Mark’s Good Old Stuff

It’s not an heirloom recipe, but to me it’s a classic. It helped me survive graduate school. You can file it under “goulash” or “one-dish meals,” but you can also label it “cheap, first-apartment food” or “culinary atrocity number 537.” The major sin here is a ham-handed blending of Italian and Mexican Tex-Mex flavors. The basic idea is to use canned chili, plus other ingredients, as your pasta sauce.

Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.

I have two versions to share. Mark, referenced in the title of the recipe, was the owner of the pet shop I worked at all through college. One version of the recipe amounts to the original notes that I wrote down to the best of my memory, after watching Mark make it as a quick, tasty dinner one night. It will give you an insight into how to approach such a dish as this.

I had never seen Mark cook before, and I don’t think I ever saw him fix any food after this. At work, if we ever had any big projects requiring after-hours labor (like the three times we moved the entire pet store within the mall!) he would reward us, and keep us from going home, by ordering three or four large Domino’s “ExtravagaZZa” pizzas. I remember coming to the pet store for work the morning after a late night, and he and I gnawed on some of the cold pizza still laying on the counter in the back room.

We weren’t very close friends; I mean, he was my boss. I only went to his home a few times, so I can’t speak to the rest of his culinary repertoire. Sure, I’d seen him move a rock the size of a refrigerator, and I knew he was a hockey player and part-time/reserve city police officer—when he wasn’t at the pet store. He was not exactly domestic.

Neither was I, at the time. But I was starting to pay attention to methods and procedures for making tasty foods, so in this case it was like a big brother showing me how easy it was to make “good tasty cheap stuff, and it makes a ton.” He kind of laughed as made it. He hadn’t been in college for a number of years, but had just gotten a divorce, was living in an apartment, and was paying alimony and child support.

So here are my original notes for “Mark’s Good Old Stuff”:

Get some links of Italian sausage, cut it up and fry it in a skillet. In a separate, large saucepan, heat up a can of chili beans. Dump the sausage and grease and all into the beans. Put in some cooked macaroni (elbow or whatever). Did he put in some oregano? A bay leaf? Some green pepper, black olives, onion? Some canned tomato?

And here’s my version, as I eventually developed it into more of a formula. (Or maybe it’s more of a checklist for when you stop by the grocery store on your way home from work.)

8 oz. rotini pasta (or elbows, or shells, or whatever)
Italian sausage (2 to 4 big links; remove casing)
green bell pepper (chopped) (optional)
onion (chopped) (optional)
1 can corn (whole kernels) (drained)
1 can chili with beans
1 can chopped tomatoes (optional)
1 can black olives (California olives) (drained and chopped)

Cook the pasta until al dente; don’t overcook it. While it’s cooking, prepare the rest of the stuff. Use a big, heavy skillet. Fry the sausage; chop it up while it’s cooking. Remove some of the grease (or not). Add the green bell pepper and onion, if using, and fry those, too. Add the corn to the sausage in the skillet, and keep heating. Then add the chili and tomatoes (if using), and heat through. Add the black olives last, because they’re kind of delicate. Then combine the drained pasta with the “stuff.” Heat through.

Optional: serve garnished with sour cream or shredded cheese, such as cheddar, mozzarella, or parmesan. If you really want to dress it up, top it with chopped cilantro or green onions.

Note: clearly, you can adjust it however you wish. I like it with hot Italian sausage and spicy chili.

Finally, this actually tastes better the next day or so after you make it. So this makes a ton, and you do want to have leftovers.

Aunt Lyd’s Goulash

Time for a retro recipe!

Great Aunt Lydia Meyer provided this recipe about 1984, though I’ll bet she’d been making it for years. Aunt Lyd, Grandma Renner’s younger sister, who lived off of West McCarty, on Hamlin Street, in one of those nifty 1920s/1930s homes with the tall, steep gable soaring over the front door.

Her husband, Adolf, was a letter carrier for the post office—a physical job, for sure—and they had two robust, busy sons, so with all that activity and appetite surrounding her, she knew how to make satisfying meals in a hurry. And inexpensively.

Since there were lots and lots of women in the same situation, the following dish is hardly unique. Most of us who grew up in the middle twentieth century have memories of eating some kind of gloppy hamburger-based stew called “goulash.” It didn’t help that it sounded a bit like “galoshes,” which puts one in mind of mud, slush, and other sloppy things that collect on the ground. But honestly, we loved it.

The concept of “goulash,” although somehow loosely connected to an ancestral idea in the Old World (e.g., Hungary), constitutes a central branch of a wide variety of midcentury American tomatoey, ground-hamburger-and vegetable, one-dish meals called “goulash.” In Sue’s family, when her mom produced a goulash dish, Mr. Ferber would chuckle and call it (affectionately, but no doubt to Mrs. Ferber’s chagrin) “slumgullion.”

If we’re critical, and we’re being honest, this is not food to savor, except occasionally as a retro recipe—a way for us midcentury babies to plumb childhood memories of suppertime and potlucks. Mostly, it’s valuable as a quick, tasty way to feed a bunch of hungry people using things you have on hand.

Which means: “mom food,” or “church lady food.” (With the recent cold, snowy weather, I made this recipe as a meal for my parents and brother.)

Also, since we’re being critical, we owe a salute to our moms for improvising such tasty meals, on a shoestring, using what was in the freezer and cupboard. Boxed Hamburger Helper would soon come along and tell them, “you don’t need to mess with all that stuff; just brown some hamburger, add water, and stir in our box of sodium and dried-up things.” And compared to that, goulash seems like a meal made with actual love and care and creativity.

As a hot stew, it’s also perfect for wintertime eating.

