A Subtle Grace Before Meals–Victorian Fish Curry

I’m delighted to host my editor and friend Ellen Gable, as she makes her way around the blogosphere promoting her latest book, A Subtle Grace. You don’t know Ellen? Let me introduce you!

Ellen Gable (Hrkach) is a bestselling, award-winning author of five books. She is also a freelance writer, publisher, editor, book coach, NFP teacher and President of Catholic Writers Guild. When she’s not writing, Ellen enjoys spending time with her family, watching old movies, playing trivia games and reading on her Kindle. Originally born in New Jersey, USA, the author now calls Canada her home. She and her family reside in rural Pakenham, Ontario, Canada.

Here’s Ellen’s cover:

Here’s the Book Blurb/Synopsis:

1896, Philadelphia. In this sequel to In Name Only (2009 FQP), A Subtle Grace continues the story of the wealthy and unconventional O’Donovan Family as they approach the dawn of a new century. At 19, Kathleen (oldest daughter) is unmarried with no prospects. Fearing the lonely fate of an old maid, her impatience leads to an infatuation with the first man who shows interest. The suave, handsome son of the local police chief seems a perfect match. But will her impulsive manner prevent her from recognizing her true beloved? A disturbing turn of events brings a dark shadow that threatens the life-long happiness she desires.

Dr. Luke Peterson (the family’s new physician) also makes quite an impression on Kathleen. His affection for her leads him to startling revelations: about Kathleen, about his practice and, most importantly, about himself.

Will (oldest son) believes God may be calling him to a religious vocation. Eventually, he discovers the hidden circumstances of his humble beginnings, compelling him to embark on a pilgrimage to Rome.

(Although “A Subtle Grace” is a sequel, it can be read as a stand alone book.)

Go visit my author page for my 7 Quick Takes interview with Ellen. My review of the book is on Amazon, and my endorsement is on the endorsement page (my first ever book endorsement! and I was QUITE happy to give it).

And now, as this is my virtual kitchen, I won’t just leave you with book stuff. A Subtle Grace takes place in the late Victorian era, and as Ellen’s virtual book tour is taking place in Lent. I wanted to combine the two and blog a meal that the lovely O’Donovan family might have been eating on a Friday in Lent of 1896. Alas, this is a meal that Dr. Luke would not enjoy, as that character does not eat fish. Let’s pretend he’s out doing a corporal work of mercy and it’s just the family for dinner tonight. No food makes me think “Gilded Age” like a nice curry, and as soon as I saw Cauliflower in the German Style on Recipes Past and Present, I couldn’t resist; as much as you may think Irish when you think Catholic Philadelphia, Philly’s Catholic population was, for a very long time, mostly German–as was most of the population of any faith. Did you know that up until recent decades, the most commonly printed language in the U. S. of A. was not English but German? This is why I’m not a fan of making English the officially official language of my country, because the language, like the people, is always in flux–the second we codify it will be the second that law is outdated and cripples how We the People serve We the People. Anyway, not like anyone wanted to hear from me on that subject. So, without further ado…

The Menu– A Supper in Three Courses Suitable for an Upper-Class Lenten Friday

Codfish Curry

Cauliflower in the German Style

Boiled Potatoes with Chive Butter

Codfish Curry (inspired by Victorian Curried Fish on Recipes Past and Present)

2 lb cod or other white fish
1/4 c butter, divided
1 onion, quartered then sliced
1 T flaked coconut
1/2 T of curry powder
1/2 t Kosher salt
a “dusting” of sugar
1 T flour + 1/4 t of pepper (white would look best, but we only had black)
1 c of vegetable stock or fish stock
2 T lemon juice

In a heavy pan over medium-high heat, melt 2 T butter then immediately add fish (this will keep the butter from smoking). Fry fish on both sides until fish just starts flaking with fork but is not quite cooked through. Remove fish from pan and cover. With pan still over medium-high heat, add remaining butter and sliced onion and stir until onions just start to brown, reducing heat as needed to keep butter from smoking. Return fish to pan, then add coconut, curry, and salt, then sprinkle with flour/pepper mixture. Pour in stock and simmer, covered, over low heat for five minutes or until fish flakes easily with fork. Use a fork to flake all the fish. Sprinkle with lemon juice just before serving.

Cauliflower in the German Style is pretty much here, only I didn’t toast the bread crumbs in butter first, since the bread crumbs we buy in paper canisters from the store are already toasted. The cauliflower was good, but it could have used some more flavor, like rubbed sage or at least some parsley. We make spaetzle in the same way, so the cauliflower was a nice change.

