Taste Home Cuisine

Jane Ann Waldrop said one of the great things about her daughter’s bread recipe is its simplicity.

“It’s a really easy bread to whip up and I love it while it’s warm,” she said. Her daughter sent the bread recipe after she completed cooking school in Atlanta.

When I first married 24 years ago, my cooking skills were as far away from Iron Chef as one could get. I am committed to providing delicious home-cooked meals for my family, and finding something that all seven of us can appreciate is a challenge.  Long-distance coaching from my mom, along with trial and error of  published recipes, has helped me really enjoy cooking.

The best tip I can give to new or seasoned cooks when trying someone else’s recipe occurs during the final tasting. If your dish needs additional seasoning, put a bite of it in your mouth and explore different options for added seasoning by smelling them while tasting the bite. For instance, if I have prepared a curry dish, I will smell peanut butter or mushroom soy sauce while tasting it. The combination of smell and taste for the final seasoning has usually proved a successful cooking technique since I (and most likely other cooks) discovered it about 10 years ago.

During my tour in the Peace Corps on a Pacific island almost 40 years ago, the local store got in a shipment of Australian tomatoes.  They were pure green and $3.00 a pound. My grandmother had cooked fried green tomatoes, and they were my favorite. I had to do something, as I had bragged about the delicacy and had a reputation to maintain. This cooking method developed, but not all at once:

Green tomatoes, medium size, allow 1-11⁄2 per person

Self-rising corn meal

Vegetable oil with a little bacon grease

Tomatoes can be green throughout, or even show a little pink. The pinker fruits will be of a sweeter flavor, but may be a little more fragile to handle. Used peeled tomatoes which are at room temperature, core the stem and cut into slices of 1⁄4” thickness.