Do you remember the first time you experienced real grief when a beloved relative died? Maybe relatives died in your young childhood, but you simply saw a lot of crying and didn’t really feel what happened. 

My first experience was when "Unk" passed away. I was a teenager. It wasn’t a tragic accident. Great-uncle Lloyd, simply "Unk" to us, was 94, lived at home, and hadn’t experienced ill health. His heart simply gave out. Later I decided his longevity was due to him having "just a snoot" of "medicine" before bed each night. Today we’d call this a shot of whiskey. My people come from Kentucky, remember, so a good bourbon runs in our veins. Sometimes literally.

  

Young "Unk" with his cousin Edgar Botkins at the "baptizin’ spot" on the Salt River in north Missouri. 

Unk would even tell us he was heading to the store for his "medicine"–really the liquor store, of course. That’s how Baptists lived back in the day. The churchgoers didn’t criticize him: after all, it was his "medicine"!

That morning of his demise, I headed for his home, which he shared with his daughter, Georgia Ruth. Unk and Georgia Ruth had outlived Unk’s wife, great-aunt Laura, and Georgia Ruth’s two siblings. With Unk gone, only Georgia Ruth was left. The living room was crowded with women comforting her, and arriving with food and hugs. Her kitchen table was laden with casseroles, pies, and, of course, desserts made with Jell-O. The talk was the many stories of Unk, some when he was young, both funny and sad. They also each told how they’d heard the news.

"When I told Marshall," one farm woman said, "he went over to the fence and stood with his back to me. I know he was crying a little." That one shocked me. I never thought of the big, strong farm men I knew as people who would cry. I would see it soon, though; the 1980s farm crisis was about to occur.

You don’t see many gelatin desserts these days, whether it’s for a gathering or not. (People are more likely to ask you to sign an e-Sympathy book, like Legacy.com, which I find strangely unsettling.) In the late 1940s through the 1960s, though, gelatin was not only dessert. Sometimes it was the main course, eaten as part of aspic–a dish that enveloped vegetables and meat within a congealed shape.

 

The best of both worlds in the 1970s: Jell-O made in a Tupperware mold! 

Tupperware even made a mold with a detachable top, and the set had different images–a heart, star, Christmas tree, etc., so you could customize the top of the mold. Jell-O’s discontinued 1950s flavors include Celery, Mixed Vegetable, Italian, and Seasoned Tomato. I’m sure one of these came in handy when you made a dish like Large Chunks of Vegetables Embodied in Gelatin.

Remember when TV commercials always said the phrase, "Jell-O brand gelatin"? I don’t know about you, but all those years I had never even heard of another brand of gelatin and couldn’t figure out why they said that. Maybe some consumers thought, "I think tonight we’ll have Knox brand gelatin" or "let’s try Royal brand gelatin today."

For those people who wonder what gelatin really is, it’s a protein created from collagen that is extracted from boiling bones, connective tissues and intestines of animals. Try convincing someone of that when they’re eating a mouthful of delicious Cherry Jell-O.

I was reminded of the old days of frequent Jell-O consumption when I found a wonderful book entitled Up a Country Lane Cookbook by Evelyn Birkby.

  

Up a Country Lane Cookbook by Evelyn Birkby, considered Iowa’s best-known homemaker. 

More than a cookbook, this highly readable work tells of the quiet and secure country life in Iowa during the 1940s and 1950s. As Birkby says, "The people who resided in southwest Iowa half a century ago built their lives around the land, their families, their neighborhoods, their schools, and their churches. They reflected the independent, hard-working pioneer spirit that motivated their ancestors to come to this country."

All the stories with that life–sad, funny, tragic–are colorfully recounted by Birkby. She has written a weekly newspaper column, "Up a Country Lane," for more than 50 years. Lonely farm housewives longed for tips and advice beyond their monthly meeting of the Neighbors Club or Homemakers Club, so in the early days of radio, Birkby she hosted a radio program by the same name.

Evelyn Birkby, 93, is still writing, and recently released her latest cookbook. Her story of neighbors bringing food and visiting grieving ones brought back the memory of Unk’s gathering. Since I’ve lived in the city, I’ve never heard of anyone practicing this tradition of bringing food to comfort others, but I’m sure it continues in small towns.

