Dziadziu's Hamburgers

Tastes and smells can bring back memories faster than anything else. My grandmother was a good cook, but I most remember the one thing, the only think I've ever seen my grandfather, my dziadziu, cook: hamburgers.

These were not the flame grilled burgers from a box you might see on a grill today. These were griddle cooked patties reminiscent of what you'd find in a diner. The stove my grandparents had included a built in griddle between the two sets of burners. Whenever we came for a visit and saw the white cover plate removed, revealing the steel surface with six circular brown stains where the burgers always cooked, we knew we were in for a treat. That griddle was only ever used for hamburgers!

The burgers were simplicity themselves.

ground beef (don't get fancy with this. Plain old ground beef is best)
yellow onions
salt & pepper
hamburger buns

Peel the onions, and slice them into disks. Do not separate the rings. Form beef into golf ball sized chunks. A little bigger is OK, but don't make them too big. Place the onion slices on a flat surface so that the rings nest inside each other like stacked bowls. Yes, this does make a difference: upside down and the onions will fall apart. Salt and pepper the onion slices.

Place a ball of meat on each slice, and press into the onion, forming a flat patty. The meat should just reach past the edge of the onion slice. Salt and pepper the top of each burger.

Onto a heated griddle or frying pan (cast iron is always best) place the burgers onion side down. Now you wait. Don't fiddle wit them or try and flip then too soon. You want that onion to cook through and brown, a good 5-7 minutes. If the first one you flip isn't quite there, hold of on the rest and give them a couple of minutes more. Once all burgers have been flipped onion side up, cover each with the top of a bun and let the burgers cook and the buns steam in the juices for another 4-5 minutes.

Remove each burger/bun from the griddle and place on lower half of bun.

You can dress these as you see fit, but they don't need anything. Try them plain. The flavor of the simply season beef infused with the onion is delicious enough. We would devour these as kids (yes, even with onions, which usually turns kids off) and the memories stick with me still.

Submitted by Rich, from The Northwoods Notebook

Tobblin's fish chowder

I like a nice fish chowder.
My Recipe is not traditional though.
What you'll need for this, is;
2 16oz cans of cocoa nut milk.
2 16oz cans of low sodium or no sodium chicken broth.
one medium onion, diced fine.
five clean, large fine diced celery stalks.
half lb of crab meat, ( fresh, or imitation crab, but no canned crab )
1 lb of nice medium or large cleaned and shelled shrimp.
about half cup of freshly smoked salmon thats been flaked.
2 tablespoons of Thai green curry paste.
6 red unpeeled, but cleaned potatoes, diced in about half inch chunks.
teaspoon of garlic powder.
Dill weed.
Lemon.

This recipe is so simple it does all the work.
Saute the onion in butter or olive oil with the garlic powder added, add in the celery, when onions start to caramelize, add in taters and lightly brown them.
While you are lightly browning your potatoes,( you want your taters cooked done )
put into a soup kettle, ( big ) your other ingredients, starting with the cocoa nut milk, and the green curry, let simmer until this milk and the green curry is blended smoothly. add in your chicken broth, the salmon flakes, then when your potatoes are finished, drain any extra oil away from them, and put them into the soup.
next, bring to a boil, ( add water when needed ) you want your potatoes to break down slightly.
once they have began to break down, add in the shrimp, and crab meat, and add enough water to cover the added ingredients. Let this come to a slow heat and make sure you are not scorching the bottom of the pan, by keeping it stirred.
When the shrimp are done, the soup is done.
when the soup is done, give it a taste for needed salt, if it needs some, carefully add in more, you don't want to over power it with salt. If it has too much salt, sprinkle a tiny bit of sugar in it, to try and balance your flavour.
before serving, sprinkle in fresh dill weed, and a drop or two of lemon juice to taste.

Additionally, this soup can have corn added in it, which does okay, but I prefer it without.
You can garnish with fresh spinach leaves, or a sprig of fresh dill.
This soup serves well with garlic bread, and a green salad.

