Rivel Soup

Rivel soup appears to be a German-Menonite creation. Wikipedia, amazingly enough, did not have a definition for me, and their question software is too annoying to penetrate. However, there are many recipes for it on the internet, and the ones I looked at made mention of a German or Memonite origin. Rivels would be noodles if they had a shape. They are little bits of flour egg dough dropped into the soup. This is a tasty, easy soup to make, except the rivels need more than one egg yolk to be made into anything. Try two egg yolks, and then you may still need a little water.

Rivel Soup

1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk
8 cups boiling chicken broth
1 cup corn kernels (freshly cut from cob, it says. If not that time of year, use frozen)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the egg yolk and with the fingers work together until mixture is crumbly.
2. Add the crumbs, a few at a time, to the boiling broth. Add the corn, salt and pepper and boil ten servings. Makes six servings.

Winy Apple-Raisin Pie

I had planned to make this back in the fall. Son and fiance had gone apple picking at Homestead Farm in Poolesville, where they have many varieties of apples, including tart pie apples. They kindly bought me some, but I never got it together to make Winy-Raisin Apple Pie. What I did have was the vermouth.

We are not martini drinkers in this house, except for son, who orders these exotic drinks from the past when we go out to dinner. The rest of us stick with humble, average white wine. When I did drink hard liquor, I drank Bourbon and orange juice, which earned me a raised eyebrow and a dusty bottle from the rest of my family. So anyway, although vermouth was a staple in my parents' house, it was not something you were likely to find on the bar in my house.

I made the pie for my husband's church potluck. He had signed me up for desert, so I couldn't work in either shellfish or eggplant or both. It also had to be made in about an hour and a half, because I was riding in the morning, and then we had to go out to Ikea in College Park to buy a single bed for daughter's room.

So I called husband when I left the barn and asked him to A. find me a recipe and B. figure out what I needed to buy. I told him I would call him again when I got to Potomac and stop to buy the ingredients.

He chose this one, which was certainly quicker than a cake, or cheesecake, which were the other choices. I bought the apples and dig it guys, ready made pie crust. This stuff is the best convenience food ever, and much better than what I ever made. After we got back from Ikea with a carload of boxed furniture, I got to work and whipped it out.It was very good and answers the question of whether you can make an apple pie with Granny Smith apples. You can,.

This calls for a latticework crust. If you don't know what that is, it's the crust that looks like an openwork basket. My husband did it, and instead of weaving the crust the way Joy of Cooking says to do, he just laid the strips going one way over the strips going the other way. It's definitely an option.

Winy Apple-Raisin Pie


Pastry for a two-crust ten-inch pie

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup dry vermouth (Martini and Rossi)

1 cup golden raisins

6 cups peeled, sliced tart apples

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3/4 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon allspice

sweetened whipped cream


1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Roll out half the pastry and use it to line a ten-inch pie dish. Reserve remaining pastry for the top.

3. Heat the butter and vermouth in a saucepan and add the raisins. Simmer until raisins are soft. Drain and set aside.

4. Combine the apples, lemon juice, brown sugar, granulated sugar, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg. Add raisins and toss lightly. Pour mixture into the pie dish. Roll out remaining pastry and make a lattice work top for pie. Bake about forty minutes, or until crust is golden brown. If desired, serve with sweetened whipped cream on the side. Serves 6-10.

Cheese Soup

I am discovering, in the need to crank these recipes out, that many of the soups make a nice dinner on Sunday night and don't take too much time. Of course, I don't get to write up the recipe until the following Friday when things simmer down, but nevertheless, they get cooked, and we have something different to eat.

So, Sunday evening, we had Cheese Soup, from, where else, Vermont. It took about half an hour, and was tasty and required no weird ingredients that could not be purchased at Safeway. I highly recommend it in these last few weeks of cold wet weather before it gets hot. I just made it with Safeway extra sharp Cheddar, but if you had Vermont Cheddar, I bet this would be really good.






2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons flour

3/4 cup chicken broth

4 cups milk, scalded

3/4 pound finely grated sharp Cheddar cheese

1/8 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 teaspoon celery salt

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper



1. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan and saute the onion in it until tender. Sprinkle the flour over all and cook two minutes.

2. Gradually stir in the broth and milk. Bring to a boil.

3. Add these cheese, mustard, celery salt, Worcestershire and pepper ad stir until cheese is melted. Remove from the heat and serve immediately.
Serves 6.

Clam Cakes

We also had clam cakes for first cousin once removed. It actually calls for canned clams, so I didn't have to do the search through multiple venues for ingredients routine. I prefer Rhode Island Clam Cakes, which I made this summer. These were okay, but rather liquid-y, partly due to my not reading the recipe all the way through in advance.

One is supposed to chill the clam cake mixture for at least 2 hours, and let the cakes dry out four 15 minutes after dipping them in egg and bread crumbs. I skipped that step entirely since I had to toss the bread crumbs intended for dipping into the mixture to get it to hold together.So while the Rhode Island Clam Cakes were luxuriously puffy, these Massachusetts Clam Cakes were flat. They were okay. People seemed to like them.They probably would have been better with the egg and bread crumb dipping. If you decide to make them, give yourself plenty of time





Clam Cakes



2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons minced shallot

1 1/4 cup bread crumbs

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup cream

2 seven ounce cans minced clams, drained

1/2 cup minced celery

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

1 egg beaten and diluted with one tablespoon water

fat for deep frying



1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and saute the shallot in the butter until soft but not browned.

2. Add one-half cup of the bread crumbs, the lightly beaten eggs, the cream, clams, celery, lemon juice, parsley , salt and pepper. Chill the mixture at least two hours.


