Food In The Fort

My dad put this frosting atop the “Surprise Carrot Cake” and it was the perfect complement. The original recipe below produces more icing than you’ll probably need unless you really like to spread it on thick (I do, when it comes to frosting, my dad, not so much). Dad also cut way down on the sugar (I have to agree that a pound of powdered sugar is pretty crazy). I’ve italicized his changes in parentheses after each ingredient.

Where Daddy dearest and I really disagree, though, is on the necessity of making frosting from scratch at all.  For my money, Betty Crocker and her friend Poppin’ Fresh do a splendid job for about $2.50 a canister and it beats the hell out of having four cups of confectioner’s sugar flying every which way. But I’m a lazy slacker who’s always looking for the quick ‘n’ easy way and Dad’s a true cook who actually sifts flour and performs other labor-intensive procedures.

In short, homemade’s better, but Betty’s fine in a time-crunch. I certainly enjoyed every bite of the carrot cake and cream cheese frosting and wished I had been there to lick the spoon! Read the rest of this entry »

 Okay, I’m not exactly sure what the surprise in this carrot cake is supposed to be. In my case, I guess I was just surprised that my dad had made a carrot cake… Surprised and very happy, to be sure. He has been going through kind of a cake phase: a flour-less, European-style chocolate cake, a very involved-sounding pound cake (The recipe for which will not be appearing on this girl’s blog. When he got to the second time you had to sift the dry ingredients, I knew it wasn’t for me!), and now this yummy carrot cake taken from the back of the Softasilk Cake Flour box. I’m not sure what’s up with the whole thing, but I’m not going to complain. Keep on bakin’, Daddy-o!

Here’s the low-down on the carrot cake which may or may not be surprising, but certainly is easy to assemble and very tasty to boot. You’ll want to top it with cream cheese frosting. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

July is a pretty good time to get the hell out of Fort Wayne and seek out cooler, less *&%$ humid climes, and that’s just what me and the kiddies have done. We’re in NY; they’re down in the city with their dad and I’m upstate on the farm with my brother and the ‘rents. We’ll be meeting up tomorrow in the Big Apple and then it will be all about spoiling the grandkids: Macy’s fireworks, the Cloisters, a Broadway musical, shopping for Rachel and a restaurant that only serves variations on the cheese toastie for Jack. But until the kids steal the show, I’m enjoying some serious spoiling of my own: sushi last night, mussels and clams two nights before that, and a chocolate cake from Wegmans, the best supermarket on earth. It’s been good.

But I’m not one to keep all these good eats to myself. No, dear reader, although I’m not going to invite you come over for dinner,  I am going to send a few scrumptious recipes your way for a little taste of what life is like on the farm (where the only animal is my mom’s bratty dog Emily). Here’s what you can look for in the next week or so:

• “Surprise” Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
• Pork Fried Noodles direct from the heyday of Wo Hop
• The Perfect Pancake
• An interview with the brewmasters of Butternuts Beer and Ale

Hope to see y’all soon!

(Well, apparently about 169.000 people say that, according to Google, but that’s not the point.)

As poor Leo can tell you, I am just a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy bit obsessed with recreating recipes so that they taste just like my Mom made them. There’s her shrimp scampi recipe which is always a little less vermouth-y than I remember, the cucumber salad that is always too oily or too vinegary and the turkey gravy on which I don’t even come close. But the other day I nailed one of those maternal recipes to the wall: potato salad exactly as I remember having it as a kid. God it was good. It has a bunch of hard-boiled eggs in it and a lot of celery, but the key ingredient is the celery salt (which is also the key ingredient in a good Bloody Mary; no, my Mom didn’t make me Bloody Marys, that was my Dad).

So here it is, just in time for summer picnicking season: Read the rest of this entry »

Leo is a godless heathen, while Catherine is just a plain heathen but we live in Fort Wayne, Indiana which is nicknamed The City Of Churches. It’s true. You can’t go more than a half mile in any direction downtown without running into a church or overhearing some pious pontiff haranguing the flock about the sorry state of the place where they’ll be spending their afterlife. So we thought it only appropriate to name one of the hottest chili recipes we’ve ever tasted here at Food In The Fort after that mythical lake of fire.

This is truly a collaborative recipe. We made it last week when we suddenly decided that we absolutely had to have chili. Of course, last week was actually the first week of April. We’ve been too busy to write this up before now (something about buying a house…) but it is true that we had a sudden craving for chili, whatever month it was.