In Birkby’s Iowa farm neighborhood, it was Mabel Lewis who had a go-to recipe for condolences. Mabel Lewis was a "slight woman married to a robust man" and raised six children. She always took her "Comfort Jell-O" to the grieving, Birkby says. Trust me, this Jell-O salad would comfort me any day.

Mabel Lewis’ Comfort Jell-O

  

1 8-oz. can crushed pineapple

1 3-oz. package of cherry gelatin

2 cups white grapes, halved

Optional: whipped cream or whipped topping

In a medium saucepan heat one cup of water. When boiling, drain pineapple, pouring juice only from can into water. Retain fruit separately. Reduce heat to medium. Dissolve gelatin in water-juice mixture, stirring frequently until dissolved, approximately 2 minutes. Pour into large bowl and let cool for 5 minutes.

Fill a 2-cup liquid measuring cup with ½ cup cold water and enough ice cubes to make approximately 1 ½ cups total. Pour into gelatin and stir until slightly thickened. Remove any remaining ice cubes. (If mixture is still not thickened, place in refrigerator for 15-30 minutes).

Add grapes and pineapple and pour into mold or pan. Chill in refrigerator until firm, approximately 2 hours. Top with whipped cream if desired.

Notes: Do not use fresh pineapple; the gelatin will not set. This makes a fruit-dense dessert. If you prefer more gelatin, you can make the gelatin portion with a 6-oz. package of gelatin and double the water used (do not add extra pineapple or citrus juice).

Follow me on Twitter @chuckmall, Facebook at: www.facebook.com/CountryCookingintheBigCity and Pinterest (chuckmall)

Jell-O is a registered trademark of Kraft Foods.

When I first heard the lyrics, I thought it was an old folk song, maybe written by Woody Guthrie...

He put gold in the ground; 
He turned the water into wine... 

But no, it was the voice of Mary Kay Place, best known as appearing as Meg in the movie The Big Chill and for her lively role as Loretta Haggers on the old TV show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman  

To our American ancestors, root vegetables surely did seem like "gold from the ground" in winter. When the weather was fiercely cold, animals too scarce to kill for food, and purchasable supplies running low, a family always could rely on their winter store of root vegetables.

  

Rutabagas: ugly now, pretty later

Rutabaga is one of them. I’m surprised at the number of people who have never tasted a rutabaga, think it’s a "large turnip" or think it’s bitter. The yellow flesh has a delicate lightness, reminiscent of artichoke, perhaps a faint hint of turnip. It is a firmer vegetable than many, and requires longer cooking if you want your vegetables spoon-soft. But it can still be fully cooked and have a bit of nice crunch. 

This dish contrasts the texture of rutabaga with the softness of sweet potato, and also has a crisp/sweet contrast. I don’t like to heavily flavor good organic vegetables, since they have a natural harmonious taste that need not compete with seasoning.

 

I recommend you buy peeled and roasted chestnuts. Save your fingertips and a half-day of valuable time.

Here I added chestnuts as an enhancer. I like chestnuts and enjoy serving them because many people have never even eaten them. They mistakenly think they’re hard like other tree nuts; they’re soft. People also think they will have the same nutty taste as peanuts or cashews. They don’t. It’s a subtle nut-like flavor. Everyone knows the lyric "chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." but don’t realize that the American chestnut tree was almost extinct by 1950, with only 50-100 trees left. If you can’t find chestnuts at your local store (check the kosher section if you have one), you can order them online at Allen Creek Farm, a family-owned farm in Washington started by city-escapers like so many of the readers here. I don’t recommend you peel chestnuts yourself, unless you have lots of time and patience. I did it once and that’s it.

Rutabaga-Sweet Potato Hash

2 rutabagas, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
3 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
½ teaspoon salt (with boiling water)
½ cup peeled and roasted chestnuts
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano (or 1 tablespoon dried)
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a large saucepan with approximately 3 quarts of water, add ½ teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil. Add rutabagas and return to a boil. Cook 10 minutes. Add sweet potatoes and cook 5 minutes more. Drain rutabagas and sweet potatoes in a colander, rinse with cold water, and let rest for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine rutabagas, sweet potatoes, chestnuts, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper. Stir until all is coated. Spread in one layer on a large baking sheet and place in center rack of oven for 20 minutes. Remove and serve.

