FAMILY RECIPES GET SHARED IN MANY WAYS. Boxes of index cards, well worn and food-stained. Favorite cookbooks passed on with page corners turned down. And, for our daughter Laurel, this blog.
She calls it her family cookbook. Laurel has lived in a number of states—and in a number of apartments and houses within those states—but Blue Kitchen is one thing she’s never had to remember to pack. As soon as she has WiFi connected, it’s there.
Partly, it’s a practical way to keep recipes on hand. And sometimes, she says, it’s a way to get a taste of home when she’s feeling a little homesick. So we asked her to share some of her favorite recipes. Here’s what she picked.
Marion’s Simplified Three-bean Chili
Or as Laurel calls it, Mom’s Chili. Besides meat, beans and various spices, the weeknight-quick chili shown above includes surprises like red wine and coffee. Laurel says it’s also good made with plant “beef,” and she sometimes serves it with canned tamales, a way we used to serve it when she and her sister were kids.
Biryani Chicken Breasts with Coconut Rice Pilaf
We like to mix things up here, borrowing ingredients from all over and throwing them together. Here, Indian biryani curry paste combines with Tex-Mex canned tomatoes with green chilies to create a spicy, weeknight-quick meal. The coconut rice pilaf adds exotic fragrances and flavor to the meal, but you can also serve it with plain white rice.
Chinese Egg Noodles with Beef and Hot Bean Sauce
Despite not being in the name, Asian eggplants are the star of this dish. We are such eggplant fans that we always try to order dishes with eggplant in Chinese restaurants. And both Laurel and we grow them in our gardens. Laurel says she likes to use ground pork instead of beef for this dish.
Tilapia with White Beans and Kale
This dish is totally flexible, right down to the animal protein. It’s shown here with tilapia, but Laurel (and we) make it with chicken breasts or Italian sausages just as often as we do fish.
Dried Cherry Upside Down Cake
And finally, dessert. As Marion says of it, dried tart cherries and a batter made with olive oil and flavored with star anise and almond extract create a dense, delicious, not-too-sweet dessert—or an illicit breakfast.
Such a nice recipe collection! Kind of a moveable feast. 🙂 One of the reasons we actually started our blog was to have a convenient way to share recipes with others. And frankly, serve as a reference for ourselves. 🙂
Family recipes always taste better to me with the addition of fond memories and a big dose of love.
Most of the recipes come from my late mother but some from me, my daughter and son-in-law of 27 years next week. The grandkids have their favorites, too. My granddaughter’s boyfriend of two years gets in on the action at holidays.
Your daughters are really lucky to have an archive of fifteen years of recipes!
Your chili is definitely in my favorites from your site.
I haven’t tried the others in this list – I’ll have to get cooking, since they come so well recommended.
If I was forced to pick a Top Five, they would be Marion’s Chili, the Vietnamese Beef Stew, the ‘old godmother’ potatoes with chili-crisp sauce, the idea of stirring chipotle in adobo into mashed sweet potatoes (which morphs with the sweet potato vichyssoise), and your simple garlicky French vinaigrette is in constant use, especially in the summer.
It was hard to narrow them down to just 5. And there’s no desserts/baked goods… maybe they need their own Top Five?
Thanks for (virtually) inviting me into your kitchen & sharing your recipes. It’s made my table tastier.