Maine Bicentennial, A Cookbook, and Me

 At first, I thought this recipe might be similar to Shepherd's Pie, as it has meat and potatoes. But the Shepherd's Pie I'm familiar with has mashed potato spread over a meat base. This recipe calls for encasing all the meat and potatoes inside a bottom and a top crust. And I do like the look! The top crust is so inviting, all golden brown.  Now, I'm rather a fan of Jimmy Dean sausage, myself. The spices are just right, and do not overwhelm the meat. I noticed that this recipe calls for adding spices to plain ground pork. I admit I was tempted to buy Jimmy Dean and skip the recipe spice list, but then I decided I should really try it once as it is written. I discovered that the spices are a little strong, and a little unusual.  I remember using cinnamon  for a lamb dish, and it actually tasted fine, but in this dish, I was just hankering for a simple meat and potatoes meal. I'm afraid the cinnamon confused my taste buds (I usually associate cinnamon with a sweet). ...

 I learned something new with this cake! As I skimmed the ingredients, I saw yogurt. Then I read more carefully. Coconut yogurt. Non-dairy. As in, yogurt made from coconuts. And here I've been living under the impression that yogurt requires the help of a dairy cow. BTW, this recipe also calls for vegan butter. Well, I can assure you, no dairy cows were employed for the ingredients in this cake! The poppyseed reminded me of the lemon poppyseed muffins I like at the church camp I volunteer at in the summer. But this is heavier than muffins, more like the density you find in a pound cake. I was a little concerned that the end result would be dry. No worries! The frosting slathered on the top adds to the moisture of the cake, but the interior is plenty moist. Don't bake it the full 40 minutes the recipe suggests, tho. I always undertime a cake on the first bake. Glad I did for this one. It only needed 30 minutes. Not an overly sweet cake, the raspberry frosting lends a natural swe...

 I'm still getting my donut feet under me, so to speak. I am not as fluent in working with the dough and the hot oil as I'd like to be. There is a certain ease that comes, I'm sure, with experience--rolling out a dough not too sticky but not overly floured; dropping the dough into the hot oil without a splash; timing the flip of the donut so that it doesn't overcook on one side. I'll get there, but I'm not sure I reached the pinnacle of expertise with the batch I made today. I have a ways to go before I make the Perfect Donut. They turned out tasty, but just a tad too crispy, I think. Of course, it would help if I didn't have an ancient fryer. It does not have any temp gauge on it, so I can't regulate the heat. And were I to try the stovetop, the nature of a glass-topped electric oven is that the heating elements cycle on and off, so it is very hard to keep a consistent heat. (If I went on about this in my blog about Hester's Donuts, forgive me. Noth...

This recipe comes from a woman who grew up in the Netherlands and now lives in Maine. The dish features potatoes, as the name of the recipe suggests, but also has sausage and vegetables. I'm not fond of kale, so I substituted Swiss chard. Note to self, it does not take very long to saute chard. Should have waited for the other veggies to cook, and then tossed in the chard for the last few minutes. In the end, the veggies and sausage get draped over the mashed potatoes. A few generous spoonfuls of sweet chili sauce lend a little spice to the meal. Quick, inexpensive, easy-to-prepare meal. And who doesn't love mashed potatoes? One of my fav comfort foods!

 Ployes are made from buckwheat flour. If you live in Northern Maine, you are likely already familiar with this food. Living in the mid-coast, it took me a little time to find buckwheat flour, having to go to a food co-op for it, since the major grocery stores did not carry it (in this era of COVID-19, it's not easy scoring any kind of flour and we learn to make do with whatever is on the store shelf). The buckwheat flour that I purchased comes from the Bouchard Family Farms, established in 1871 in beautiful Fort Kent, Maine. I like to research my food, if it is new to me. Buckwheat is technically an herb or fruit, related to wild rhubarb. So, it is gluten-free. It has twice the B vitamins of wheat flour. And just how did this crop become popular in the St. John Valley? Well, in the 1830s, wheat crops were devastated in the Northeast by an insect called the wheat midge, and a disease called rust. The wheat farmers turned to oats and buckwheat. By 1850, buckwheat became the most pop...

