The Best Dish that Mom Cooked for You

[reuvens]

As I am still young I am considering my Mom´s alltime Food Miracle

was a simple Chicken Stew with Paprika and a kind of Spätzle Dumplings....

I will never ever forget this taste !

As a Chef...Thank you "Mama".....what is / was your alltime Favourite ?

The one and only dish that is still in your mind in smell / taste.....

Edited July 12, 2005 by vue_de_cuisine (log)

[Sue Flay]

As I am still young I am considering my Mom´s alltime Food Miracle

was a simple Chicken Stew with Paprika and a kind of Spätzle Dumplings....

I will never ever forget this taste !

←

We cooked this exact dish yesterday--I'll post a picture if I can! My husband got a spatzle maker (a little square dish that goes back and forth on a track over a sort of grater) before we met, and I took it as a good sign for our relationship.

I dream about my mom's baked macaroni and cheese with dry mustard in the sauce and lots of crunchy buttered crumbs on top. She also made a venison pie with red current jelly and pearl onions that was amazing.

[docsconz]

My absolute favorite dish from my mother growing up was bucatini with a stuffed blue crab sauce. I would always ask for this on my birthday. She would take crabs split by the fishmonger (tops pulled off and kept) and stuff the tops with a bread crumb, cheese and herb mixture. The tops would be placed back on top of the cleaned bodies and tied together with string. The crabs would then simmer for a few hours in a tomato sauce imparting the most incredible flavor. When I have access to live blue crabs, i make the dish myself. Unfortunately it is not nor will it ever be as good as hers.

Other favorites included fusilli with chopped meat sauce (we made it for dinner tonight) and white clam sauce.

[AK@Spicehouse]

Thanks heavens my mother has a live in housekeeper. Her idea of cooking was take-out.. Fine woman, but cooking, not....

Grandma made a great Matzo ball soup though,, Inspired me.,,

As I am still young I am considering my Mom´s alltime Food Miracle

was a simple Chicken Stew with Paprika and a kind of Spätzle Dumplings....

I will never ever forget this taste !

←

[lesfen]

Mmmmm... mom's home cookin'. My mother is the gravy master. You give her a hunk of meat and some of that "gravy master/kitchen bouquet" stuff and some mashed 'taters and you have one happy family. I don't even care that she cheats a little with the bottle... it's soooo good.

"Honey, what would you like for your birthday dinner?"

"Anything with gravy, mommy."

[cakewalk]

My mother was not a particularly good cook (to say the least), but she made great soups. Thick, hearty vegetable soup with a meat base (my father was a butcher, everything had a meat base), and wonderful chicken soup were her specialties.

[CaliPoutine]

My best memories are all the "jewish" foods my mom made. Blintzes, noodle kugel( sweet), brisket, matza ball soup. Ive never had better than my moms.

[bergerka]

Chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. No contest. Accept no substitutions.

She also makes this rice dish with sour cream, jack cheese and green chilis that totally floats my boat.

K

[reuvens]

My husband got a spatzle maker (a little square dish that goes back and forth on a track over a sort of grater)

We are really talking about the same dish.....Amazing! My mom is using the same "machine"...

And by the way....so far in the thread 2 times Matzoball Soup and 2 times Chicken Stew with Spätzle.....a tight game

[Toliver]

Chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. No contest.  Accept no substitutions.

←

Word.

Or should that be "Word to your mother"?

I love my mom's chicken fried steak and I swear that, if given the chance, I could eat it all in one sitting.

[Basilgirl]

Her beef stroganoff - strips of round steak braised slowly in onions & butter and beef stock - no fancy filet or sirloin for us (6 kids)...tomato paste, mushrooms, sour cream, heavy cream. On buttered poppyseed noodles.

Pot roast French dips.

Slices of salami layered with cream cheese and cut into triangles.

Beef fondue with 3 kinds of dipping sauces.

Cream cheese, olive & walnut sandwiches.

[acautrell]

My mother is really more of a baker than a cook, but her chicken stew is perfect, especially when she makes fluffy dumplings on top.

She stayed up late making this after I had my wisdom teeth out and was unable to eat anything except popsicles and yogurt. Nothing I've eaten since has ever tasted better than that first spoonful.

[reuvens]

I just want to add, that my Mom never ever used a recipe or even a scale for her cooking and baking....

And she hardly produced any Disasters and as a Professional i saw Chefs doing worse with all their tools and skills...Man...my mom is the best...sorry Guys !

[Really Nice!]

Meatloaf with bacon slices on top.

[Verjuice]

I could've sworn that there was already a thread on this topic, but I can't seem to find it.

My mother was only ever in the kitchen around birthdays for one of two reasons:

1)Chocolate-frosted devil's food cake

2)Warm, sticky chocolate pudding cake

Both were okay, but we doubly appreciated her efforts because we knew how much she hated cooking.

