The recipe of the month is taken from COOKED BOOKS, a cookbook featuring recipes from the staff of Princeton University Press. Enjoy!

Strawberry Girl Shortcake

When Most Is Best

Daphne Ireland

This recipe is my mom’s recipe; thanks, Lorraine Tams! Every first week of June, my Strawberry Girl, Larissa, and I pick strawberries at a nearby farm— more accurately, I pick them and she “sneaks” them. There’s nothing more irresistible than a sweet, sun-warmed strawberry, right off the stem. Same night, its fresh Strawberry Girl Shortcake for dessert, which the boys, Gavin and Kent, love too.

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
• 2⁄3 cup sugar
• 1⁄2 cup butter
• 2⁄3 cup milk
• 1 quart fresh or frozen strawberries (divided use)
• 2⁄3 cup light cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Sugar to taste
• Whipped cream (homemade is best, of course!)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees (F).

Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in butter. Add milk. The batter will be thick – like biscuit dough. Spread into 2 buttered 9-inch cake pans. Bake for 10–12 minutes. Remove, and cool completely.

Meanwhile, blend 1/2 quart of strawberries (reserving other 1/2 quart for later use), cream, vanilla extract, and sugar to taste. Cut the leftover 1/2 quart strawberries into quarters, leaving the last 3–5 strawberries to be used as garnish.

Assemble in layers—cake, strawberry blend, whipped cream, and quartered strawberries; then repeat.

Garnish with whole strawberries. Enjoy!

The recipe of the month is taken from COOKED BOOKS, a cookbook featuring recipes from the staff of Princeton University Press. Enjoy!

Red-Breasted Boiled Beets

Sam Elworthy

Identification: Key identification features are two large red mounds protruding from white gunk. Subspecies Parsilia features spots of green on top. Juveniles are smaller. Geriatrics are larger and tougher.

Range: Long assumed extinct after last confirmed sighting in its native New Zealand in 1954, but recently there have been unconfirmed reports of Red-Breasted Boiled Beets in Lambertville, New Jersey (note — last confirmed sighting preceded Elworthy’s departure for New Zealand to act as director of Auckland University Press).

Behavior: White gunk and red breasts occasionally merge into pink mush on arrival at table. Red boiling liquid has been known to produce startling red stains on floors, clothes, and faces, etc.

BEETS
8 medium-sized beets
parsley, for garnish

WHITE SAUCE
1 stick of butter (½ cup)
4 tablespoons flour
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups milk

BEETS
Boil beets until you can poke a fork in them—around 45 minutes. Drain beets, run them under cold water, and use a knife to take off skin and trim the ends.

WHITE SAUCE
Melt butter on medium heat, add flour, and mix; add salt, and then add milk slowly, while stirring vigorously. Sauce should be thick but not solid—add more milk if too thick, weep if too thin, and proceed anyway.

Put 2 beets on each plate. Pour white sauce on top. Garnish with parsley.

Eat!

Serves 4 people.

In honor of Canada Day here’s the re-post of the recipe taken from COOKED BOOKS, a cookbook featuring recipes from the staff of Princeton University Press. Enjoy!

“Revenge of the Once-Domestic Canadian, Ann Ambrose” (spin off from PUP book Revenge of the Domestic by Donna Harsch.)

Cyber Goddess “Great White North ‘Chilly’”

1 pound veggie ground round
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 can vegetarian beans
1–2 tablespoons chili powder

Sauté veggie ground round and onion in large frying pan. Add tomatoes, sauce, beans, and chili powder; stir. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour; alternatively, throw ingredients into slowcooker and cook on low for the day (or at least 6 hours).

Serves 4.

Note for my fellow Canadians: Many apologies for the nonmetric measurements. Substitute 100 milliliters of olive oil for 10 kilograms whale blubber/veggie ground round. Add an additional kilogram of chili powder and serve with a side of rubaboo (substituting Earth Balance shortening for lard).

Serves 12, plus 8 sled dogs.

The recipe of the month is taken from COOKED BOOKS, a cookbook featuring recipes from the staff of Princeton University Press. Enjoy!

