The I Hate to Cook Book (5 page)

This makes a pretty company platter, incidentally, with some fat tomato slices and parsley around the edge.

     OLD FAITHFUL     

4 servings

(Fruit salad is good with this, because there are enough vegetables in it anyhow.)

4 medium-thick lamb or pork chops

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

6 tablespoons uncooked rice

1 large onion, peeled and sliced

2 ripe tomatoes, cored and sliced

½ green pepper, cut in rings

salt, pepper

1 can broth (chicken is best)

1 tiny pinch of marjoram

1 tiny pinch of thyme

Brown the chops in the oil in a skillet. While they’re browning, put the rice in the bottom of a greased casserole dish, and slice the vegetables. Next, lay the chops on the rice and top each one with slices of onion, tomato, and green pepper, salting and
peppering a bit as you go. Pour the broth in, add the marjoram and thyme, cover, and let it fend for itself in a 350˚ oven for an hour.

The Problem of Falling in Love
You often do, when you hate to cook, fall in love with one recipe which seems to have simply everything: it’s fast, it’s simple, and the whole family
likes
it. And so, like impetuous lovers since time began, you tend to overdo it. You find yourself serving the little gem three times a week, including Sunday breakfast. Your problems are solved. You’re serene. Oh, you love that little recipe!

But no recipe can stand such an onslaught. After a while, it just doesn’t taste as good as it did the first time. You begin to wonder what you ever saw in it. Presently, you stop making it. Eventually, it’s lost in limbo, and that’s the end of
that
love affair.

Two things are responsible for this all-too-common occurrence: first, you overdid it, and, second, you probably started to kick it around. You felt so safe with your own true love that you began taking it for granted, not exactly following the recipe, using vinegar instead of lemon juice, or canned mushrooms instead of fresh mushrooms (because you
had
some vinegar or canned mushrooms). Soon, without your being aware of it, the recipe has undergone a sea change and become something rich and undoubtedly strange, all right, but not at all the same recipe you started with.

The moral is this: Instead of going steady, play the field. When you make proper contact with a recipe,
don’t make it again for an entire month.
Keep it warm and cozy, your ace in the hole, in your card file, or checked in your recipe book, while you try some more. Presently, you’ll have several aces in the hole, which is a very delectable state of affairs indeed.

In the
PORK
and
HAM
department, we come to

     MAXIE’S FRANKS     

4–6 servings

(This is a fast, good franks and kraut routine.)

½ onion, chopped (or 2 tablespoons minced dried onion)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

¾ cup ketchup

¾ cup water

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon prepared mustard

1 28-ounce can sauerkraut

10 or 12 frankfurters or hot dogs

You make the sauce first. Sauté the onion in the oil until it’s tender, then add the ketchup, water, sugar, and mustard, and bring to a boil. Now open the sauerkraut, drain it well, and put it in a big casserole. Arrange the frankfurters—slashed or split—on top, pour on the sauce, and bake, uncovered, at 350˚ for thirty minutes.

     DR. MARTIN’S MIX     

4–5 servings

(It takes about seven minutes to put this together. Dr. Martin is a busy man.)

Crumble 1 to 1½ pounds of pork sausage (hamburger will do, but pork is better) into a skillet and brown it. Pour off a little of the fat. Then add

1 green pepper, chopped

2 green onions (also called scallions), chopped

2 or 3 celery stalks, chopped

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup uncooked rice

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

½ teaspoon salt

Dr. Martin then puts the lid on and lets it simmer at the lowest possible heat while he goes out and sets a fracture. When he comes back in about an hour, his dinner is ready.

     PORK CHOPS AND SPUDS     

Use the grater with the big holes to grate your potatoes (1 to 2 per person) for scalloping; it’s much faster than slicing. Then prepare them in your habitual scallop fashion, whatever that may be. (If you don’t have a habitual fashion, you might put over them a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup slightly diluted with a third of a can of milk.) Lay the pork chops (also 1 to 2 per person) on top of the potatoes and put the casserole dish in a 350˚ oven, uncovered. If you happen to think of it, turn the chops over in half an hour and salt and pepper them. You bake this for an hour all told.

And so to
CHICKEN
.

It’s a funny thing about chicken. Grandma got along nicely frying hers, and she lived to a sprightly old age. But these days the word is “baked,” not fried—oven-baked.

That is what these two recipes are, by pure happenstance, although in the first one you cheat a bit and brown the bird first.

     CHICKEN-RICE ROGER