5-6 lbs pickling cucumbers
1 c pickling or kosher salt
3 quarts (12 c) water
1 quart (4 c) white vinegar
crushed garlic
fresh dill
black peppercorns

Cover the cucumbers in a large non-reactive bowl with water, and add ¼c salt, and let them soak for 8 to 12 hours. Sterilize 4 or more jars in the dishwasher. In a pot, bring 3 quarts of water and the 1 quart of vinegar and ¾ cups of salt to a rapid boil. While you’re waiting for that, crush 1-3 cloves of garlic in each jar, along with a couple of fronds of dill and 5 or 6 peppercorns. Rinse the cucumbers, and slice each in half or quarters, or slice into rounds, and fill each jar with as many as you can. Ladle the hot liquid into each jar to cover, and apply the lids. Allow the jars to cool a bit, and then let cool in the fridge.

Technically, the recipe says that you let the pickles cure for 2 weeks, but I can never wait that long, and they taste great immediately. The recipe also claims that they’ll last for a month or two, but I’ve never had them last that long. A variation on the recipe has you add a hot pepper to each jar for a little spice.

The weird part about the recipe is that the barbecue sauce is mayonnaise based, as opposed to ketchup based, and it was quite tasty. The real recipe has you smoke a chicken cut in half over hickory chips. I used apple wood. The real recipe has you rub the chicken with a mixture of salt, black pepper and cayenne, and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes (or up to 8 hours). I don’t use cayenne because the people I feed don’t like the heat of cayenne, so I made a bit of a mix of salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and adobo seasoning.

The sauce is made up of a quarter cup of mayonnaise,  what was left over from the spice mixture I didn’t rub on the chicken, and a tablespoon of jarred horseradish.

So you cook the chicken (3 to 4 lbs., cut in half with the backbone removed) over an aluminum pie pan, with a chimney full of fully lit charcoal distributed evenly on either side of the pan, and then the soaked wood chips over top of the coals. I cooked it 45 minutes, skin side down, and then 20 minutes with the flesh side down. Then you remove the chicken and brush the sauce over top.

Yes, but apparently only if you know what you’re doing. Inspired by a small shop in Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh and various blogs, I decided to give pastrami a try. I have been brining my own corned beef for some time now (both literally and figurative). Pastrami is just smoked spiced corned beef, right? So I took my corned beef out of its brine, covered it with pastrami spices, and smoked it in my smoker. The result: smoked corned beef. It wasn’t exactly awful, but it definitely was not pastrami. It tasted like roasted sauerbraten and had the texture of corned beef. My family wouldn’t touch the stuff – especially not after they were expecting the taste of pastrami.

Back to the drawing board. More research. It seems like most pastrami is dry cured and that we have come to associate the taste of nitrates with pastrami. How does a home cook dry cure brisket? With something called Morton’s Tender Cure. Trim all the fat off a brisket (or whatever cut of beef you are trying to turn into pastrami). A few tablespoons of Tender Cure , a few spices and 3 weeks in the fridge yield a beautiful dry cured piece of meat.

What next? Cover the brisket with pastrami spices (paprika, salt, ground black and white pepper, ground yellow mustard seeds, ground coriander seeds, garlic, a little brown sugar) and put it in a smoker over water to cold smoke for 4 hours. Then into a slow oven over boiling water to steam for maybe 2 hours.

The result: delicious! Hot pastrami, better than anything you can get in the grocery store. Hot through and through, fine textured, no collagen, with a peppery bite and a fragrance that’s out of this world. Is homemade better than the pastrami in a great deli like Katz’s? Dunno … we’d have to do a blind taste test. But then again, who cares unless you live in NYC or Squirrel Hill and have ready access to fine hot pastrami. What came out of my oven was better pastrami by far than anything I can buy here in Northern Virginia. David Sax was right (of course).

When the world seems to be falling apart, when the stock market loses 1000 points in 2 minutes, when Labour and Tories have just as much trouble figuring out who’s boss as do Democrats and Republicans, when the car payment is due and you can’t get your kids to do their homework or even get out of bed in time for school, when the county makes you tear down your beloved backyard shed due to zoning laws and your bicycle gets a flat tire two miles from home, when your spouse’s whole family is coming to visit for a week – that’s when it’s time for Comfort Food. And there’s no food more comforting than macaroni and cheese.

