Hot Chicken Salad (Gluten Free)

Hot Chicken Salad comes from the Midwest section of the cookbook. It is a dish that one would expect to find at a hot dish supper. We're not talking grand cuisine here. It's simple, fast and amazingly tasty. Of course, I would say that because I consider mayonnaise, one of its chief ingredients, one of the major food groups.
I made this for dinner for the two of us, and we polished  the whole thing off. No leftovers here. The mayonnaise, the croutons and the grated cheddar cheese all blend into an unctuous soothing mouthful.  I served hot chicken salad with the first green beans to come out of the garden. A great dinner, in spite of the fact that I sat down in the middle of the oregano patch as I was cutting some tarragon. My husband Bob had to come pull me out.
If the cook can get it together to poach a chicken breast in the morning, the prep time on this dish is not more than 10 minutes, and the cooking time is 15, so Hot Chicken Salad is a genuine half hour dinner dish. To make it gluten free, use squares of toasted gluten free bread, or gluten free croutons.

Hot Chicken Salad

2 cups diced cooked chicken
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon grated onion
2 cups diced celery
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup grated sharp Cheddar Cheese
1/2 cup buttered croutons

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Mix together all the ingredients except the cheese and croutons and turn into a greased baking dish.
3. Combine the cheese and croutons and sprinkle over top. Bake fifteen minutes. Makes four servings.

Deep-Fried Grits Balls (Gluten Free)

On Sunday, my son and daughter-in-law came over for dinner with her father and stepmother to be and my brother . I inquired about their fondness for shellfish, and was told that they liked shrimp, but daughter-in-law didn't. Okay. Drop the shellfish recipe idea and go with side dishes and appetizers.  I figured with 7 people, we could serve a hot appetizer. Hence the deep-fried grits balls.
I also had (or thought I had) all the ingredients. I definitely had grits, although I had to dig through the closet for them. I had seen a huge block of cheddar cheese in the refrigerator just the day before, I bought a bag of gluten free breadcrumbs at Whole Foods, (and then found another bag down in the bowels of the closet after I took the vacuum cleaner out to suck up the dog hair on the rug.) I bought two dozen eggs for the dessert, so I had eggs. All set.
I even realized that this is, while not a day before recipe, a couple of hours before kind of recipe. The grits had to be cooked and cooled, which I did around 3:00. But, as usual, there's a slip between the cup and the lip, or something to that effect.
About boiling grits. Any kind of ground corn, which is what grits are, clumps up in boiling water if you just dump them in. The directions say add them slowly. What that means is, maybe add a couple of tablespoons at a time, and stir them into the water. You don't have to measure, but that is what I mean by a small amount.
Then it was time for assembly of the grits balls. I opened the refrigerator for the huge block of cheddar cheese, and found it gone! Quel horreur! I asked Bob, my husband, if we had any cheese. He said no. I hadn't told him I needed some, and he had used it all with the broccoli soufflé. At this point it was around 5:30 and the guests were coming at 6. I did not want to run off to the grocery store. Innovation took hold. I grabbed the medium block of Monterrey jack cheese and used that.
If the cook does not mind cooking while the guests are getting settled, these are not a difficult hors d"oeuvre  There is a relatively short list of ingredients which one mashes all together and forms into balls. The balls are then dipped in beaten egg and finally the gluten-free bread crumbs.
The balls are dropped in hot oil and fried until brown. The cooking takes about fifteen to twenty minutes. One easily could assemble the grits balls in the morning,  pop them into the fryer before the guests arrive and keep them warm in the oven.
How do you know when the oil is hot enough? We actually had a discussion about this while munching on the grits balls. I used my 40 year old electric frying pan, which has a thermometer on the dial. If you are lacking such a piece of equipment, here's what to do. Drop a small piece of grits ball into the hot fat. If it starts bubbling and browning right away, the fat is hot enough. If not, it's not hot enough.
These were very well received. My daughter-in-law said they tasted like deep fried macaroni and cheese. "What are these?" she inquired. "Deep fried grits balls," I replied. "Are we in the Southern section of the cookbook?" she asked. "Sure enough, honey child," said I.
The flavoring is a little off. It calls for nutmeg and cayenne pepper. If I ever make these again, which I probably won't unless my son asks me to, I will definitely use cheddar cheese, because the Monterrey Jack  was a little bland, and lose the nutmeg. Nutmeg isn't bad, it just didn't seem to belong there.

Deep Fried Grits Balls

2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup quick cooking (or non quick cooking) grits
1 cup grated cheddar cheese or Gruyere cheese
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 1/2 teaspoons peanut oil (and 3-4 cups peanut oil for frying)
1 1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I used gluten free breadcrumbs)
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1. Bring the water to a  boil and add salt.When water is boiling, add the grits slowly. Return to a boil and cook over direct heat, stirring occasionally,  two and a half to five minutes. Chill the grits.
2. Mash grits with a fork and stir in the cheese, cayenne, nutmeg and pepper, With hands, shape into approximately forty balls.  (Mine were probably too big.)  beat the eggs and oil together. Dip balls in mixture, then roll in the bread crumbs.
Fry in hot fat (375 degrees) about two minutes, or until golden brown.
Makes forty grits balls.

