Union Elementary School's Chicken Pot Pie

Back in the day, Union Elementary School in Lincolnton, NC, had the best chicken pot pie (CPP) in the world.  When they had they annual CPP dinner, tickets would sell out in minutes.  Students' grandparents would fly in to Charlotte-Douglass airport just to come and eat this stuff.

The recipe, I guess, was secret, and that bothered me for many years.  However, I decided to sit down and do an autopsy of the Union CPP.  What would the cafeteria staff have at hand?  Well, water, flour, lard, leftover chicken, frozen vegetables, and either chicken soup or condensed chicken soup.  The youngest of the cafeteria staff back then would be 70 years old, so there had to be some grandma going on with cooking the CPP.  Ergo, I went to my great-great-grandmother's cookbook to review what was probably the most important part of the CPP...the crust!  Putting all of this together, I concocted a CPP that, to me, tastes like the Union CPP of old!

Recipe for the crust:

• 1.5 cups of all-purpose flour;
• 1/4 cup of cold water;
• 1/2 cup of lard;
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt and throw in a wee bit of black pepper.

Recipe for the guts:

• One can of cream of chicken soup and one can of milk;
• 2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables;
• 2 cups of roasted chicken that has been pulled into pieces;
• A shot of hot sauce;
• A small shake of dried thyme leaves;
• A wee bit of cornstarch that has been whisked into 1/3 cup of water, for thickening.

Turn on your oven to 425 degrees F.

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl.  Turn on the mixer and cut in the lard a little bit at a time until it starts to look grainy.  Add the salt/pepper and gradually add the water until you have a smooth, balled-up mess.  Cut the ball into half.  On a floured surface, roll out the dough until it is big enough to cover the top of whatever pie pan you are using.  With the other half, roll it out big enough to line the inside of the pie pan.

Put all the guts together into a pot and warm it up until almost boiling, then turn off the heat and let it set.   Rub the inside of the pie pan with butter and line it with one piece of flattened dough.  Place this in the oven for about 5 minutes to allow the crust to bake.  After 5 minutes, open the oven and pour in the guts.  Then place the other part of the dough on top, cutting the edges to make it look pretty, and seal it to the pie pans outer edge with your fingers.  Make a few cuts in the upper crust to allow the steam to come out.  Bake for about 40 minutes or until you see the guts bubbling from either out of the cuts or from around the sides of the pan.  Don't let the crust bake too much.  You want to see a light brown crust.  Take out the CPP and let it rest for 20 minutes.  Then dive on it!

I bet this will take you back to your elementary school days, when the air was filled with smells of biscuits, CPP, and innocence.

Sarah's Apple Pie

The Red Neck Chef uses some recipes that go back over 100 years. Great-grandma Sarah was married to the son of a Civil War veteran. I saw some pictures of her in her youth and she was hot. Sarah liked to take a nip of homemade spirits every once in a while. She made lye soap in the barn, churned butter in the oak’s shade, made candles in the smokehouse, raised vegetables in a garden that is still used today, and rung a couple thousand chickens’ necks in her day. Old Sarah has been talking to me since I got her cookbook a few months ago. I have been making the recipes that she probably made for her family in the late 1800s-early 1900s, like meat loaf, chicken and dumplings, homemade bread, etc. Of course, I cannot find lard anymore, and pure butter is hard to come by. But the recipe below shows some of the simple magic that you cannot find on the Food Channel. This recipe also shows why old Sarah got a wider waistline during her later years.


Ingredients:
6 large apples of your choice…The Red Neck Chef likes Granny Smith apples for Granny Sarah’s apple pies

1/2 cup of shortening

1 and a half cups of Flour

1 cup Sugar or Splenda

Butter

1/4 cup water

1/2 teaspoon salt

dash of nutmeg or cinnamon
This is a double-crust pie…that means that you will have the bottom crust and a layer of pastry on top of the pie itself. Pour the flour and salt into the mixing bowl. Stir it up a little with a mixer. Buy the shortening that is in separately-wrapped bars. Cut the shortening into little pieces. As the mixer is mixing, put a piece or two of shortening into the flour. Do this until all of the shortening is in the flour and it looks like flour with little pebbles in it. While the mixer is on, slowly put in the water. The pastry mix will clump up into a ball. That is good.