  

Tomato Corn Muffins 

Who among us growing up in the 1950s through the 1970s never had a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup? Just like in the commercials, it awaited us after cold sledding days, coupled with the classic grilled cheese sandwich.

This isn’t a product-placement column. I certainly don’t work for Campbell’s and in fact, as I became an adult and my tastes matured, I grew to hate the stuff. Even Chicken ‘n Stars.

Homemade soup from fresh vegetables, stirred and loved by home cooks, made me decide that Campbell’s Tomato Soup was just wrong. It had a too-smooth texture and tasted too sweet. Much too sweet.

I do shop farmer’s markets but am also one of those people who foolishly meander down grocery store aisles, looking for anything new. So one day I was surprised to see Campbell’s ORANGE Harvest Tomato Soup. 

Looked interesting. Made from sexy-sounding “Tangerine Tomatoes." Doubting it was less sweet, though, I topped it with extra-sharp grated cheese and a few croutons. I was right--still too sweet. It was like a blind date; higher expectations, but not what I’d hoped for. 

This was a “limited edition soup” along with a Campbell’s Yellow Tomato Soup--which I have never found in a store. This company is keeping it secret. If you do a search on their website for “yellow tomato soup” or even just “yellow” you get NO results. However, the Orange version must no longer be limited because it keeps appearing in stores in my area. 

I knew like all good things, it had a purpose in life. After some disastrous attempts at melding it with a recipe, I finally struck gold--or maybe “struck orange” would be more accurate. 

While the tradition with cornbread is to make it coarse, I always liked the silky-smooth sweeter cornbread from Tippin’s in Overland Park, KS, when I lived there. It was half cornbread mix and half white cake mix. That was my inspiration. 

You can mix this soup with cornbread and it comes out with a denser but light cakey texture, though not actually “sweet” like the Tippin’s faux-cornbread I’d enjoyed. At the risk of looking a bit like Sandra Lee and her semi-homemade oeuvre (no one should be famous for putting McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning over every entree), I present it here.

TOMATO CORNBREAD  

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup corn meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten
1 can Campbell's Harvest Orange Tomato Soup

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9-inch pan. Mix dry ingredients. Stir in milk, oil, and egg. Add can of condensed soup (do not add water). Stir just until ingredients are moistened. Pour batter into pan. Bake 25 minutes, until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Serve warm, preferably.

Note there is no added salt or sugar in this recipe. You don’t need it--it’s in the soup! I suppose you can make this with the regular Campbell’s Tomato Soup but I haven’t stooped that low yet.

For 10 years I have lived in downtown Chicago, and--as my readers have heard me whine--I have craved a garden. Now it’s a new era. I no longer live or work in downtown Chicago. Sure, I’m only in the north ‘burbs, but the quiet and wildlife are welcome. Gone are the endless slabs of concrete and tiny trees in pots and traffic bleets among downtown’s skyscrapers, and now here are large trees in the ground, relentless grass and greenery, and the ability to hear the birds sing.

With the recent weird weather, God smiled down upon northern Illinois and gave us a Saturday in the mid-50s. Since we hadn’t had any serious snow or even hard-cold weather (which would be normal, starting as early October if Mother Nature wants), the ground was spring-soft, the sun peeking out and teasing, and my day free.

I decided to prep my four gardens. Oh, four gardens sounds ambitious, but it’s really not more space than any regular backyard garden. One of my criteria in choosing a house was that it have a sunny space for a garden. This house was perfect, but there wasn’t enough all-light area for a regular garden. There was, however, room to have four small, narrow gardens. It wasn’t really all in the back 40 (the back yard in my case), so I decided to call the gardens “the Back Forties.”

There is a lot to remember from my childhood gardening days, and a lot to learn (which fortunately I can do right here at Grit.com with articles like Small-Scale Crop Rotation). It is not nearly time to be planting. I haven’t tested the soil for pH balance. I haven’t mapped out which plants will go where. Heck, I haven’t even ordered my seed catalogs! But it is early enough to dream.

