Recreating Childhood Favorites

After a flippant remark in the tangential footnote of an otherwise unrelated post (and some subsequent encouragement), I decided to recreate a much-beloved (but utterly ridiculous) childhood/college favorite, Campbell's Chunky Sirloin Burger soup.

There wasn't much to it: sweated roughly-chopped mirepoix, added beef stock, cubed potato, diced tomato, salt, pepper, garlic powder, dried basil & oregano, bay leaf, and toward the end, frozen pearl onions, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. For the little burgers, I formed a pound of grassfed ground sirloin into tablespoon-sized patties and grilled them to around medium rare, then threw them into the pot to finish cooking and soak up some flavors.

I was pretty pleased with the end result, but was a little sad that I didn't get the little black grill lines that were such an iconic feature of the Campbell's stuff...the grill that came with the pace we're renting was filthy, and even after lots of scrubbing and scraping and running the thing full-blast to burn off the buildup, I had to throw a sheet of foil over the grates to overcome the psychological ickiness. Still, it tasted like a fresh, natural version of what I was trying to recreate, so mission accomplished.



I'd love to hear about others' attempts at recreating canned/packaged favorites!

Get some metal skewers and heat them on the stove till RED HOT then use to create the grill marks. This is what the food stylist would do to create grill marks on food for photo shoots.

mhill95149 wrote:Get some metal skewers and heat them on the stove till RED HOT then use to create the grill marks. This is what the food stylist would do to create grill marks on food for photo shoots.

That's some great advice! I have some long metal skewers that could probably tackle 6 little burgers at a time. Guess I'll have to make ths again soon.

Thanks!

Khaopaat, I really empathize with your project. I've got several childhood food memories that I would really really like to scratch and, ultimately, secure them forever. But, until now, I've been unsuccessful. Let me describe one effort.

When I was a first and second grader—(damn, I hate to reveal this) in '49-'50—many schools, including my 4-room Catholic school in Ft. Collins CO, had access to enormous stores of war surplus foods. One essential staple was 'chicken à la king' or some other cream-sauced canned chicken. It came in olive drab one-gallon cans. The lunch ladies would bake scratch biscuits, and somehow convert that can of chicken glop into what (in memory) was manna from heaven.

I've tried—totally unsuccessfully—a zillion times to recreate that dish, something that lives burningly in my mind, but to no avail. Somehow, I can NOT get it to taste like I remember it. Most likely, it's a fault of my memory, and not my culinary skills. But still and all, I'd really enjoy, at some juncture in my life, to have a fair analogue to that dish. Any suggestions LTHers?

Geo

PS. Of course, I suppose it would help to be able to eat it off of Army surplus tin mess trays!

Geo,

I also have memories of a creamed dish from my youth. In my case, it consisted of Carl Buddig chipped corned beef on white toast covered with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup which I remember my Mother making in the mid-60's. Back in the day, this was my favorite meal and I remember very complex flavors from the combination of the soup and the corned beef and the difference in textures between the creaminess of the soup and crunch of the toast.

Fast forward forty years to one day when I noticed some Carl Buddig corned beef at the grocery store and it occurred to me that I could recreate this dish because all of the ingredients are still available. Well, it was edible, but I am afraid that it was not nearly as good as I remembered it - and I don't think the ingredients have changed that much. Wow, it was loaded with salt and we haven't made it since.

I think that sometimes our tastes just move on and what was so good when we were younger can't appeal to us on the same level even if made the same way.

By the way, my kids wouldn't touch the stuff.

An afterschool fave was Franco-American canned chicken gravy over white toast. Years later I was pregnant and nothing tasted good. Reverting back to my childhood favorite foods, I bought the jarred gravy, heated it up and doused it over fresh toast. YUCK! But a hot turky sandwhich smothered in homemade Thanksgiving turkey gravy ws da bomb! You can't go back.

