Help me with making some recipes

Breaking this out from the foodies BS thread.

Okay, y'all, I have an OUT THERE request and favor to ask the foodies thread.
For those I know in the real world, this is a surprise for my wife and her family, so please do not mention this one.

I have access to my wife's late grandmother's recipe book. I went through it, scanned in all of her hand written recipes (worth keeping. Watergate salad? No thanks). Over the next year, I am going to make it into a Family Cookbook, to be printed for Christmas 2025.

What I am asking for.... I have a bunch of recipes I can absolutely cook, take pictures of, and figure out. But there's a lot I can't/won't be able to. I'm asking to crowd source some of this - putting together the recipe from a hand written note into an actual recipe. There's a lot of these that are just ingredients, and some brief hand written notes. Also, I can't pull off taking pictures of all/a lot of these on my own, without my wife being suspicious as to why the hell I'm making some of these things

I would love some input too on "Wow, they used THAT!? No, it's 2024, that causes lupus, we now use THIS" if you do the recipes, feedback on "Temps way too low, bump it up" etc.

So, I have a list below of recipes I would LOVE a hand in making, and taking some decent pictures of so I can include the pictures of the finished dishes in the cookbook. A lot of them are desserts.

• Popovers (I might be able to get to these, but I don't have a pan)
• Cheese Dip
• Clam Puffs
• Chicken wings (I have to check the recipe, if these are on the grill I might need a hand)

• Pork Pie (I might be able to get to this one)
• Chicken Supreme

• Bolognese/marinara sauce - This one I will specifically ask if someone is willing to do it in an enameled cast iron pan/fancy pot for the insta credit here. I can make this easily, but this one is a photo op/art project, more than making the recipe.

• Peanut butter cookies (taken)
  
• Whoopie Pies
  
• Pineapple Upside Down Cake
• Brownies (might be able to get to these on my own)
• Chocolate oatmeal cookies
• Sour cream coffee cake (taken)
  
• Apple crisp
• Congo bars (This isn't the recipe, but I hadn't heard of them before, and she has a bunch of recipes, so I DEFINITELY want to include these) https://therecipecritic.com/congo-bars/

• Punch. No, seriously, a big bowl of punch - this was in the recipes, and I think it would be an awesome addition, and photogenic.

I can definitely do some of these, it's just a matter of when, can I get a good picture of them without my wife being suspicious, and "Can I justify making an entire apple crisp for myself to her? I don't think I can..." (She's vegan so she would butt in with "excuse me, can we use vegan butter? I would like some", which is fair, but hinders the process here).

Full recipe list below, in case anyone wants to do others, more than happy to spread the love, but the list above is ones that I would appreciate a hand on.




Open recipe IOUs:

NONE! At the moment.

 

I guess that might make sense thanks for the idea! I didn't know if there would be any uptake. Cool beans y'all!

Yes, typo for sure. I have spent the entire year thinking it's 2023, and somehow I thought "Okay next christmas will be 2026, obviously". I'll fix that.

And YES I have the recipes. I'll explain more in another post.

of course. I might include a little portfolio of who the heck that is, since I don't think anyone in the family will know. The uncles might, but not the cousins.

There's nothing saying we can't overlap, too, if y'all just want to have fun with it and make new recipes. Yeah, I'm making the chili but if others want to, heck, I don't mind. At that point it's just sharing recipes.

Quoted y'all from the Foodies BS thread to respond.

 

Okay, so, the "how" is kind of whacky. My wife and I have our own recipes book as well, where we have recipes we want to reference often (mostly breads, with weights in grams, etc). So, I have some experience in how to make this. Ours doesn't have pictures, since it's just for us, but this one is meant to be more fun, so pictures abound!

HOW I am writing it - in LaTeX. I am an engineer so...Of course I am going to overcomplicate things.

Spoiler: What is Latex

LaTeX is a "programming language" to make documents. Microsoft Word is called a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) software. LaTeX makes it programming, essentially. To make bullets, it's a code (so I took a screenshot of the code, and the output, above, so you can see what I'm working with).

The "hard part" is that right now, everything is hand written and scanned in. Some are by news paper clippings.





So, what I am doing is going through each one, to translate the ingredients and temperatures and whatnot, into a "real" recipe in the cookbook.

For example:



So, when someone says "OH I want X recipe, I'll make that!" - I will prioritize that one to translate it and type it up, and I can send it over. So, when someone says "Oh cool, I'll make Congo Bars!" - awesome, but I need to read through the recipe and type it up first. (And that one specifically has 3 different recipes, hand written...)

And I can send the original scan(s) over too.

Just something I thought was really cool, I'm going to include this as a picture alongside the tomato sauce/bolognaise (TBD, I might have a bolognaise and a non-meat option), her hand written notes, things crossed out, on the back of an envelope.



So, this is what I am working with, and the process I am going through.

Anyone who has already mentioned any recipes, I will go through those first, and post them up. I will censor any sort of "should be hidden" info like if there are any addresses, names, etc, so it can be all posted here, no PMs needed.




Some other cool things I found, that I am going to include in the cookbook somehow:

 

@GarlicFarts I'm up for any of the ones you've listed.

Interested in Pop overs, bolognaise, chicken supreme, pineapple upside down, coffee cake, but any others are doable.

Weights in grams or ounces work to keep your translation minimal. The original recipes you posted look ok unless there are some hand writing legibility issues

This could be fun

 

When it comes to breads and doughs, I try to go in grams. I HATE getting a recipe with cups of flour. Salt is my second least favorite but I can work with it, just because the granules are different packing efficiency so some have more "salt" per volume than others. BUT that's a lot closer than flour.



