Of course, this leaves us with leftover fish.  This is great because we love cold fish in green salads, as well as mixed up with a little mayonnaise and turned into a spread for sandwiches.  Using up our leftover fish has never been a real problem, but I sure would like a little variety!

Because seafood is plentiful where we live, I have developed one good bisque recipe that I’ve used over and over again.  I’ll share it here for you.  I apologize for the vague amounts, as I’ve never actually written this down.

Fish & Vegetable Bisque

• 1 or 2 slices bacon, diced up
• 1/2 a yellow onion, diced
• 1/2 a green pepper, diced
• 1/2 a sweet red pepper, diced
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 small clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup, more or less, of fish, shrimp, or vegetable stock
• 1 cup cooked fish, flaked up
• add salt and black pepper to taste
• sprinkle red pepper flakes

Saute the bacon and all the vegetables together in sauce pan until vegetables are just starting to get tender.  Pour in the stock, cover and simmer until the vegetables have cooked completely.  Then add fish, salt, black pepper, and if desired, sprinkle a little red pepper flakes in.  You can double or even triple this recipe, depending on how much fish you have to use up.

Does anyone have some suggestions as to what else we can make with our leftover fish?  Are there some really good layered salads or even casseroles that use cooked fish?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

I do love pan fried fish now that I found the secret!  I’ll share it with you here.  The secret for keeping the coating on the fish as it fries, instead of having it all flake off in the fry pan is, you use the Dry-Wet-Dry method of coating the fish.  Start with dipping the fish in dry, whether you use flour with a bit of salt and pepper, or cornmeal… it doesn’t matter.  Next, dip in your wet mixture, usually a little egg and milk beaten together, then finally dip again in your dry mixture.

Then, here’s the real trick – lay out your fish on a rack, like a cookie cooling rack, on top of a cookie sheet and stick it in the refrigerator for at least an hour.  I don’t know if it’s the Dry-Wet-Dry coating or the refrigerator time, or maybe a combination of the two.  But, whatever it is, it works.  I can now pan fry fish fillets without losing any of the coating!

Does anyone else have some tried and true tricks or recipes for fresh fish?  I’d love to hear from you!

Now, I like his oven-fried chicken livers just fine, but he insists on using shortening in the pan so that the livers get nice and crispy.  Well, he’s right… they do get nice and crispy, but I really don’t want to eat that shortening stuff anymore.  I like chicken livers, even crave them sometimes, so I really need a dish to make that is different, and possibly healthier.

Borrowing from my past again, I do remember one delightful dish my Dad used to make for us when Mom wasn’t around to see, smell, or hear about it.  (Mom was not a fan of chicken livers, to say the least.)  It’s a very simple, but yummy dish.  Let’s see if I can remember Dad’s Chicken Liver Skillet…

1) Saute some diced onion and sliced fresh mushrooms in some butter until the mushrooms are cooked all the way and even a bit crispy.
2) Slice the livers into thin pieces and add them to the hot skillet.
3) Saute everything together for a couple minutes until the liver is thoroughly cooked.
4) Pour in some beer or chicken broth, so you can loosen up the good browned bits stuck to the skillet and have a little sauce.
5) Let it simmer just until the liquid reduces a little and it gets nice and bubbly all together.
6) Put a piece of buttered toast on each plate, and spoon a portion of the liver mixture over the top.  Add a little salt and black pepper now if you want.

This is not a dish every kid would like, but we were kind of adventurous with well-developed tastebuds!

If you have any fun chicken liver dishes that you like and remember fondly, or even not so fondly, I’d love to have you share them.

The obvious use for Kielbasa is the good old fashioned skillet meal which, once again, includes sauerkraut and potatoes.  This frugal meal is an all time favorite in my house.  I like to brown up the Kielbasa a little in my favorite heavy cast iron skillet, take it out and set aside, add the potatoes and sauerkraut, and just stir the vegetables up a little in the skillet.  That gives the vegetables a chance to soak up some of the good bits left in the skillet from the meat.  Then, I put the Kielbasa back in the skillet, cover it with foil, poke a few holes in the top, and simmer until the potatoes are done.

Does anyone have a recipe that has been your family’s favorite for as long as you can remember?  Have you created any new recipes for Kielbasa dishes… recipes that might surprise us?  Feel free to share your cooking successes, and failures if you wish.  I’d love to hear from you!

We typically have every kind of pork sausage you can buy, from mild prepared pork sausage, to the super-spicy and hot stuff.  The spicy variety, I find, is excellent for quick spaghetti sauce or other meat-based “feel good” casseroles.  The mild pork sausage is good for casseroles where a moderate taste is needed to let the flavor of the other ingredients, like wild rice for instance, come through.

In case you would like to try my quick meat sauce using pork sausage, this is my method (can’t call it a recipe… it’s too easy)!

In a large skillet, put pork sausage in and break it up.  Add a small diced onion and a small diced green pepper to the skillet with just a touch of olive oil.  Cook everything together slowly until the meat is no longer pink and the onions and green pepper are soft. Pour in a can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste.  Sprinkle in some dried basil and oregano until it tastes like spaghetti sauce.  Simmer everything for at least 15 minutes or until the flavors blend.  Taste and add salt and pepper if you like.  See?  Really easy.