Take out the ball and separate into two equal balls. Roll out one ball on a floured board until it is about one-eighth of an inch and close to a circle. If the pastry flakes off onto your rolling pin, it is too dry so you have grab your pastry and work a little more water into it. Beware…if you work the pastry too much, you will have created one more shingle to put on your roof. Once you have a flat, round pastry that fits into your pie pan and up its sides and over the lip, roll out the other ball in the same way.

Peel your apples and cut them into slices. Place the slices in a paper bag. Add the sugar, nutmeg or cinnamon, and a tablespoon of flour. Shake it up and pour the bag’s contents into the pastry-lined pie pan. Cut pieces of butter and place into the apples. Put the top crust on top of it all. Make the edges nice and pretty. Get a knife and put a few cuts into the top pastry to allow steam to escape. Place in an oven preheated to 425 degrees F and bake for 45 minutes or until the crust begins to turn brown. Take out the pie and place on a cooling rack for twenty minutes.

Cut you a piece, putting a dab of vanilla ice cream on it with a shot of hazelnut liqueur on it. Enjoy the pie while remembering old Sarah sweating over a butter churn, taking a nip of something naughty, and her chickens cowering in fear.

Sun-dried Tomatoes Without The Sun

Let's say you get the itch for some sun-dried 'maters, but you don' have any and the local Piggly Wiggly does not carry any in stock.  Well, if Piggly Wiggly carries Roma tomatoes, olive oil, salt, and sugar, then, if you have about six hours to be at home and smell some great cooking, please keep reading.

Ingredients:
20 Roma tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise;
olive oil;
salt;
sugar;
bowl;
cookie sheet or roasting pan;
an oven.

Preheat oven to 185 degrees.

Cut the tomatoes lengthwise as noted.  Put the tomatoes in the bowl.  Pour some olive oil on them and give them a good mixing with your hands until all tomato surfaces are covered.

Place the 'maters, sliced side up, on the cooking sheet or in a roasting pan.  Sprinkle a bit of salt and sugar on the sliced side of the tomatoes.  Slide those bad boys in the oven and take the rest of the day to watch "Maury," "Springer," and a "Three Stooges Marathon," because this will take about 6 to 8 hours to cook.  The finished product should be dark red, flattened because of the juices being evaporated, and getting almost to the crisp point. 

After cooling, you can eat them right away or place them in a zippy bag and freeze them.  They last about a year in the freezer, or about 10 minutes if you leave them out in the open with my spouse nearby.

Cold Mediterranean Orzo Salad

I love pasta salads.  I love risotto.  Hmmm...how can I combine the two loves?  Ding dang it!!!!  Use orzo.

I don't know what orzo really is.  I knew a person named Orzo Hamhock up near Grungeville, Tennessee, who operated the town's main company, Hamhock's Vi-EEN-Ya Sausage House.  The place ran well until old Orzo decided to train somebody on the sausage grinder.  Now we call him "Lefty."

Anyway, a great orzo salad is the one named, "Cold Mediterranean Orzo Salad," and here it goes!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb uncooked orzo;
• 1 cup of pitted, chopped kalamata olives (don't say "what the..." as they sell them at Harris Teeter!):
• 8 oil-packed sundried tomatoes, finely chopped;
•  3/4 of chopped onions;
• 4 chicken boullon cubes;
• 7 cups o'water;
• 1/4 cup o'butter;
• 1/3 cup of olive oil;
• 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar;
• A smecklin' o' salt and pepper;
• 5 oz of crumbled goat cheese (don't say "what the..." as they sell this at Food Lion!);
• 1/2 cup of thinly sliced basil and four full basil leaves.

First, in a sauce pan, heat 7 cups of water that has 4 little cubes of chicken boullon in it to a boil.  While you are doing that, take a cast-iron skillet and put the heat to it.  Put one-half of your dry orzo in the pan and toast it until it begins to turn a little brown, about 4 minutes.  Take the orzo out of the pan and put in a bowl to cool off.  In that cast-iron skillet, heat it up again and add 1/4 cup of butter so it can melt.  When melted, add the chopped onion and let it cook until you can almost see through the onion bits.  Add the combined orzo into the onion butter mixture and  cook for two minutes.  The fake chicken stock should be boiling by now.  Add 2 cups of the stock to the orzo mixture and stir it so the broth is absorbed; continue one cup of stock at a time thereafter.  You should use most of the stock...however, you don't want your orzo to be gummy...each grain should pop in your mouth when you bite into it.