Tobblin's Green-Curry Honey BBQ Chicken

Want a very simple, yet very tasty and spicy Chicken BBQ?
Lets go over your ingredients!
Large flat, deep skillet
4 to 5 chicken breasts, unboned.
Some Thai Green Curry paste. (teaspoon) ( Green Curry can make a wonderful spice if properly used. )
Some apple juice (sparkling if you have it ) about 16oz, and about 16oz of water.
Large bowl.
Jar of honey ( preferably a squeeze bottle for easy handling )

Take your apple juice and water, put it in the bowl, stirr in one teaspoon of green curry paste.
Place your chicken in the bowl, and find a saucer small enough to fit inside the top of the bowl, and press down until juice rises above the plate, and weight it down with a can of something.
place in the refrigerator for about an hour, take the juices left over, and put them in your large skillet add in the pieces of chicken, bring them to a simmer til they are nearly evaporating, be sure to turn them occasionally, you are basically boiling the chicken, precooking it before the grill now, so you wont have any rawness. Let them brown in the carmelization of the juices on the bottom of your pan when the juices finally evaporate.
If you did not have enough juice, while boiling the chicken, mix up some of the apple juice, and water with a bit more green curry paste, and add more to the pan.
When all the chicken pieces have a nice glaze look to them and they are cooked all the way through, take them out to your grill, drizzle honey with your squeeze bottle on top of each piece, and let them smoke/bbq a bit, turn them over and repeat.

The green curry should have enough salt content in it to be more than enough for this dish, if you feel necessary, you can add in a sprinkle of salt before you glaze them with the honey.

Serve these extremely spicy chicken breasts with a nice green salad, and a rice dish or cous cous, of your choice.

Tobblin's Breakfast Wrap

A simple recipe with a great flavor.

Take 2 potatoes, cut them in half, and microwave, ( or boil ) til they are cooked through, and can be diced up easily.
Dice these up into tiny cubes, or shred them with a cheese grater for hash brown style.
Take your favorite brand of sliced pickled jalapeños and dice up a 1/3d cups worth.
Take 2 eggs, and 1/4th cup of milk, and scramble them together in a bowl.
Dice up 1/3rd cup of ham, 4 strips of cooked bacon, and a pressed thin, cooked Jimmy Dean's sausage patty. When I say press it thin, I mean very thin! Cook it throughly and dice.
Take 2 fresh cut broccoli florets and dice them completely up.
one 1/3rd cup of fresh onion ( sweet onion preferred )
You also want a half cup of fresh spinach leaves.
half teaspoon of fresh chopped garlic.
butter a grill, or skillet, and begin sauteing the jalapenos, the onions, the meat and garlic together, then when the onions caramelize add in the broccoli, let it get a tiny brown to it, then your taters. Stir it up well, and brown them.
Push them to the side of your skillet or grill, in a cooler area, and scramble your eggs picking up the flavor from what you'd just cooked.
When the eggs are scrambled well, mix in the hasbrown mixture and section them off in 2" by 4 " rectangles, top each rectangle with cheese and carefully push them to a cooler section of your grill.
clean your grill's work area ( the hot part ) and take out some flour tortillas.
warm one side, flip it, put a rectangle in the center, top with fresh spinach, and wrap the tortilla up around the rectangle and spinach.
repeat until your rectangles are gone.
You should have a couple very tasty Breakfast wraps.

Tobblin's Orange Chicken with cous cous.

Another easy main dish, which works great with rice pilaf, wild rice, or cous cous.

Take some chicken breasts, thaw them, and marinade them ( same way for the beef marinade below, except add in a couple spoonfuls of lemon juice )

Fry or BBQ the chicken breasts, while you are doing this, take some chicken broth, and make a cornstarch gravy,
and take another pan, and mix orange juice, and garlic powder, and abit of brown sugar, and a tiny bit of salt, make a cornstarch sauce out of this, ( you want it to taste sweet, over the salt, and you want the garlic to stand out.


Now, take a nice oven safe pan, ( biscuit pan works and I like glass because it clans better ) ladle in the bottom, a good covering of the gravy, put the chicken breasts in it, then, Cover each piece with a ladle of more gravy, and a piece of Swiss cheese. Let the cheese melt in the oven, take out a serving, and ladle over it, some of the orange sauce.

Serve it with a salad and some cous cous, and it is great!


