Author: Jim Cofer

Lisa and I both just love Cracker Barrel’s hash brown casserole. Yesterday I was surfing the ‘Net and stumbled across one of those “copycat recipe” sites. Some of the recipes seemed kind of pointless – why spend $8 making a faux Big Mac at home when you can buy a real one 24 hours a day for $2? But the copycat recipe for the hash brown casserole intrigued me. It’s as simple as can be. It’s cheap to make. And it’s oh so goooood!

The following recipe has been slightly adapted from the one I found online. Lisa doesn’t like mushrooms, so I changed the soup from cream of mushroom to cream of chicken. I also decided to add a “broiler cycle” at the end to make the top of the casserole extra-crunchy. According to the website I snagged the original recipe from, if you want your casserole to be as close to Cracker Barrel’s as possible you’ll need to use Colby cheese and a 50-50 mixture of cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup. As it turns out, my use of cream of chicken soup and a Colby\Jack cheese mix came incredibly close anyway.

Continue reading “Cracker Barrel’s Hash Brown Casserole!”

I first had this wonderful dish at the Red Lion Pub in Bimini, Bahamas. It’s amazingly easy to make, dirties no pots or pans and simply tastes heavenly! Cooking the fish in a foil pouch makes for fast cooking times; cooking it with wine in the pouch creates a moist environment that makes it difficult to end up with dry, overcooked fish, too.

Although the Bahamian version uses fresh fish – and by “fresh” I mean “that grouper was swimming in the ocean two hours ago” – this recipe works wonders with the more affordable frozen fillets. Just be sure to use a white fish with this – tuna or salmon made in this method would taste… not so good!

Ingredients:

Fillets of a whitefish (tilapia, grouper, mahi mahi, etc.)
Sliced onion (enough to add one or two slices per fillet)
1 “pat” of butter per fillet
Around 1/4 cup white wine per fillet
Salt
Pepper
Capers (optional)

Hardware:

Aluminum foil
1 small knife
1 cookie sheet (optional)

1) Preheat your oven to 375F.

2) Tear off a large piece of aluminum foil. The piece should be big enough to fit the fillets comfortably and seal at the top. For best results, use a very large sheet folded in half.

3) Put the fish fillet in the center of the foil.

4) Salt and pepper the fish to your liking. Add a few onion rings (slices) to the fish, as well as the butter and capers (if desired).

5) Tightly close the foil up around the fish; leave a small gap to pour the wine into before sealing the pouch completely.

6) Repeat for any additional fillets.

7) Place pouches directly on the middle rack of your oven (or place them on a cookie sheet – this is better in my opinion as any leaks won’t make a mess of the oven).

8) Cook at 375F until done. The amount of time necessary to cook the fish depends on the size and thickness of the fillets. Consider 12 minutes to be a minimum cooking time, although in practice it usually takes around 16 minutes for the average fillet in my oven.

One of my favorite memories of childhood was coming home from school and hearing that tonight was “tuna casserole night”! Sure, my mom’s recipe was nothing fancy – in fact, I’m sure you can find quite similar recipes in any United Methodist Women’s cookbook – but still… nothing makes me feel more like “home” than eating this. I make this at home today and end up missing my mom!

I’ve also included some variations at the end of the recipe, in case you don’t care for any of the main ingredients.

Continue reading “Mom’s Tuna Casserole!”

When I was close to graduating from college, it occurred to me that I still had hundreds of copies left on my library copy card. I suppose many students had gotten scammed in the past because none of the kids at GSU would buy my “used” copy card. So what to do?

Well, I took some time that I should have been in anthropology and instead went to the library and found the cookbooks section. And what glorious books I found there – Greek, Thai, Indian, Italian… But one book in particular stood out – an Irish cookbook of all things. Not because of delicious Irish cuisine, but because the book had recipes for just about every basic sauce and dish from the European continent as well as good descriptions of the techniques any aspiring chef would need to master. I didn’t bother copying the copyright page but it would have been interesting if I had: most of the larger measures were in metric (2kg of beef), yet most of the smaller measures were still given in Imperial units (2 oz. of butter). Must have been an interesting time to be a chef in Ireland, what with all the conversion charts all over the kitchen and everything! Anyway, I got the gist of one recipe and present it to you now in good God-fearing Imperial measures!

Continue reading “Guinness Stew!”

I once made a pecan pie for a family function. Unfortunately, frozen pie crusts come in packages of two, so the poor “extra” crust sat in the freezer for a couple of months being all lonely. One night I came home late from work too tired to cook anything, yet not in the mood for one of the few food items left in my pantry – a big can of beef stew. I suddenly remembered the frozen pie crust and in a flash a quick and easy beef pie was born. This is one hell of a starter recipe – once you get the basics of what’s going on here, you can expand it by making your own pie crust or your own filling mixture from scratch – why not try it using my Guinness Stew as a filling? You can play around with the filling ingredients and make it as simple or as complex as you want it to be. If you’re not really comfortable in the kitchen, try making this dish directly as shown below, then make it again one day and have fun with the filling ingredients!
Continue reading “Beef Pie!”

With all due respect to the people of the great city of New York, Chicago pizza is the best stuff on the face of the earth! I love the crust’s cornmeal taste as well as the overall heft of these pies! This is deep dish, baby!

Unfortunately, making one of these pizzas by yourself at home can be an all-day process. The last time I made one – for my family’s Christmas Eve “Wrapping Party” – it took around four hours to make this from start to finish. But this is a labor of love; after all, any jackass with a phone and $20 can call Pizza Hut, but making a pie worthy of Gino’s East or Lou Malnati’s is something to be proud of!

