My Dad's Cooking
My dad is a pretty damn good cook.
He’s no Gordon Ramsey, but I’m pretty sure even Gordon couldn’t match making one of my dad’s dishes. By the way, if you ever happen to be over and my dad asks if you want breakfast, take him up on it. You will be treated to the fluffiest eggs you ever had, along with bacon, onions, and peppers. I usually skip the peppers. I like peppers, but then I’m burping up and tasting peppers for the rest of the day. I’d rather be burping up bacon or eggs but that doesn’t seem to work that way.
His egg concoction, as my mom likes to call it, isn’t really an omelet. With an omelet you pour the egg in the pan, add your other ingredients, and then fold it over. My dad starts by frying the bacon in the pan and then removing them to a paper towel. Then he sautés the onion and pepper, adds the bacon back in, and pours the scrambled egg mix over everything. Once done, it’s put on a plate. And it’s fluffy and delicious and very non-diet. If he remembers to offer you toast, it’s going to be Lithuanian Rye Bread. It’s pretty much a staple in his house.
Coming from Hungary we were introduced to many different foods that most people never even heard of. While most kids were eating mac and cheese, we were dining on egg noodles with butter, cottage cheese and sour cream. I still prefer that to mac and cheese any day. My dad also served us egg noodles with a poppy seed and powder sugar mix or with strawberry jam. Looks weird, sounds weird, but don’t knock it until you try it. If I remember correctly, the egg noodles were allowed to cool down before those ingredients were added.
My dad also made a killer polyczenta (blintz) that stood toe to toe with my grandmother’s. They were filled with a mixture made of farmer’s cheese, egg yolk, and sugar. Once put together you fry them up in a pan and stack them on a plate. You can eat them while they’re hot. Some people put powdered sugar or sour cream on them. Those that weren’t eaten were put in the fridge or left on the stove to pick at during the day. They were good hot out of the pan, room temperature on the stove, and even cold out of the fridge.
My dad also makes some killer fried chicken cutlets. The secret ingredient is love. That’s the only way to explain it. My nephew, Nate, was a kid that grew up on McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets. When he would stay with my parents, he’d ask for McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.
One time my dad told Nate he was going to make his own chicken nuggets. He made him a plate with some mashed potatoes and Nate curled his nose, pushed his body against the back of the chair in repulsion and asked, “What’s that?” The size was odd. It was bigger pieces of chicken breast and not the processed, formed, and stamped little nuggets that he had grown used to.
Long story short, he refused to eat. My dad took the plate away and told him he doesn’t have to eat anything. Later, towards evening when a growing boy’s belly is grumbling, he told my dad that he was hungry. My dad made him another plate with his chicken nuggets. Nate picked one up and cautiously bit into it. He slowly starting chewing the portion in his mouth when his face perked up and said, “Hey, these are good!”
“Of course they’re good,” my dad told him.
Besides being the King of Breakfast and King of Chicken Cutlets, he was also the King of Soups. Starting with a base of oil and sautéed onions he would add other ingredients and a short time later… Soup!
His most famous soup is something you won’t ever find in any cookbook because it doesn’t exist. It also varies depending on the ingredients that he may have on hand at the time of cooking. The consistency varies also depending on how he chooses to thicken it up. I guess it could be The Soup That Can’t Be Explained, but I’ll try.
Back when I was still in single digits, my mom must have been working because it was up to my dad to feed us. So he made this soup. He called us to the kitchen for lunch, and my older brother Frank and I stared into a bowl of something we’ve never ever seen before. It was an off-white, thick-based soup with small chunks of potato (similar to New England clam chowder which we never had up to that point in our lives), slices of Hungarian kielbasy, and green beans poking through the surface. Being kids, we cautiously dipped our spoons and moved the ingredients around, while curling up our noses and going, “Ewwww!”
“What’s wrong?” my dad asked us.
We told him that the soup didn’t look good. One of us took a whiff to see what it smelled like. The other shouted out, “What kind of soup is this anyway?”
My dad, not skipping a beat said, “It’s Superman Soup.”
In unison, we looked at him, “Huh?”
“Yeah, that’s Superman Soup. It’s what Superman eats so that he stays big and strong here on earth.”
As you can imagine we dove right in and the soup was delicious. He then added a little bit of white vinegar into the soup bowl; maybe just shy of a tablespoon and mixed it around. That made it even better. We even asked for seconds.
Years later after my younger brother Karl was born, my dad was making what we thought was Superman Soup. Unbeknownst to us, he ran out of green beans, so he put peas in the soup instead. He called us to the table and as we looked at the contents of the bowl, one of us asked somewhat disgustingly, with our noses curled up in the air, “What kind of soup is this?”
Without missing a beat he said, “It’s Batman Soup. It’s what Batman eats to stay strong.”
We looked at each other, our BS detectors sounding the alarm, “No way. This is just Superman Soup with peas in it. We hate peas.”
“Just eat it,” he said sternly.
And we did. And it wasn’t bad. He used sweet peas which are a lot better than the bland tasteless peas you sometimes get. But it wasn’t as good as Superman Soup.
To this day, if we come down to visit and he asks us if we want him to make anything special, all three of us ask for his fried chicken cutlets and Superman Soup! If we have the choice of one, it’s Superman Soup.
Nate just asks for chicken cutlets. I don’t know if he’s ever had the soup.
Check out my books here: https://www.amazon.com/Daniel-Terelme...