And, for the cous cous,
Heat a pan, put in the pan some butter, some pine nuts, some pistachios, and some sunflower seeds, brown them with a sprinkling of garlic powder, or fresh diced garlic.
add in the cous cous, and let it soak up the butter, ( make sure you are just warming the first ingredients, you don't want to darken them too much )
then add in 16oz of chicken broth, ( or water, if you want to season it yourself ) let it steam til the liquid is almost gone, don't let it burn, fluff with a fork, you want the cous cous almost dry.
at the very end, when your fluffing it, add in some dried cranberries ( or sundried tomatoes , your choice, depending on the dish you serve with )

The Cranberries are a great addition, to it for a non traditional Thanks Giving, they bring out a sweet in the dish and make it a real balanced flavor.
The Sundried tomatoes go good with anything.

Balifor's peanutbutter & butter pancakes

Okay, this is no real recipe, just something my Dad always did with pancakes, and it is really good.
A couple pancakes, some real butter, and Jif Peanut-butter ( with all its hydrogenated badness intact ) and maple syrup.

cook the cakes, butter the first one then put peanut-butter on it, top that, then butter the top one, put your syrup on it, and Yumm.

My Dad used to also top his, with a fried over medium egg, ( which can give room for the shudders, for the faint of heart, or weak of stomach, as we found out one time when my brother inlaw was visiting, and had breakfast with us. )


Surprisingly, over the years, going out for breakfast I always ask for a side of peanut-butter, with pancakes, and for years I'd get odd looks, but last couple years, I get the comment " its good that way ain't it!?"

Hoppa's Microwave polenta

This one is Sooo... simple.
Depending on how many people you plan to serve, you will need to get some of those "Glad" disposable Tupperware sandwich boxes, they have the Tupperware lid, and are microwaveable and dishwasher safe, so perfect for making polenta molds.
This is my "Pizza flavored" one.
Ingredients are simple, Polenta, abit of butter, and Water.
put them in the microwave container, add to it, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, and season with some salt, until your satisfied with the liquids taste, and balance with a pinch of sugar.

Microwave, watch it, when it absorbs all the liquid, you should have a hard clump of cornmeal thats seasoned. Note that half way through, while there is still a lot of liquid before is sets, stir it to mix the Italian seasoning.
While this is microwaving, ( usually about 10 minutes ) you need to be making your pizza sauce.

Which is simple, and great.

Take a sauce pan,
a couple cans of tomato sauce,( about 12 to 16 oz total)
one can of tomato paste (the 6 oz or 8 oz can )
add into it, ( just like the song ) about half teaspoon of Parsley Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. you now want a tablespoon of garlic powder, or a teaspoon of fresh garlic, your choice.
Same with onion powder, 1 tablespoon or, one whole diced but small onion ( or a couple shallots will do ) stir it all in, taste, if it needs salt, add abit, more than likely, in my experience, it has plenty of salt, and may need a pinch of sugar to bring out the flavors and balance it.
when you taste the sauce, you want to look for the in between flavor of salt and sweet, you want a 'twang' of both flavors on your taste buds.

Now, for the Polenta, slice several slices. It should slice very nicely once it cools down, cool to room temp, or, refridge and cool down completely.
Once you slice the slices, brown them lightly, in olive oil, or butter, turn them on both sides, take them out, plate them, put hot, pizza sauce on them that you just made, microwave abit of fresh parmesian and or, mozzarella on top, and serve.

Tobblin's creamy skillet dish

A simple recipe ( most of mine are )
This dish works well with Turkey breast, chicken breast, but also would work equally well with a brace of coneys ( red meat just doesn't do well in cream sauce )

butter a skillet, and dice the meat, lightly season it with salt and fresh course black pepper. Cook it til its completely done then remove from skillet.

add abit more butter to allow you to fry up some asparagus ,
you want these cut in about 2" chunks, or you can substitute frozen Brussels sprouts but it is not near as good.
For Asparagus, you want them seasoned in the butter with jus garlic powder, fry them til they are a real pretty green, and take them out, you don't wanna ruin em!
While you were doing that, take a Yam, dice it in 2" strips ( resembling fries ) and microwave til they are almost cooked through.
When you get the asparagus out of the skillet, put in the Yam ( or sweet potato ) Now these have to be fresh, no canned or precooked taters bleh...
After you fry up those til they are a nice golden brown on the outside, remove them from the skillet, clean the skillet and start a cream sauce.

