Crusty Peach Cobbler

“Top is golden-brown, sugar-crusted shortcake”–

3 cups sliced fresh peaches
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon lemon juice
…
1-1/2 cups enriched emergency flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup milk
1 well-beaten egg
…
2 tablespoons sugar

Arrange peaches in greased, 8-inch-square baking pan. Sprinkle with mixture of 1/4 cup sugar, almond extract, lemon juice, and lemon peel. Heat in oven while preparing shortcake. Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, and 1 tablespoon sugar; cut in shortening until mixture is like coarse crumbs. Add milk and egg at once; stir just until flour is moistened. Spread dough over hot peaches. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons sugar. Bake in hot oven (400°) 40 minutes. Serves 6.–Mrs. H. E. Connell, Dallas, Texas.

That all looks reasonably tasty and straightforward — except I don’t know what enriched emergency flour was. Luckily, we have Google!

In February 1946, President Truman enacted a number of emergency measures to conserve wheat. The goal was to increase the availability of food exports to Europe, which was struggling to recover from World War II while simultaneously dealing with drought and famine. Among a variety of mandates, there was a change to the formula for all-purpose flour…

“The wheat flour extraction rate (the quantity of flour produced from each bushel of wheat) will be raised to 80 percent for the duration of the emergency. Also, steps will be taken to limit the distribution of flour to amounts essential for current civilian distribution. This will save about 25 million bushels of wheat during the first half of 1946.” — Statement by the President Announcing Emergency Measures To Relieve the World Food Shortage, February 6, 1946

Lela E. Booher, PhD, explained exactly what this meant in a May 1946 article from Life & Health: The National Health Journal. Regular white flour production is 72% extraction, achieved by removing almost all the wheat germ and bran, leaving just endosperm to be ground into flour. Emergency flour, or 80% extraction flour, requires that some of the germ and bran be left in. While you get more flour from the same amount of wheat, you also change the properties somewhat — the flour looks darker, it doesn’t keep as long, the nutritional properties change somewhat, and it doesn’t behave the quite same way in baking (at least in more delicate cake recipes). And enriched emergency flour was just emergency flour with iron and vitamins added.

With that in mind, I decided to make the shortcake topping with 1 cup regular all-purpose flour, and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, to approximate the 1946 flour proportion. (1/2 cup whole wheat flour is probably too much; however, I like the flavor of whole wheat flour, so I’m not terribly worried about doing the math and figuring out an exact proportion.)

Oh, and since not even South Carolina winters are balmy enough to permit peaches to grow, we used canned fruit.

Buzz and the kids worked in the kitchen while I sat in the living room calling out measurements and directions.

She mixed the sugar, lemon peel, extract, and juice together.

“Big brother” dumped peaches into the baking dish.

This mix was sprinkled over the peaches, and then the dish was put in the oven to heat. (The recipe was rather vague about this, so they set it at 200°F and stuck it in.)

She then measured out the various dry ingredients and the milk. Buzz measured the shortening, since gooey things can be a little tricky, and also got out the egg (which is too high in the fridge for her to reach).

This is where things went somewhat wrong. At some point Buzz asked, “So this goes in?” He was intending to convey, “She’s mixed the egg and milk together, does they go into the flour before the shortening?” I understood something more like, “This will go in eventually?” and so I said yes.

And so the milk and egg went in before the shortening, and the next thing I heard was, “This doesn’t look like coarse crumbs, it’s really wet. Did we measure things right?” (UH OH.)

Yeah, the liquid went in too early, and so of course the shortening wasn’t really mixing in evenly. After a lot of mixing, it did eventually evenly distribute (more or less), but I was a little concerned that it had been fussed with too much and would be quite tough as a result.

Regardless, I spread it on top, Buzz sprinkled some demerara sugar (which I love to use for topping baked goods, it’s crunchy and has a nice flavor) on top…

… and the cobbler went into the oven.

After 40 minutes, it was a lovely golden brown.

I didn’t have any vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, which would have made this perfect. But even on its own, this was quite good. Almond extract is a very good partner with peaches, and the “shortcake” topping was delicious. It actually was sort of too thick — it tasted best right next to either the peach and juice, or on the very top with the sugar crystals. Having some ice cream to help moisten the middle section while you’re eating would help. The most interesting feature of this cobbler though, the “emergency flour,” was a nice feature and gave the topping a dimension of flavor that you don’t always get in desserts.