Diane Mann contributed this recipe and she won a blue ribbon for it at the Blueberry Festival in Machias.  Is it a coincidence that I chose to make this pie during the week that we would normally have held the Maine Wild Blueberry Festival/Union Fair here in Union, Maine, were it not for COVID-19 precautions?  I am pleased to note that this recipe is the 100th recipe I have made from the Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook. In theory, that puts me halfway to the finish line...except that there are actually a few more than the 200 recipes the cookbook claims on its cover. Which is fine by me, since I consider extra recipes a bonus! I love that blueberries are so deeply a part of the Maine experience, and I wanted to celebrate that by baking this pie as my 100th recipe. I can see why the pie won a blue ribbon. It has a surprise when you bite into it. You may be expecting a baked blueberry pie, when in truth, underneath the cooked blueberries hide loads of fresh wild Maine blue...

 Ben Diaz contributed this marinade. He says he never wrote it down until his church youth group was gathering recipes for a cookbook. Those are always the best recipes, aren't they? The ones we know by heart. Until someone comes along and urges us to write it down, so others can enjoy it too! It has a good flavor. I chose to do a beef and veggie stir fry. It was so easy to toss the ingredients in a shaker, shake it all up, and put it in a zippered plastic bag with the pieces of beef, for about four hours. The recipe suggests overnight, but I just didn't have the schedule to do that. So the flavor is sort of mild. To deepen the flavor, overnight would be best. 

It's hard to go wrong with a meal when it's pizza. The dough is pretty happy being thick or thin, however you like to stretch it. I made healthy homemade wheat dough when my kids were little, but today, with my personal schedule, I just pulled a ball of storebought white pizza dough out of the freezer at lunchtime and let it thaw till supper time.  Making a pizza has never scared me, but turning my oven up to 600 degrees? Now, that was a little scary. In fact, I literally covered my eyes with one hand, peeking through my fingers as I pressed the "up" button on the digital oven temp gauge. 450. 475. 500. Yikes! Dare I go higher? 525. 550. Learned something new today. 550 is as hot as the parsonage oven will go. As you may have guessed, a Greek pizza is not a Greek pizza without feta cheese and kalamata olives. There are other fun things about this pizza, like fresh, thinly sliced red tomatoes instead of tomato sauce. Next time around, I'll try Roma tomatoes. The on...

 I was quite sure I had almond extract in the cupboard, as I like to keep it on hand for making almond biscotti.  But when I went to the cupboard, I found every extract I could ever want (peppermint, maple, vanilla), and hiding way in the back was a sizeable jar (4 oz) of almond extract. But when I pulled it into the light of the kitchen, it revealed there was but a drop left inside. So, I had to substitute vanilla. Not as good, but you certainly wouldn't want peppermint or maple fighting with the raspberries!  The only thing I might change in this recipe is to add more of the raspberry filling. You get plenty of butter/oats/flour base/topping in your mouth, but the raspberry was spread a little too thin (and I had added two generous spoonfuls more than called for, just to make sure it spread completely over the bar mixture). Discovered a bonus at the grocery store...I don't like to toast my own almonds, because invariably some get toasted more, some less, you know, it ju...

 I did some housework today and it was hot, and I was sweaty. What better way to take a break than with a glass of ice-cold Ginger Juice? I sat down with my juice and enjoyed a Martha Stewart TV show featuring various recipes with lemons. Coincidentally, this recipe uses lemons! The delightful surprise of fresh ginger is that it gives you a little tingle as it passes your lips and then another tingle on your tongue and the back of your throat, as you swallow this thirst-quenching beverage. I'm a believer, now, in fresh ginger. We have always used jars of ginger for eating sushi at home. But I had not ventured into any other areas for ginger, except, of course, using powdered ginger for baked goods. This beverage is new to me, and I love it. The recipe instructions are a little vague (no actual measurements). I ended up making 2 quarts of this juice, and just following the directions to add sugar and lemon and mint leaves to taste, and that worked out fine. It does not direct one to...

This is a marvelous recipe for those nights when you need to get supper on the table in under thirty minutes. And it is so delicious that folks will be asking for seconds. Yes, this is what a Bechamel sauce with a few easy additions can do to dress up your main dish! I can't reveal the secret ingredient for the sauce, for that you'll want to buy the cookbook. But trust me, this is one meal you'll want to make over and over again, not only because it's a quick prep, but because it tastes great!  I have had limited experience with sauces, prior to meeting the Resident Archeologist. It is amazing to taste the difference a good sauce can make when serving an entree. The only thing I would add to this sauce is perhaps a squeeze of lemon. Oh, and I cut the recommended amount of cayenne in half, and still tasted its heat just fine, but not overwhelmingly so.

