The Encyclopedic Cookbook Recipe Series- American Kedgeree

It's time for Recipe #2 of  The Encyclopedic Cookbook Recipe Series!  If you don't know what that is, I'll give you a quick rundown. 

A book caught my eye in the thrift store. It was from 1966.  I love things from the 60s.  My house was built in 66'. It seemed like fate.  I decided to cook one recipe from the book every month of 2019. The food back then can be weird.

Hopefully that was fast enough while still getting all the deets relayed.

So I tried to ease y'all in the first month with a simple soup recipe.  Granted simple also meant bland AF, but simple nonetheless. Really though, as I have flipped through the book I have been hard pressed to find any recipe that doesn't make me go either 😲 or 😕

Food back in the 60s was a little sketchy.  

The style? Cute! 

Home décor? Mostly cool.  

The music? Awesome! 

The food?  Weird.

I had been eyeing a few recipes as potentials but I gotta be honest, I ended up going with this one because the end of February really creeped up on me (this month just really does that to ya doesn’t it?) and I had everything I needed to make this recipe without a trip to the store...score!!

So I present to you, “American Kedgeree”  A combination of kidney beans, potatoes, curry powder, and hard boiled eggs.  If that doesn't make your mouth water I don't know what will!😜

Upon a little research, I found that Kedgeree is a British dish that traditionally consists of flaked fish, rice, curry powder, and hard boiled eggs and is usually eaten for breakfast.   This "American" version subs beans for fish, potatoes for rice, and the whites of the egg are chopped and mixed through while the yolk is finely sieved over the top.

So I got to work making the dish following the series rules of sticking to the recipe.  The recipe gave the option of adding 1/2-1 cup of cream or sour cream, so I added 3/4 c. of sour cream. I'm surprised this part was "optional" because it seemed necessary to me to bring everything together in it's sauciness.  I feel it would have been dry and hard to get the flavors to meld together without it.

  The verdict?  Surprisingly good!  I certainly wouldn't be requesting it for my last meal on death row (I also don't have plans to make it to death row) but it was tastier than I imagined the combination to be.  Versus the soup from last month that was a bit (or alot) bland, this dish actually had some decent flavor!

Join me next month as I dive deeper into the weird culinary scene of 1966