And for extra niceness, this was really a family production, and the kids did a great job. Thanks, guys!

It certainly is brown, though, isn’t it…

BROWN CHICKEN FRICASSÉE

1 3-lb. chicken, disjointed.
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 c. butter
1/2 to 1 tsp. thyme leaves
1/2 to 1 tsp. leaf marjoram
1 lg. onion studded with 12 cloves
1/2 lemon
3/4 c. Burgundy
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. mace
1 c. half and half cream
1/4 c. all-purpose flour
3 egg yolks, beaten
1/4 c. tomato purée (opt.)

Season the chicken with salt and pepper and place in a large saucepan. Add the butter, thyme, marjoram, onion, lemon, Burgundy, nutmeg and mace. Add enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes or until chicken is very tender. Remove the chicken from the broth and discard the lemon and onion. Cool the chicken until easily handled. Remove the skin and bones, then dice the chicken coarsely or leave in large pieces. Mix enough cream into the flour to make a smooth thin paste, and stir into the broth. Combine the egg yolks with the remaining cream and blend into broth gradually, stirring constantly. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened but do not allow to boil. Stir in the tomato purée and add the chicken. Season with salt and pepper and heat through. Serve with rice or pasta and garnish with Baked Croutons (Breads, page 16). This makes 8 servings.

I was all geared up to make this on a Tuesday night, and even managed to plan so far ahead that I stuck a frozen chicken in the fridge to thaw for 24 hours. By Tuesday afternoon, though, it was still hard as a rock — well, a slightly squishy rock, perhaps. So this got pushed to a Wednesday.

I left the chicken whole rather than “disjointing” it, because I hate trying to bone or disjoint raw chicken. Since it’s going to be stripped of its meat after boiling, this shouldn’t pose too much of a logistical problem.

The ingredients for this really look like they belong to a proper recipe: no canned veg-all, no gelatin, no boxed macaroni.

Although that clove-studded onion is pretty bizarre, come to think of it. (At least it’s not sponsored by The Clove Council or something.)

The chicken was rubbed liberally with salt and pepper.

Chicken, clove-onion, lemon, butter, and assorted herbs are put into a pot — oh, and also a lot of wine.

And then enough water is added to cover the chicken, also presumably washing off all the salt and pepper rubbed onto it.

When we lifted the lid off after thirty minutes, it smelled really amazing.

I let the chicken sit to cool for about ten minutes, then started peeling the meat off the bones.

Luckily this isn’t terribly hard with a cooked chicken, and it was neatly separated into piles — one for tasty chicken bits, and one for less edible chicken bits. (The dog was completely thrilled to be given leftover chicken skin.)

Then started the process of thickening the broth into a sauce. First, the flour and some cream (about 1/4 cup, I guess) were whisked into a paste (aka “slurry”).

Then I added the broth, and then the yolks and the remaining cream. Unfortunately, with a stick of butter, half cup of cream, 3 egg yolks, and whatever additional fat rendered off the chicken, this isn’t the healthiest way to serve chicken — I rarely try to eliminate fat, but this recipe made my arteries raise their eyebrows skeptically.

I poured all this back into the pot to continue heating it on the stove until it thickened. And this took a REALLY LONG TIME. The chicken boiled for about 35 minutes, then there was probably another 20 between removing it from the pot and starting to work on the broth again. Reducing this sauce until it thickened took at least 30 more minutes.

(My best guess is that there was a little too much water in the initial cooking broth. We also eventually doubled the amount of flour, which helped thicken it further.)

I dumped in the tomato paste and cooked chicken, stirring around for a few minutes to warm everything up and blend it together.

It isn’t terribly inspiring in the serving bowl. Dull brown soup…

It perks up a bit when served over some tasty spaetzle noodles, looking more like a nice chunky stew.

It took hours to make, but I felt really proud of the results. This tasted terrific! Both kids insisted on seconds, which is incredibly rare — usually “I’m still hungry” means they want dessert, not more dinner. I thought it was amazing. Buzz liked it at first, but started complaining it tasted too much of tomato about halfway through. I can see where he was coming from, although I personally found the tomato flavor to be a nice accent to the chicken, herbs, and wine sauce. I can streamline it next time — use bone-in chicken breasts (the white meat was more tender than the dark), and less water to reduce the reduction time (ha) — and probably cut down on the fat content without losing any of the flavor. This was one of my favorite retro recipes to date!