3. Shape into eight two-inch cakes. Dip the cakes into the remaining crumbs and then into the remaining egg. Coast the cakes with crumbs a second time. Allow the cakes to dry out for fifteen minutes.

4. Fry the cakes, a few at a time, until golden brown in deep fat heated to 375 degrees. Drain. Makes four servings

Rutabaga Pie

Rutabaga Pie! Are you serious? Rutabaga Pie? Or, as my daughter asked, "Are you going to tell people what's in it?" The answer is, yes. I made this on Tuesday evening for Wednesday when my first cousin once removed came down from New York on a business trip. Son and fiance and daughter all came to dinner, and we had a high old time laughing about the antics of her two year old and looking at my parents' 1942 wedding pictures. FCOR is about 35. She was born right after I got out of college, and I used to spend a lot of time hanging out at her parents' house. So, as cousins should be, I am someone she has known all her life. Her mother is the sister of my cousin Cricket, my one blog follower. If her mother ever gave me any cooking advice, she would be referred to as my Boston cousin. Anyhow, although I refrained from Rutabaga Pie all these years (and Rutabaga Salad, and Pot Roast with mashed rutabagas as well), on closer examination, one will notice it has all the same ingredients as pumpkin pie. Of course, except for rutabaga instead of pumpkin. Anyway, it tastes pretty much like pumpkin pie. The rutabaga taste (and smell) is disseminated in the cooking and mashing of the rutabagas. The recipe says to sieve the rutabagas. Don't bother. Just make sure you cook them enough so they will be chewed up by the blender. So, if you have a surplus of rutabagas, (which frankly seems unlikely unless you live on a rutabaga farm) here's something new to do with them. Rutabaga Pie 1 1/2 cups cooked, mashed, and sieved (unnecessary) rutabaga or yellow turnip 1 cup light brown sugar 2 tablespoons unsulphured molasses, 2 eggs lightly beaten 1 1/4 cups light cream 1/2 teaspoon ginger 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon cloves 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 unbaked deep nine inch pie shell 1/2 cup heavy cream whipped sliced filberts 1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. 2. Beat together the rutabaga, brown sugar, molasses, eggs, light cream, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt and vanilla. Pour into the pie shell and bake fifteen minutes. Reduce the oven heat to 350 degrees and bake about forty minutes longer, or until set. Do not over bake. 3. Cool. Serve topped with the whipped cream and sliced filberts. Makes six servings.

Hot Apple and Potato Salad

This week has been a perfect whirlwind of blog related cookery, which just goes to prove that I could do this faster if I would put my mind to it. But that is true of just about anything. I could get better scores on my teacher evaluations if I put my mind to it. Anyhow, Hot Apple and Potato Salad is... a dish that one needs to monitor the cooking of the potatoes for.

I got on the phone with my friend Juliette while they were cooking. She told me that she, her mother, her two sisters and her husband are all coming to Son's wedding in May. Should be fun. As a result, the potatoes were more fit for mashing than potato salad. I am not terribly open to innovations in potato salad. German potato salad doesn't cut it at all. The various different deli potato salads such as three cheese are okay, but not great. Red bliss potato salad is about the best. This potato salad is not very potato salad-y, meaning it has no mayo. But, since the weather has been cold, windy and rainy, it is a good dish for a chilly night.

Hot Apple Potato Salad
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 cup boiling water
3 cups sliced cooked potatoes
1 cup diced celery
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 slices bacon
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
3 unpeeled red apples cored and diced

1. Place the raisins in abowl, pour the boiling water over rasins and let stand three minutes. Drain.
2. Combine the potatoes, celery, parsley, salt and pepper in a skillet.
3. In another skillet, cook the bacon until crisp. Add the cider vinegar, tarragon vinegar, sugar and lemon rind and bring to a boil.
4. Pour over the potato mixture. Heat gently. Add the apples and raisins and heat mixture to serving temperature.
Makes 8 servings.

Golden Cabbage

Monday night brought Golden Cabbage, which for some unknown reason I had viewed with suspicion. It's pretty simple. Shred cabbage, cook for an hour, make a cheese sauce and bake. The combination of cooking the cabbage for an hour and the cheese sauce gives it a mashed pototoey consistancy. It's good reheated too. It was very good. I didn't take a picture because it was very white food. I chose to serve it with pork chops on our everyday china, which is all white.

I got home relatively early for me after a satisfying hour with my first tutee, Elisa, who has been faithfully doing her homework without a glimmer of understanding as to what it was all about. She showed signs of being able to count money. I used my early arrival time to go down and work on the blog, not to start dinner.So when I went back upstairs and discovered that the cabbage had to boil for an hour, and then, "bake until thoroughly heated." I was somewhat dismayed.

My husband teases me about how, when he cooks, dinner is on the table when I get home. When I cook, no matter when he gets home, we eat around 9. So, this was another later than necessary meal.


Golden Cabbage



2 pounds white or green cabbage

2 quarts water

1 tablespoon sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons plus one teaspoon salt

2 cups milk

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/4 cup butter

1/4 pound Swiss cheese, grated



1. Remove and discard the core from the cabbage. Shred or chop cabbage finely and combine it with the water, sugar and one and one-half tablespoons of the salt. Bring to aboil, cover and cook over low heat one hour. Remove cabbage and drain thoroughly in a colander.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

3. Combine the nmilk, cornstarch, butter and remaining salt. Bring to aboil over moderate heat, stirring. Combine with drained cabbage. Stir in all but four tablespoons grated cheese and blend well. Poour cabbage mixture into a buttered 71/2 by 12 inch baking dish. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and bake just until thoroughly heated. Run the dish briefly under the broiler and serve hot. Makes six servings.