Berry Dumplings Recipe by Ruth Paget

Berry Dumplings Recipe by Ruth Paget 

These dumplings freeze well for homeworkers who are organizing their weekly meals ahead of time.

Serves 6 

Ingredients: 

-4 tablespoons butter 

-1 (5-pound) bag frozen mixed berries 

-1/4 cup flour 

-1/2 cup sugar 

-1 (16.5-ounce) ready-to-bake refrigerated canister of biscuits 

-1/4 cup sugar to roll biscuits in 

Steps: 

1-Melt butter in a pot with a tight fitting lid. 

2-Place berries in the pot and cover. Cook until the berries are thawed and liquid. 

3-Mix the flour and sugar together. Turn the heat on the pan up and add flour-sugar mixture a little at a time to the berries. 

4-When the berries thicken, turn the heat back to low. 

5-Cut 10 biscuits into fourths and roll them in the ¼ cup of sugar. Place biscuits on top of the berries. 

6-Cover pot and cook for 8 minutes. Serve warm or cold. 

(A Royal Oak, Michigan Recipe)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Ravioli Hot Dish Recipe by Ruth Paget

Ravioli Hot Dish Recipe by Ruth Paget 

This dish freezes well and heats up easily in a microwave for people who are working at home.  

Serves 6 

Ingredients: 

-3 pounds frozen 5-pound bag of ravioli (40 -50 count per bag) 

-2 (28-ounce) jars Marinara sauce 

-4 tablespoons Italian seasoning 

-2 cups shredded Mozzarella cheese 

Steps: 

1-Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  

2-Boil ravioli as directed on package in several batches. Drain ravioli and hold while other batches are cooking. 

 3-Spread marinara sauce on the bottom of a 9-inch casserole dish. Place a layer of ravioli on top of the marinara. Place more marinara on top of the ravioli. Sprinkle ravioli with mozzarella and some Italian seasoning. Repeat twice with a final layer of mozzarella and Italian seasoning on top. 

4-Bake for 20 – 30 minutes and serve. 

(A Royal Oak, Michigan Recipe) 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Ambrosia Pie Recipe by Ruth Paget

Ambrosia Pie Recipe by Ruth Paget 

Serves 4 

Ingredients: 

-1 (1-ounce) envelope unflavored gelatin 

-2/3 cup water -1/2 cup sugar 

-1 teaspoon salt 

-3/4 cup orange juice 

-1/2 cup dry coconut flakes 

-1 cup cold and whipped evaporated milk 

-1 (9-inch) pre-baked graham cracker crust 

Steps: 

1-Combine gelatin, sugar, salt, and water in top of double boiler. Stir over boiling water until gelatin dissolves. 

2-Remove gelatin mixture pan from heat. Add orange juice ad coconut flakes to the gelatin mixture. 

3-Chill gelatin mixture and stir in whipped evaporated milk. 

4-Pour orange-coconut flake mixture into pie crust. Chill pie until ready to serve.

(A Royal Oak, Michigan Recipe) 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Yunnan China's Food as Medicine by Ruth Paget

Yunnan China’s Food as Medicine by Ruth Paget 

The people of Yunnan China are reputed to be very healthy and long- lived writes Georgia Freedman in Cooking South of the Clouds: Recipes and Stories from China’s Yunnan Province. 

This southwestern Chinese province extends from snowy, southern Tibet in the north to tropical borders in the south with Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. 

There are 24 minority groups in this province with distinct cooking styles that make use of some common ingredients including: 

-mushrooms (there are 800 varieties in this region) 

-Yunnan ham (this is similar to Spanish Serrano ham) 

-pickled vegetables (especially pickled mustard greens, which Freedman provides a recipe for) 

-spicy chili peppers -garlic 

-Yak meat (beef is a substitute) 

The following five dishes give a flavor for the types of recipes in Cooking South of the Clouds:

*mushrooms stir-fried with Thai chilies and garlic cloves that is seasoned with soy sauce 

*fried rice with ham, potato cubes, and peas 

*stir-fried beef with pickled mushroom greens and garlic chives 

*fried beef with fresh lettuce (the beef here is served on a bed of lettuce leaves with chopped spring onions on top. Raw vegetables are usually found in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine not what you typically associate with Chinese food.) 

*dried Mushroom Salad – dried mushrooms are rehydrated and drained and then seasoned with vinegar, light soy sauce, and chopped coriander. 

The complete recipes are in Cooking South of the Clouds: Recipes and Stories from China’s Yunnan Province by Georgia Freedman. 

People who like spicy foods might enjoy trying these recipes from one of China’s lesser-known provinces.  

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Spanish Cheese Trays and Cold Tapas by Ruth Paget

Spanish Cheese Trays and Cold Tapas by Ruth Paget 

A quickly put together Spanish cheese tray and made-ahead cold tapas, hors d’oeuvres, can be light lunches at the office or at home for home workers. 

My suggestions for a Spanish cheese tray include: 

-wedges of Manchego cheese 

-wedges of P’tit Basque cheese 

-green olives 

-almonds

-membrillo (quince paste that goes well with Manchego cheese) 

-onion confit (author Penelope Casas has a recipe for this in her excellent cookbook Tapas) -thin slices of French bread 

-rolled Serrano ham 

-pickled onions 

 -2 or 3 cold tapas from the following list (The recipes are in my go-to reference – Tapas by Penelope Casas.) 

 -sweet red pepper salad 

 -green pepper and tomato salad 

 -cumin-flavored mushroom salad 

 -cabbage, green pepper, and raisin salad (includes carrots) 

-marinated asparagus wrapped in ham 

Preparing all or some of your meal ingredients ahead of time allows you to have more time to enjoy your meal or check personal e-mail. 