 Do these cookies even need a review? I mean, have you ever met a "bad" cookie? Never have I ever! I have maintained a close friendship with cookies ever since that first chocolate chip cookie introduced itself to my mouth as a very young child. I owe my lasting relationship with cookies to my mother and my father's mother. Mom was known for her chocolate chip cookies, and Grama always baked tins and tins and tins of cookies for us to tide us through the holidays. This recipe reminds me of my Aunt Linda's "Kitchen Sink Cookies." She put lots of "healthy" ingredients in that recipe, and confessed to me that it was her go-to sneaky method of feeding her kids something they thought was "junk food" but was actually packed full of good things. I like the chocolate chips in this batch, but I do wonder if butterscotch chips might taste just as wonderful (or maybe mint chocolate chip?!). I made a half-recipe, since it is just myself and the Resid...

 Ah, the Maine Whoopie Pie. I learned to make whoopie pies in my 7th grade Home Economics class, at Garland St Junior High (renamed the William S. Cohen School in 2013), in Bangor, Maine. My classmates and I thought we had the coolest Home Ec teacher, letting us make such a treat! Apparently, there exists a special "whoopie pie" pan one can purchase. Not exactly sure why, since I just take a small cookie dough scoop and portion the batter on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Works like a charm, and you get the sweetest little chocolate cakes you ever did see! The recipe calls for baking 19 minutes, which, fortunately, I knew would be way too long for my wee cakes. All it took was 10 minutes. Meanwhile, you whip up the frosting. I've never been fond of the super-sweet frostings in whoopie pies. I was grateful to find that this recipe has a mild frosting sweetness: not-too-much/just-enough sugar. It calls for shortening, but I prefer (Cabot) butter. The recipe makes 14 mel...

 After experiencing Moxie Pie, what's next but "Ayuh Paella?!"  Another quintessential Maine recipe! The recipe contributor was the cook/owner on a Maine Windjammer, with her husband who captained the ship. The recipe includes a variety of meats and seafoods to tempt the palate of a Mainer, or anyone who loves a jumble of the flavors of sea and land creatures.  The recipe essentially has meats cooked first (three), then you add in the seafood (four), and broth, and rice, and let simmer till the rice is done. Unfortunately, I discovered about the time I added the mussels that the pot I chose was going to be way too small to hold the rice as well. So I adjusted the recipe so that the rice could cook separately. I was so preoccupied with that switch that I forgot one of the essential ingredients...a wee bit of saffron.  By the time I realized what was missing, it was too late. The rice was already underway, and the mussels had opened, signifying that the meats/seafood m...

 Have you ever made Moxie Syrup? I have. And I gotta tell ya, it ain't nothin' like the stuff you get from your uncle's sugar shack in Vermont! First, you have to search for the Moxie Trees (bright orange, kinda hard to miss). Then, there's this unique way of tapping them, involving a metal tab that you pull towards you in order to push a metal disc into the interior of the tree, to enable the sap to flow.  Then, you pour that bubbly stuff into a hot pan and let it thicken over a medium high heat for an hour or so. Result? If you did it right, you've got Moxie Syrup. If you did it wrong, it's time for a do-over. While that bubbly stuff is turning into syrup, make a flour and cornmeal and butter crust. Tuck it in the fridge while you wait on your sap-to-syrup miracle, then pull it out and roll into a 12 inch circle and lay into a buttered pie pan. The rest is classified: Moxie Top Secret. Unless, of course, you buy the same cookbook I did and discover the top sec...

 We have family visiting from out of state (COVID-tested and cleared) and so we decided to visit a local state park for a picnic and walk with them. I made these date nut bars to contribute to the luncheon. Oddly, there are no nuts in the recipe whatsoever, altho I suppose you could always add some. It has a shortbread-type base and a meringue topping (altho we packed the bars before they cooled properly, which ruined the pretty meringue, but it was still tasty).  My husband loves dates, so I wanted to make a pre-birthday snack for us all to enjoy on the picnic.  The recipe calls for chopped dates. I think that if I use the recipe again, I'll opt for a date spread instead, to make sure you get dates in every bite. Either that or put in more chopped dates! Also, I did not find the meringue directions especially helpful. If you have your own tried-and-true method for stiff peaks, I say stick with what you know. That being said, the outcome was that the date-lover among us e...