Beware that you will need a deep dish pizza pan for this recipe; although you can buy a deep dish pan anywhere, I heartily recommend the Chicago Metallic brand, because they are the company that supplies Gino’s East. For what it’s worth, I bought my pan here and have no complaints about the service or price.

Continue reading “Chicago-style Pizza!”

This recipe is something I whipped up all by myself several years ago with things we had just lying around the kitchen. The true beauty of paella – like jambalaya – is that you can add just about anything to the basic ingredients listed below. If you have some leftover chicken or smoked sausage you can add this in step 4 below. How authentic is this recipe? Not very! But it’s good, cheap, easy and quick – just like me!

Ingredients:

1 10oz. bag of yellow rice mix
1 6.5oz. can tiny shrimp
1 6.5oz. can chopped clams
1 4oz. can octopus (in oil), drained and rinsed
1 2.25oz. can sliced black olives, drained
1 tbs. pimentos, for color
Handful of frozen English peas or capers  (10-20), for color

Hardware:

1 large pot, with tight-fitting lid
1 large spoon
1 can opener
1 measuring cup

1) Open and drain shrimp and clams, reserving clam juice into a measuring cup.

2) Add water to reserved juice, sufficient for manufacturer’s directions to cook rice (usually 3 cups).

3) Bring liquid to boil.

4) When water boils, add rice mix FIRST, stir well, then all other ingredients except seafood.

5) Stir while boiling for one minute.

6) Cover and simmer per rice mix directions (usually 20-25 min).

7) Around 5 minutes before rice mixture is done, add seafood ingredients.

For more authentic flavor, season with adobo seasoning (available at better markets and Hispanic shops) instead of salt. Also, you might consider putting the shrimp and clams ONLY in ice water for 10 minutes or so to “refresh” flavor before adding them to the paella.

I found this recipe on the back of a bag of Mahatma Rice back in the mid-1980s. It’s a good thing that I wrote it down, because it doesn’t appear anywhere on Mahatma’s online recipe archive! It’s quick, easy and delicious. Although the “German-ness” of this dish is slightly suspect, you do get a great taste of German cuisine with this dish. Plus – like most of my other favorite dishes – it only requires one skillet!  You can’t go wrong there!

Ingredients:

1 lb. bratwurst, weißwurst, bäuernwurst (or other German-style sausage)
1 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 cup sauerkraut
2 cups water
1 cup uncooked rice
2 teaspoons mustard
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon caraway seed
Pepper (to taste)
Nutmeg (to taste)

Hardware:

1 knife
1 cutting board
1 skillet
1 large spoon
1 meat thermometer

The first thing you need to do is determine if the sausages you’re using are raw pork or are fully-cooked. Look carefully at the wrapper the sausages came in – if the package says “fully cooked” or “heat and eat”, you’ll only need to heat them enough to “crisp” the casings. If you DO NOT see those words, you must assume that they contain raw pork! Raw pork sausages will take at least 15 minutes to cook – make sure that they get to at least 160° before you add the remaining ingredients. Also, fully-cooked sausages can be easily sliced before heating; if you’re using these, go ahead and cut sausage against the bias into one-inch slices before cooking. If you’re using raw sausages, don’t try to slice them until after they’re done cooking – otherwise you’ll have a mess on your hands! Let them cook and cool off a bit before slicing them!

1) Brown sausage in skillet, making sure to follow the advice above.

2) Add the onion and garlic to the sausages, sautéing a couple of minutes until crisp.

3) Stir in all other ingredients, bringing to a boil. Cover, simmering at low heat for around thirty minutes.

I am *not* a fan of “honey mustard” anything. I think this is because most commercial honey mustard sauces taste more like corn syrup than either honey or mustard. But this dish is the exception. I was looking for something quick and easy and came across this recipe – which doesn’t get much quicker or simpler. But I ended up being blown away by how good a real homemade honey mustard sauce tastes! Even if you think you don’t like honey mustard, this dish will make a believer out of you!

Ingredients:

1lb. chicken thighs or breasts
Honey
Wholegrain mustard (it must be wholegrain)
Salt
Pepper

Hardware:

1 small bowl
1 spoon
1 measuring cup
1 brush
1 8″x8″ glass baking dish
Cooking spray

1) Preheat oven to 350F and lightly spray baking dish with cooking spray.

2) Trim excess fat off chicken, then place in the baking dish.

3) Mix 1/2 cup mustard and 1/2 cup honey in a small bowl and add salt and pepper to taste.

4) Gently brush mixture over the chicken.

5) Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 160F.

6) Baste occasionally with sauce from pan.

7) Spoon sauce from dish over the chicken before serving.

Coca Cola is ubiquitous here in the South. Not only is a refreshing drink, it shows up in desserts (Coke floats, Coca Cola cakes) and even main dishes like the one below. Pork chops cooked in Coca Cola, ketchup and brown sugar end up tasting a lot like slow-cooked Carolina barbeque. In fact, the sauce that ends up in the pan when this dish is done is just heavenly! And it only takes around 10 minutes of prep time to put this together!

Ingredients:

4 thick-cut pork chops
Ketchup
Coca Cola
Brown sugar

Hardware:

1 small bowl
1 spoon
1 measuring cup
1 8″x8″ glass baking dish

1) Preheat oven to 350F.

2) Place the pork chops in the baking dish.

3) Mix 1/2 cup ketchup and 1/2 cup Coca Cola in a small bowl.

4) Pour Coca Cola\ketchup mixture over the chops.

5) Sprinkle a handful of brown sugar over the chops.

6) Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 160F.

7) Spoon sauce from dish over the chops before serving.

Got some leftover chops? Put ’em over fried rice and pour remaining sauce over them for a delicious “quasi-Polynesian” treat!