When finished with the stocking, get a collander and put it in the sink.  Pour the hot orzo in it and then rinse it with cold water until the whole she-bang is cool.  Allow the stuff to drain and then pour the orzo into a nice-sized bowl.  Pour in the olive oil, the chopped olives, the sliced sun-dried tomatoes, and the salt/pepper mix into the orzo.  Cover the bowl and put it in the Kelvinator for about 2 hours. 

After two hours or so, take the orzo out and stir it a bit.  Put in the sliced basil and the crumbled goat cheese and stir those in gently.  I usually put a few slices of sun-dried tomatoes and a few basil leaves on top to make it fancy.  Then go ahead and serve to those who don't care that you slaved over a hot oven to make them something good and European to eat.  If your guests are like that, tell them the story about Lefty.

PS...if you cannot find sun-dried tomatoes, then you can do the following (and you have to add about 8 hours to your meal-prep time)...oh, what the heck...I'll put it in another recipe!

Honey-Roasted Turkey Salad

Alrighty...you made the roasted turkey as mentioned earlier, but you have a cravin' for a kick-your-uncle turkey salad sandwich.  Well, my wondering young one, here is what I do to make  kick-your-uncle turkey salad.

Get a nut and cabbage crusher...you know, the thing that has a handle and there is a round, serrated blade at the bottom?  Get some of your sliced turkey and put it in an 8"-round bowl and fill it about halfway or three-quarters to the top.  Crush the Hades out of the turkey, like you would cutting cabbage into cole slaw.  When the turkey becomes uniformly cut to the point that it looks somewhat spreadable, stop crushing it.  Add two tablespoons of mayo, two teaspoons of crushed thyme, a handful of finely-chopped celery, one-half teaspoon or so of garlic, and stir away.  You could add some slivered almonds if you want.  The texture should be not dry and not real wet...you should be able to ball some of it in your hand without it falling apart or draining juices through your fingers...it should be just right.  If I have to tell what kind of bread or bun to use, then you are really helpless, aren't you?

The flavor of the roasted turkey (if you used the previous recipe, ding-a-ling) with the thyme, garlic, and celery will make you want to put a hole in a sheetrock wall with your fist.  But, instead of ruining a nice wall, go kick your uncle.

Honey-Roasted Turkey Breast

Dear readers, most of you know that I really do not like turkey. They usually come out dryer than a camel carcass in the Sahara Desert. But I stumbled upon this recipe because my spouse wanted me to make a turkey for Thanksgiving last year but I waited too late to cook a big bird. So I got a bone-in turkey breast, started looking at some old cookbooks, and found this recipe (of which I added some things to it to make it my own). This dish is so moist, it would bring life to the camel carcass in the Sahara Desert. I don't know if the Sahara Desert has camels, but I digress.

Ingredients:

One bone-in turkey breast (not one of those boneless breasts that is already seasoned...give those to the buzzards);

2 tablespoons black pepper;
1/2 cup Kosher salt;
1/2 cup Clover honey;
1/2 cup brown sugar;
Thyme leaves;
One regular-sized sauce pan;
One decent-sized pot;
One 2.5-gallon plastic zippy bag.

In a saucepan, bring to boil one cup of water with the black pepper added and about two teaspoons of thyme. Watch out! The smell coming from boiling pepper water is equal to mace being shot in your face.

Take the pan off the heat and let it cool. Go outside and have your significant other get a garden hose and spray your eyes out. Come back in the kitchen, get a pretty good sized pot and pour six cups of water into it. Add the kosher salt to this water and stir it up until mostly dissolved. Pour in the brown sugar and honey and stir again until that is absorbed as best as possible. Add the dreaded black pepper water.

No, we haven't forgotten the poor turkey, anxious reader. Wash the turkey inside and out under the faucet. Place the turkey into the zippy bag. WASH YOUR HANDS WITH SOAP AND HOT WATER to kill any turkey juice that remains on your digitals. ALSO WASH AND SANITIZE THOSE AREAS WHERE THE TURKEY SAT AND WHERE IT DEPOSITED ITS JUICE!

Pour the pepper/honey/salt fluid mixture into the zippy bag with the turkey and zip the bag closed (I would recommend getting as much air out of the bag as possible prior to the final zip). Place this concoction on the lowest shelf of the Kelvinator (refrigerator for you youngsters) to prevent any accidental turkey juice drips on your other edibles, and leave it overnight. You want to turn the bag over a few times during the marination period to enable all meat parts to be equally marinated.