 My husband and I are not on a gluten-free diet, so we used regular pasta. I didn't feel like macaroni, so I used mini penne. Really turned out to be the perfect choice, allowing the cheese sauce to cling to its ridges. I read the recipe, then just basically used what I had on hand. I did plan for the cooked lobster itself, since I had 2 small cooked lobsters in the fridge from the church Lobster Takeout the night before. We don't use Velveeta, plus I have never heard of shredded Velveeta, which seems like an anomaly. We had shredded Swiss, shredded Cabot sharp cheddar, and of course, grated Parmesan on hand. And milk, and butter. It tosses together quickly, and only has to bake about 15 minutes in the oven. Which is good, because it was well past my lunchtime and I was starving! As you can see from the recipe title, there should be a scallop in the mix somewhere. But there is not. We just didn't have any on hand. And I'm a bit of a purist. I like my lobster as the star...

 This could not be an easier recipe. And every bite of egg has an exquisite taste of lobster in it! And to think that back in 1935, when lobsters were a dime a dozen at the coast, you could have your fill of them! The recipe originates in "Just a Few Maine Sea Food Recipes" circa 1935. The recipe is simply eggs and chopped cooked lobster meat. So if you were on a spit of land, waiting on a supply boat and tending the lighthouse, how do you feed your family if the supply boat can't get thru for weeks, due to weather? The lighthouse keepers might have had a few laying hens, and lobsters were plentiful, so much so that they were considered a "poor man's food." I think this makes for an elegant breakfast, and would only add one more food item to make one's breakfast "quintessential Maine." Popovers. Hot out of the oven. That would require flour, which a lighthouse keeper would have in the pantry. And if you've got hens, you've got eggs. Oh ...

 I serve as pastor for two churches in Mid-coast Maine. Both churches have a blueberry cake recipe which the cooks in the church make for church suppers. It's a great recipe. I have thoroughly enjoyed it, every time. And I admit I was very loyal to the recipe, although I knew that some church cooks preferred other recipes. So I tried this recipe with some misgivings. I was prepared to not consider it as good as the one my churches use. Well...let's just say that I'm not as loyal to the church recipe as I used to be... Wow, this recipe is melt-in-your-mouth delicious. The only thing I did, to adapt this recipe, is to place it in a smaller baking pan. I noticed that my church recipe calls for a 9x13. I noticed that this recipe has about half the ingredients of the church recipe. So, I figured pouring it into an 8x11 would work fine, and it was perfect! It is dense and moist and just the right sweetness but not too sweet, and just the right blueberries but not too blueberry! T...

 This is a traditional Lebanese dish. It has ground lamb and rice and cooked chicken. What really brings it together, though, is the spice. Which makes it sweet and delicious. I usually read recipe directions thoroughly, but I was speed reading and missed a few steps. It still turned out fabulous, with some improvisation. The recipe indicated you could use either ground beef or ground lamb. But I figured if it's a Lebanese dish, why not use lamb? So I splurged (it's definitely more expensive than ground beef!). And that was definitely the right choice. My husband and I agreed it would taste completely different with beef, and we both liked the lamb. I used a very basic white rice, and we agreed maybe a jasmine would be better next time around. This food is eaten by taking pieces of Lebanese bread (flatbread) and scooping the mixture into the bread. We used small flour tortillas. We happened to have corn on the cob for vegetable at table tonight but this dish is often served wit...

Don't you just love a recipe that sounds familiar, but is in a completely different form? Who doesn't love Chicken Pot Pie? So tasting it as a soup sounded like a great adventure to me! The ingredients are much the same as you would have in a pot pie, minus the crust, of course. I do think it might have been more satisfying on the tongue had it been thicker. I guess, as much as I thought I wanted a soup adventure, what I really wanted was pot pie without the crust... It was too late, by the time I made this discovery, to do much about it. I quickly threw together a roux and added that in, but it was still very thin and soupy. I've made notes to create a bechamel at the start (and adjust the amount of cream the recipe calls for), to get that creamy thickness going on, sort of chowdery rather than soupy, you know?  I also might experiment with how the potato flakes in the recipe could be used as a thickener too. All in all, terrific flavor, slurpy soupy goodness, but not quit...