Buen Provecho! 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Chicago Dim Sum by Ruth Paget

Chicago Dim Sum by Ruth Paget 

Eating Chinese dim sum was one of the money hacks I used to lead an urbane existence in Chicago on a budget as a young woman. 

On Sunday mornings, my husband Laurent and I would leave our apartment in Marina City and walk up Michigan Avenue to Water Tower Place Shopping Center. Our destination was Rizzoli Bookstore. At Rizzoli’s we would buy Le Monde and Financial Times newspapers. I would sometimes buy art books or novels by Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie. 

We would check out upcoming movies on the way out and walk down to the Chinese restaurant with dim sum tea lunch, which is what I think is the Shanghai Terrace of the Peninsula Hotel now. I liked the circular booths in the restaurant. 

We ordered fragrant jasmine tea to start as waitresses wheeled carts of steaming dim sum by our table. We pointed at many of them, and waitresses noted our choices with a Chinese stamp and wrote how many we chose. 

There is a very good book for ordering dim sum called Dim Sum Field Guide by Carolyn Phillips. Her book is not a cookbook, but has line drawings of various dim sum, dim sum tea etiquette, Chinese characters for the various dim sum, alphabet spellings for Mandarin character pronunciations, and dim sum ingredients. 

I used the cookbook Dim Sum and Other Chinese Street Food to find ingredients used in three dim sum “dumplings” that you can order in almost all dim sum restaurants: 

*jiaozu – ravioli-like coin purse pasta made with minced pork, Napa cabbage, bok choy, and garlic chives 

*Siu Mai – egg dough cups that are squeezed and twirled before steaming that are made with minced pork and shrimp, bamboo shoots, black mushrooms, and water chestnuts 

*Har Gau – Crescent shaped dumplings stuffed with minced shrimp, water chestnuts, pork fat, and sherry 

Leung’s cookbook shows hot to set up bamboo steamers in a wok over boiling water as well. 

Pre-made dim sum would be welcome to many people who are working at home, because you would just have to steam them or heat them up in an oven. H Mart in California just might have all you need to set up dim sum tea lunches from tea to chopsticks. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Slow Food Italy Revisited by Ruth Paget

Slow Food Italy Revisited by Ruth Paget 

With more people working at home now, I read the 60 Slow Food recipes made by restaurants in Italy: From the Source with an eye towards great-taste-low-cost dishes. 

If you are at home working, you can have a crockpot of bean soup simmering for twelve hours that not only tastes great, but is very economical to make. Many Slow Food recipes can take twelve hours to make. Some like baccála mantecato from Venice can take two days of dealing with dry salt cod that starts out as hard as a board. 

I used the restaurant recipes in this cookbook to make some moderately slow food recipes for an American home cook. The following five recipe modifications can add variety to your monthly menu planning on a budget: 

*Dry bean or lentil soup 

*Polenta Valdostana 

*Pasta á la Norma 

*Saltimboca alla Romana 

*Baccála Mantecato 

*Dry Bean or Lentil Soup 

According to Italy: From the Source, you can cook dry lentils in 45 minutes. I have always found supermarket lentils and beans to take a few hours to cook. I also like to purée soups, so I do not care too much about beans holding their shape. 

If you have time, this recipe is easy and pretty inexpensive. Soak dry lentils or beans overnight in water. The beans will double or triple in size depending on how much water you put in the bowl with the beans. Rinse the beans the next day.  

Place beans in a crockpot with 8 to 10 cups of water and ¼ cup olive oil. Place crockpot on high and cover the crockpot. Cook beans for 12 hours. Use an immersion blender to purée the beans. 

*What you can do with puréed bean soup:  

-Season with salt, pepper, and oregano and serve with toast 

-Boil 2 cups of tubetti pasta and stir cooked tubetti into the soup with seasonings 

-Add cream 

-Sauté onions, garlic, and sliced mushrooms in olive oil. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with two tablespoons of the vegetable mixture. To be extravagant, you can dribble truffle oil on top of the vegetables. 

-Fry bacon till crisp and crumble on top of soup in bowls 

*Polenta Valdostanta 

There are brands of polenta that can be made in the microwave instead of standing at an stove stirring for an hour. I use these and mix in butter and shredded cheese. 

Polenta Valdostana is made with Asiago cheese. I have used Swiss cheese and thought I had an upscale oatmeal for breakfast. 

*Pasta á la Norma 

This Sicilian dish has cubes of eggplant in a tomato sauce over pasta. Italian eggplant has to be salted to remove bitter juices. 

I use Japanese eggplant or Italian yellow squash to make this, because you do not need to salt it.

*Saltimbocca alla Romana 

In the traditional recipe, a cook places veal sirloin between wax paper and pounds it flat with a meat pounder. Then, the cook places a sage leaf on one side and covers it with prosciutto for flavor. The other side of the meat is treated the same way before cooking. 

Veal is hard to come by in most American supermarkets. I have used this recipe for chicken breast and think it tastes good, too. 

*Baccála Mantecato 

Basically, this is a purée of boiled fish, water, olive, and seasonings. The Venetians use salt cod for this dish, but frozen white fish can be used as well to cut down on the two days of preparation time for the salt cod. 

The beauty of this dish is that fish for two can be stretched to feed four or five when you spread it on toast or baked polenta. 

I make what I call Monterey Mantecato with leftover salmon. There are no set measures in this recipe: 

-leftover crumbled salmon 

-mayonnaise 

-Cholula hot sauce 

-toast squares 

Mix the salmon, mayonnaise, and hot sauce and spread on the toast squares. 

My recipes are easier than the cookbook’s and might be a good starting point before attempting the more elaborate recipes in Italy: From the Source by Lonely Planet. 

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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