Since I always have pork sausage of some kind on hand, it’s a good go-to food for me, so it would be great to have an abundance of recipes to choose from.  If you have a delicious recipe or two for pork sausage dishes, I’d love to hear from you!

I don’t, however, remember any other dish made with ground ham.  I would assume you could make a ground ham meat loaf, or ground ham patties, but haven’t a clue where to begin.  Would the texture be too grainy for most dishes where we are used to ground beef?  I suppose you’d have to watch out for the salt that you add since ham is already quite salty.

This one has me stumped and I wouldn’t even be asking except I happened to see ground ham in the butcher case and it got me remembering and thinking.  How about you?  Are you curious about what you can make with ground ham?  I’d sure like to hear from someone who has the answer!

Now I have a nice package of salt pork and would like to make something really good with it.  I would also like to stick to a more traditional recipe, one that the settlers might have made with salt pork, since it is sort of an “historic” ingredient.

I’ve been looking at old cookbooks and it looks like salt pork was used a lot in bean or potato soups and chowders.  Comparing those recipes with more modern ones, it seems at some time a switch to using ham occurred.  I’m wondering if I could take a more modern chowder recipe and just replace the ham with salt pork?  What would be the difference?

I would really love to hear from anyone who has an old soup or chowder recipe that was passed down through generations.  That would be the best… a real tried-and-true recipe!  Looking forward to your input!

I have seen quite a few recipes that use apple juice as a marinade for chicken and seafood, normally in Asian-inspired dishes.  Combining apple juice with ginger and soy is a pretty basic blend that packs quite a bit of flavor. 

How about using apple juice in stir fry dishes?  Again, with soy included, I would imagine that a stir fry would really benefit from the impact of apple juice; perhaps replacing all or some of the chicken broth when creating a cornstarch thickened sauce.

Apple juice could also be used as the sweet part of any sweet and sour dish.  Even Szechwan Beef or Chicken wouldn’t hide or minimize the distinctive flavor and sweetness of apple juice.

You see I’m a little stuck on the Asian inspired dishes that would benefit from a splash of apple juice.  Are there any other uses for apple juice?  How about baking?  Have you ever used apple juice to replace other liquids in bread or muffin recipes?  I’d love to hear from you!

Of course, if I never found another recipe that uses beer, I could probably live quite happily for the rest of my life with my “Kielbasa and Sauerkraut Skillet” recipe.  Give this a try the next time you have some really hearty appetites to satisfy!

Kielbasa and Sauerkraut Skillet

1 ring of Kielbasa
8 medium potatoes (I like Yukon Gold) peeled and cut one lengthwise
1 jar “Barrel” Sauerkraut (Gundelsheim) You can use any brand, but this is tender and sweeter than most
1 12 oz bottle/can of your favorite beer
salt and pepper potatoes to taste
optional: sprinkle or two of caraway seeds

Get out your big, heavy cast iron skillet, put just a bit of oil in, slice Kielbasa into chunks at angles and lightly brown over medium high heat.  When Kielbasa is brown, move to the edges and arrange potatoes in the center and season with a little salt and pepper.  Cover with entire jar of sauerkraut, sprinkle on some caraway seeds if you wish (good for the digestion), and pour the beer carefully over the whole thing.  Cover skillet with tin foil top, poking two or three slots in the top for steam.  Bring up to a boil, and turn down to simmer nice and slow.  You’ll want to let this cook for about 1 hour so all the flavors combine.  Dinner’s on!

That’s a pretty basic beer recipe, but it’s sure yummy!  But if you’ve used beer in other imaginative cooking I’d love to hear about it.

In large soup pot, pour in a little vegetable oil (just enough to coat the bottom of the pot), throw in some nice bite-size pieces of celery, salt and fresh ground pepper and let cook a little until celery just starts to soften.  Then throw in some cut up carrots, and let those cook just a minute or until they start to soften.  (Don’t use baby carrots; use the real full-grown ones, peeled and cut.  Baby carrots don’t have enough flavor to stand up to soup.)  Now add some diced onion and some minced garlic.  Continue to saute all these veggies until onion is just starting to get transparent.  Pour in your turkey stock, taste for seasonings, and add a little more salt and pepper if needed.  Cover loosely and let simmer.  Don’t let it boil!  Meanwhile, cook some egg noodles in another pot according to directions BUT do not cook until they are soft.  They should be a little undercooked as they will cook a bit in the soup. Drain the noodles and add them to the soup pot.  Stir everything together, simmer for about 3 – 4 minutes or just until the noodles are done cooking.  It’s soup time!

You’ll notice that measurements for the ingredients are nonexistent.  This is one of those “make it as you please” recipes.  If you like a lot of veggies in your soup, add a lot.  If you’re a noodle fanatic, add a lot of noodles. 

What I’m lacking here is variety and ingenuity.  I would love to try an Asian inspired dish, like “Hot and Sour” soup, which should hold up very well against a rich turkey stock.  I’d also like to find out if anyone has ever attempted an “Egg Drop” soup.  What about some unusual vegetables in a turkey soup?  Are there some Autumn vegetables that stand out and are a little more inspiring than celery and carrots?  Any ideas are welcome!