 Sometimes it is the meal with the fewest ingredients that tastes The Best. A little haddock, a few potatoes and onions, a little butter, half and half (we like fat-free), and salt and pepper to taste. Oh, delish! An extremely satisfying Comfort food with-a-capital-C. The one new twist to the preparation, for me, was that the recipe called for parboiling the fish. Usually, I just put the fish right into the hot milk and let it cook in the milk. It was just as easy, I found, to remove the potatoes from the boiling water, and just drop the fish in. It doesn't take but a minute or two for the fish to turn opaque and flaky. Then you put all the ingredients that were separated together in a happy chowder (yes, I watched Bob Ross on TV years ago, and if he can call painted trees happy, I can call chowder happy!). There were leftovers, and I look forward to the blending of flavors in the fridge overnight and an even better chowder tomorrow.

 I approach older recipes with some caution, due to the fact that all of the recipe info may not be written down. Sometimes, they would just put the minimum details, and neglect writing down things the cook assumes everyone knows already about how to work with a particular ingredient. This recipe is found handwritten, tucked inside an 1882 cookbook: "Cuisine, A Collection of Family Receipts" collected by "Ladies of Bangor."  Haha! Makes me want to go weed all the slips of paper tucked into cookbooks in our kitchen, and properly organize them! It calls for brown sugar, flax seed, and slippery elm. For the life of me, I cannot find slippery elm as a stand-alone item. Sure, it is an ingredient in tea, but there are other ingredients mixed in with the tea, so that wouldn't work.  And so, I decided to do a little research on flax seeds and candy recipes. Athenaeus of Naucratic, an ancient Greek food writer, recorded a sweet called chrysocolla, found in writings by a ...

 This, I've been told, is the quintessential Maine candy. And I've never really been fond of them, because coconut is not my fav food. But I do like potato, and sugar surely makes everything taste great! So I was willing to give this a good go. I made a 1/2 recipe and it makes up 15 chocolates.  It comes together easily. I did get frustrated at the end, because the recipe implies that while the potato mixture is chilling (I figured that meant refrigerate), you can melt the chocolate, and by the time the chocolate is melted, your potato mixture is ready for dipping. Well, it wasn't ready. I put it back in fridge for an extra 20 minutes. Still not firm! I looked recipes up online and found you need to freeze the potato mixture. Twice. After the first time, you roll the potato mixture into small balls, then shape into a slightly flattened square. Back in the freezer, because your hands have now warmed the pieces up too much for dipping. Twenty minutes later, ready for dipping ...

This is not a recipe to be whipped up last minute. It takes two hours to bake in the oven.  And plan on a little time slicing up fresh veggies. It calls for a 9x13 pan, but I fit it all into an 8x8, which was perfect for the layering, potato on the bottom, then you just build up from there: onion, bell pepper, mushroom, celery, zucchini. A good way to use produce from your garden (or, in this case, a neighbor who coincidentally showed up at my door with veggies from his garden). The reason this recipe bakes so long is that the veggies are not prepared in any way beforehand. So, after layering raw veggies, pour water in "until you can see it through the vegetables." I did add significantly more cheese, since it only calls for a tiny bit. After the first hour, take the aluminum foil off and let it bake another hour. That's when I liberally sprinkled the top of the casserole with shredded cheese. It just needed more cheese! And salt and pepper.  This makes for a nice vegetar...

 Knowing how sour vinegar can be, I took a close look at this recipe to be sure it had enough sweet to balance the sour. In my experience, maple syrup is just not sweet enough, in small amounts. I should have gone with my gut feeling, to increase the sweetness. But I guess I thought ingredients like the ginger and the smoked paprika might bring some balance.  As I feared, the vinegar overpowered the blueberries and everything else in this sauce. Were I to make this again, I would cut the vinegar in half, and double the sweet as well as the spice. It is just unfortunate that the blueberries did not get full honors in this sauce. The chicken didn't complain, and I paired it with a very simple pasta salad that seemed to cut the sourness of the sauce somewhat. I do love Maine blueberries, so I won't give up on this recipe. It just needs some adjustments to be able to celebrate the blueberries.

 These are stuffed Somali dumplings which are fried in oil.  The person submitting the recipe is part of the Somali Bantu community in Lewiston.  I made these with hamburg but you could use other meat-I think I'll try chicken next, or just veggies. What makes this recipe special? The curry. It flavors the meat perfectly, as well as the small amount of veggies that are mixed in.  The dough is a simple flour, salt, oil, water recipe. I like how it behaved under the rolling pin, very easy to roll thin. Using a plastic dumpling mold, I made about a dozen dumplings from 1/2 the cookbook recipe. There was a little dough leftover, and a little of the meat filling, but I wanted to save the leftover dough for a different project tomorrow. The leftover meat filling will be perfect in a curried omelet in the morning. We have a small round electric fryer. It has one heat level, basically, so I just keep a close eye on the browning to see when it is time to turn the dumplings ove...

