STUFFED SURPRISE BURGERS

A FAB RECIPE FROM MY YOUTH

Ah, looking forward to a homecooked meal way back in 1964... or maybe not!

Surfing through my favorite food blogs, I stumbled upon Domestic Muse and found myself laughing out loud! Actually shrieking with laughter. She is hosting THE 1ST ANNUAL EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN VINTAGE RECIPE CONTEST. She has asked us to pull out those old hand-written recipes of our youth, dust off the favorite family recipes, and re-create a “vintage” dish that we would love to see come back into vogue. Brilliant idea and what fun! But little does she know…

Anyone that has followed my blog from its earliest days has read about my mom’s cooking, the liver fried to resemble old shoe leather, baked fish overcooked and dry, cabbage soup that is best left undescribed…. my mother, and heaven knows we all love her, was not the best of home cooks, her heirloom dishes, recipes handed down mother-to-daughter, were enough to make us cringe and grab for the ketchup bottle. The canned vegetables, the boxed mixes (just add meat and water), the hot dogs served with her fabulous home fries were perfectly fine, but a vintage, family recipe that I would want to see come back into vogue? Not likely! Well, this took a bit of thinking…

Over the course of my last few trips home to mom’s house, I have pilfered so many of her old cookbooks, Joy of Cooking, The Settlement Cookbook by Mrs. Simon Kander (don’t you love those old cookbooks written by women who still went by their husband’s name?), Secrets of Better Cooking, coming across, oh joy! the actual recipes she used for meatloaf (who said “lead weight”?), salmon cakes (canned tuna, but these I actually loved!) and something similar to her Baked Red Snapper.


I also grabbed up handfuls of old promotional pamphlets put out by food companies offering recipes using their products, and, on my last trip home, I hit the jackpot, actually stumbling upon my old 7th-grade Home Economics notebook, complete with all of the recipes we learned how to make for this class: Chocolate Pudding (the teacher marked it “Neat”), Club Chicken Casserole and, heaven forbid! Cream Cheese Dainties! I had thought of making this oh-so 70’s treat for the Vintage Recipe Contest, I mean, who else would make these? But the list of ingredients was daunting to say the least: 2 sticks of butter, 6-oz package of cream cheese, 1 cup sugar, 2 cups flours and all rolled in crushed Rice Crispies cereal! I mean, who in my house (in their right mind) would eat these things?


But then a truly brilliant idea struck! One thing my mom made that we all loved, that we clamored for, that was so special, so exciting to eat was... Surprise Burgers! Mmmm…. hamburger patties split in two and filled with spaghetti sauce and a slice of American cheese, then sealed up and fried. Wow! This was a Kid’s Dream Meal! Out with the boring, the usual and in with the surprise! I can see the tv commercial for this now: “Why serve those boring burgers when you can surprise them with a mouthful of fun?” Yah!!!!


The recipe for this burger delight came from, yes, a product promotional pamphlet: the Hunt’s Tomato Sauce pamphlet “21 New Ways to Serve Hamburger (Hamburger Loves Hunt’s Tomato Sauce)”, printed in 1964. I have changed the recipe only insofar as, living in France, I can’t get the true jarred ingredients, but here goes….

SURPRISE BURGERS for a family of 4

20 oz (600 g) ground beef – or, as I did, I got the butcher to weigh me out 4 medium-sized burgers 5 oz (150 g) each
Your favorite jarred spaghetti or tomato sauce (you’ll be using 4 generous tablespoons)
4 slices (processed, of course!) American cheese (ours are a mix of emmenthal and cheddar)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, your favorite steak seasoning if you like


I took each pre-made hamburger patty, divided it into 2 equal pieces and rolled each half into a ball. If you have just a package of ground beef, divide the meat into 8 equal pieces and roll each into a ball.


Place each ball of ground meat between 2 squares of waxed or parchment paper. Using a rolling pin, carefully roll and flatten each ball into a thin disc, just larger and wider than a square of cheese, working 2 at a time (one Surprise Burger).


Remove the top piece of waxed paper and spread one disc with a generous tablespoon of the spaghetti or tomato sauce.


Lay a slice of American cheese on top of the sauce.