No-Fail Welsh Rabbit (Gluten-free)

Welsh Rabbit is a cheese sauce poured over bread. Why it is called welsh rabbit, no one on Wikipedia seems to know. The contributors are definite on the fact that it is rabbit, not rarebit. Some writers heap scorn on using rarebit to describe the dish. There is, or used to be, some kind of a stereotype about melted cheese being irresistible to the Welsh. The writer repeats a 16th century joke  involving melted cheese which purports to explain why there are no Welshmen (or women) in heaven.
Welsh Rabbit was one of those magic foods I lusted after in my meat and two vegetables eating childhood. For some reason, it featured heavily in young people's books of the early 20th Century. Boys at boarding school induced their families to send them large wheels of cheese, which they used to make welsh rabbit during midnight feasts. I drooled over the descriptions of those midnight feasts, even though they usually involved some peculiar ingredient that took the place of the beer.
I can't remember the first time I ever had welsh rabbit, but I do remember making it in August, 1978, during the week I slept in my office in Centerville, a tiny town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I had gotten my first journalism job, and decided to save money by moving out of the boarding house in Easton, and crashing at the office. Luckily, the office was equipped with a kitchen and, I guess, a few pots and pans. Welsh rabbit is cheap, which might explain why there are no fewer than four rabbit-like recipes for cheese dishes in the Southern section of The New York Times Heritage Cookbook. Cheddar cheese seems like a New England product, but I guess none of the New England contributors thought to send in a recipe for what my mother's generation remembered as something their fathers used to make during the cook's night out.
I made the Welsh Rabbit on Thursday night after dog training class. We are trying to learn to control the puppy who is a lovely dog, but can be completely insane. The rabbit took all of five minutes, about half the time that Bob took to make the salad.  The only thing you need to be careful about is stirring in the eggs. Do not overcook or the eggs will scramble, the recipe says. Keep it on a low heat, 4 on a gas stove, or less, and stir it.

No-Fail Welsh Rabbit (Gluten Free)

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour ( I used gluten free flour. Rice flour works well too.)
1 cup stale beer
2 cups cubed sharp Cheddar Cheese
2 eggs well beaten
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce or to taste
salt to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste
4 slices toast

1. Melt the butter and add the flour. Stir in the beer. When the mixture is thickened and smooth, add the cheese, stirring.
2. When the cheese is melted, add the eggs and cook just until the eggs thicken. Do not overcook or the eggs will scramble. Add the Worcestershire , salt and cayenne. Serve with or on toast. Makes four servings. 

Cheese Grits Casserole

On Sunday, the YMs, our friend Tim, Bob's old colleague and friend Kathleen  and my brother George came to dinner. I decided to have Southern dinner, especially because the New England choices are kind of thin. Tim, who comes from Alabama, was especially pleased.
"I like to know what I'm eating," he said. Apparently, he doesn't always know what he's eating when he comes to our house.
Since the beans had to cook or set for hours, I started them around 2:00. About 5:00, it was time for the grits. I had had my eye on this recipe for several weeks, since I bought the grits for something else. I bought several iterations of sharp cheddar cheese that got eaten or made into some other dish. However, when I opened the cookbook, I couldn't find it. My eyes fell instead on a recipe for grits souffle. I started the grits with the intention of making the souffle. Immediately, I sensed a problem. The directions on the grits box tell you how to make various numbers of servings, not, how many cups of uncooked grits one needs to produce a certain number of cups of cooked grits.
Since time was passing, I winged it. I figured that if one cup of uncooked rice and two cups of water produce two cups of cooked rice, something like that would work for grits. It did. I put two cups of grits and four cups of water in the saucepan. Then I came to my senses . This dish had cheese in it, I said to myself.   I  looked in the index. I hadn't been able to find Cheese Grits Casserole because it was under main dishes at the end, with cheese concoctions.
I scraped the large amount of grits out of the sauce pan into a greased baking dish, mixed in everything but the beaten egg white and set it off to the side while I went to work on the fried chicken. I am not giving you the recipe because I made it once before, sometime in the 1980s. When the chicken was soaking in the milk, I went back to the grits. My husband Bob beat the egg white with a whisk. For some reason I had reached the state of malaise, or fatigue that made taking out the hand beater too much effort.  The whole thing went into the oven and came out onto the plates of the delighted diners.
My son pronounced grits much better as a side dish than as a breakfast food. I have to say I agree. The first time I encountered them was on a ski trip for teenagers in Vermont. I thought it was cream of wheat and put milk and sugar on them. Cheese and butter makes virtually anything downright tasty.

Cheese Grits Casserole

5 cups water
1 cup hominy grits (I used regular grits. I prefer not to use quick cooking anything.)
1/2 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 cup butter
1 egg separated
1 teaspoon salt

1. Bring the water to a boil and gradually stir in the grits. Simmer, covered, twenty five to thirty minutes, stirring often.
2. Stir in the cheese and butter until melted. Spoon a little of the hot mixture not the egg yolk, return to the bulk of the mixture, add the salt and mix. Cool to room temperature.
3 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
4. Beat the egg white until stiff but not dry and fold into the cooled mixture. Spoon mixture into a greased baking dish and bake, covered, forty minutes. Remove cover, turn oven heat to 375 degrees and bake until top of casserole is slightly browned.
Makes six servings.