Real cookbook’s real recipe comes from the Flickr stream of Glen.H.

Since this holiday is all about celebrating amazing oil that lasted for eight days rather than the expected one (the original energy-efficiency holiday, if you think about it), it’s generally traditional to serve something fried. I’m still working with the oil for this retro recipe attempt, but in a slightly different form…

Pie Crust. I have met very few people who say, “Oh, pie crust is really easy to make,” or “my homemade pie crust tastes amazing.” The general rule of thumb is that pie crust actually isn’t all that bad, but it does require some attention — in particular, you have to keep your fat of choice (butter, lard, and/or shortening) very cold while cutting it in, or utter disaster will result. I’ve also run into problems with overmixing or overworking the dough, resulting in a very dense, chewy, unappealing crust. And if your crust is mediocre, you need to have an absolutely amazing filling to save that pie.

I was pretty intrigued, therefore, by this advertisement I stumbled across which used oil, rather than very cold chunks of some sort of fat. It didn’t sound like it could possibly match the quality of “standard” crust methods, but the simplicity of just “stir and roll” really appealed to me — we had to try this.

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, such as Gold Medal
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup Wesson Oil
1/4 cup cold whole milk

1. Quick start for modern Stir-N-Roll pie crust: pour Wesson Oil and cold milk into measuring cup, and pour all at once into flour. There’s no digging out shortening, no packing to measure, Wesson pours to measure accurately. It is instant shortening with all the delicacy of finest salad oil.

2. No cutting in shortening — just stir to mix. Wesson blends in quickly and evenly. Even beginners find Stir-N-Roll pie dough easy to handle. Best of all, light, delicate Wesson Oil keeps its delicacy at high pie-baking temperatures. Your pie crust has home-baked flavor no mix can equal.

3. No mussy floured board. Roll your pie crust neatly between waxed papers. Even with moist, juicy fillings, your pastry keeps its tender crispness. And because Wesson Oil is lighter and more delicate than any other type of shortening, your pie crust is sure to be delicate, too.

Easy enough ingredient selection.

I had to include this picture, because oil and milk actually look pretty cool together.

This is the unmentioned first step. Really, the motto should be “pour, stir, and roll”…

And now we get to “stir.”

The stand mixer is a good tool for this job, too; turn on, pour liquid, and walk away for a minute. (Just in case you wanted to make a quick recipe even quicker.)

It very soon turns into a crumbly dough…

… which is quite easily formed into two separate balls for…

… rolling!

Handling is interesting. This is far easier to repair than a “traditional” crust — you just squish extra crust into the holes, pat it so it’s (more or less) flat, and it’s fixed. That’s good, because this crust rips very easily and is impossible to transfer into a pie pan without some damage.

The top crust didn’t brown very much during baking, but I also didn’t add any egg wash or such to help with that. (And yes, those are oak leaves, not holly leaves… my cookie cutter selection isn’t extensive, apparently.)

I like salty foods, but this is ridiculously salty. Other versions of “stir-n-roll” crust call for 1 teaspoon (which is plenty), so I don’t know what the heck happened here — rogue copy editor, or sabotage by the Morton’s Salt girl perhaps? A mincemeat pie at least has enough other flavors going on that you aren’t immediately killed by the salt. (I’ve made this a couple of times now, and reducing the salt is quite helpful!) Additionally, the crust ends up rather oily. This helps when you’re rolling in wax paper (it peels off super-easy), and it comes out of the pie dish easily, but it ends up sliding around on plates rather than sitting still.

Between the handling and the oiliness, this isn’t likely to be a contender for Best Pie Crust Ever. But it is a lot better than I expected. The flavor is good (when made with appropriate salt content), and it does actually manage to be somewhat flaky and tender despite not having any solid blobs of fat that melt in the oven (which is what I’ve always heard is the main trick to truly flaky crust — or biscuits, for that matter). So it’s not the best crust ever, but it’s pretty darn good — and pretty easy, too.

For the holiday season, I wanted to try a few different variations of fruitcake. I love my grandmother’s recipe the best, but there are so many ways of making fruitcakes, and a lot of retro advertising came up with some intriguing (and frightening) variations, promising simplicity and deliciousness.