The next day, take the zippy bag out of the Kelvinator and pour the juices into the sink. Wash the turkey off and dry it as much as possible. Again, wash your hands and work area afterwards. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F. Place the turkey onto a roasting pan and put it in the oven for about 1 hour or until the internal turkey temperature is around 160 degrees F. I always throw some water into the bottom of the roasting pan during the cooking process to get some gravy out of the bird.
Once it is done, take it out and let it cool, thus allowing all the internal turkey juices to redistribute within the meat. Safely carve the turkey. Take a taste. You will first taste the salty crunch with a shot of peppery sweetness. The meat itself will be so juicy that your significant other may think you are foaming at the mouth.

If the turkey is not as good as I presented above, you are a lousy cook who needs to stick with washing your hands at a burger joint.

Hoodoo Bar-B-Que!

Natives, you have your BBQ and I have mine.  In Waco, Texas, where the land is flat, the sun is hot, and where the best damn cowboy hats are made, they have beef  BBQ.  I mean, it has to be beef!  In Florida, it can be any meat that is found on the side of the road, but it has to have red, ketchup-y BBQ sauce.   Nearer to Rawl-eee, NC, the state's capital, they mandate mustard sauce on whatever they are cooking, be it pork or possum.

Well, gentle people, I have married the gap between the differing types of BBQ, and have made it safer by taking away the charcoals and adding a crock pot.  Here is "Hoodoo BBQ!"

Ingredients:

3 lb. Boston Butt Pork with bone;
1 jar of Carolina Treet marinate or mix up some ketchup, mustard, and vinegar to make an orange-looking sauce;
1 big ole onion cut into four chunks;
1/3 cup of cider vinegar;
1/3 cup of brown sugar;
1 T of garlic;
One regular-sized can of chicken broth and one similar can of beef broth (hence the marriage of the meats).

Get the cut onion and put it in the bottom of a crock pot.  Place the pork on top of the onions.  Pour in the brown sugar, vinegar, garlic, the broths, and about 1/2 cup of the marinate.  Turn the dial on high, cover, and it should cook for about 6 or 7 hours.  Halfway during this glorious smell-a-thon of meat and sauce, pour a cup of the marinate on top of the pork and put the lid back.  When it gets to the point whereby you can get a Q-tip and pull the meat off with it, it is done.  The bone should be separating from the meat.  When safely cooled, take out the meat, place onto a big platter, and pull it apart with two forks...two forks only, mind you!  With the liquid still hot, pour in some water laced with corn starch and make a thickened gravy.

Make some championship-quality slaw, buy some fancy buns, and pig out!  It will make you want to smack your grandpa out of his wheelchair, it is that good!

Greek Mac

Greek Macaroni Casserole


I hate eggplants. I hate the name. Who in their right mind would name a purple melon an eggplant? I’ll tell you who…Greek people. That’s right, the people who invented the Olympics and olive oil named this hellish bulb an eggplant. Why? Who knows. Maybe back in the olden days, they had Greek ostriches who laid purple eggs. The only thing that I know is that there is a lot of consternation in the Red Neck Chef’s household because I do not like eggplants and my spouse does. If you make it right, like soaking the sliced innards in salt water and getting rid of that nasty rind, I could eat it with a lot of bourbon, which is marriage-saving.

Anyway, to get around making eggplant dishes, I make this recipe, sans eggplant. It is a great pasta dish with the right amount of Greekness to it to inspire a legion of eggplant lovers to try something else.

Ingredients

2 lbs of ground beef

1 chopped onion

1/4 cup of chopped parsley

1 teaspoon of garlic in a jar

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

one 8-oz can of tomato sauce

1/2 cup of white wine

butter

1 lb of macaroni

3 beaten eggs

salt and pepper

grated cheese

4 cups of white sauce
Brown the ground beef in a cast iron skillet with the butter. Add the onions, parsley, garlic, and cook for a while. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, pepper, wine, and tomato sauce to the skillet, put a lid on it and let it simmer for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, make your macaroni and drain it. Pour it in a bowl and add the eggs, a little melted butter, and as much shredded cheese as you want. Get a 9X13X2 baking pan, grease it, and pour half of the macaroni in. Cover with the meat sauce, add a layer of cheese, layer the rest of the macaroni, and pour the white sauce on top.

