Can you call something a secret family recipe if before being “secret” or becoming part of a family’s repertoire it was first published in a newspaper? I ask, because if you can, what follows can best be described as a secret family recipe. If you can’t, it’s just old and obscure. Either way, unlike David Blaine, I’m about to reveal to you the secrets of a recipe that is delicious, and as a result of that deliciousness, has become a staple in my family.
This recipe was clipped from a food column in either the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Daily News, or the Chicago Sun Times while people still did such things, long before newspapers began their inexorable decline. (My parents can’t decide which paper it actually came from. They sometimes disagree about things.) The paper is yellowed and brittle, its frailty obvious from the first touch. It calls out to be handled with the care of an archivist, and yet, it is regularly called into service, age taking a back seat to matters of taste.
Known only in my family as “chicken and peanuts,” some have suggested that it is a recipe for Kung Pao Chicken. Perhaps on some level it is. But I can tell you this: It tastes like no Kung Pao Chicken I’ve ever eaten.
Pie are Round 