Yet this one still stands out, because I have absolutely no clue what makes it a “Hong Kong” Fruitcake.

HONG KONG FRUITCAKE

1 — Prepare 1 pkg. marble cake mix as directed on package. Add 2 Tbs. chopped candied ginger (crystalized preferred), 1 tsp. almond extract. Spoon batter into wax paper lined tube pan (alternating white with chocolate; with knife cut through batter several times.

2 — Bake 40 min. at temp given on pkg.

3 — Cool, then frost with powdered sugar icing. (Blend 2-1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar, 1 Tbs. butter. Add 2 Tbs. milk, 1 tsp. almond extract.) Stud with currants, pieces of candied cherries and ginger, citron, 2 kinds of nuts.

I don’t know, what Hong Kong stereotype would this recipe conjure up in the 60′s? Maybe it’s the ginger. At least there isn’t some bad caricature to go with it.

(Google is absolutely no help, since the only mention of “Hong Kong Fruitcake” I can find is the Wrigley’s ad. Soon, I’ll be the second most prevalent online source for Hong Kong Fruitcake. Don’t worry, I’ll still remember all you loyal readers when I’m rich and famous.)

Weirdly, we couldn’t find marble cake mix, so we got one box each of yellow and chocolate to make a double recipe.

In other words, I’m banking on Wrigley’s to not let me down.

I stand by my opinion that cake is always best when made from scratch. But, at the same time, you can’t beat box mixes for convenience. Dump ingredients in a bowl, turn on a mixer, and walk away? Sometimes you just need that simplicity.

Five minutes later and we’ve got the batter wonderfully smooth, and spooned into bundt pans.

This is where I actually tend to have the most trouble. Whenever I need to marble batter, I tend to think it would be better if I just keep stirring just a little bit longer. This has historically led to a lot of pale chocolate cakes when I was trying for marbled.

Luckily for the fruitcake, I’ve learned to restrain myself over the years.

I even managed to grease my bundt pans enough that the cakes released almost perfectly. (Ignore that slightly torn patch. It will be glued back on with icing shortly.)

Once icing was made and bits of topping were purchased, we tossed everything on top. There was some dispute over the best size for the “2 kinds of nuts” (halves, or chopped); Buzz did his cake his way, I did mine my way.

Since the camera is mine, you get to see a picture of mine. (Ha!)

A cutaway of the interior reveals slight marbling; I think I managed to cut into sections that were both primarily chocolate. When eaten, there was plenty more yellow cake in evidence!

Buzz’s initial reaction sums this up quite nicely: “It tastes like cake.” Not fruitcake, just cake. Not even almond ginger cake, just cake. The icing is delicious (I love almond extract in baked goods), although the sprinkling of fruits and nuts makes for a somewhat odd contrast.

I can literally see the appeal of this recipe, though. It looks really festive with all that stuff on top, and would make a beautiful holiday dessert, but doesn’t taste like a fruitcake at all. For the large number of people who complain about hard cake with to many weird candied fruits, this could be a really nice alternative.

Personally, I still prefer my Grandma’s sweet and soft booze-soaked version, but I’ll keep this in the recipe archive as a possibility for potlucks.

This 1962 recipe is preserved on Flickr by Look Homeward, Harlot!

On the other hand, it means we have a lot of pumpkin hanging out in our freezer sometimes. In an attempt to use up the last of the 2010 batch, we are still making pumpkin-based food although Thanksgiving is well past. (Frankly, the South Carolina climate is so bizarre to my northern sensibilities that it still seems like early fall to me, despite December holidays rapidly approaching. It was 60°F here today and it’s going to be warmer the rest of the week. I just don’t understand this.)

So we’re retr-attempting a pumpkin chiffon pie — I mean, coconut pumpkin chiffon pie, since it’s from an advertisement for Baker’s Coconut. It seems like a bit of a stretch to put coconut in a pumpkin pie… however, I like coconut well enough, and I’ve never made a chiffon pie before, so I’m up for it.

COCONUT PUMPKIN CHIFFON PIE

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1-1/4 cups mashed cooked pumpkin
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup water
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 egg whites
1 cup Baker’s Shredded Coconut, toasted *
1 baked 9-inch pie shell
1/3 cup cream, whipped and sweetened

Soften gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water. Combine pumpkin, milk, 1/2 cup water, egg yolks, 1/2 cup of the sugar, salt, and spices in top of double boiler. Cook over boiling water 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Add gelatin and stir until dissolved. Remove from boiling water. Chill until slightly thickened.