How do you make the white sauce? Heat 2 cups of milk. Put 1/4 cup of butter in a pan and melt it. Stir in 3-4 tablespoons of flour and make it all lumpy. Pour in very slowly the hot milk, stirring to make the sauce creamy and smooth. Add a little salt and pepper and let it thicken.  Consider it Greek Roux.

Pour this on top of your casserole and sprinkle a little cinnamon on top. Put this in the oven at 350 degrees for one hour. Take it out, let it cool, and enjoy.  Get some Retsina Greek wine to partake with this dish.  Don't worry about vegetables.  Don't need no vegetables.

I enjoy this dish usually alone, because my spouse usually leaves the house and heads for a Greek restaurant to have eggplant.

Spanish Roast

Nothing smells better in a kitchen than a roast simmering in a large, cast iron Dutch oven. The only thing that smells better is a Spanish roast cooking in a Dutch oven. Hence, you are cooking a multi-cultural dish. The meat falls apart and the sauce and vegetables that have simmered with the meat for hours will make you want to roll around in the dirt like your bird dog. I guess that is dirt that the bird dog is rolling in.


Anyway, if you want to make your dog howl to get in the house or if you want to convert a vegetarian into a dirty meat-eater, then this is the recipe to do it with.
Ingredients:
One 3-4 pound pot roast

One 8-oz bottle of Catalina dressing

1/2 cup water

1 cup of sliced olives

8 small onions

8 small potatoes

8 small carrots

Some flour

Some cornstarch

Some whiskey, beer, or vodka

Use a large cast-iron Dutch oven. Brown the meat on all sides in 1/2 cup of the Catalina dressing. Add the remaining dressing and water and let it cook over low heat for 2 – 2 1/2 hours. Add the olives, onions, potatoes, and carrots. Cook for 45 minutes or until the meat and vegetables are done. Thicken the gravy with a little cornstarch and water mix.

Since the dish cooks for almost three hours, you do have time to sample some of the fine spirits listed above, all of which can be purchased at Brad’s or your local distillery. To make it special, serve the spirits in a Thomas Jefferson pewter cup. I know that most people in the area use these as ashtrays or keep bait in them, but they are for selected spirits! Please, don’t embarrass the Red Neck Chef!

If your husband or wife is running around on you, this dish will make the wayward spouses stay home and adore you. If not, divorce them for they are not worth keeping. Don’t shoot them as that is a waste of good bullets. Take all that they own instead. And make sure that you get those Thomas Jefferson pewter cups.

Filet Mignon

Oh my, The Red Neck Chef has lived amongst the angus cows of the Carolinas. We would get a male calf, make him a steer (if you don’t know what this is, ask a farmer), pen him in the barn, and feed him sweet feed to make him beefy. All would be good until Mother found out. She would go to the barn and name the steer. Now, who in their right mind would grill something with a name? We had a lot of fat steers as pets.

Anyway, for those steers that were unnamed, this recipe was concocted.

Ingredients:

2 filet mignons, about 1.5 to 2 inches thick, depending on the cost
Pepper
Olive oil and a CD with the song “Bad To The Bone” on it.

For the sauce:
1 cup drinkable white wine
1 shot of Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon of capers – crushed
1/4 cup of butter
1/2 cup of lemon juice

Put on the CD and play the song mentioned above to get you in the mood.

Preheat a cooking platter in your oven to about 450 degrees F. While this is getting hot, heat an iron skillet with the olive oil in it. Pat some pepper on both sides of the steak. Place the steaks in the hot oil for 2 to 3 minutes per side, until it gets nice and brown. Flip them and do the same for 2 to 3 minutes. Take the steaks and put them on a plate. Leave the drippings in the iron skillet.

When the oven is ready, place the steaks in the heated cooking platter and let them cook for about 7 minutes for medium-rare middles, a little less for rare middles, or a little more for cooked middles (if you going for cooked middles, don’t buy this type of steak…get hamburger). This will make your steaks crunchy on the outside and hot and red/pink on the inside. Take them out of the oven and cover with a pot lid or tin foil (yes, The Red Neck Chef grew up calling it “tin foil”).

With the drippings in the skillet, add the butter and wine and heat to almost boiling. Stir it around and reduce it by about half. Add the rest of the ingredients and heat. Pour this on top of your filets. Enjoy with a salad, some rice pilaf, and a cold beverage of your choice.

Remember and never forget, never name your beef.