when you cook almost every meal at home, research sometimes becomes necessary.  out come stacks of cook books looking for new recipes and old forgotten recipes.  ever just read a cook book?  there are actually pretty interesting and can start generating ideas beyond whats on the page.

research, research, research and a beer

this week’s sunday night dinner came from a very old friend of a cookbook.  one i have had since i was a kid.  it was my american girl cookbook for the character addy.  don’t skip over kids’ cookbooks there are some damn good recipes in them!  my nancy drew cookbook, yes i have a nancy drew cookbook, is where i got my curried shrimp recipe.

you can just ignore the instructions that tell you to have an adult take things out of the oven

chicken scratchbacks……what is that?  well scratchback is a term that was used to describe a method for baking cornbread.  scratchbacks are spoonfuls of cornmeal batter that are dropped into a buttered baking dish.  when baked, scratchbacks have rough, scratchy tops, thus is where they get their name.  baked the bread too long?  turn them into dogers.  those are cornmeal cakes that are baked so hard that if they were thrown, you better dodge them!  i was so excited i got to use my new cast iron cornbread pan for dinner.  there was much debate about what size of pan to get the 5 cob pan seemed too small yet the 10 cob too many so i got the 7.  after making a whole batch of cornbread batter…..should have gotten the 10 cob.

love that cast iron

to turn a scratchback into a chicken scratchback, take cooked chicken, make a milk-based gravy and add the chicken to it.  let it all get heated through and in the true farris way add lots of pepper to that gravy.  of late i have actually been contemplating making the holes bigger in my pepper shaker, like every other farris does.  any veggie is yummy to pair with chicken scratchbacks but i recommend peas because you can mix all that together!