All you have to do for the chive potatoes is skin, chop and slice as many spuds as you’d like (usually 1/person being served), then boil them until tender; then while still steaming-hot, toss with butter and chives (fresh if you have them, but if you have dried, reconstitute them in water for 10 minutes before adding them).

When I first told Ellen I’d celebrate her latest book with a Victorian meal here on Mrs. Mackerelsnapper, OP, I imagined a meal of boiled stuff in butter. I wasn’t far off, but what was a surprise was how good it was, overall. I’m more of an oven-roasting, microwaving, slow-cooking kind of girl. Taking some time to step back in time, both in my kitchen as well as with A Subtle Grace, was a journey well worth taking, and I didn’t even need a TARDIS or to put my life in mortal danger to do it. Quite nice indeed.

 

 

I thought I didn’t like clam chowder.

It turns out I just don’t like canned clam chowder. We have two Lenten birthdays in the Mackerelsnapper household. No matter what we do, those birthdays will always be in Lent. One year when we were dating, Mr. M’s birthday fell on a Friday, so I invited him over to my apartment to make him dinner. I was just starting my cooking career, and it was so long ago that I couldn’t go to the internet to find recipes, because it was mostly AOL chat rooms and X-Files fanfic and whatnot. Anyway, I went to my trusty Betty Crocker Cookbook to find a dinner that would be easy yet elegant, romantic but not overbearing, and special enough for the agnostic steak-lover but meatless enough for me to eat alongside him.

“What is this?” he asked as I served him his dinner.

“Salmon mousse in puff pastry,” I replied, waiting for him to voice his admiration.

“Salmon mousse?”  He bust out laughing. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Kill you? What are you–? Oh! Oh no!”

::facepalm:: I never made him salmon mousse again.

Anyway, many years later, and this was another year in which his birthday fell on a Friday, only this time around he and all of our brood are Catholic. There are three ways that practicing Catholics may approach a Lenten Friday birthday.

1. Say, “I’m sure God won’t mind if we celebrate such a special day!” and make steak.
2. Say, “It’s Lent, and you’ll have another birthday another year. Bread and water for us sinners.”
3. Say, “It’s Lent, but it is your birthday. Let’s break out something that is meatless but slightly luxurious.”

We went with #3. We made bread bowls directly from this recipe,though we did skip the cornmeal and egg wash bits. We also halved the recipe and shaped them into five bowls instead of four. They held up well to the hollowing-and-filling process. We filled them with clam chowder. We used this recipe as a starting off point but made a few changes, even beyond the leaving out of the bacon slices.

Clam Chowder

2 T olive oil
5 T butter, divided
2 onions, finely diced
1 8oz bottle of clam juice or 1 c clam broth (you can make that by treating clam shells like the vegetable trash in veggie stock)
2 10oz cans of minced clams, drained, juices reserved
4 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 c half and half, divided
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 T flour

In a large stock pot, soften onions in olive oil and 2 T butter over medium-high heat for 5-7 minutes (you want them translucent but not quite brown). Add bottled clam juice and the juice from one of the cans of clams, then add potatoes and salt. Cover and simmer over medium heat for 15 minutes or until potatoes are nice and soft.

Meanwhile, pour 1/2 c of half and half into a shaker bottle and add flour and black pepper. Shake until blended and smooth.

Once potatoes are ready, add half and half, clams, remaining clam juice, and remaining butter. Heat over medium, but don’t allow it to boil. Once heated through (butter has melted), add reserved half and half/flour/pepper liquid, and stir over medium heat until thickened, reducing heat as needed to avoid boiling. Serve immediately.

Adding the black pepper to the thickening flour & cream may just be a quirk of mine. I find that the pepper helps to break up the flour and makes for a smoother thickener, with fewer lumps to be worked out in the final product.

I made clam chowder for the Birthday Honoree, because Mr. M loves clam chowder, but I am not a fan. Or, at least I thought I wasn’t. I am, however, a fan of this stuff for sure. Next time his birthday falls on a Friday, I have even more reason not to think about making salmon mousse.

Lent 2014: The Leftovers Lent

No, this year’s challenge is not surviving on leftovers for 40 days (though that would be interesting). I started this blog as a way to get myself back in the discipline of writing on a regular basis: just once a week, I told myself, might get me back in the daily groove. Once a week for God, and maybe that would open up enough of a crack in the door for the writing grace to walk back in and spend a little time with me. The good news is that it worked.

The bad news for this blog is that my fiction career, piddling though it may be, is demanding what spare time I have.

But it’s still Lent. I still have to cook, and we’re still going Pre-VII-style meatless. The blogging of it, however, will be extremely limited. This year will be a “best of” with a few new recipes thrown in. For instance, in the event our mint comes back enough before Easter, I really want to make samosas with mint chutney.