Not “collegiate mac ‘n cheese” — that unnaturally goldenrod-colored aggregate of powdered milk and microscopic noodles that spills out of boxes you can buy 4 for $1. Real homemade macaroni & cheese. The kind they serve in real English pubs. In a pudding dish. With complex cheddar melted over beautifully textured noodles, bubbling out of the oven with a crispy crunchy top. The universal food, loved by Labour and Tories, Democrats and Republicans alike, cherished by Wallace & Gromit (at least if you use Wensleydale).

The ingredients are simple:

macaroni
good quality sharp cheddar cheese (grated)
butter
milk
salt
white pepper
flour
bread crumbs

Cook the macaroni. Drain. Make a béchamel (white) sauce by melting butter in a saucepan and mixing in salt and flour until foamy (4 mins), then gradually add (hot) milk and constantly stir over medium heat until thick (don’t let it boil). Stir some grated cheese into the sauce. Well grease a casserole dish, and layer the macaroni, the sauce and the grated cheese. Sprinkle top with sautéed breadcrumbs and some white pepper. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees until bubbly. Or, if you are twenty-something, impatient and/or really hungry, skip the baking step and eat immediately after adding the cheese.

This week’s People Magazine (the ultimate real mag for real people?) had a variation attributed to Alton Brown: add some powdered dry mustard, ½ cup finely diced onion, a bay leaf, paprika and an egg to the white sauce, and use sauteed panko bread crumbs for the topping.. Alas, our kids wouldn’t eat this recipe. Too many onions?

Cheryl and Bill Jamison’s American Home Cooking advises you to add some buttermilk with the milk to make the white sauce, and to add some Tabasco sauce and a pinch of nutmeg. The Lee Bros. recommend 3 bay leaves and Gruyere or Swiss cheese. The White House Cookbook uses ¼ cup chopped onion, liquid Butter Buds (whatever they are – I guess some low cholesterol butter substitute), whole wheat flour, dry mustard, some swiss cheese mixed in with the cheddar, and fresh parsley. Other variations add minced ham or bacon. But the more complex the ingredients, the less comforting the result?

Garmey’s Great British Cooking has an even more basic, super-comforting recipe that leaves out the pasta. Put layers of buttered white bread (crusts removed) into the casserole dish, sprinkle cheese and a little salt and pepper over the bread; cook 3 beaten eggs with 2 cups milk in a saucepan until almost ready to boil; pour over the bread, top with bacon or ham slices and some more cheese (Wensleydale?), and bake for 45 minutes after letting stand for 15 minutes.

Saveur Cooks Authentic American (a wonderful cookbook if you’ve never seen it – it will make you so hungry just looking at the spectacular photos) suggests adding a small amount of cayenne and pouring ½ cup of heavy cream over the whole mixture after assembling just before topping with sauted bread crumbs. Not something for every day. But it’s not every day that you need to comfort food before curling up under the afghan in front of a warm fire with hot cocoa and a tearjerker (book or film). Don’t forget the chocolate.

In a zip-top bag, combine the sugar, salt and about a cup of warm water. Mix to dissolve. Cut the onion into quarters or eighths, removing the papery skin. Add the pork chops and the fresh herbs. Zip the bag mostly closed and remove as much air as possible before closing it completely. Toss it around a little, then put in a shallow pan and let sit in the fridge, turning it after 4 hours. After 8 hours, remove the chops from the brine, and refrigerate until ready to cook.

Preheat oven to 350°. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan. Dry the pork chops of excess surface moisture, pepper each side, then fry in the hot pan, 5 minutes per side. Pour off excess fat, and replace with port wine. Put on the lid, and put it in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove lid, and baste with bbq sauce, return to oven for 10 more minutes. Remove from oven, and let rest for 10 more minutes.

1 lb. fresh strawberries, blueberries, raspberries or other berries
2 cups sugar

Wash and clean berries, and place whole (do not crush!) into medium sized saucepan with 1 cup of sugar. Warm over low heat while stirring gently and occasionally until the sugar melts and forms a syrup. Turn heat up to medium high and bring to a boil until foam appears on the top. Skim the foam, add the second cup of sugar, and boil just until jam forms a sheet on the end of your spoon. (Do not overcook — if you do, the jam will slowly transform itself into something that tastes no different from store-bought!) Pour into sterilized jars (leave enough headroom for ice expansion), seal jars with sterilized jar lids, cool, and store in the freezer.

