French Pudding, with apologies to the French

Eleanor was superstitious. More superstitious than any person I've ever known, and it wasn't an ironic superstitiousness, either: she was totally sincere. AND I don't mean, like, “broken mirror” superstitions, but weird ones like “if you put your shirt on backwards you have to leave it that way because it's bad luck to turn it around,” and “don't turn the page of your calendar to the new month until the new month has already started.”

So, in honour of Friday the 13th, which would have been Eleanor's least favourite day of this year, I give you my first disaster recipe from the box. It is not a recipe for pudding. Nor is there anything about this recipe that is French, with the possible exception of the inclusion of unsweetened whipped cream, but I think even that's a bit of a stretch. This is sort of like a trifle, but you're supposed to make it in a baking pan, and it includes raw eggs... I guess if I get food poisoning, we'll know today is truly an unlucky day. And for a no-bake recipe, get ready to use all of your dishes again.

I made a couple of substitutions here: I can't get Nilla Wafers anywhere, so I used Digestive Biscuits. Also, I can't find crushed pineapple in this country and I don't know what size “a small can” is, so I used two tiny cans of pineapple rings, which I pulverised way beyond “crushed” in my food processor. 

Anyway, it's way less bad than I thought it would be, but I still think it probably counts as a disaster. Eleanor may have liked it (there's a note in her handwriting that reads “delicious” in the top corner), but I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. In the 1960s it might have been awesome, but today it's kind of just a mess that reminds me of something that would have been served at a church potluck when I was a kid.

The verdict:

1 spoon out of five. I think it still deserves a single spoon because the recipe clearly worked the way that it was supposed to, it's just that the flavour combination and texture and its general existence are not really appetising. I do, however, feel like this is a fixable recipe: what if the cookie layers were cubed angel food cake? Or there was a layer of white cake, then pineapple filling, then a white cake layer and then the custard/whipped cream combo was the frosting? It's probably possible to fix this up into something edible, but if you make it as listed here, it's probably not going to be great. Unless you just really like canned pineapple, I guess.

The recipe:

French Pudding

The ingredients:

8 oz Nilla Wafers or digestive biscuits, crushed
4 oz butter
1 ¾ c powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 c whipping cream
1 small can crushed pineapple, or 2 small cans pineapple rings, crushed in a blender or food processor
½ c chopped nuts (I used pecans)

THE DIRECTIONS:

Sprinkle half of the cookie crumbs into the bottom of a 9x13 pan, as evenly as possible.
Cream butter, powdered sugar, and eggs until well-mixed, then pour it into the pan on top of the crumbs.
Whip the cream until fluffy, then spoon it evenly over the butter mixture in the pan.
Spoon the crushed pineapple over the whipped cream evenly.
Sprinkle the chopped nuts and the remaining cookie crumbs over the pineapple and press down gently.
Refrigerate until ready to eat, so, basically refrigerate forever.

Yields a 9x13 pan of pudding, and if you could find 35 people who wanted to eat it, I bet it would comfortably feed all of them. 

Dressed-up Tomato Soup

Sometimes I wish I was more like Eleanor and her friends, women who, by all accounts, gave no care as to what anyone else thought.

Pictured: Eleanor (Far left) and Friends , drinking wine and Giving no shits.

Eleanor's best friend, my Aunt Margie, once made a lasagna for a dinner party. It's worth noting here that there was nothing Eleanor feared more than making a lasagna. She talked so much about how difficult it is that my mom STILL has never tried to make one out of fear she'd do it wrong. Anyway, Margie's friends had gathered around the table, everyone was anxiously awaiting the lasagna, and as she pulled it out of the oven, bubbly and steaming...

She flipped over the serving dish and the entire thing landed face-down on the kitchen floor. What did she do, you ask? She scraped it up and served it anyway, with the rationale that what her guests didn't know wouldn't kill 'em.*

Anyway, none of her friends died or got food poisoning, so clearly she was right. But the point is this: Eleanor and Margie didn't care what people thought. They did what they wanted, and maybe part of that is the luxury of age, but I think a lot of it was just their personalities. I, however, did not inherit this trait. 

Pictured: Eleanor (Far Left) and friends at the beach. Not Pictured: Any shits. On an unrelated note, I would give anything to own that bathing suit top.

Note: This is not a recipe for tomato soup. It is, instead, a recipe for how to dress up pre-existing tomato soup. So to start with, procure yourself some soup.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for this meal, which is basically just slightly fancy tomato soup. I was going to make the soup from scratch, but as you will soon see, that was not in the cards. We were out of fabric softener, so I headed to that aisle first and put the cheapest bottle in my basket. It happened to also be the biggest bottle, at nearly a gallon. I continued my shopping in peace until suddenly I heard what can only be described as a gushing sound coming from the vicinity of my elbow. Alarmed, I looked down to see that the fabric softener had tipped over, the lid had come off, and the bottle was gushing all over the tile floor of Tesco.

