American Cooking?

A few days ago we were up against a real challenge. We had to come up with a recipe from this book:

It's called The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Cooking and there is a little story behind it. Basically it belonged to my beloved Grandmother (aka Mama Joyce). She was a cook-extraordinaire and probably owned hundreds of cook books. Anyway - when she sadly passed away her daughter, my Aunt Melinda, gave the book to me, along with a few other cook books. I never really looked at this one in great detail. So when Benjamin and I gave ourselves this challenge of making one dish from each cook book we owned we simply had NO idea how (first of all) enjoyable it would be to go through this book. Page after page of recipes you simply couldn't make up. But second of all how very challenging it would be to try out a recipe that was actually edible. The premise of the book is that it's listed in alphabetical order by ingredient. Apple, Apricot, Artichoke, etc, etc. You get the picture. This book was published in 1986 but honestly I can't help but wonder if it was somehow a copy of recipes from the 50s or 60s. I mean - I was a child of the 80s and I do not remember having to eat anything which resembles these recipes. Believe me - you would remember. Here are just a few gems...

Anyway - enough of the funny stuff. We did manage to find something in the end. Called Captain Chicken. Why it was called this we have NO idea. But basically it was a chicken curry with almonds and raisins tossed in at the end. I would give this recipe probably a 3 1/2 out of 5. Given that we have had some pretty remarkable dishes as of late, perhaps if we hadn't, this would have had a higher mark. Anyway here are a few snaps...

Ben toasting the almonds.

Pretty much the final product. 

Evelyn was in a foul mood that evening....

Next time: The River Cottage Fish Book