For tonight, however, we’re pulling out a family favorite: Slow Roasted Potato Leek Soup.

No, that doesn’t look slow roasted to me, either. I had to hurry things along because the slow cooker was otherwise engaged first thing this morning making a batch of veggie stock. So, if you’re in a rush, you, too, can soften your leeks in butter then soften them some more with the diced potatoes in the recipe’s 2 c veggie stock before adding it to your slow cooker.

We’re serving it with our… Homemade Beer Bread

3 c flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 T salt
1 T sugar
120z bottle of beer
Optional: 1/4 c butter

Grease two loaf pans. Preheat oven to 400F. Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and beer together and divide between loaf pans. Slice butter into pats and place on top. Bake at 400F for 35 minutes or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean.

One Pot Wonder IS truth in advertising!

We followed the recipe for One Pot Wonder at Kim’s Simple Recipes.  It was a hit!  One might even say it was a wonder!

We used fettucine instead of linguine, and we used fresh oregano instead of dried because that’s all we had), but the results were smashing!

If you’re looking for a low-maintenance, meatless Friday recipe, click the link above and enjoy!

Cool Caribbean Tilapia

Too hot to use the oven? Ran out of propane and propane accessories for the grill? Break out the microwave-safe dish for a dinner of…

Cool Caribbean Tilapia
(or, as Middle Dumpling likes to call it, “Fishy Colada”)

3 tilapia fillets
Salt & pepper to taste
1 can coconut milk
1/4 c chopped cilantro, divided
1/4 c lime juice, divided

Salt and pepper fish and place in a microwaveable dish. Pour coconut milk over all. Sprinkle with half of the cilantro and half of the lime juice. Microwave covered on high for 8 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork. Let rest five minutes before serving. Drain and sprinkle fish with remaining cilantro and lime juice.

Then after family rosary, enjoy one of these:

Lent Challenge 2013 Day 43: Bread Alone?

Ah, the Lent Challenge.  Boy, that takes me back.  All of four days ago, we were still fasting and so busy with the Triduum that it took me until Easter Monday to finish the blogging of it all. Just as our Jewish older sibs get rid of all the chometz (every single crumb of leaven) in the house heading into Passover, we thought it would be kind of meaningful to use up all the bread in our house in anticipation of Good Friday.

Slow Cooker, you’re my hero!

Slow Cooker “Quiche” (prep time:  10 minutes)

8 c cubes of leftover breads (I say “breads” because we used everything we could:  naan, pita, rolls, leftover French bread, etc.)
2 broccoli crowns
1 onion
1 c chopped celery
1 c shredded mozzarella
1/2 c parmesan cheese
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 c milk (if your “quiche” seems dry, add more milk until it is at least malleable)
1 t salt
1/2 t black pepper

 

Chop broccoli stems in your food processor first, then chop the florets, to make sure they’re all chopped evenly. Then go ahead and chop your onion in there, too.  Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until well-mixed.  Spray your slow cooker liner with cooking spray.  Pour in “quiche” and cook on low 4-5 hours.

This makes an ENORMOUS batch.  It can be halved easily, but as this was an experiment, I don’t know how that would affect the cooking time.

Lent 2013 Challenge Day 42: Slowcooker Falafel. Seriously.

We had a perfect cucumber for making tzatziki. Oldest kid is a huge falafel fan. Alas, our 20 minute rule could not possibly permit for falafel… or could it? On a whim, I googled “crock pot falafel,” and God bless Stephanie at Crockpot365. She has a recipe for falafel! That was the feature of our meal last night.

See how golden brown those falafel got, all without deep frying?  I’m not going to kid us both and tell you they’re better than fried:  they’re not.  Seriously, these were just as good as baked and a million times faster.  All kinds of yum.

However, the meal as a whole is best made in installments. Because of the timing, I’m going to start you off with our…

Tzatziki Cous Cous (prep time: 3 min +5 min + 6 min)

1 1/2 c plain yogurt
1 whole seedless/English cucumber, ends trimmed off
juice of 1 lemon
1 T chopped oregano (we were out, so we used cilantro)
1 T chopped mint
1 T minced garlic (as usual, we used more–shocking)
1 t salt
1 1/2 c vegetable stock or water
1 c whole wheat cous cous
1 t butter or oil

Line a strainer with coffee filters and place yogurt over filters. Place strainer over a bowl and then place the whole contraption in a refrigerator, allowing the yogurt to strain for 4-10 hours. (If you have Greek yogurt, use that without straining, but on our budget, we are using just regular American, non-drinking, spoon-only yogurt).