Geo, I am always trying to recreate my mom's chicken á la king with biscuits, and never quite getting it right. I wouldn't want to risk offering you suggestions; among your zillion attempts you've surely tried everything I might suggest. I do know my mom would have added a touch of sherry to the gravy, and that flavor and aroma of sherry reminds me of that dish. But I would be surprised if the US Army added sherry to its version.

My mom would make chipped beef on toast also...same deal Carl Buddig but she kind of chopped it a little and put it in the pot with the cream of mushroom soup. Maybe put milk instead of water in it to make it more like white sauce instead of thinning it with water. I never make it because frankly I do not much like it but I could see doing it for old times sake once to see what its like. Like you say, our taste buds have moved on....

Get some metal skewers and heat them on the stove till RED HOT then use to create the grill marks. This is what the food stylist would do to create grill marks on food for photo shoots.

I actually use a coupe of these for the grill marks: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Toastmaster-Speed-Grill-Pizzelle-Waffle-Grill-/380391538072?pt=Small_Kitchen_Appliances_US&hash=item58911a3d98 as opposed to the $99 ebay price, they can be found for $5 . Since they are not really non-stick, the plates leave great sear marks. This was the precursor to the better designed forman grill.

Oddly enough, I just encountered one cook's recounting of recreating childhood tastes in the form of homemade Lucky Charms.

I have a cherished handful of my grandmother's recipes, painstakingly extracted during the brief period between my first becoming interested in cooking while at college and her death just before my graduation. Mostly, they taste just as good as I remember because I learned them at her side and have made most of them regularly ever since.

Recently I made one for the first time in some years because I had had trouble getting a key ingredient: Henri's Tast-ee Dressing. This was a staple in our house when I was growing up, and I was delighted to find it again -- it tastes just as good as ever.

I made my grandmother's baked chicken recipe calling for it, and it was also as good as it tasted in my memory.

The one recipe I wish I had is for her apple cake, which rather than the traditional Jewish apple cake, was more of an apple slice, baked in a jellyroll pan with a layer of apples between two thin crusts, almost like a flat pie. She didn't make it often, because she said it was a lot of trouble. Usually we got it only during the rare visits of my uncle, who was the apple of her eye.

I made these for mom for mother's day. I replaced the cocoa with flour in the base dough to replicate cookies we used to buy at Oven Fresh Bakery (Foster & Harlem) that we thought were not as good as they used to be. She called me up today to tell me how much she liked them, and that she wants more for her birthday. Then...she said they were better than pie.

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/choco ... y-tassies/

I wasn't crazy about the dough. Next time I think I'll use a basic pate sucrée instead. Or sablée? I always get those confused. This might become a bake sale staple, but without the frosting.

Has anyone else gone to Dobbs Preschool? Then perhaps not been traumatized and later attempted to make this:

Pie Lady wrote:...Worst of all was some kind of [stew] made of white sauce tasting oddly like canned cream soup (like potato without the potatoes), peas, and Chex. I can still smell and taste it to this day.

The chocolate raspberry cookies sound truly delicious. the pea stew not so much.

I wonder if the cookies are kind of like the bakery chocolate cookies they would sometimes sandwich together with either rasp. jam or choc. frosting and then dip an end in chocolate and then dip that in chocolate jimmies. Man I loved those.

Great stories everyone! and Katie, maybe you shouldn't be so reticent about describing some of your efforts! No reason that you wouldn't have found something that I missed.

For example, the cream gravy was a bit yellow in tone. I'm sure that it came out of the can pure white. Now *what* could the lunch ladies have done to make that yellow tint? Over the years I've ended up with the idea that they somehow added chicken stock or bouillion or soup powder, something like that, to change both the color and the flavor.

Had another memory of something my mom would make: she used to get Underwood's devilled ham, add something--mayo?--and maybe some celery dices, to make a sandwich spread. I sure remember *that* those sandwiches tasted good, but I haven't a clue *what* those sandwiches tasted like! And when I see the teeny cans the spread comes in, I can't imagine my mom spending so much money on such a small amount of product... but she did.