All I’ve done so far is dig out plants and weeds and deeply spade the dirt to “prep.” Maybe it was just really an excuse to play in the dirt. One section, what I call Garden 2, was originally part of the yard and the sod had to be removed. Not fun, with a spade. But ambition and a falsely-spring Saturday drove me.

I realize this column is all about food, and has always included a recipe. But food will grow out the Back Forties, and it will end up in my kitchen, on my plate, and in this column.

The dreaming goes on. Time to order the seed catalogs ...

A cookie recipe that starts with Spam 

It was a bit of an adventure trying to find the origin of Sally Ann Cookies. It started when I received a copy of a community cookbook with a recipe from my late great-aunt Georgia Ruth: "Sally Ann Cookies." She was a great cookie baker, but I'd never heard her mention these.

I found out that "Sally Ann Cookies" were a commercial product in the 1950s (possibly earlier) and sold in stores.

An enduring commercial cookie is one that is delicious, but also hard to duplicate at home. Yes, commercial chocolate chip cookies are popular--because they seem to be number one in the cookie world--but that's because fewer people make homemade cookies. Back in the day, Mom would have made chocolate chip cookies herself. Oreos are probably the ideal commercial cookie. Yes, they could be made at home but who does? And you still wouldn't get the cookie imprint like an Oreo.

There is very little about Sally Ann Cookies on the internet, other than the recipe appearing in many variations. I also found a tiny newspaper ad, dated 1949, for salespeople for the cookie line. However, it fell out of favor long ago and stopped being company-produced. My guess is that people's enjoyment of molasses declined as the U.S. became more urbanized. Most younger people I know say either one of two things: (1) "I've never eaten molasses" or (2) "Isn't that the same thing as syrup?"

Somehow along the line, Sally Ann Cookies became known as a "Christmas cookie" among bloggers and recipe hounds. This is likely because it's a rolled cookie with a cooked frosting. Many people tend to make "fancy cookies" only at Christmas. (I think once a week is much better idea.)

 So where's the Spam? Don't worry, you don't cut up processed meat for the recipe. But you do have to buy a can of Spam. You wash out the can very well, and use it for the cookie cutter. Store-bought Sally Ann Cookies had the oblong shape easily duplicated by using a Spam can for a cookie cutter. Word to the wise: if there is someone in your house who is likely to throw away your Spam cookie cutter, thinking it is trash, mark it with a permanent pen like I did.

It's not a molasses cookie. It's much more complex, with a texture that's firm but not necessarily crunchy or soft, with unusual and delicous icing. This recipe makes about 40 medium-large cookies. You can easily halve it to make less.  Remember that these aren't a quick cookie: the dough needs to be refrigerated at least 4 hours, and longer is better. In my testing, I even refrigerated it for a full week and it was fine. However, freezing it did not work. These instructions might seem detailed, but trust me, I've done what I can to make this as easy as possible.

Sally Ann Cookies 

Cookie dough:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cubed

5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup molasses (light or dark)

1/2 cup strong cold coffee or espresso

Frosting:

1 cup sugar

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

1 cup cold water

2 cups confectioners' sugar

In a large bowl, beat sugar and butter with mixer on low speed till blended, about 1 minute. Increase speed to high, beat until creamy, about 2 minutes. This is the "batter bowl."

In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, ginger, nutmeg, salt, cloves, and cinnamon, and stir thoroughly to mix all ingredients. Pour half of this dry mixture into the batter bowl.

In batter bowl, add molasses. Blend with mixer on low (or by hand) until thoroughly mixed. Add other half of dry ingredients, then add cold coffee or espresso. Again, mix or beat thoroughly. The dough will be thick, but do not add water. Toward the end of this process you can even "knead" the dough with your hands to get it mixed and smooth.

Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least four hours, or preferably, overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees, with a rack on the bottom. The dough will be thick and cold, so leave it in the refrigerator until you are ready to work with it. Roll out dough to about 1/4-inch thickness and cut cookies with the Spam cookie cutter (for extra info about this stage, see the dough-prep tips below).

Place cookies on greased cookie sheets. Bake on center rack in oven for 15 minutes. Let cookies cool on pan for about 1 minute, then use metal spatula to put on cooling rack. All cookies must be completely cool to frost them.