( for my cream sauce, I prefer less heaviness, since already butter is being used so I sub cream with milk. )
Cream sauce is like making flour gravy without anything else in it if your unfamiliar.
Take some butter, melt it into your skillet, and begin to add in some flour, you want enough to almost make a paste but abit looser, toast the flour, but do not burn it.
After this is toasted carefully begin to add milk and let it thicken into a sauce.
once it becomes a nice creamy sauce, add your ingredients back in that you precooked. let it simmer until you can see some of the caramelization coming off the meat , then add in half cup of frozen peas ( I like the baby petite peas personally, they give better flavor )

let simmer a brief amount longer, til the peas are thawed and the dish is warm again from adding the frozen peas, additional seasoning to taste ( salt and course fresh pepper )

Serve with dinner rolls, fresh bread or biscuits or cornbread or whatever.

Pretty much a complete meal right there.
If you like, you can top each serving with a sprinkle of cheddar cheese.

Each ingredient has its own unique flavor, that is balanced with the cream sauce.
It's nice.

Tobblin's 15 minute red-meat marinade.

A simple teriyaki type marinade for beef.

3 tablespoons of garlic powder,
3 tablespoons of onion powder,
2 tablespoons black pepper,
2 tablespoons of sugar.
a teaspoon of dill weed.
mix dry ingredients and begin adding "La Choy" brand soy sauce.
you want this into a gooey paste, and taste this paste, if you can taste a balance between sweet and salty, then you have it right. ( this is about 2 steaks worth of paste )

Roll the steaks in the paste really well, ( what I do is put them in a tupperware thing or a ziploc bag, in the tupperware, press them down til the paste pools abit and put a plate inside the bowl to weigh it down. )
let stand in room temp for about 15 minutes while your BBQ grill heats up.
Toss em on the grill baste any left over paste back on them after turning them before your done.


Watch them to not burn them, you may need to turn them a time or two , because of the sugar content in the mix.

Hoppa's favorite Chicken wraps

This is probably one of the easiest recipes that is 'good!'

You know when you look around for something in the chicken, and decide to invent?

Here is what I did on this recipe:

I seasoned and boiled a couple boneless chicken breasts, keeping the water level high enough, to cover them, then when they are done, flake them up in the broth.

Next I took a box of Minute Wild Rice traditional flavor, added it and the seasoning to the broth and chicken, with a diced fresh jalapeño. ( if you want it less spicy, make sure you don't get seeds or the white pulp in it, just the outer green )

Cook that til the rice is fluffy/done.
Then take several burrito wrap shells ( flour ) and warm them on the skillet
put the mixture, and some shredded cheddar cheese, or what you want, in there, you can add chopped lettuce and tomatoes if you like too, and ranch dressing really makes it nice.

Hopwise's favorite Chicken Stew

Ingredients:
2tbls Olive Oil
6 slices of bacon,chop as fine as you can
8 oz Fresh mushrooms,sliced
1 Green Bell pepper, 1 inch pieces
1 jar of roasted red peppers
1 bunch of green onions,sliced
4 boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite sized chunks
1 can sliced ripe olives
2 tbls balsamic vinegar
3 tbls tomato paste
1 14.5 oz can of tomatoes
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Heat olive oil, brown bacon in large pan. When bacon is almost browned add mushrooms,peppers,onions and cook for about 4 minutes(or untill peppers start to get tender) add balsamic vinegar and stir for another minute or so. pour in slow cooker adding. Add rest of ingredients and cook on low for 8-10 hours.

I served with garlic bread and went well.

Tobblin's Chicken Stew

My Chicken Soup recipe I did last night was extremely simple,

2 cups,Cooked Diced Chicken breast,
4 small red potatoes diced, ( if your in a hurry microwave them before dicing.
4 stalked of asparagus diced,
1/4 bag of frozen corn ( half cup )
Normally I would have added frozen peas too ( half cup ) but I didn't have any so I put in Brussels sprouts, which surprisingly tasted fine!
I seasoned it, with garlic powder, lemon juice, Johnny's Season Salt, and a pinch of sugar to balance the flavors.
Season it to taste.
Remember cooking, use garlic powder and NOT garlic salt. garlic salt will make our dish way too salty and not give you the flavors you want.
Oh, the water.. Don't forget to cover it all in water.
If you want, a nice chicken stock will work a lot better instead of water, and you will need less seasoning.
If your using Brussels sprouts, boil til Brussels are tender, and also until asparagus is tender. When the potatoes break down, it thickens up quite abit.

Its real quick for a Chicken Stew, and you can easily substitute various veggies.