Leo concocted the basic recipe out of four or five of his favorites with the guiding philosophy that if a little is good, a lot must be better. By the time Catherine came home, the paint was peeling off the ceiling and god knows what sort of damage Leo had inflicted on his intestinal tract in the sampling. So Catherine felt that a little mediation was in order. Leo rambled on for quite some time about balancing PH levels, but in the end Catherine added the cocoa, sugar and extra cornstarch because they sounded good. Presto! The chili was nice and hot; just shy of necessitating a trip to the ER.

We couldn’t have been happier with this Rube Goldberg of a recipe. It goes great with the sun-dried tomato and jalapeño cornbread and gives sinners like us a little taste of what’s to come. Read the rest of this entry »

If your place is like mine, it’s oppressively hot in the summer, even with the air conditioning running. So the last thing you want to do is add more heat by cooking. Still, unless you want to subsist on a steady diet of deli meats and fast food all summer, you’re going to have to turn that stove on some time. Although, now that I think about it, eating more fast food would give me an excuse to loiter and soak up that sweet, cool, air-conditioned atmosphere… Ah, who am I kidding? They all kick you out after the first couple of hours anyway.

The key to summer cooking is to cook for as short as possible, do it as early in the day as possible, then forget about it and spend the rest of the day competing with the dog for the primo spot on the sofa right next to the A/C vent. This recipe fits the bill. To its advantage, it happens to be quite tasty too and literally takes under a half hour to make (including the time it takes the water to come to a boil). Now move over dog, it’s my turn! Read the rest of this entry »

Via What’s Going Down(town) we learn that the Downtown Improvement District is bringing back their popular Downtown Dining Club cards. The cards are meant to encourage people to visit the many great downtown Fort Wayne restaurants, and there are some wonderful deals to be had at some of your favorite Fort Wayne eateries.

Each time you visit one of the participating restaurants you’ll get a stamp for your card. Collect eight stamps and you’ll be entered into a contest for a VIP Party for you and all of your friends at Columbia Street West plus a night’s stay at the downtown Hilton.

To get your free Downtown Dining Club Card, just visit any one of the participating restaurants and you’ll get your card right along with your meal. Nothing could be simpler, and you get to save a few shekels while enjoying some seriously good eats and supporting your local restaurateurs. Everybody wins.

Hmm… And lunch is only an hour away…

Read on for the full list of participating restaurants… Read the rest of this entry »

This recipe might not be authentic Thai, or authentic anything for that matter, but it’s quite tasty and will go with fish, meat or poultry.

Quick’N'Easy Creamy Peanut Sauce
Ingredients

• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt, sour cream or mayonnaise
  (use what sounds good to you, or what you’ve got in your fridge)
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

Preparation

1. Simply whisk everything together. It couldn’t get any easier! This will keep in the fridge for several days.

I had been craving a fish fry for ages so, despite the fact that Leo and I had just made pan-fried fish on Thursday (it’s just not the same!), I decided to take the kids to Ya Boy. In case you are unfortunate enough to be unfamiliar with this wonderful establishment, it’s at the corner of Anthony and McKinnie, across from the 99 Cent Pus store - your one-stop-shop for knock-off purses, perfumes and bling. Being situated in this less than lovely part of town, Ya Boy does boast some unusual features such as bullet-proof glass separating you from the food preparation area and a little lazy susan contraption that allows them to give you your food without actually handing it to you. Brings back fond memories of liquor stores which sold vodka to minors in NYC when I was an undergrad… Read the rest of this entry »

I love cooking together with Catherine. Yes, because of our schedules it’s often harried and sometimes things don’t turn out quite as good as we might like. Such is life. But, and I think this is important, the time we take in planning and preparing meals nourishes our love for one another just as we are nourishing each other with the food we cook. We work hard to keep it interesting too by trying to anticipate each other’s tastes, making old favorites, trying out something exciting and new, indulging each other in decadent desserts, or just a heaping serving of comfort food. Everyone needs a little comfort now and then.

It doesn’t have to be complicated either. Just like in love, a plain and simple screw is exactly what you need once in a while. So it goes that sometimes the simplest meals are the best ones. Last night was like this. All we did was pan fry some salmon that had been hanging out in the freezer and served it with this uncomplicated and unpresuming lemon-dill sauce that I threw together at lunch time. On the side we had steamed asparagus because asparagus was on sale this week and I bought a mountain of it (we both love the pointy green veggie).

And you know what? The lemon-dill sauce was as good on the asparagus as it was on the fish.So here’s the recipe, but by all means, don’t feel like you have to restrict this sauce to just fish. I imagine it’d be just as good on some chicken, pork or beef. And if you don’t have a lemon to grate, don’t worry! Remember, we’re keeping it simple here and it’s going to taste as good whether you use bottled lemon juice or the real deal. Read the rest of this entry »