To make frosting, place sugar and gelatin in a medium saucepan, and stir. Add water, turn on heat and stir. Heat to boiling, stirring periodically. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. In a medium bowl, place confectioners' sugar; pour hot sugar-gelatin mixture from saucepan in a thin stream into confectioners' sugar while mixing at low speed. When mixed, turn mixer to high and beat on high for 7-9 minutes, or until fluffy. If it starts to turn into a sort of ball and seem overly thick, stop. Cookies can be frosted immediately, but if not, place plastic wrap in the bowl directly on top of the mixture until you use it, and do not refrigerate.

 

After frosting, let cookies sit at least 30 minutes for frosting to harden and dry. Makes approximately 40 cookies. To store, keep in a covered container.

Dough-prep tips for best results (or if you're a perfectionist like me): Not only do the baking pans need to be greased (you can use cooking spray), I recommend greasing the area where you'll cut the cookies as well as the rolling pin. The dough is very dense and will stick easily. Keep the dough chilled as best as possible while rolling out, and place onto cookie sheets that are room temperature or cooler. In fact, after I cut the cookies, I put the cookie sheet in fridge for 10 minutes before I bake. This helps the cookies expand less and retain their correct shape.

Do you have any memories of unusual cookies, or something that people no longer recognize? I'd be interested to hear them. You can also follow me on Twitter @chuckmall or Pinterest (chuckmall).

 

 

 

Let’s take a break from cooking and look at some aspects of local food, small farms, and getting back to the way things used to be—growing vegetables that taste good, are bought by local people, and which show respect for the land and the people who grow the food. 

At the recent Good Food Festival Conference held in Chicago, fans of organic and local food learned of DIY workshops about preserving garden bounty, growing and making healthy food, and the policies affecting our food systems. Tom Spaulding of Angelic Organics spoke about the farm’s training program for new farmers. Angelic Organics is known for “Farmer John,” John Peterson, the founder, who is featured in the film The Real Dirt on Farmer John.  

Peterson was considered a “hippie farmer,” and was suspected of running a free-love farm where secret murders happened. But the truth was, no one understood that he was simply a man trying to do something new with his family’s farm--which almost failed from traditional means int he 1980s farm crisis. All he wanted to do was raise organic crops and make a living. Spaulding spoke of the current-day operations of Angelic Organics, where they run a popular CSA and have a training program for wanna-be farmers who have no experience. Spaulding said, “Half of all new farmers in our training program are women.” Of the 120 graduates of the training program since 2005, he stated, 70 percent are operating working farms. Peg Sheaffer of Prairie Crossing Farms of Grayslake, IL, affirmed that. She stated that she has three active kids between age 6 and 8 and she has run a farm and will continue to do so.  

Gene Mealhow of Tiny But Mighty Popcorn told his amazing story of searching for the perfect popcorn, and finally finding an elderly farmer who’d had a strain of popcorn that their family had grown for four generations. He no longer farmed, but still had an ounce or two of it in a jar. Mealhow tried, tasted, and immediately propagated this strain of popcorn, creating what some say is the best popcorn they’ve ever tasted. He has also used corn waste to heat his home for only $149 a year!  

Michael O’Gorman of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition  informed the crowd that, " Support for beginning farmers is better now than ever in the past."  

The Farmer-Veteran Coalition was founded by farmers and food industry leaders with long histories in overcoming the agricultural, managerial, financial, and marketing obstacles to be successful in their work. The goal of their work is to share experiences with recent military veterans and to assist them in using their many relevant skills to create a new generation of innovative, ecological, and financially successful young farmers.  

They combined two urgent facts: the age of the average American farmer is 57 years old (according to the 2007 census), with two farmers retiring for every one entering the field. Juxtaposed with that is the high unemployment rate and lack of viable career opportunities among American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a plethora of young people searching for jobs.  

O’Gorman informed the crowd that "Many vet farmers are disabled and growing only organic produce,” and that “Your asset isn’t your market or your land—it’s your knowledge."  

He concluded with this eternal truism that had a lot of heads nodding: “Most people wake up and go to work. If you’re a farmer, you wake up and you’re surrounded by work.”  