She had a bunch of other interesting sandwiches, most of which I'm sure she read about in Ladies Home Journal or Better Homes and Gardens or one of those other leading-edge women's mags from the fifties. One was cream cheese and black olives. That was damn good. Another was Fluff and peanut butter. I can't even *imagine* eating one of those today--altho', she once put sliced bananas on one of those Fluff + peanut butter sammiches, and I can remember to this day being blown away by the whole thing.

Jeez. Childhood and food. What possibilities there are/were!!

Geo

toria wrote:I wonder if the cookies are kind of like the bakery chocolate cookies they would sometimes sandwich together with either rasp. jam or choc. frosting and then dip an end in chocolate and then dip that in chocolate jimmies. Man I loved those.

Me too. The jam got increasingly scant over the years. Sprinkles make everything better.

I refuse to open up a can of Franco-American spaghetti (if it even exists these days), but I really liked it as a kid and better still I could make it myself if I came in from baseball & was hungry. Instant carb-loading. From what I remember, it was thicker-than-normal spaghetti with an orangey tomato/cheese sauce (same sauce as <ack> Spaghetti-O's), all jammed inside a can. I washed it down with a huge glass of whole milk with Nestle's Quik. In the middle of the afternoon...

Maybe with some bucatini, tomato paste, milk, salt & generic Parmesan I could get close? Would I even WANT to?

jnm123, interesting points--we *all* remember some canned pasta product or other. I just checked on wiki and apparently Campbell's (which owns the Franco-American brand) is still producing a few products under that brand, including one spaghetti. Dang, canned *pasta*!! How awful is it? Just awful enough, I guess. I had more than a few cans of Chef Boyardee pasta in my kidhood. Imagine my surprise when I learned a few years ago, on chef's passing, that there actually was a Chef Boiardi, and that he started his company in his basement, based upon product from his resto.

But still and all, canned *pasta*??! Just sayin'.....

Geo

I used to love that stuff. It presented my first conundrum...wieners or meatballs?

Here is another memorable dish from my childhood which cannot be recreated-

My grandmother grew up in County Mayo Ireland as the oldest of thirteen children and came to the U.S. in the late 1920's. I remember her as an excellent cook, but in reality I think she was limited pretty much to boiled dinner and soda bread. The exception was that when I was lucky enough to stay overnight she would make home made "chop suey." As best I can recall, this was not from a recipe and was certainly not from a can and I am sure that it was quite a stretch for her. It is touching now to think that she would go through that effort. That particular style of Chinese food cannot be recreated unless the cook grew up in the west of Ireland as the oldest of thirteen and was put on a boat to the U.S. alone.

Geo wrote:For example, the cream gravy was a bit yellow in tone. I'm sure that it came out of the can pure white. Now *what* could the lunch ladies have done to make that yellow tint? Over the years I've ended up with the idea that they somehow added chicken stock or bouillion or soup powder, something like that, to change both the color and the flavor.

Geo,

Eggshade http://www.spiceplace.com/mccormick-yel ... loring.php

Ronnie, you ARE so evil!!

That's very interesting, esp. the name. And obviously at less than ten bucks a pint, you can well afford using this stuff to 'beef' up (so to say) the look of your sauce.

But I wonder if that's what the lunch ladies actually did? My suspicion is that they used some chicken bouillion stock in a butter roux. Given that they were all (there were c. five of them) late-motherly, early-grandmotherly bakers (even more than cooks), I suspect that that's what they had going on.

On Fridays, of course, we had mac 'n cheese or classic tuna fish and noodles. Nothing rocket science-y there. I can do that, now, no questions. It's just the damn creamed chicken on biscuites that drives me crazy from my remembered distant past.

Geo

Geo wrote:Ronnie, you ARE so evil!!

That's very interesting, esp. the name. And obviously at less than ten bucks a pint, you can well afford using this stuff to 'beef' up (so to say) the look of your sauce.

But I wonder if that's what the lunch ladies actually did? My suspicion is that they used some chicken bouillion stock in a butter roux. Given that they were all (there were c. five of them) late-motherly, early-grandmotherly bakers (even more than cooks), I suspect that that's what they had going on.