Haven't translated through this one yet.
And that's the next part too - some of these I won't necessarily know what the result is until I actually make them!




@Beef Nachos > I can/will help with any/all that don’t have bread or gluten filled ingredients

 

Measure salt????

That pop over is interesting contrast to the Yorkies.

Yorkies the batter is refrigerated and the muffin tin is heated with 1/4" of oil to 450F. Cold batter into hot pan gets the lift.

Maybe I'll try it today by your recipe.

 

I measure everything for breads, in grams. Breads I do not f with. Granted, if the recipe calls for 6.5g (if I scale it up or down and it falls as a decimal), and I land on 7, whatever. If I am aiming for 8 and land on 9, close enough. But if I'm aiming for 8 and land on 12, I'll drag that down closer to 8.

Yeah I threw in that recipe because one of the cousins just made popovers using the sourdough starter I shared with him. This is not "All of Grannie's recipes" sort of thing. If it was, we'd have 8 different watergate salads, and a bunch of other stuff that people just won't make. So, I curated a bit.

the fun section, which I didn't include, because I will figure these out...




Another funny aside - she worked for a school in the kitchen, so the pork fried rice recipe starts with 20lbs of rice. That's been a long standing family joke, about the 15lbs of pork strips and 20lbs of rice. So that recipe will have those quantities in there (And similar to above with the butter crunch recipe, another column with a normal size, same proportions).

 

@GarlicFarts when I did culinary school they brought in one of the pastry chef instructors to teach us baguette. Ninth generation French pastry chef teaching baguette to a class of 1st year cooks, LOL, he was impressed. I recall his instructions were flour, water yeast salt, the dryer and stiffer the dough the better. Then he went back to his pastry kitchen. Came back a couple of hours later to see how we did. LOL. I got along well with him, great guy and very talented but understated. Salt acts as a preservative and flavour element but also delay and can kill yeast growth.

From experience, you get an idea of how big of a pinch or how many pinches to go for. If you've already got your starter proofed is a big advantage.

One chef I worked with doing evening housewife classes was teaching them to properly saute mushrooms and came out with "mushrooms are high in sodium so they need lots of salt" I went to her after the class and asked "where the hell do you learn this stuff? I want to study this stuff."

oh, eggs and milk are coming to room temp on the counter for popovers. I'll let you know.

Gin and Tonics became a staple when I lived in the tropics. In Belize, our office was on a hilltop and we had rooftop access. 5:30pm was rooftop G&T's while the sun set upon the Empire, we even had pithe helmets. LOL

 

This post, isolated on its own, reads like a wild back story to the experienced spy that is teaching the younger one.



Cheers thank you! I know my way around the kitchen slightly more (like one step above) most average housewives/househusbands. A high school student who took Culinary in voc school would blow me out of the water I am far from a culinary amateur - below, I mean - let alone an expert and people who went to school for it.




The drinks - I am 99% sure G&Ts were her drink of choice, but they've become a fan favorite as of late, anyway, so I am going to leave them in there. Manhattan's were a favorite, margs and mojitos are favorites. I need to add Mai Tais in actually now that I think about it....

 

Some these seem very New England traditional . You might find some help over in the regional forum. I get you are trying to get eyes on these recipes.
It's a fun project you are undertaking here. I'm no help. Good luck!

 

what gave you that idea?



I'll post a link in some of the BS threads over there, good idea!

 

I wonder how accurate that cost per serving is.

 

Actually, you've made a fun idea. I'm going to make this, and figure out today's cost and put it in there.

 

Gotta say I was sceptical with everything going into a cold oven but not bad. I would have liked a more consistent rise but the taste and texture is great.

Hats off to Grandma!

 

Thinking about yesterday's batch, I had added up to a T of melted butter to the muffin tins before adding the batter. The ones with less fat rose more. New batch this morning where I just rubbed the muffin tins with cold butter to grease them. Much better result.

Other thing was I used the lowest most rack in the oven.

 

Awesome. I'll see what I can write up for that one.

Also, cheers on deciphering the writing for me on that one

I'll write that one up first and then get the others that people had thrown in on written up, hopefully early next week for everything.

 

@CTSpruceMica



This one was easy to convert

My takes on this:

• I'm roasting that chicken, or getting a grocery rotisserie.
  
• Maybe use penne or ziti or rigatoni instead of spaghetti.

Happy cooking

 

We're boiling that chicken and using spaghetti as God and Larry Pleau intended...next you'll be demanding Larry wears a helmet...

 

I mean, fair enough, the first go through I'm following the recipes unless it's something like "sprinkle with asbestos", but in the notes, I might add my notes from above. Then once I make them as-per, I'll adapt them however might make sense to bring it to 2025 instead of 1978.

 

Tomato Sauce

Okay this one's a bit weird.

One recipe, that I think is right, has more information than the recipe that's written on the back of the envelope. I was hoping the envelope one would be the winner. So, there's two options.

The envelope one has a LOT of onions to sauce ratio.



The other written recipe has a normal amount.



I don't know what a large can is, either. I don't know if "large" was the 15oz cans, or the 28oz cans.



So, this is AS WRITTEN. I think the second recipe makes more sense in terms of onions:cans of tomatoes quantities. If you think my deciphering of the envelope amounts is wrong, please chime in - because I would love that one to be correct.

This is what I got. I will probably make the second one in a single batch size soon after Christmas, but I know this was a requested one.

@DuffyBank