Cottage Cheese Patties

Recipe by Peggy Ray, Tyler, Texas

This one comes from the Tyler, Texas SDA cookbook, courtesy of my friend Peggy Ray. Peggy comes up with some great recipes for potluck.  This one is a combination of oatmeal patties and cottage cheese loaf only it eschews the Kellogg's Special K in favor of oatmeal.  I had a bunch of cottage cheese and no Special K, so I went with Peggy's cottage cheese patties tonight. You really won't believe how good these things are. They have this incredible medley of flavors that is just amazing.  Here's how you do it.

Ingredients:

• 1 c. cottage cheese
• 1/2 small onion chopped
• 3/4 cup pecans or walnuts
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 1 egg plus 1 egg white
• 1/2 cup multi-grain cracker crumbs
• 3/4 cup oatmeal
• 2 pkgs (2 tbsp) George Washington Golden Broth or powdered chicken flavored broth
• 1 can French's fried onions

Gravy:

• 2 cans mushroom soup
• 1 can of water

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl (except for the fried onions)
2. Let set for 10 minutes or so after thoroughly mixed
3. Form into patties and brown in oil. 
4. Make up gravy in saucepan or skillet
5. Pour small layer of gravy in bottom of a casserole dish.
6. Add a light layer of French fried onions
7. Lay patties over the top and drizzle the rest of the gravy over it.
8. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 300 degrees.
9. Layer on top with the rest of the French fried onions.
10. Bake for 5 minutes more

Serving Suggestion:

Peggy Ray

Around here we just go ahead and have them for supper. If you're taking them to potluck, cover the casserole dish with foil or the lid that goes with it on Friday afternoon and refrigerate. Heat it up in the church warmer starting as soon as you get to the church on Sabbath morning so it's good and hot by lunch time. You might want to leave an extra pan of these at home because if you're like most potluck contributing cooks you line up last in line and by the time you get there the good stuff is gone and you're stuck with lentils and cabbage.

Thank you soooooooo much for this recipe, Miss Peggy. We love your culinary work.

Tom King

Cottage Cheese Loaf - Nutty Version

I got hungry for cottage cheese loaf and whipped up this one.  I changed a few ingredients thanks to some suggestions from readers and a couple of ingredients I wanted to try out for a nuttier version. If you guys are allergic to nuts, this one is not recommended. Here's the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 large carton cottage cheese (24-32 oz. size)
• 5 eggs (higher in protein with the extra egg and binds the extra oatmeal)
• 1/2 cup pecan meal (If you have pecans, dump a cup in the blinder and whiz it up till it's meal)
• 1/2 cup slivered toasted almonds
• 1 cup oatmeal
• 2 Tbsp peanut butter
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 packet Lipton's onion soup mix
• 1 regular box of Special K cereal
• 1/2 stick of butter

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Crush the Special K in a large bowl. Grind up the pecans to make meal if you don't have pecan meal.
3. Stir in oatmeal, peanut butter, oil, soup mix, cottage cheese and eggs. Mix together thoroughly.
4. In 9x13 casserole dish, melt butter.
5. Press loaf mixture into the casserole dish
6. Sprinkle toasted almond slivers over the top
7. Bake in the oven for 40 to 60 minutes until the top is brown and the edges are crisp and pull slightly away from the sides of the pan.

SERVING SUGGESTIONS:

Cover and hold in the refrigerator for tomorrow's potluck or serve immediately. I tend to go with "serve immediately" as you can tell from the picture above. This version has a nuttier flavor than the original recipe. The oatmeal doesn't much change the taste and gives you more of it if you need to feed a larger group. An extra egg covers the extra ingredients. I love this stuff. If you haven't checked it out, here's the original recipe the way my grandmother and Miss Sheila made it.  (Just click the link).

Tom King

Oatmeal Patties

As an Adventist I grew up in a vegetarian community; an SDA ghetto if you will in Keene, Texas. For a long time you couldn't buy meat hardly anywhere in the city. You had to drive five miles to Cleburne five miles away to get a hamburger.

My grandmother who was a cook at Southwestern Adventist college where she worked magic with vegetarian substitutes, some commercial and some the ladies just made up.  Any vegetable protein you could think of seemed to form the basis for local vegetarian cuisine. One ingredient in particular found it's way into everything from bread to "patties".  Oatmeal.

Oatmeal is an Adventist staple. Oatmeal forms the basis of many Adventist vegetarian main dishes. When I say oatmeal is versatile, I mean you can throw all sorts of stuff into a mixing bowl with oatmeal and fry it up. This version is a kind of clean out the leftovers version. If I'm out of vege-meat, these oatmeal patties are my fall-back. Here's how you make them:

Patty Ingredients:

• 3 cups rolled oats, instant or regular oatmeal (it all works)
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 large onion chopped
• 1/2 cup pecan meal or slivered almonds (optional)
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 package Lipton Onion Soup mix
• 2 eggs

Gravy Ingredients:

• Handful sliced mushrooms
• 1/4 chopped onion
• 1/2 package of Lipton Onion Soup
• Leftover oil from frying patties
• 4 tbsp. flour, (for the gravy)
• 1 cup Water

 Directions:

1. Pour the oil in a skillet and preheat it while you make up the patty mix.
2. Mix together all the patty ingredients in a mixing bowl. Note: you don't have to have pecan meal. If you have pecans or walnuts, just whiz them up in the blender till they are the consistency of meal. The pecan meal really kicks up the protein levels in the dish. You can add soy sauce or leave it out and just go with the pecan meal for flavor. I recently tried slivered almonds when I didn't have pecan meal and it's amazing. Really great flavor.  I've even added leftover cottage cheese and sour cream (or onion dip) and given them a little pizzazz. Some crushed Special K Cereal is nice too if you like. The recipe is very flexible. The trick is to get the consistency of the mixture right so that the patties don't fall apart. If you add too much extra stuff you should add an extra egg or some of that new Vegan egg replacement that just came out.
3. Once you've got the patty mix prepared, form the mixture into balls and place the balls in the skillet and flatten them with a spatula. Allow them to cook until brown and flip them over to brown on the other side. 
4. Set the patties aside. They make pretty good vegeburgers as this stage. To complete this as a main dish, you need to make the gravy now.
5. Turn down the heat a bit under the oil. Toss in the chopped onions and carmelize them by cooking them slowly on low heat. Takes about 15 minutes or so, but well worth the time. After the onions are about halfway done, add the mushrooms.
6. Next, sprinkle a handful of flour into the skillet with the oil, mushrooms and onions. 
7. Turn up the heat a little and lightly blend the flour into the oil until it starts to brown. Add Lipton Onion Soup and water, stirring constantly till the gravy forms. Stir until all the lumps of flour are absorbed.
8. In a Pyrex casserole dish, spread out the cooked patties and pour the gravy over the patties.
9. Place the dish in the oven at 350 degrees and bake until the gravy bubbles. 
10. Now you can work on the rest of the stuff to go with it while the oatmeal patties bake. 

Conclusion:

These go well with anything that would go with vege-burger, hamburger or most any vegetarian meat substitute. The wife usually makes mashed potatoes and corn. Baked potatoes, broccoli and a salad are also nice. Throw in some homemade bread or wheat rolls and you've got a lovely meal.

Leftover oatmeal patties make nice sandwiches or vegeburgers too. I love leftover oatmeal patty burgers.

Enjoy.

(c) 2015 by Tom king