Now, in case you don't use fabric softener because you have a dryer and don't need the extra softening power, let me tell you something about it: it pretty much has the texture of liquid soap. So, after nearly wiping out in the mess I had just made, I had to go find a Tesco employee to come clean up the mess before someone died. But it happened to be the morning, so Tesco was full of nothing but running children and older people with canes. (Thankfully, Britain is less litigious than the States). Anyway, I made a giant mess, all of my groceries were so covered in goo that I couldn't even purchase any of them, and I was so embarrassed I ended up just grabbing a bottle of rum (for a recipe, I swear!) and a can of tomato soup and getting the heck out of there.

But now I have to find a new grocery store since I can never show my face there ever again, and I didn't want to brave another grocery that same day since my cheeks were still red, so I used canned tomato soup for this recipe and just dressed it up from there. It was still delicious, so no complaints here, but if you have the time, try making this recipe with homemade tomato soup. My favourite (and the one I was going to use) is here. Just leave out the cheese and tortellini and replace it with the ingredients listed here.

*Another reason I wish I was more like Eleanor and her friends is that I wish my kitchen floor was always... sometimes... even occasionally clean enough that I would eat from it, never mind my poor friends.

Send me your good wishes on finding another grocery store with such a great selection of marshmallows and weird 1950s-style ingredients, friends. I'm so humiliated that I don't think I can ever leave my flat again.

The verdict:

3 spoons out of 5, just because it's so easy it really shouldn't count as a recipe to begin with. As stated, I made this recipe with a can of Heinz tomato soup and dressed it up from there. I couldn't find the brand-name noodles the recipe calls for to put on it, so we had it with prawn crackers (which I got from the Asian grocery since I couldn't bear to go back to Tesco). If you have those wonton-type noodles that come with Chinese takeout on hand, I think those would be excellent, but no one is going to tell if you just use Saltines. Made with a can of soup it's literally the easiest thing ever. Made from scratch takes a bit longer, but homemade tomato soup is so good I think it's probably worth it.

The Recipe:

Saucy Tomato Soup

The Ingredients:

Tomato Soup-- from a can or your favourite recipe
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp pepper, black or red
Prawn crackers or fried wontons

THE DIRECTIONS:

Heat tomato soup thoroughly.
Stir in soy sauce, lemon juice, and pepper.
Ladle generously into bowls and top with prawn crackers or fried wontons.

Hong Kong Burgers

I know what you're thinking. SO MUCH red meat for an ex-vegetarian!

Personally, I view burgers as a sort of edible plate for whatever you are going to put on them. More of an excuse to put pimento cheese, jalapenos, and a fried egg on a bun for dinner than anything else. This is why, even after I abandoned vegetarianism at the age of 21, it still took until I was about 23 (and on my first date with Judson!) before I ate a meat burger again. If it's just a vehicle for burger toppings, why not just skip it in favor of the less expensive veggie burger options?

My view of burgers as little more than “the thing you have to serve if you're hosting a cookout” means I've never had to make them before because I'm always over in the corner plotting a dessert that won't melt in the sun. Someone else always views them as the quintessential expression of American cooking, and so I've always been exempted from making them. But not this time, and it turns out burgers are pretty easy-- even these weird ones. The texture of these is great: the patties are equal parts meat and bean sprouts, so there's a lot more going on than in a typical burger. And the fact that the flavour is more unique than just the “dump a packet of onion-soup-mix into a pile of ground beef” style of burger that I grew up with means you get to dress them up in a totally unique way. (Eleanor not guaranteed to approve, but, hey. You gotta do what you gotta do.)

We ate ours with acorn squash and roasted fennel, which I burned to a crisp. Life in our house is très glamorous.

The Verdict:

3 spoons out of five. Judson, a burger connoisseur, loved these. I thought they were good, too, but I got stuck eating the leftovers for lunch two days in a row, so I got bored. If we lived somewhere that wasn't Scotland, where it occasionally got warm enough to cookout, maybe I'd add another spoon, but, alas. Plus, I'm subtracting a spoon because the recipe called for ¾ lb of ground beef and ¼ lb of ground pork. Good luck finding ground pork anywhere, and if you do, good luck convincing someone to sell you only ¼ lb. We used all beef and it was fine. 

Note: If you're vegetarian or just not so into ground beef like I am, I think these would be really good made with black bean veggie burgers with a heap of steamed bean sprouts on top, garnished as noted below.

The Recipe:

Bean Sprout Burgers

The Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
1 lb bean sprouts
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
½ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp ground ginger
Hamburger buns

Optional garnish: feta cheese, red onion, hot curry ketchup (1 tsp curry powder, 1 tbsp sriracha, 2 tbsp ketchup)

THE DIRECTIONS:

Combine all ingredients and shape into 5 or 6 patties (bean sprouts will stick out).
Chill for 30 minutes to allow flavours to mix.
Broil 2-3 inches from heat to desired doneness, turning once (about 5 minutes).

Yields 5-6 large-ish burgers.