Copywriters’ Crutch Casserole

Or Baked Cheese Grits

Bob Bettendorf

Most non-Southerners believe grits are disgusting. So something called “baked cheese grits” must be doubly so, right? Not so, boldly asserts Bob Bettendorf, the world’s leading fake Southerner and grits authority. With his magisterial, pathbreaking, incisive, penetrating, compelling, beautifully illustrated, timely, controversial, provocative, previously unknown, unprecedented, comprehensive, elegantly written, far-reaching, sweeping, pioneering, unique, revealing, forthright, readable, landmark, and scholarly-yet-accessible recipe Copywriter’s Crutch Casserole, Bettendorf persuasively demonstrates that grits are not only edible, but also consumable. Based on original archival research, cutting-edge laboratory work, firsthand field study, industrial espionage, and hours of sitting in the dark thinking hard, this recipe—the first grits recipe ever published in New Jersey (or in standard English)—will change forever the way three or four people look at the humble corn staple.

1 cup of good quality stone-ground yellow grits
(Not processed white grits.You may be able to find good grits at better gourmet stores or online: copywriters can usually tell you where to look.)
3 cups water
1⁄2 –1 stick butter (you decide)
1⁄2 cup milk or cream
2 teaspoons salt (less any salt you use when
cooking grits)
a dash of pepper
2⁄3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2⁄3 cup grated Gruyère cheese
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).

Prepare grits as directed on bag (for some brands, this may mean bringing 1 cup of grits and 3 cups of water to a boil and then simmering them for 30–60 minutes, stirring occasionally. You may add a pat or two of butter and a few dashes of salt.)

Pour hot grits into a bowl and stir in all other ingredients.

Pour mixture into a 9 x 13-inch pan or casserole dish.

Bake for 45–60 minutes at 350 degrees (F) or until it doesn’t jiggle too much. It can
jiggle a bit because it will set more as it cools.

Highly recommended: Reheat refrigerated leftover squares by frying them in butter, in a cast-iron skillet.

Even more highly recommended: Take a refrigerated square (about 4 x 4 inches), cut out a circle in the middle using an upside-down drinking glass with a diameter of about 1. inches: start frying square in a buttered skillet, and then crack an egg in the circle, flipping several times as it fries.

The recipe of the month is taken from COOKED BOOKS, a cookbook featuring recipes from the staff of Princeton University Press. Enjoy!

The Evolution of Maia’s Complexity Mango-Cranberry Nut Bread

Maia Reim

This is a recipe I concocted when I had lots of ripe mangoes I wanted to use up. To make 1 cup of mango pulp you will probably need 2 large mangoes, but the exact amount is not critical— applesauce or mashed bananas, or whatever you have to work with, can be substituted for mangoes.

½ cup skim, soy, almond, or rice milk, blended with 2 teaspoons vinegar to make “buttermilk”
½ cup canola oil
1 cup puréed mango pulp
1 cup sugar (I like to use brown sugar for ¼ of this)
2 eggs (or ½ cup Eggbeaters)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1¾ cups flour
¼ cup wheat germ or bran
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
½ cup chopped walnuts
¾ cup chopped raw cranberries or raisins
2 tablespoons fresh grated citrus peel (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).

Blend together the milk, oil, mango pulp, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, and almond extract.

In separate large bowl, combine flour, wheat germ, baking soda, cinnamon, walnuts, cranberries, and citrus peel. Add liquid ingredients to the dry, and blend until just moistened.

Pour into 2 medium-sized or one large greased loaf pan; bake in oven for 35 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Serves many. Freezes well. Makes great muffins too.
It is nice to keep one loaf at home and bring one to the kitchen at PUP. (this blog editor says, “Indeed, Maia feel free to bring one in at any time!”)

The recipe of the month is a traditional dessert from Denmark–cold strawberry and rhubarb soup–provided by our art and literature editor Hanne Winarsky.

The recipe of the month is CyberGoddess Ann Ambrose’s take on chicken chili–with special instructions for our neighbors to the North.

The recipe of the month reminds you that if you have trouble remembering how to pronounce “Bollingen,” think of the Bollingen martini. The “o” is pronounced as in “olive,” but there is no “gin” in a Bollingen martini (“ng” is pronounced as in “sing”).