Recipes: April 2003 Archives

Good Friday
I think today is one of the most solemn and sacred days of the year and should be spent with family in Church, contemplating the death of Our Lord and eating customary Good Friday food at dinner (after fasting of course).
Well, the people who like run the country and stuff do not see Good Friday the same way I do, so my husband has to work. Bummer. I will attempt to go to Stations of the Cross at noon at my local Novus Ordo Church, and hope that the children behave and that I do not burst a blood vessel from some type of heterodox theatrics. Say a prayer it goes well.

In the meantime I will share with you what my Italian family customarily eats on Good Friday. It is something we call "Grass Pies." You take greens, any greens you like, but broccoli rabe is a must, spinach, dandelion and in my parents generation, we added collard greens and even if you have it a green called colalu. In a pot sautee some garlic, a couple of anchovies in olive oil, some sliced black olives and some chopped up hot peppers or crushed red pepper if you like. Add washed (and still wet) greens to the pot and simmer on low heat covered. When the greens are all dark and mushy (in Italian we say "shfat", Ido not know how you spell it though) you put them in in pizza dough. I guess in little rolled out cirles about 8 inches in diameter, put some greens in the middle, fold over and squish the sides together with the tines of a fork to make a little pouch. Now the customary thing to do is take these and deep fry them. I do not-too fattening, so we bake them.

In the meantime here are some Good Friday prayers a friend emailed to me (thanks Karen):

Prayer For Good Friday

"O, my Lord Jesus, I hereby beg of Thee, by the merits of Thy Precious Blood,
by Thy Divine Heart, and by the intercession of Thy Most Holy Death to assist
me in this pressing necessity."

(To be said 33 times for each intention. It must be said during the hours of
12 noon and 3 PM.)

~~~~~~~~~

Prayer for Good Friday

"I adore Thee, O Holy Cross, which has been adorned with the tender,
delicate, and venerable hands and feet of my Saviour, Jesus Christ, and
immured with the Precious Blood. I adore Thee, my God, nailed to the Cross
for me.
I adore Thee again, O Holy Cross, for the love of my Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Amen"

(Revealed to St. Bridget that if said devoutly 3 times on Good Friday that 33
souls would be released from Purgatory. 3 souls on ordinary days.)

Prepare your favorite recipe for a double crust pie. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Combine 3 cups one-inch slices rhubarb, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp grated orange peel (optional), 3 Tbsp flour, a dash of salt.

Line your pie plate with the first crust, add your rhubarb filling, add the second crust. Bake at 400 degrees about 40 to 50 minutes.

This recipe is from an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. The current edition's recipe for rhubarb pie involves froufrou ingredients (sour cream?), but it does have a recipe for a basic rhubarb crisp.

When my mom (who was raised on a North Dakota farm) makes rhubarb pie, she uses more rhubarb than 3 cups but just guesses the amount (update -- around 5 cups) -- she likes a nice heaping full pie that mounds up in the middle, not one of those sad sunken pies. She just tosses in sugar until it looks right -- the rhubarb is lightly frosted with sugar but not wallowing in it. I don't remember whether or not she uses flour, I will have to get back to you on that after Easter.

This old cookbook calls for a lattice crust, but my mom just uses a top crust.

I had trouble with my (inexpensive) pie pan discoloring when the rhubarb juice hit it. Next time I make a rhubarb pie I'm going to use a Pyrex pie plate.

I am not an accomplished pie cook at all; I need to work on mastering pies.

...because I am seriously Sleepy and I was afraid the grammatical and spelling errors would be compounded by an even more reduced state of brain function. My husband and I were only able to take a few catnaps last night with the baby's asthma attacks.

In the meantime, the baby will not let me put him down. I have a half made bed, I was going to make Jeanetta's Portuguese Muffins because she was kind enough to adapt the recipe to the bread machine. I am just sitting here trying to keep him calm and happy.I have a cute story about last night's dinner...

Peony gave me a recipe for a chicken stir fry dish called "Singing Chicken". The dish is yummy and calls for hot peppers. I love hot peppers. I am not sure if it is just me because I was raised on spicy food, or because I am just not as allergic to hot peppers as some, but I do not really notice if something is really hot.

I prepared the dish with the standard wimpy two chile peppers. I used jalapenos, because again, they are not spicy to me. A good, spicy pepper is a Jamaican Scotch Bonnet (or habanero). Now that's a pepper.

My family did not agree with my assesment that last night's dinner it had a slight "kick" to it. My husband told me his face went numb, my daughter kept refilling glasses of milk, but the two youngest turned red and had their tongues hanging out of their mouth. It was too cute. No I am not into torturing babies with hot peppers, but as a Mom everything babies do is so adorable. The funny thing is (kids after my own heart) they ate seconds.