Beat egg whites until foamy. Add remaining sugar gradually and continue beating until stiff. Fold in pumpkin mixture, vanilla, and 3/4 of the toasted coconut. Turn into cold pie shell. Chill until firm. Before serving, top with whipped cream and remaining toasted coconut.

* To toast coconut, spread thinly in shallow pan. Place in moderate oven (350°F) and toast about 10 minutes, or until delicately browned. Stir occasionally to toast evenly.

FYI: This recipe does not cook the egg whites. If you are concerned about the safety of raw eggs, use pasteurized eggs or do not make this pie.

This is a lot of ingredients, and a lot of steps for a pumpkin pie.

Softening gelatin is easy, just drop it in water and wander away for a while.

My fun trick for how to cook things in a double boiler, despite having never owned a double boiler: stick a bowl on top of a pot with water in it! (Just make sure it’s heat-safe — Pyrex works beautifully, metal would probably also be ok. Plastic would be a bad idea.)

And ten minutes of stirring, uuuugh. (My arm, my arm!)

Meanwhile, the gelatin had absorbed almost all the water and was squishily firmed up. (Side note — in my freshman solid state chemistry class, Prof. Sadoway showed us superabsorbent polymer gels one day, which were still pretty unusual and interesting in 1996. They are the stuff that allows super-thin diapers to absorb gallons of fluid. This gelatin looks exactly the same, even though it’s [a] edible and [b] not nearly as absorbent. And now I’ll stop talking about nerdy chemistry and get back to the cooking.)

The pumpkin mix had thickened a bit after ten minutes, so time to drop in the gelatin…

Which caused it the gelatin to almost immediately liquify, and the entire mixture became very loose. Oh well, it’s supposed to thicken after it cools.

Incidentally, coconut smells amazing while it toasts.

While the pumpkin cools, we whipped the egg whites. I usually use white sugar, not brown, in egg whites, but it makes it a nice tan color and gives it a somewhat richer taste. (Something to remember to try in meringue some time!)

One thing I couldn’t really understand is why the vanilla isn’t added until this step — why not put it in the pumpkin-gelatin mix?

Whatever, everything is folded together, poured into pie crust, and chilled.

The 1/3 cup of cream is absolutely not enough; it couldn’t make a full ring around the pie, and certainly not the heaping fluffy circle in the advertisement.

So whip up 2/3 cup of cream, and you’ll be able to adequately cover the whole pie. Then, sprinkle with coconut!

This pie is GOOOOOOOOOOD. I don’t think the coconut is really necessary — it adds a bit of texture and a nice toasted flavor, but anyone with coconut allergies could easily leave it out. It’s somewhat on the sweet side. And it’s also a lot less orange than the original advertisement — browny-orange isn’t a bad color for pumpkin pie by any means, just don’t expect an orange-orange pie!

I think I’ve got a new favorite pie to take to Thanksgiving next year!

Recipe comes from the Gallery of Graphic Design from TJS Labs.

Now that’s cleared up, let’s take a look at what we’re trying to make and eat this week…

This is one that has been up for consideration a number of times, actually, but we’ve always either settled on something better or worse. While these meat balls are pretty weird looking, they aren’t quite as outlandish as some things we’ve made — they fall into that middle ground of odd, but not horrifyingly bizarre. I am actually not so much freaked out by the “porcupine” rice bits, as I am by the weird glossy coating the meatballs seem to have. Food just isn’t supposed to glisten like that.

PORCUPINE MEAT BALLS

*00 g (1 lb.) fine hamburger mince
*50 g (8 oz.) sausage meat
*50 (1 cup) long grain rice, uncooked
1 onion, grated or finely chopped
1 carrot, grated
1 teaspoon mixed herbs
1 tablespoon chutney, chopped
1 egg, beaten
Oil for frying
1 can tomato soup
250 ml (1 cup) water
Finely grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
Parsley sprigs for garnish

Place hamburger mince, sausage meat, rice, onion, carrot, mixed herbs, chutney, and egg in a mixing bowl and mix together.

Shape mixture into balls, approximately 4 cm (1-1/2 in.) in diameter, with clean, cool, wet hands.