I’m sure you can find lots of similar recipes, maybe even better ones, online, but here’s Aunt Lydie’s version. My suggestions follow the recipe.

Aunt Lyd’s Goulash

Brown ½ pound of hamburger; add ¼ cup chopped onion, and ½ cup chopped celery. Cook until tender. Then add 1 package of frozen succotash, 1 can tomato soup, 1 tsp. sugar, and pepper and salt to taste, and a little chili powder, and a little green pepper.

Simmer for 45 minutes.

Makes 4 servings.

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Suggestions and notes:

• “Package of frozen succotash”: in the past, frozen vegetables only came in ca. 10 oz. boxes. Maybe you can still find 10 oz. boxes of frozen succotash, but to replicate this dish, you may have to buy frozen lima beans and corn and measure out about 5 oz. of each. You could also use canned instead of frozen.
• “1 can tomato soup”: this would have been a can of condensed Campbell’s tomato soup, used in the condensed form.
• Obviously, the variations are endless.
• Finally, if you add a little Italian herbal seasoning, or oregano, it would probably be even more tasty. Just sayin’.

Fun fact: I had to look up the spelling for slumgullion for this post!

French Hunter’s Dinner—Retro Recipe

This post follows up on my previous one. It’s a recipe from Leota Busch’s personal cookbook, and she got it from my dear friend, the late Maryfrances (Schwartz) Ridgeway. I had to make it—for personal reasons. Because, I suppose, it connects me in a tiny way with someone who’s gone. Someone I miss.



The recipe itself? Well, at a glance you might think it’s one of those midcentury “culinary atrocities,” with the chop suey vegetables and such.

Somewhere, this recipe got pretty far away from anything French. (Unless French hunters shoot cattle and mix it with Italian spaghetti and American Campbell’s tomato soup!) It is what it is. As they say, boney patoots! (—Or something.)

But you know what? It’s pretty darned good! It’s kind of like a pre–Hamburger Helper hamburger helper. Unlike the prepackaged stuff, you control the sodium and fat. And it tastes much better.

It’s hearty, tasty, and good! Perfect for this time of year, as the weather gets cold and colder, and we get busy and busier. It makes a lot, and the leftovers are even tastier the next day.

I give you two versions: first, the original as it appeared in Mrs. Busch’s recipe book. Then, my interpretation. (No, I didn’t change it too much.)




French Hunter’s Dinner
(Original Version)

Ingredients:

Garlic buds
1# hamburger (twice ground)
Suet (about a cup, diced)
1 medium onion
Chili powder
1 box spaghetti*
1 can lima beans (medium)
(Seaside brand at Piggly-Wiggly)
1 can tomato soup
1 can mushrooms (Sutton, or sliced; may be omitted if desired) (20¢)

Procedure:

Boil & blanch one box of spaghetti, while hamburger is being prepared. Rub bottom of skillet with 1 or 2 garlic buds. Render suet & remove “cracklings.” Brown hamburger, & stir constantly to keep particles segregated. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of chile powder in. Add salt & pepper (about teaspoon of each). Dice onion, & stir into browned hamburger. Stir into this the spaghetti. Then the can of tomato soup. Let cook for a while. Add lima beans. Mushrooms.

* One can of spaghetti in tomato sauce may be used in place of “fresh” spaghetti.

This serves 5 or 6.

One can of “vegetables for Chop Suey” makes it extra good and increases the portions. these vegetables have to be sliced or diced, as they are large-sized in the can (Delmonico).

Serve with hot rolls, relish, coffee, and dessert.

Prepare in advance, & re-heat for serving, for best results.

--Maryfrances Schwartz





My mom is always quick to correct people when they say they’ve used “So-and-So’s” recipe but then admit that they’ve changed things. To Mom’s thinking, if you changed it one tiny bit from the original, it’s no longer “So-and-So’s” recipe.

But who’s so anal to follow instructions to the letter, especially when casserole-like dishes are concerned? Also, since apparently all of the brands specified in the recipe are defunct, there’s already no way to follow the directions completely.

Plus, prices and packaging have changed, so quantities must be interpreted. And if you’re gonna go that far, might as well make a few other changes for modern cooking methods. Like, get rid of the lard, and use the whole two cloves of garlic, pressed.

So, here’s my rendition. Because otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it. And what’s closer to the original recipe: tweaking it for 2013, in my kitchen, or never cooking it at all?




French Hunter’s Dinner
(Amended)

1/2 of a 16-oz. package of spaghetti
1 lb. ground chuck or ground round (beef; get the lean kind)
1-2 tsp. chili powder (to taste)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed, crushed, or minced
1 16-oz. can lima beans (frozen and thawed would be fresher-seeming)
1 10-oz. can condensed tomato soup
1 4-oz. can mushrooms (drained)
1 14-oz. can chop suey vegetables (“Fancy Mixed Vegetables” or “Stir-Fry Vegetables”) (drained)

Start the spaghetti and prepare according to package instructions. Meanwhile, in a large sauté pan with a lid, start browning the meat (if using lean beef, you might use a little vegetable oil). Sprinkle in the chili powder and add salt and pepper (about 1 tsp. of both; to taste). As meat begins to brown, stir in onions and garlic. When the meat and onions are cooked, stir in the can of tomato soup. Then add the (drained) spaghetti and stir gently to combine. Cook, half-covered, to meld flavors. Then add lima beans, mushrooms, and (if using) chop suey vegetables. Cook a little longer to heat through.

Oh yeah! And serving with hot rolls and relish, and ending with coffee and dessert, as instructed, is pretty darn good!



(—Boney patoots!)