Former restaurateur can't get out of the kitchen

Until she retired from the restaurant business in August, Pam Holden never had time to cook.

The irony is rich, like the gallons of cream of chicken soup she once prepared for grateful customers "with pounds of butter and quarts of cream."

For most of her career Pam rolled up her sleeves and got her hands messy in the kitchen of her four, side-by-side businesses: Cafe Penelope, Penny's Pizza, Penelope Catering and Club Penelope that featured blues music every weekend.

Homey and reasonably priced, the cafe attracted students and professors and from nearby University of Illinois and Rush University and staff from a local medical center for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"I like cooking more than anything, but for the last five or six years I was doing all the ordering, billing and overseeing," she says.

"I learned everything from my dad," says Pam, whose father owned a South Side restaurant where she started working at 11. A "prolific" poet who dished out soup, chili and burgers to pay the bills, "he came from the 'make it up as you go' school of culinary arts," she says.

After staying home for 15 years raising her own children, Pam returned to the restaurant world she loved. She started a catering business at home in 1979 and in 1987 opened Cafe Penelope.

"It wasn't hard to go to work every day," she says.

But late this summer, just ahead of the economic flameout, Pam closed the doors and moved to Elk Grove Village with her daughter's family. She already had slogged through the fallout of 9/11 and didn't want to ride out another economic meltdown.

"We had two trucks of food going to Sears Tower that day (in 2001); no one would accept delivery, they were all going home," she says.

Today no one turns down Pam's from-scratch cooking.

Each Sunday she sets out a spread for 15 to 20 family members.

"My daughter (Garah Duffy) and I pick a theme, I make the food and my granddaughter makes desserts," says Pam.

She prepares everything from scratch, even stocks, just as she did when her restaurants first opened and she was hands-on in the kitchen.

"I made tons of pound cake, carrot cake, cranberry bread and zucchini bread," she says. "Now I could make it easier on myself, but I want people to know how good real food tastes."

For a Mexican fiesta, she turned out chicken enchiladas with green sauce, beef enchiladas with red sauce, rice and refried beans, cactus salad ("hardly anybody ate it") and guacamole.

For an Italian festa she laid out meatballs, chicken Marsala, antipasto salad and plain angel hair pasta with butter for the kids.

This week she explores Germany with a hearty fall menu of pork chops and cabbage braised in apple cider, green beans and potatoes with bacon and apple cake flavored with German Riesling wine.

Her recent adventures in home cooking are teasing out warm memories from her early, hectic days as a restaurateur.

"When I first opened I was really nervous," she says. "But I overheard someone say, 'I think we're eating real food.'"

Imagine that.

German-style Green Beans with Potatoes

4 small new red potatoes, quartered or cut in equal-size chunks

1 pound fresh green beans, trimmed

½ pound bacon

1 medium yellow onion, diced

1 soft, ripe tomato, diced

1 clove garlic, whole

¼ teaspoon summer savory

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

In large pot of boiling water, cook the potatoes until tender but still firm, 8-10 minutes. Add green beans last few minutes and cook until tender.

In the meantime, cook bacon in large skillet until crisp. Remove, cool and crumble.

To the pan add onions, diced tomato and garlic and saute until soft. Season with savory. Stir in green beans, potatoes and bacon, cover and simmer until very hot, about 10 minutes more. Sprinkle red wine vinegar over all.

Serves four to six.

Pork Chops with Apple Cider Braised Red Cabbage

cup flour

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cooking oil

4 center-cut, bone-in pork chops

1 medium yellow onion, sliced

1 head red cabbage, shredded

1 cup apple cider

Combine flour, paprika, pepper and salt in a pie plate. Dredge pork chops in mixture, coating both sides.

Heat oil in a large skillet. Brown chops over high heat, about 3 minutes per side. Remove meat to a platter and cover to keep warm.

Reduce heat and to the same skillet add onions and cook until they start to soften. Add cabbage and apple cider and return pork chops and cover skillet; cook 25-30 minutes over low heat. Cabbage should be soft and chops should be cooked to 160 degrees.

Serves four.

German Apple Cake

1 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

½ -1 teaspoon Riesling or other sweet dessert wine

4 cups Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced

½ cup chopped walnuts

Frosting

4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

2 tablespoons butter, room temperature

1 cups powdered sugar

-1 teaspoon Riesling

Milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a Bundt pan with cooking spray.

In mixing bowl combine oil, eggs and sugars. Beat for 5 minutes or until thick and foamy.

Add dry ingredients and beat for 1 more minute.

Add Riesling, apples and nuts. Gently stir until mixed. Pour into pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cake cool in pan, then invert onto serving plate.

While cake cools, in a large bowl beat together cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and wine. Add milk by teaspoonfuls until consistency is thin enough to drizzle. Spoon over warm cake and serve immediately, or refrigerate.

Serves 16.