Park for lunch then went to the Korean market in the same mall and got stuff for dinner tonight. Charlie got some side dishes: a tofu dish called dubujolim, japchae, fishcake, kimche, and some other stuff not for dinner tonight. I got some thin sliced pork shoulder, bok choy, snap peas, shitake mushrooms and rice. I made bulgogi with the pork and cooked the vegetables separately in sesame oil and salt and pepper, then combined them to heat through and served in one bowl. We had so much food that we each needed two plates for everything.

A few days ago I got a package of fondue and today decided what to do with it. I cooked some steak, new potatoes, shrimp, baked a loaf of bread and added some cut up apples

Charlie asked about having lasagne today. I told him that asking for lasagne and getting it the same day would be too hard and too late. He then suggested chicken breast, Martini style. That I can do. We like it with fettuccini and Alfredo sauce. I decided to add mushrooms to the usual carrots and green beans.

We have one that looks very much like that a few blocks away. It is in a liquor store parking lot and next to a car wash.