"Ma made the cornmeal and water into two thin loaves, each shaped in a half circle. She laid the loaves with their straight sides together in the bake-oven, and she pressed her hand flat on top of each loaf. Pa always said he did not ask any other sweetening, when Ma put the prints of her hands on the loaves."

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie

Edited July 12, 2005 by Verjuice (log)

[rcaffelle]

She also makes this rice dish with sour cream, jack cheese and green chilis that totally floats my boat.

K

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I love this kind of rice, too. Search for "southwestern rice" on foodtv.com and you should find a recipe from Sara Moulton. It's great.

rich

[newbie]

My favourites include a French Acadian dish called Chicken Fricot, a chicken soup with summer savory for seasoning topped off with yummy dumplings. Also, boiled dinner made with cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions and stewed meat.

[TMus1111]

I could've sworn that there was already a thread on this topic, but I can't seem to find it.

Maybe the thread you are referring to is in the Special Occassions Forum - Pay Hommage to Your Mother, Her Culinary Skills (I don't know how to link other threads)

[DTBarton]

Mom made lots of good stuff. I especially remember rib roast and Yorkshire pudding at Christmas, pork roasts with hoppin' John, and these terrific pastrami sandwiches she made with pastrami, swiss and mustard on Kaiser rolls, wrapped in foil and baked for a long time in the oven. Hot gooey wonderful with dill pickles. She's gotten much more diet concious in her later years, don't get these treats much anymore althhough the pork roast still comes out on holidays sometimes.

Got get both grandmothers in on this.

Dad's Mom: Beef and noodles - shredded pot roast and beef gravy mixed with home made noodles she rolled, cut, and dried on makeshift string clotheslines in the kitchen. She would laugh today if someone told her she was making artisinal pasta. Born in 1903 in Oklahoma, she never heard the word pasta. This dish still resonates clearly in my memory, it was killer.

Ham and beans - dries beans cooked with a big piece of ham, falling apart ham pieces mixed with beans at the end and served over conbread.

Mom's Mom - A Presbyterian lady from the Shenandoah valley of VA. Great church picnic food, fried chicken, deviled eggs. Also the queen of the pressure cooker. I learned to like vegetables eating fresh produce from my grandfather's garden cooked in my grandmother's pressure cooker.

[Angela Alaimo]

Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, and hoe cakes.

Or maybe biscuits with sausage gravy.

<swoon>

I don't do too badly with either of these, but it's nicer when someone's making it for you.

[Allura]

Two things come to mind because they were frequenently requested: meat tortellini alfredo (frozen tortellini, but still good), and corn fritters. Couldn't get her to make the latter too often, since she hates frying, unless someone else is cleaning her stove after...

Oh, and when I was 5ish, my dad made a meatloaf train for my birthday that I still remember. He rarely cooks, so putting all that work into it still makes me smile.

[mizducky]

My mom was an excellent cook, and was yet another maker of a truly fine chicken soup. Hers was more like a stew than a soup, actually. She believed in soups with big hunks o' food in 'em.

But her finest cooking efforts as far as I'm concerned all revolved around Thanksgiving. I had no idea how spoiled I was by her turkey-day skills until I moved cross-country and started having Thanksgiving with friends, and got to experience all the lame-ass excuses for Thanksgiving dinner all these other poor souls had been suffering with all their lives. Never until then had I understood the yearly flurry in the papers assuaging the panic of home cooks regarding turkey-roasting--what is up with these folks? I'd wonder; my mom showed me how to do that when I was a kid, and yeah it took time but it certainly wasn't rocket science. But I guess it must indeed be such for many people, because to this day, the only way I can experience a roast turkey anywhere as good as my mom's is if I prepare it myself.

[ruthcooks]

My favorite recipes of my mother's are now mine, as I've adopted or adapted them over the years: Swiss steak, meatloaf, frosted soft orange cookies, her vinegar cole slaw. One thing I have never duplicated is Mom's homemade egg noodles. Hers were tough and chewy; she despaired over them and I loved them. Mine are always soft as butter after cooking 2 minutes. I remember her fried chicken, but back then chicken always tasted better because it was raised on the farm.

Many other wonderful recipes came not from her, but from the people she knew in card club, neighborhood club, church socials: Fern's scalloped chicken and pineapple icebox cake, Mary's coffeecake and asparagus casserole, Linda's cranberry salad, and the family recipe for ice cream which I finally tracked down to my great aunt Enid.

Mom is 87 now, and doesn't cook at all anymore. The only food she truly loves is cookies!

[munchymom]

My mom made the most wonderful pan-fried chicken when I was a kid. Haven't had it in years, since she's more health-conscious and out of the habit of frying now... but maybe I'll request it the next time I visit (have to introduce the next generation to the wonders of pan-frying, you know!) My dad's always been in charge at Thanksgiving, and he makes the best turkey and stuffing (not to mention a fabulous turkey noodle soup the next day).

[KARENR65]

Chicken Soup

Roast Chicken

Roast Pork with Crispy Skin

Pot Roast

Eye Round

Ropa Vieja!

Yum!