1 pound of flour (about 3 to 4 cups)
1 or 1½ sticks of cold butter or margarine
¼ pound (about 1/3 cup) sugar
½ teaspoon salt
glass of ice water

In a deep mixing bowl, mix together by hand the flour, sugar, salt. With  a pastry cutter (though a butter knife will do), thoroughly cut the butter or margarine into the flour mixture. (The flour mixture will turn slightly yellow overall.) Add ice water, a sprinkle at a time, and mix with your hands into the flour mixture until it holds together and forms a doughball.

If you are very cautious, you might want to refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes (but no longer! It will get to hard to roll out!), but I usually proceed immediately to the next step.

Gulp down some of the ice water, cross yourself, then turn slightly more than half of the dough onto a flat surface and roll out with a rolling pin (or a wine bottle, in a pinch — tall german riesling, preferred), big enough to fit your pie pan with overflow. Position the bottom crust into a (glass) pie pan, by loosely rolling the dough onto the rolling pin, lift it over the pan, and carefully let it unroll into the pie pan.

Fill with your favorite pie filling, and top with the remaining dough. Bake in a 375° oven for 45-50 minutes. Let the pie cool completely.

This crust is excellent with any fruit filling, but it’s especially great as an apple or a peach pie, or in early summer, filled with tart pitted cherries, sugar, and tapioca. In midsummer, try freshly picked raspberries or blueberries, sugar, lenom juice, and lots of tapioca.

1 cup sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup smooth peanut butter
6 cups Rice Krispies^® cereal
1 small bag (12-16 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 small bag (12-16 oz) butterscotch chips

In a 3-quart saucepan, combine the sugar and the corn-syrup and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat, and stir in the peanut butter, and mix well. Add the cereal, stirring until blended. Press the mixture into a buttered 13x9x2-inch sheet pan. Melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips together in a double-boiler, or use a microwave: half power for 3 minutes, stirring, and then up to another 2 minutes. Spread melted mixture over the Rice Krispies^® mixture in the pan. Cool until firm, and cut into squares. Do not refrigerate!

1 slightly beaten egg
1 10 oz. package of frozen chopped broccoli, partially thawed
1 8½ oz can creamed style corn
1 cup herb-seasoned stuffing mix
1 tablespoon grated onion
¼ teaspoon salt
dash of pepper
3 tablespoons butter

In a greased 2-quart casserole dish, combine egg, broccoli, cream corn, onion, salt and pepper. In a small sauce pan (or in a bowl in the microwave), melt the butter; add the stuffing mix, and toss to coat. Stir three-quarters of the stuffing mixture in with the vegetables, and then top with the remaining quarter cup. Bake uncovered, 35-40 minutes in a 350° oven.

My grandpa, Aaron Jelliff, 1906-1971

My grandfather loved to cook, even back in the Eisenhower days, where the men went out to work, and the women stayed home and kept the house. He was a fabulous bread maker and started my mother on her endless cookbook collecting. He is also very much remembered for this recipe. It dates back to the 60′s, so the only kind of parmesan cheese Grandpa knew of came in a green can. The recipe also doesn’t take advantage of many fresh herbs or the new no-boil kind of pasta either, though I’m sure it couldn’t hurt at all to make those replacements. Rinsing pasta is usually frowned upon, but it’s important to do it in this recipe, otherwise the noodles will stick together and become completely impossible to handle.

1 lb. sausage (sweet italian or bulk)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon basil (dried)
1½ teaspoons salt
1 can of chopped tomatoes (16 oz)
2 cans tomato paste (6 oz. each)
10 oz. lasagna noodles
3 cups ricotta cheese (whole milk is best)
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons dried parsley
2 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 lb. mozzarella, sliced thin (or same amount, shredded)

In a large frying pan, brown the meat slowly. Spoon off the excess grease. Add garlic, basil, salt, tomatoes, and tomato paste, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook the noodles according to the package, drain, and rinse under cold water until you can handle them. Combine the ricotta, parmesan, parsley, eggs, salt and pepper. Put half of the noodles in a 13x9x2 baking dish, spread half of the cheese mixture on top, and a layer of 1/3rd of the mozzarella cheese, and half of the meat sauce. Repeat the layers, finishing off with the rest of the mozzarella. Bake at 375° for about 30 minutes. Let it stand 10 minutes before serving.