Heat 1 cm (1/2 in.) oil in a large heavy frying pan and fry meat balls until browned on all sides, turning frequently. Drain well on kitchen paper towels.

Place fried meatballs in a casserole or ovenproof dish.

Mix soup with water, lemon rind and juice and pour over meatballs.

Bake, without a lid, in a moderate oven at 180 deg. C (350 deg. F) for 45 minutes or until tender.

Serve hot garnished with parsley sprigs accompanied by creamed potatoes and glazed carrots. Serves 6.

So upon a closer reading, it’s not the rice that’s going to be the oddball ingredient here — it’s chutney. Now, I don’t really know much about chutney. It is an Indian condiment, and it can be wet or dry, spicy or mild, made with fruits or vegetables. I’ve often seen it with takeout or at restaurants, but never really eaten it. So for this, I settled for a moderately inexpensive “Major Grey Chutney,” which is a mildly spiced mango chutney. It tastes like somewhat vinegary jam, or maybe mincemeat.

In other random news, I got exactly 1.00 pounds of ground chuck at the meat counter. Maybe I should go play the lottery.

This isn’t a very inspiring assortment of ingredients in the bowl. (And I even forgot to add the blob of chutney at this point, it had to be mixed in later when I remembered.)

I started mixing the meat and stuff with a wooden spoon, but quickly gave in and switch to hand-mixing — it wasn’t going to come together otherwise.

Besides, I had to shape the meatballs by hand, so I ended up with meat-coated hands anyway.

While it might be “nourishing and economical,” it isn’t low-fat. And while I don’t try to entirely eliminate fat from my diet, I do try to use a little bit less than THIS much.

The meatballs smelled very good when finished frying. I kept having to remind myself they were still raw on the inside and I really shouldn’t try eating them yet. (Plus all that rice must still be crunchy…)

They almost fit in one layer in the casserole dish — hopefully a few sticking out of the sauce won’t be a problem. Speaking of which, the sauce tastes like very watery tomato soup. The lemon probably helps it somewhat, but it’s awfully diluted.

And finally, a nice helping with a side of mashed potatoes. (I didn’t get around to making any glazed carrots. Sorry.)

These were so close to being delicious that I was really disappointed. The chutney and Italian herb mix gave the meatballs a really good flavor; you couldn’t tell there was onion and carrot in there at all. The sauce, after cooking, had a wonderful citrus freshness that brightened up the tomato flavor and accentuated the meatballs nicely.

So what went wrong, you might well ask? The rice, while not completely raw, was still very al dente. It really ruined the texture, and it was hard to get past the crunch and enjoy the rest of the meatball. If the rice had been half-cooked to start, it could have worked (or possibly leave the rice out altogether, although that might make the texture odd in other ways). While those little spines definitely did remind us of a porcupine, I doubt it’s what the recipe creator really intended. (Who would do that to food on purpose?)

But I did learn that chutney helps make some darn good meatballs!

Advertisement from 1976 in “New Idea” preserved online in the Flickr stream of glen.h

WHITE HOUSE SPINACH DE LUXE

1 pound spinach
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup spinach water
1/2 cup White House [evaporated milk]
1 cup grated cheese
4 slices bacon

Wash spinach carefully. Add salt. Cook spinach with only the water clinging to leaves. Drain. Measure liquid, add water to make 1/2 cup. Combine with White House Milk. Place alternate layers of spinach, cheese, and milk mixture in shallow greased casserole. Top with bacon slices. Bake in moderate oven, 375 F., for 35 minutes or until bacon is crisp. 4 servings.

Spinach De Luxe is one of those dishes that visually scare me. My mother, despite good intentions, was pretty bad at cooking. She also worked. So a lot of her standard main and side dishes were from the freezer. The worst was fried clams that tasted like breaded rubber bands. A close runner-up was “spinach soufflé,” which took the worst characteristics of both soufflés and spinach and combined them into one sad, unappealing green blob. I still can’t look at any cooked spinach without mentally cringing, even when I know it’s going to taste infinitely better than my memories.

Although, I’ll admit — I don’t know how this is going to turn out. Maybe my fear of green sludge will be justified.

I didn’t have fresh spinach on hand, but did manage to dig a pound of frozen chopped spinach out of the freezer. (I didn’t expect it to be quite so finely chopped, though.)

Draining the spinach yielded exactly 1/2 cup of “spinach water,” so we didn’t add any extra water.