When a written recipe is circa 1880, unless you have a way to speak with the great-grandchild of the recipe creator, and unless this great-grandchild has been blessed with being taught by the family cooks as to the details that are not written in the recipe itself... then it is sometimes mighty hard to figure out how to cook said recipe, sans details. This is my problem with Salmon Souffle--it lacks details. I read through the recipe, which is from The St. Croix Recipe Book for Cooking, published by the Ladies of the Second Baptist Church in Calais, and I have so many questions. Now, I happen to know right where the Second Baptist Church is located, as I've attended several Christian concerts there.  Wish I knew someone from that church who makes this recipe to this day, and could answer my questions. Lacking such connection to culinary wisdom, I decide to focus on the part of the recipe that appealed to me the most.  The very last sentence refers to "puff paste...in a quick o...

Oh my my! Vegetarians of Maine (and everywhere else), you need this recipe in your life! And, non-vegetarians, too! The person who submitted this recipe calls it "the perfect comfort food." Ironically, at the same time that I was making this chowder in the kitchen, my husband dished himself up some pork with mashed potatoes and asparagus (and yes, he is a meat-and-potatoes kinda guy). He returned to the kitchen for seconds, and said, "this is the perfect comfort food," referring to the meal he was eating. I agreed that it looked delicious. But me, I am perfectly happy with a non-meat meal any day of the week, and this one is going to be right at the top of my list, when I want veggie comfort food. It is what I might call an "empty-the-fridge-and-pantry" meal. Really, it's just what you have on hand. Potatoes, carrots, onion, cabbage, celery, a nice white sauce (I used whole milk, but you could go with skim or even almond milk), and toss in some shredde...

It's been years since I've had cast iron frying pans in my kitchen. I can't remember if I gave them away or if they are just in a box that never got unpacked in the new parsonage. Anyway, had to improvise with something else. Enter the Blue Souffle Dish. I figure if such a dish is used to "puff" other recipes, perhaps it can "puff" this one as well! This could not be an easier recipe. Just whisk those eggs and milk and a little flour and sugar, and pop the souffle dish in a very hot oven. It took longer to rise than the recipe called for, but maybe that's because the souffle dish has a higher side than a cast iron frying pan?  It rose about an inch higher than the dish. But by the time I managed to get the picture, it had settled down to the rim of the dish. It still looked mighty tasty. In addition to sprinkling some powdered sugar on top, I poured maple syrup on it. No pancake is complete until it has maple syrup! It tasted a little like a popover,...

The Meat Knish recipe was so good, I could hardly wait to try the Potato Knish. Having become experienced in the stuff-the-roll activity, with meat knish, it was that much easier when it came to the potato knish. Sautee onions, cook and mash potatoes, mix it all together with some butter, salt and pepper.  Line the filling down the strip of pastry, close and pinch dough around filling. Again, I took the easy route, with just the two of us. If we were to have folks over for appetizers, I'd go the extra time it takes, and pre-cut the roll into 1-2 inch pieces before baking, and wrap the dough around either end, so that the filling is enclosed in its own little pouch of dough. But for tonite, I just put the tubes of filled dough on parchment paper, basted with egg wash, and baked it in a hot oven. They came out beautifully, and while you do have to slice carefully (gentle sawing motion), so that the potato doesn't squish out everywhere, they are a perfect little snack food. Serve ...

Little pockets of cooked meat and onions sealed in a bite-sized pastry crust. Where have you been all my life! This recipe was published in "Requested Recipes" in 1963 by Temple Beth El Sisterhood in Portland (recipe created by Sadye Schatz who was a Kosher caterer in Portland in the 1940s and 1950s).  I'm afraid I didn't even know how to pronounce "knish" (I thought the "k" was silent, as in "knickers," but this is a Protestant English major speaking, so I now stand corrected!). The recipe calls for "cooked meat" so I used what we had on hand...ground sausage. It cooks up well with the onions. Fair warning, the pastry recipe makes up enough dough to feed a small army or a couple of hungry teenagers, neither of which we have billeted at this house. There was so much dough leftover that my husband happily made suggestions as to how I could use it up, ranging from slathered butter and sprinkled cinnamon and sugar "crisps...