I’ve been on a tangent of studying “named foods.” You know: dishes like Steak Diane, Parker House Rolls, and the like. Of course, some were named after the restaurants where they were created. Others have murky origins or are even have faux origins:

Steak Diane: Named after Diana, the goddess of the hunt in Greek mythology. Basically a filet mignon with a sauce made from the pan juices and butter, shallots, brandy, and other ingredients. In earlier eras, this was usually served flambé at the table.

Beef Wellington: A filet steak cooked with a puff pastry covering, supposedly named after the Duke of Wellington. The first known recipe with this name appeared in 1966.

Waldorf Salad: Created in the 1890s at the Waldorf Hotel in New York (now the Waldorf-Astoria), it’s a cold salad made of fresh apples, walnuts, and celery with a mayonnaise dressing. Some cooks call any cold salad primarily made of apples, and including things like coconut, maraschino cherries, or other fruits, a “Waldorf Salad.”

Lobster Thermidor: A very delicious (and expensive) dish made from lobster meat, egg yolks, flour, brandy or sherry, and put back into a lobster shell, then often covered with cheese (usually Gruyere). The dish was created in 1894 by Marie’s, a restaurant in Paris, to honor a play named Thermidor opening at a nearby theatre.

Lobster Newburg: The ancestor of Lobster Thermidor, similarly made, and which debuted in 1876 at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York. What’s the difference? Newburg is not returned to the shell to be served. Some say the sauce is lighter, being made without flour and with white wine instead of other liquors.

Parker House Rolls: A soft, buttery roll usually in the shape of a half-moon, introduced of course at the Parker House Hotel in Boston. The hotel opened in 1855 and is also famous for inventing Boston Cream Pie. The earliest reference to the name of these rolls dates back to 1873. Photo at right: The Omni Parker House, on the site of the original Parker House Hotel.

Chicken Kiev is a faux Russian dish that appeared on a restaurant menu in Chicago in 1937. It might date back to the early 1900s, however. It’s a boneless chicken breast wrapped around butter and herbs and either baked or fried.

Chicken Cordon Bleu is not named after the famous cooking schools. This boneless chicken breast wrapped around cheese and thinly-sliced ham started in the mid-1950s, though it was Veal Cordon Bleu in those days. It originated in the U.S., not France.

Beef Stroganoff, lean beef strips sautéed and served in a cream sauce with onions and mushrooms, was supposedly named after a 19^th century noble named Count Stroganoff. The legend says he was stationed in Siberia and found the only way he could use his frozen beef was to cut it in thin strips. One source says the recipe first appeared in the 1870s, another source says it was launched in the 1930s.

Now let’s talk about Hasselback Potatoes. Ever heard of those? Probably not. This is a clever but little-known treatment of potatoes that makes it both a soft and crispy side dish. Some recipes say to “scallop” the potato and others say to “shingle” the potato, but both of these terms are unclear in their exact nature. Basically, you take a potato and slice it thinly so that it stays together but is in a fanned shape. The ingredients are not complicated. The preparation is what makes it seem like a fancy dish. I like to use russet potatoes but Yukon Golds also work. Round potatoes might be fine once you get the cutting technique mastered.

This recipe seems to have started in the 1700s at the Hasselbacken, a restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. It still appears on the menu there.

Hasselback Potatoes 

4 large, preferably oblong, potatoes

2 cloves garlic, chopped

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons coarse salt, divided

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon grated parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon parsley

Scrub potatoes thoroughly, with skin on. Place each on cutting board and cut off the bottom, about a half inch deep, to make a flat bottom surface. Then make slices in top of potato, about one-fourth to one-half inch thick, cutting only through three-quarters of the depth of potato to leave it joined at the bottom. Place, flat side down, in pot of boiling water (enough to cover potatoes) with one teaspoon coarse salt. Boil for 12-20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a small bowl, mix garlic, olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, pepper, paprika, and Worcestershire sauce.

Lift potatoes with slotted spoon onto baking sheet, flat-side down. Brush each potato thoroughly on top and sides with liquid mixture. Place in oven and bake 40-45 minutes. (If using medium-sized potatoes, allow between 20-30 minutes.)

Remove from oven, sprinkle with parmesan and parsley, and serve.