For “cheese,” I grated up some leftover gouda. This is becoming an excellent use of leftovers!

Layering turned out to be slightly challenging. A pound of chopped spinach doesn’t take up very much volume, but I did manage to stretch it into two thin layers.

I used five slices of bacon rather than four, just to cover the entire surface. And then, it went in the oven to bake.

It took longer than 35 minutes to crisp the bacon; it’s generally difficult to get bacon truly crisp if you’re letting it sit in its own fat (or sit on top of cheesy spinach milk, for that matter).

I also forgot to account for the bacon shrinking. (Oh well.)

This tasted really good! Everybody’s first bite was sort of reluctant (it isn’t a beautiful thing, even if you weren’t traumatized by spinach as a child) but even the pickiest child, at first declaring she didn’t like it (and liked bites including bacon “even worse”), ended up cleaning her plate. She claimed she was just being polite, although I don’t necessarily believe that.

To really make this dish a winner, I recommend leave out 1/2 cup of liquid — there was some debate whether the “spinach water” or evaporated milk were less helpful, but either way Spinach De Luxe came out rather on the squishy side. I think using a nice cheese was a big help for its overall flavor, and the bacon is a great contrast on top. Also consider breaking your bacon into smaller pieces, rather than just having a meat layer on top; it will be easier to eat and serve.

Adorable milk-hawking infant brought to you by White House Milk, and preserved online in bluwmongoose’s Flickr stream.

OK, that isn’t all that terrifying. The most monstrous thing most puddings resemble is a slime mold — kinda gross, but not particularly threatening.

Thanks to thoughtful comments (which more or less worked out all the options I’d come up with on my own) I have a list of reasons this might have failed:

1. Cornstarch works better than tapioca. True. This is why almost every modern made-from-scratch pudding calls for cornstarch rather than tapioca, I assume. For now, though, I want to see how to make tapioca work. In researching and debating the tapioca question, I found a (much more) modern recipe for tapioca-based chocolate pudding. Buzz tried making it one night and it worked beautifully — extremely thick, just like pudding should be — so clearly tapioca is a usable (if fussy) thickener.
2. The eggs weren’t whipped enough. This is was what I thought the first time through, and for Batch 2 I ensured extremely stiff egg whites — but still ended up with very liquid pudding.
3. Incorrect substitution amount, should have used 2x as much tapioca flour. The measurement conversions from The Cook’s Thesaurus do point out that half an amount of instant pearl tapioca should substitute for pearl tapioca, so maybe it’s a
4. Need to cook tapioca flour longer than Minute Tapioca. Thanks to research from Ellen’s Kitchen, we learned that “instant” tapiocas are partially pre-cooked, which reduces the time the home cook must heat the starch to get it to thicken properly — implying that plain old tapioca flour needs to be heated longer than its name-brand instant cousins.

I ranked these in order from least to most likely (in my humble opinion); so, if I’m right, the tapioca flour needed to be cooked longer on the stovetop. As a “control,” I’ll also use authentic Minute Tapioca to see how it works in comparison to tapioca flour.

The assembled ingredients.

The retro Minute Tapioca recipe as seen above is still (more or less) what’s on the back of the Minute Tapioca box, so it seems to have stood the test of time. Interestingly, though, the modern version recommends letting the tapioca-milk-yolk mix stand for five minutes before applying heat (presumably for the liquid to soak into the tapioca granules, so I’m following that recommendation.

Egg, milk, tapioca, sugar, and vanilla — whisked together and sitting around.

After it sat, I put it on medium heat and stirred gently for a while. As the temperature rose, the tapioca did indeed start to slightly congeal. This was particularly obvious because it had that classic tapioca-blob appearance. (Not very surprising since Minute Tapioca comes in little chunks.)

Again, the modern box came in handy since it explicitly stated that the pudding needed to be at a hard boil — bubbles continuing to appear even when I stirred — before coming off the heat. This wasn’t really made clear in the vintage recipe (indeed, it freaked out that I would overcook the tapioca).

And after cooking, Version 3 was better than Versions 1 and 2. Thick and pudding-like!

The egg whites were whipped into submission.

The tapioca was adding to the egg and everything was folded together.

And it sat in the fridge for a while. (Interestingly, this batch once again seemed to lose a little bit of structural integrity — it almost felt the bubbles in the foam collapsed more easily after sitting for a while. It’s still far more sturdy than either previous attempt though, an extremely strong indication that the tapioca cook time is to blame.)