Shortly before serving, cut your cucumber into thumb-length chunks and chop it in a food processor until finely diced. Add lemon juice, herbs, garlic and salt, and pulse to process. Add strained yogurt (discard whey in the bottom bowl).

Just before serving, boil stock/water and oil (in microwave for 5 minutes should do the trick. Add cous cous, stir, then cover immediately. Let sit for 5 minutes, then stir in tzatziki.

Top this lovely dish with Crockpot365’s Falafel. And feta crumbles if you have them.  I whipped our falafel together in less than five minutes, using the food processor. Some day, I’ll make these vegan with ground flaxseed as an egg substitute.

I did make what was supposed to be “suddenly pita,” but due to circumstances beyond my control (a. k. a. needy preschooler), I was not able to fit those into the 20 minute time frame, so they weren’t part of our “official” meal and instead became part of lunch earlier in the day.

Y’all know by now that if you’re looking for prayers and reflections on Holy Thursday, you probably need to look elsewhere on the #catholic tag.

If you’ve gotten this far, please pray for several special intentions for several friends and family members of mine, all going through tough, tough times.

Lent 2013 Challenge Day 41: On the Road Again

Yesterday our homeschool field trip club visited a museum in the city where Mr. M works.  Because of our schedule, we would be eating lunch at the museum, and all five of us would be eating dinner in the inevitable traffic jam on the way home.  Thus, I had to make all three meals for the day before leaving the house in the morning.

Breakfast was the usual:  yogurt or Instant Breakfast (depending on the kid), cereal, fresh fruit.

Lunch was hummus wraps with whole-wheat tortillas (hummus was homemade because it’s cheaper and I’m allergic to tahini; tortillas were store-bought because I can only do so much with my time).  We also brought along small Tupperware snack cups of apple sauce,  the last three juice boxes someone gave us, and a large tumbler of water for myself.

Dinner was spiral noodles and peas in cream cheese mushroom alfredo.  It was mushroom alfredo because, surprise, we were out of evaporated milk; I subbed a can of cream of mushroom soup from our emergency stash.  We gave the Tupperware microwave pasta cooker one.  last.  try. The results were passable, though they were a bit gummy and did take longer than the 9 minutes the recipe promised.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that our dinner was still hot by after 7 hours.  I made sure to preheat the Thermoses with boiling water for five minutes, then I heated a rice bag in the microwave (the kind you use for sore muscles) and placed that between all the Thermoses in a bag in our trunk.  So, the meal itself took fewer than 20 minutes to cook, but I may have gone over with the prepping of Thermoses.  Thermi?  Hm.

Lent 2013 Challenge Day 38: Breakfast for Anytime

This really only works with the rules if you have a food processor to do your shredding and chopping.  We chopped a whole onion and shredded three potatoes (skins and all).  We mixed all that together and dumped it into our cast iron pan with a good, generous splash of oil.  Stirring it up occasionally, wait until the potatoes really start to brown, then let them sit and glue themselves together a bit.  With a heavy metal spatula…

… flip the whole thing over, in sections if it breaks up (which it will), and let it all get just as brown and crispy on the other side.

Meanwhile, scramble some eggs (or fry them, but since we’re on a time limit, scrambling is faster).  Serve it all up with some sliced fruit.  Just in under the 20 minute wire, and you get a nice picture of Spinal Tap out of it.  Enjoy!

“Waitaminute, Mrs. Mackerelsnapper, OP,” you say.  “Isn’t using a food processor cheating?”  Perhaps.  But remember that our goal is to save up enough money with our fasting to buy kitchen appliances for our local food cupboard to give to families in need?  “Oh, yes,” you reply.  “That’s right.”  Someone REALLY nice even gave us a sizable donation so that we can donate more than the bare minimum.  In about a week, we’ll go shopping and give you an update on what we were able to scrounge.

Lent 2013 Challenge Day 36-37: Nothing to see here, people.

Really, there isn’t.  Late Thursday afternoon I had all the kids out for haircuts, so Mr. M made pizzas for us using the par-baked crusts spoken of in last weekend’s food prep post.

Last night, I had to use up the rest of that monster bag of bargain kale before it went south, so I made sauteed kale with mushrooms (bought on sale last week, also going south) and garlic.  I deglazed the pan with a bit of white wine, having forgotten to take out a container of vegetable stock to thaw.  Meanwhile I had angel hair cooking in our microwave pasta cooker… and I’m starting to give up on that thing.  I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but all but the first two batches of pasta I’ve made in that thing have been just this side of inedible.  They’re gummy and mushy and gross.  So, we had food last night, and it was all by the book, but it wasn’t very tasty.  Alas.  There wasn’t enough Parmesan cheese in the world to save it.