Sprinkle the other disc with salt and pepper and steak seasoning if using. Carefully flip this disc over onto the prepared disc. Fiddling with the meat if need be, seal the edges, enclosing the sauce and cheese inside the two layers of burger.


Put aside until you have prepared all 4 Surprise Burgers with the remaining ground beef.


Simply fry these delights as you would any hamburger (I do this in a non-stick pan so I don’t have to use any fat or grease). As they are a bit delicate to turn (you don’t want the top half sliding off), make sure they are completely cooked and well browned underneath before flipping them to cook the other side. Make sure they are well cooked all the way through so the sauce is hot and the cheese melted (I took mine off a bit too soon).


Enjoy your Surprise Burgers on a bun with chips or fries or on the plate with baked potatoes (filled with gobs of butter and sour cream, of course!) and a salad of iceburg lettuce with bottled Italian dressing.


Addendum : my very French older son asked me in a crazed voice :”Cheese in the middle? Who puts cheese in the middle of a hamburger?” which in his language means “You are absolutely nuts!” Oh, if he only knew!

Read more »

FAVORITE CRANBERRY MUFFINS

CONFESSIONS: In the beginning...

SWEET AND TART

My mother was, and still is, an unusual amalgamation of homemaker and workingwoman - like the strange lovechild of June Cleaver and Maude, but without the propensity to butt in. She did get married, rather late for her time, I imagine, being a working girl (and party animal) and all, but homemaker and mother she soon became. But I really don’t think that she ever embraced her new role fully. As soon as she could possibly manage, she went back to work, and more. Once we had moved to Florida, she threw herself into what she loved the best - running the Hebrew school at the synagogue, Sisterhood, the temple bowling team, Association for the Blind, eventually going into real estate. And then there was my parents’ oh-so-cool 1960’s social life - weekend Bahamian cruises, block parties (when she wore satiny, shiny party pajamas and huge mod earrings, hair piled high in a chic frosted do).

As a mother, she was cool, more like a best friend than a mom. She must have had complete faith in us little people, because I really don’t remember ever having rules set, lessons in how to behave or lectures about schoolwork. It was just something implied that we knew to follow the rules, get good grades and be polite. She was the true Matriarch, taking after her mother I assume, her presence and expectations felt beyond the necessity for loud words.

When it came to her homemaking skills, she had it down to the bare minimum: laundry every Friday, beds to be stripped and sheets and towels in the hallway ready for washing every Monday, and dinner on the table every night at six. Maybe I’m doing her an injustice, but she has always admitted to hating to cook, and I think that (rightly so?) it must have carried over to all housework. I mean, who really loves it? But, as in everything she did and still does, she was efficiency itself. As a mom, she was expected to have a wholesome meal on the table every evening, and a meal every night there was. But what could be expected from the woman who loves cold creamed corn, jarred borscht and cabbage soup? There was a lot of Hamburger Helper and Tuna Casserole interspersed among the dried liver, oven-(over-)baked fish and meatloaf (with lots of ketchup, please) meals. I must admit that we had our more than fair share of steak and home fries, waffles-for-dinner, homemade chicken soup and hotdog and hamburger meals. Baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, fresh corn-on-the-cob, the charcoal grill fired up every weekend and watermelon all summer, at times it was an All-American home.

Mom with Andrew; besides the boiled potatoes can't really tell what he's being fed

And in the end, about the time that the youngest one of us was able to reach the countertop, my mother turned the kitchen over to us. “I am not cooking any more. You are all old enough to fend for yourselves,” she explained. Well, we had had enough free reign in the kitchen and control over our own breakfasts, lunches and snacks since we were about six years old that it just really came naturally to us. We weren’t really inventive and the small collection of cookbooks in the cabinet over the stove were mostly left untouched, but we learned to love our time in the kitchen together and we all grew up with a love of cooking and eating.

Where desserts come in, I definitely got my peek into the joys of baking. Mom did her share - vanilla pudding (boxed) with ‘Nilla Wafers, chocolate cupcakes (boxed) with chocolate frosting (canned), but at least she cared enough to have treats for us. Dad did the rest. Yes, there were a lot of boxed-mix cakes and puddings, this was the 60’s after all, but, quite often, there was the homemade and the exotic - dried fruit compote, light and delicate albeit enormous cream puffs, waffles and bundt cakes. I was never far when the baking started, hovering around, mesmerized by the magic. I was a great eater, and it wasn’t only simply eating, but savoring every mouthful, living a near-religious experience with each dessert. When I made my first fruit muffins in 7th grade Home Economics, or that first Apple Brown Betty, I was amazed that I could actually make the magic myself.

