A New Way to Serve Shrimp

When I first learned that I didn’t have to dine out in order to eat a shrimp cocktail, my instinct was to make a shrimp cocktail at home.  When that worked, I became more adventurous, sampling and liking such exotic (to me) dishes as shrimp stir-fry, spicy grilled shrimp and shrimp tacos. 

Question for Mom

Onion Quiche

A lot of recipes say to preheat the oven before putting food in to cook.  Are there any dishes you can bake without preheating?  --Amy V.

When you’re baking cakes, pies, cookies, quiches, bagels or anything made with yeast, pre-heating the oven is very important.  Just a few days ago I put my pizza stone in the oven but forgot to turn on the heat.  When I was about to slide my homemade pizza onto the stone, I suddenly realized my mistake. 

So the uncooked pizza sat on the counter on the pizza paddle until

A Springform Pan: What Is It and How Do I Use It?

Unless you like to bake, it’s unlikely that you would own a springform pan.  I bought one when I was planning to make a chocolate cheesecake with a cookie crumb crust and worried: 1) a regular cake pan wouldn’t be deep enough to hold all the cheesecake batter, and 2) if I used a deep dish casserole, how would I get the baked cheesecake out of it without making a mess?

Quiche Lorraine Sounds So Sophisticated

Back when I was a new cook, I didn’t know much of anything.  Every recipe I looked at impressed me.  When one of my sophisticated friends invited me to dinner and made Spaghetti with Garlic Sauce, I was enthralled.  Only when I dared make it myself did I realize how easy it was.

My first taste of Quiche Lorraine came at a cocktail party.  By then I was slightly more ambitious in the kitchen.  I liked the bacon-y flavor of the quiche but had no idea what was in it.  There was no Internet then, so I went to a bookstore and searched through cookbooks.  That may be when I bought my first copy of “Joy of Cooking,” which included a Quiche Lorraine recipe. 

Goat Cheese – How to Use It

 Occasionally my bargain-hunting outruns my common sense, and I buy way too much of an ingredient because it’s on sale.  About a week ago an irresistible double package of goat cheese landed in my shopping cart.

Once I got it home I began to wonder what I was going to do with 20 ounces of this soft white cheese.  I took one package to a dinner party.  The other sat forlornly in the cheese drawer for a week until I remembered a quiche recipe an English friend sent me.  Conveniently it called for goat cheese.

The directions said

Mom Cooking Tip 122

Vegetable Quiche

If your quiche mixture seems too runny, add 1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs before baking to absorb some of the extra liquid.

                                                       See all my Cooking Tips!

Mom Money-Saving Tip 65

Spinach Quiche

Use up leftover cooked vegetables or small bits of cheese or cream cheese in Quiche.  Here’s an easy Quiche recipe that effectively uses up half an 8-ounce package of cream cheese.  It can also absorb a cup of leftover cooked vegetables.

Flour Overload

Pre-Baked Pie Crust

Maybe I went a little overboard the other day on my baking.  How many home cooks do you know who would be able to use 12 cups of flour making three different baked products in one afternoon?  I made 2 loaves of whole wheat bread, 1 pie crust for a quiche and 4 pizzas.

I like to bake, and I’m not afraid of yeast, but I don’t normally bake this much at once. However, our bread supply was running low.  I’ve made bread every week for years—not to save money but because we like homemade bread, especially when it’s toasted. That accounted for 7 cups of flour.

How Cookbooks Reflect Eras of Your Life

Seafood Pie

I learned to cook from books because my mother was not too skilled in the kitchen.  She made good chocolate chip cookies, but it was downhill after that.  Her go-to guide was “The Settlement Cookbook: The Way to a Man’s Heart,” originally published in 1903.  I wasn’t a fan. 

Much more interesting to me was “Joy of Cooking,” a book I heard of when I got my first apartment in New York after college.  I bought a copy and was thrilled with the huge variety of recipes, although many of the dishes I picked out to cook were on the bland side.  That was probably my fault because I was afraid of seasonings.

That changed when my mother bought me “The Spice Cookbook.”  Here were recipes with major flavor.  During my four years of cooking for myself and my roommate, I toggled between “Joy” and “Spice.”  They’re still in a prominent place in my kitchen, and whenever I pick them up I remember my young and fun days in The Big Apple.