On Fridays, of course, we had mac 'n cheese or classic tuna fish and noodles. Nothing rocket science-y there. I can do that, now, no questions. It's just the damn creamed chicken on biscuites that drives me crazy from my remembered distant past.

Geo

Geo,

I suspect that your lunch ladies used margerine roux (butter too expensive for quantity thickening), cheap chicken base (not the better stuff like Minor's, but the kind that lists salt first rather than chicken), and eggshade.

x

Basically "yes" Ronnie, but I need to make one objection: since it was war surplus time, there was butter out the gazooo. I mean, pound chunks of butter floated around that kitchen like dust motes in a bedroom. Margerine was still an exotic--and expensive--product in '49-50. I remember visiting my granny in Superior WI in '52, and the margerine pkg contained a little pellet of dye (? maybe eggshade? that you could work into your pale evil-looking margerine in order to make it look sort of like butter.

No, butter was everywhere.

Geo

LAZ wrote:Oddly enough, I just encountered one cook's recounting of recreating childhood tastes in the form of homemade Lucky Charms.

Wow...that just seems masochistic! If I ever decided to give this recipe a shot, my Lucky Charms would feature pink squares, orange squares, yellow squares, green squares, and blue squares.

. . . I remember visiting my granny in Superior WI in '52, and the margerine pkg contained a little pellet of dye (? maybe eggshade? that you could work into your pale evil-looking margerine in order to make it look sort of like butter.

Geo, Wisconsin had (and possibly still has!) state laws on the books banning margarine. Given what we know now, such vision and foresight!

sundevilpeg wrote:

. . . I remember visiting my granny in Superior WI in '52, and the margerine pkg contained a little pellet of dye (? maybe eggshade? that you could work into your pale evil-looking margerine in order to make it look sort of like butter.

Geo, Wisconsin had (and possibly still has!) state laws on the books banning margarine. Given what we know now, such vision and foresight!

My husband recalls his family smuggling yellow oleo up from Illinois. Apparently, there used to be places just south of the border that made a business of selling it.

Jeez yeah: "oleo", that's what we called it in Chicago in 1953. What in the world was * that* about?
Anyone have a clue?


Geo

Oleomargarine was the original name, back in the 19th century.

Re. deviled ham sandwiches: My mom used to make a ham spread that involved putting ham/deviled ham, cream cheese and scallions in the food processor & whipping it all together. Makes a delicious sandwich or cracker spread.

Re. chipped beef: One of my favorite Sunday breakfasts as a kid was chipped beef scrambled eggs. Tear up dried (chipped) beef into bite-sized pieces and saute in a little butter until shriveled a bit (but not necessarily crunchy). Add egg mixture & scramble together.

My Mom & Aunt have shared custody of my Grandmother's recipe box--and my Mom still has a loose leaf cookbook* of recipes she's compiled over the last 40 years. So few childhood favorites are "lost," though my Grandma never wrote down her recipe for leftover pasta tossed in bread crumbs and melted butter, then pan fried until chewy/crunchy. I've tried to recreate, but don't have the right proportions!

* I decided to cook paella** for Easter dinner and was at my Mom's so I used her personal cookbook as a reference for proportions, cooking times, etc. I loved the notes on the paella recipe page, dating back to the 1970s, that told how many pounds of shrimp & how clams she used for dinner parties of various sizes. I could clearly tell when we moved to Saudi Arabia because lobster tails started making appearances in her notes. It's a really special walk down memory lane.

** Despite having made paella dozens of times--sometimes from memory--and despite having the family recipe at my fingertips, I still screwed it up. My aunt had elephant garlic in the house, which I hadn't used before but which she noted was more mild than regular garlic, so I used more than normal. And my Mom's saffron supply*** was running low and I didn't want to clear out her supply, so I used a bit less than normal. So the paella was overly garlicy and under-saffroned.

*** Once upon a time, I dated a Persian guy. One of the fringe benefits: When visiting Iran, he'd bring back for me huge containers of saffron and caviar. More than any one person should ever have in their possession. I miss him...