This recipe comes from my old friend Ruth Liles, one of my old Iowa City hippie crowd (except she’s in Seattle now).

Lutheran Church Supper Baked Beans

Embarassingly simple to make, and they get cleaned out to the last bean most every time. I love to bring these to hippie organic tabouleh-heavy potlucks and watch people go into a feeding frenzy.

2 2O-ounce cans of cheap house brand baked beans (or 4 of the little cans)
1 large yellow onion, medium chop
1/2 lb. (more is better) good thick country bacon chopped into reasonable bits
2/3 cup (more or less) Heinz ketchup
1/3 cup (more or less) molasses

Fry bacon until it is your preferred crispiness, set aside and try to keep your family from snacking on it. Fry onions in bacon fat until golden brown, drain most of the bacon fat off the onions, set aside. Dump beans into your bean pot or baking dish that has a cover. Add in onions and bacon, stir to mix. Add ketchup until the right tomatoey-ness is achieved. Add molasses until right balance of dark sweetness is achieved. Cover bean pot and bake in 350 degree oven for an hour or so, until it is bubbly all the way through and your family is gathered around the oven inhaling the aroma and whimpering.

(JOSEPH’S NOTE: I PREFER TO COOK IT UNCOVERED SO IT’S LESS JUICY AND HAS A NICE CRUST ON TOP)

If you don’t want to heat up the kitchen, you can put the whole shebang into your Crock Pot and cook on high for 2 to 3 hours, make sure it cooks at a bubbly pace for an hour to mix flavors. The Crock Pot method makes it pretty easy to take to potlucks: just masking-tape the lid down and put it in a box for transport to avoid spills.

Two 15-oz. cans chicken broth
One 750-gram box of Parmalat chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 cup crème fraîche, or more, to taste

Combine broth, tomatoes and herbs in saucepan over high heat. Bring to boil, lower heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in crème fraîche. Serve very hot or very cold, with fresh black pepper. Add a little cooked macaroni (medium shells are my preference) to each serving if liked. (Yield:Six servings.)

(figure three servings for every pound of liver)

1 lb. chicken livers
2 tablespoons dry Colman’s mustard
2 tablespoons water
1 egg
cornmeal
salt
pepper

In a soup-bowl, dissolve mustard in water. Let stand 30 minutes, and mix again. Add egg, and mix well.
Pre-heat oven to 350. Grease a large rectangular baking dish.
Combine cornmeal, salt, and pepper.
One by one, dip livers into the mustard/egg mixture, and roll them in the cornmeal mixture. (You’ll have to keep adding to the cornmeal mixture, because it’ll get soggy.) Place livers in the baking dish, so that they’re not touching.
Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.
I suggest serving with risotto, or a potato gratin.

This cocktail went out of fashion at least 70 years ago, but it’s still a surprisingly good drink. Many recipes for it exist; most are sweeter than this one, and some use cream (yecch!). This recipe produces a drink with just a touch of sweetness; not enough to make it girly. You don’t need to use really good gin for this concoction: It’s not like a martini, where the quality of the gin really does make a difference. Indeed, the white lady was invented as a way of covering up the foul taste of the bad gin that was in wide circulation during Prohibition.

In a shaker, combine:
cracked ice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Cointreau or Triple Sec
1 egg white (or three tablespoons of packaged egg whites)
3 ozs. gin
Shake well, and strain into a chilled martini glass. This will produce a slightly fluorescent white drink, with foam on top: attractive enough that no garnish is required.

GARLIC SOUP

Believe it or not, this is breakfast food. I especially like it on a Saturday or Sunday morning, when I’m apt to be a little hung-over. This will open your eyes and put some heart into you.

For each serving:
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon “Better Than Bouillon” chicken base
1 cup water
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 teaspoon dried parsley or 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
stale French bread sliced into rounds, or croutons

In a saucepan, mix the soup base into the water as it heats. In a cast-iron skillet, heat the olive oil. When it’s hot, add the garlic and fry, stirring, very briefly: just until it starts to get a little darker. When the broth is boiling, add the garlic and oil to the saucepan. Cover, lower heat, and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add parsley, stir in the egg, and serve as hot as can be, with bread or croutons added to each bowl.

I love hearty Hungarian cuisine. A real purist might insist that my version of a classic Hungarian dish is insufficiently elaborate, but it’s good comfort food on a cold night.

4 slices double-smoked bacon

additional goose fat (or butter, margarine or cooking oil) if needed

1 large onion, chopped

2 lbs veal for stew, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 cup mushrooms, chopped

2 TBSPs tomato paste

1 heaping TBSP sweet paprika (or hot paprika if you like it extra hot)

1 tsp salt

1 cup crème fraîche (or equal parts heavy cream and sour cream)

1. Fry the bacon in a Dutch oven, on medium-high heat, turning frequently; remove the bacon (saving the fat in the pot), and chop it coarsely.

2. In a separate pan, melt a tablespoon or so of goose fat or other oil over medium heat, and sautée the mushrooms, cooking them, stirring occasionally, until the water that they’ll yield has been cooked off.

3. Brown the onions and the meat in the bacon fat, adding more oil if necessary.

4. Add the mushrooms, salt, bacon, tomato paste and paprika to the Dutch oven, plus about a cup of water. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 90 minutes, adding water if necessary. (You probably won’t need to; you don’t want to cook the meat in too much liquid.)

5. When the meat is tender, uncover, raise heat to medium, and cook, stirring, until the water is mostly cooked off and the mixture is reduced to a thick sauce clinging to the meat.

6. Turn off the heat, and stir in the crème fraîche.

Serve over noodles, dumplings or mashed potatoes.
(Serves 4.)