He’s no Gordon Ramsey, but I’m pretty sure even Gordon couldn’t match making one of my dad’s dishes. By the way, if you ever happen to be over and my dad asks if you want breakfast, take him up on it. You will be treated to the fluffiest eggs you ever had, along with bacon, onions, and peppers. I usually skip the peppers. I like peppers, but then I’m burping up and tasting peppers for the rest of the day. I’d rather be burping up bacon or eggs but that doesn’t seem to work that way.
His egg concoction, as my mom likes to call it, isn’t really an omelet. With an omelet you pour the egg in the pan, add your other ingredients, and then fold it over. My dad starts by frying the bacon in the pan and then removing them to a paper towel. Then he sautés the onion and pepper, adds the bacon back in, and pours the scrambled egg mix over everything. Once done, it’s put on a plate. And it’s fluffy and delicious and very non-diet. If he remembers to offer you toast, it’s going to be Lithuanian Rye Bread. It’s pretty much a staple in his house.
Coming from Hungary we were introduced to many different foods that most people never even heard of. While most kids were eating mac and cheese, we were dining on egg noodles with butter, cottage cheese and sour cream. I still prefer that to mac and cheese any day. My dad also served us egg noodles with a poppy seed and powder sugar mix or with strawberry jam. Looks weird, sounds weird, but don’t knock it until you try it. If I remember correctly, the egg noodles were allowed to cool down before those ingredients were added.
My dad also made a killer polyczenta (blintz) that stood toe to toe with my grandmother’s. They were filled with a mixture made of farmer’s cheese, egg yolk, and sugar. Once put together you fry them up in a pan and stack them on a plate. You can eat them while they’re hot. Some people put powdered sugar or sour cream on them. Those that weren’t eaten were put in the fridge or left on the stove to pick at during the day. They were good hot out of the pan, room temperature on the stove, and even cold out of the fridge.
My dad also makes some killer fried chicken cutlets. The secret ingredient is love. That’s the only way to explain it. My nephew, Nate, was a kid that grew up on McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets. When he would stay with my parents, he’d ask for McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.
One time my dad told Nate he was going to make his own chicken nuggets. He made him a plate with some mashed potatoes and Nate curled his nose, pushed his body against the back of the chair in repulsion and asked, “What’s that?” The size was odd. It was bigger pieces of chicken breast and not the processed, formed, and stamped little nuggets that he had grown used to.
Long story short, he refused to eat. My dad took the plate away and told him he doesn’t have to eat anything. Later, towards evening when a growing boy’s belly is grumbling, he told my dad that he was hungry. My dad made him another plate with his chicken nuggets. Nate picked one up and cautiously bit into it. He slowly starting chewing the portion in his mouth when his face perked up and said, “Hey, these are good!”
“Of course they’re good,” my dad told him.
Besides being the King of Breakfast and King of Chicken Cutlets, he was also the King of Soups. Starting with a base of oil and sautéed onions he would add other ingredients and a short time later… Soup!
His most famous soup is something you won’t ever find in any cookbook because it doesn’t exist. It also varies depending on the ingredients that he may have on hand at the time of cooking. The consistency varies also depending on how he chooses to thicken it up. I guess it could be The Soup That Can’t Be Explained, but I’ll try.
Back when I was still in single digits, my mom must have been working because it was up to my dad to feed us. So he made this soup. He called us to the kitchen for lunch, and my older brother Frank and I stared into a bowl of something we’ve never ever seen before. It was an off-white, thick-based soup with small chunks of potato (similar to New England clam chowder which we never had up to that point in our lives), slices of Hungarian kielbasy, and green beans poking through the surface. Being kids, we cautiously dipped our spoons and moved the ingredients around, while curling up our noses and going, “Ewwww!”
“What’s wrong?” my dad asked us.
We told him that the soup didn’t look good. One of us took a whiff to see what it smelled like. The other shouted out, “What kind of soup is this anyway?”
My dad, not skipping a beat said, “It’s Superman Soup.”
In unison, we looked at him, “Huh?”
“Yeah, that’s Superman Soup. It’s what Superman eats so that he stays big and strong here on earth.”
As you can imagine we dove right in and the soup was delicious. He then added a little bit of white vinegar into the soup bowl; maybe just shy of a tablespoon and mixed it around. That made it even better. We even asked for seconds.
Years later after my younger brother Karl was born, my dad was making what we thought was Superman Soup. Unbeknownst to us, he ran out of green beans, so he put peas in the soup instead. He called us to the table and as we looked at the contents of the bowl, one of us asked somewhat disgustingly, with our noses curled up in the air, “What kind of soup is this?”
Without missing a beat he said, “It’s Batman Soup. It’s what Batman eats to stay strong.”
We looked at each other, our BS detectors sounding the alarm, “No way. This is just Superman Soup with peas in it. We hate peas.”
“Just eat it,” he said sternly.
And we did. And it wasn’t bad. He used sweet peas which are a lot better than the bland tasteless peas you sometimes get. But it wasn’t as good as Superman Soup.
To this day, if we come down to visit and he asks us if we want him to make anything special, all three of us ask for his fried chicken cutlets and Superman Soup! If we have the choice of one, it’s Superman Soup.
Nate just asks for chicken cutlets. I don’t know if he’s ever had the soup.
Check out my books here: https://www.amazon.com/Daniel-Terelme...
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