The discovery of how to make s’mores at Girl Scout Camp and Cranberry Muffins in Home Ec opened the door to a new world for me. While other kids were probably eating Ding Dongs for an after-school snack, my brother, sister and I tried our hand at pulling taffy or making caramel-sesame candy or hand-rolled chocolate truffles and recreating recipes brought home from the Scouts or Home Ec. I spent Saturday afternoons putting together every combination imaginable of lunchtime sandwich ingredients from peanut butter, baloney and potato chips to salami/banana, savoring the contrasting saltiness and sweetness, creating delightful textural confrontations. Melting peanut butter on hot, crispy toast, tasting warm, salty butter against the sweetness of cherry Pop Tarts, this was my first foray into the sensual pleasures of food.

Over the years, the challenges grew larger as the time spent and the passion for baking increased, but I always returned to the simple and the homey, warm-out-of-the-oven quick breads and muffins, crumbles and cobblers, batches of cookies, tried and true All-American comfort foods. Whether from the Scouts or school, Temple cookbooks or one of many promotional pamphlets sent to all good homemakers in the 1960’s from Crisco, Hershey’s or the Florida Department of Agricultural & Consumer Services, these are the foods that warm my kitchen and my home.

It was like an eerie episode from the Twilight Zone : after I began this blog last April, I returned home to visit my family. At some point, I glanced up at the bookshelves still on my old bedroom wall and saw a battered old school notebook. Hmmm. I reached up and grabbed it and, to my astonishment and delight, I opened it to discover of all things, my 7th grade Home Economics notebook in all its glory. There were the recipes for Cream Cheese Dainties, Apple Crumble, Club Chicken Casserole, and, yes, Cranberry Muffins.


Cranberry Muffins, warm and delicate, laden with ruby red tangy fruit and memories, my first love, my initiation into the Joys of Baking. I have taken to making Cranberry Muffins these days for my family and here I offer you my current recipe, adapted from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion. Sweet and Tart, a bit like me as my husband would say, eaten warm from the oven with a cup of coffee and a walk down memory lane.

CRANBERRY MUFFINS


8 Tbs (1 stick, 115 g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup (7 oz, 200 g) sugar
½ tsp salt
2 large eggs
2 tsps baking powder
2 cups (8.5 oz, 250 g) flour
½ cup (125 ml) milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups fresh cranberries, thawed if frozen *
1 Tbs sugar + 1 tsp ground cinnamon mixture for topping, optional

* To answer a question put to me by the lovely Hilda of Saffron & Blueberry, I can find real Oceanspray Cranberries at my local “primeurs”, fruit & veg sellers, every December for the amazing sum of 5.50 € a package! Crazy, I know, but when the need is there, sometimes one has no choice!

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a 12-muffin tin with cupcake papers or grease them well.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the softened butter with the sugar and the salt until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the baking powder, beating it into the batter.

Now add the flour, alternating in 3 additions with the milk added in 2 : dry-wet-dry-wet-dry, beating well after each addition. Blend in the vanilla.

Using a large spatula (I use a silicone spatula), fold the cranberries into the batter until evenly distributed.

Spoon the batter evenly into the 12 muffin cups. Don’t worry if they are mounded above the edge of the cups, this batter is firm enough that they will rise up and not spill over. Sprinkle the top of each muffin with the cinnamon-sugar mixture if desired.

(I prefer the flavor added to the muffins by this cinnamon-sugar topping, though I have noticed that the surface of the muffins gets sticky sooner with this addition than without, so if you are making them to wrap up and take on a picnic, or to place in a school or work lunch box, it may be better to do without.)

Bake the muffins for 30 minutes until puffed and golden. Remove from the oven and carefully lift the muffins out of the pan and transfer to a cooling rack to cool. (I use a small knife or kabob spike to lift them up out of the tin so as to avoid burning my fingers) If they cool in the tins too long, I find that they tend to get a little cakier.

Read more »