Hashed Leftovers

     Many times after the holidays we're left with mounds of leftovers from an overindulgent feast of Brobdingnagian proportions and we're completely flummoxed as to what to do with them.  I didn't even cook this much for Christmas but I did have a rather large turkey and now I'm left to decide what to do with the leftovers.  Part of it is getting mixed up into turkey salad using the Chicken Salad Recipe but with the rest I'm left to get creative.

White Coffee Pot Maryland Fried Chicken

     Like the Harley's Sandwich Shops I've written about before, White Coffee Pot was a restaurant chain that was purely Baltimore.  Unlike Harley's and Little Tavern, White Coffee Pot dished up real home cooking with a smile in a diner atmosphere complete with jukeboxes at the tables.  Unfortunately time and circumstance caught up with this venerable brand and put and end to the best cup of coffee in Baltimore.

A Chicken Salad Recipe to Rule Them All

     When I set out to create a chicken salad recipe it was for an idea I've been tossing around for some time, a sandwich/sub shop modeled after the ones that used to be in every neighborhood of Baltimore when I grew up.  This is not high end food, this is not hipster food, this is not $100 hamburgers.  What this is is just good old fashioned working man's food eaten for lunch or after a good time at the local bar.

Chicken Soup Recipe, Depression Era

     I've tried many ways of making chicken soup over the years and while they were all good they weren't fantastic I was always looking for something else.  This started as a research project into Depression Era cooking.  One of things that Herbert Hoover promised as president was "A chicken in every pot" and there's a reason for this, chicken was expensive, especially young chickens.  Chickens were kept for laying eggs and after 5 years when they stopped laying that's when they ended up as dinner.

Chicken/Turkey Croquettes

I have written about Chicken Croquettes before here but that recipe hailed from the 1930's.  I found another recipe for the same thing but this one dated from 1920 and the overall ingredients were different from the 1930's recipe.  The first time I made these I used leftover chicken, but I tried them again with turkey and the end result it the same.  You can make a simple white sauce as an accompaniment to these or just have them as is.  The vintage way to have these would have been as a luncheon with some Lettuce Salad w/ Piquant Dressing and some Banana Walnut Bread.

Country Captain Southern Chicken Curry

I chose a rather laborious title for this post because most people don't know the Americanized version of chicken curry is rightfully called Country Captain Chicken.  Now the origins of this dish are veiled in the mists of time as it has been around since before the Civil War and quite a few towns make claim to Country Captain as being "their" dish.  After looking at literally dozens of recipes dating from now all the way back to 1822 I can say with a high amount of confidence that this dish is a New Orleans Creole recipe.  You can usually tell the background of a recipe by it's base ingredients and Creole cooking is one of the easier ones to spot as almost all dishes start with at least 2 of the "Trinity", bell peppers, onions and celery.  These ingredients showed up time and again in each recipe I looked at, albeit with some variations as time went forward.  I picked a recipe that was simple and stayed close to the original in terms of ingredients and flavor.

Authentic Hungarian Chicken Paprikash

One of the crucial elements of frugal cooking is ethnic recipes.  Many Americans adapted the recipes of Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Russians, etc. to suit their tastes.  These were people who were used to living frugally back in their home countries and Americans learned much from their cooking styles.  It also started the downward decline in the formerly popular "meat and potatoes" type of meals that were prevalent through the boom years of the 1920's.  Hungarian cooking is usually typified by the ubiquitous Goulash, a stew of beef, onion and paprika.  While Goulash is tasty in it's own right I much prefer Paprika Chicken (Paprikash).  Formerly we had been using a mentally recorded recipe passed down from my great grandparents and while it was good, there was something missing.  That something was good quality paprika.  Most paprika sold in the US is of inferior quality, having a dull red color.  True Hungarian paprika is a vibrant red and has an unmistakeable smell similar to fresh red bell peppers.  Getting good Hungarian paprika can be tricky, but not to worry the good Spanish sweet paprika is equal to it.  Check out TJ Maxx, Marshalls or Home Goods for tins of Spanish paprika marked Pimentón Dulce this is the really great sweet Spanish Paprika.  Also you will need some Hot Hungarian Paprika, it doesn't make the dish spicy but it adds a little kick.  Hot Hungarian paprika will be darker in color than the vibrant red of sweet paprika.

Southern Recipe Buttermilk Fried Chicken

Buttermilk has 2 flavors, true buttermilk, sometimes called sweet buttermilk is the water extracted from cream during the process of making butter.  Cultured buttermilk has been treated like yogurt and allowed to ferment.  All recipes that I have encountered, even the old ones, refer to cultured buttermilk which is well because sweet buttermilk is impossible to find unless you make your own butter.  The secret of good buttermilk fried chicken is the soak in the buttermilk itself.  The acidity helps to tenderize the chicken making it oh so juicy and delicious.  The chicken can be pan fried or deep fried but there's no getting around the fact that you need hot oil to cook it.  If you have an aversion to fat I can't really give you a low fat recipe for buttermilk chicken as it will not truly be Southern style any longer.  My advice is to live your life.  Eating fried foods once is awhile isn't going to kill you, eating them every day on the the other hand is not healthy.