Armed with research and experience, it’s time to tackle the tapioca flour method again.

I’ll spare you yet another shot of milk, tapioca, egg yolk, and sugar in a pot.

This time the thickening sort of went in stages. When the mixture was heated through and just about to start boiling, it got somewhat thicker.

And then it was about the same thickness for more than six minutes; once it was at the “hard boil” stage, it ramped up to very, very thick. Encouraging!

The apricots were a little tart, which was a nice contrast with the pudding. In terms of consistency, this finally was the gooey texture we wanted. I liked the smooth version with tapioca flour somewhat better than the lumpy version with Minute Tapioca. And, hooray, I conquered the PUDDING RECIPE OF DOOM!

Happy Halloween, everybody!

This week (in celebration of both Pork Month and Cookie Month) we’ll be exploring the lard-tastic cookbook Queens of Cuisine with Swift’ning, “written by” Martha Logan. Why is “written by” in quotes? Because Martha Logan, despite being the renowned home economist who invented recipes and was regularly featured in advertisements for Swift & Company, was a completely fictional woman.

One of Swift’s products was Swift’ning. Technically, it wasn’t lard, but rather shortening, since it incorporated both animal and vegetable fats. (Swift did sell pure leaf lard for a while, but this wasn’t it.) Instead of Swift’ning, we’re going to be trying out our own homemade pastured-pork lard.

One whole cup of it.

ROLLED OAT GOODIES

Yield: 10 dozen

1 cup Swift’ning
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup ground raisins
2-1/4 cups sifted flour
2 teaspoons soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup chopped nut meats

Cream Swift’ning and brown sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and raisins. Sift flour, soda, and salt together. Add dry ingredients, rolled oats, and nut meats, blending well. Drop by teaspoonfuls (size of walnut) onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake. Store in loosely covered box to retain crispness of cookies. These cookies do not spread much in baking.

Baking Temperature: 375° F

Baking Time: 10 minutes.

This is sort of a test of whether I actually can cook with lard. You know how there are some foods that you just won’t consider eating? I’m not honestly sure if lard is like that for me, or if maybe I just need to get to know it better.

OK, so this looks like a fairly standard arrangement of cookie ingredients, right? Except… that’s not butter. That’s pale greasy stuff in a measuring cup. That’s lard.

Lard apparently creams more or less like butter. Except it’s lard. (Yeah, this is going REALLY WELL.)

This is also the point where I notice a distinct smell of lard in the air. Uh-oh. Nobody wants to eat a cookie that smells like an old pork chop…

Once the sugar is added, it needs to mix “until fluffy.” This is one of those stages of baking that I never entirely understood, because butter and sugar never looks “fluffy” to me even when thoroughly mixed. I generally just go by color, and wait until the yellow gets a little more pale. That strategy isn’t going to work with lard and brown sugar, so it’s time to just guess and hope.

The eggs, vanilla, and raisins went in.

With flour, nuts, and oats, the batter got real thick, real fast. The mixer started groaning and whining a little bit.

And it still smells a bit like lard.

Scooped out and ready for the oven. On the plus side, this is probably the least interested in eating (instead of baking) the cookie dough that I have ever been.

And after ten minutes, rolled oat goodies were piled on cooling racks!

These were a big hit — even with me, and I don’t typically like “crisp” cookies. The lard-y smell was gone after they baked, and they were a tasty oatmeal raisin cookie. Maybe Martha Logan knew what she was talking about…

Queens of Cuisine has been preserved for public viewing on The Internet Archive, apparently scanned from a copy that had been discarded in a dumpster.

Therefore, when Buzz came home from a walk and announced he had found a ripe persimmon tree,* I was pretty excited.  (He had been out walking with our daughter, and she had picked up a fallen fruit and asked him what it was; she initially thought it was a brightly-colored rock.)

Persimmons are one of those things that really aren’t edible before they are completely ripe. If you’ve ever bitten a very green banana and gotten that sort of prickly fuzzy feeling on your tongue, just imagine that times twenty and you’ll have an idea of what unripe persimmons do to your mouth. (The Old Foodie has a nice post about their astringent effect, including some historical anecdotes of persimmons’ ultra-puckering power.)

Fresh off the tree, persimmons need a bit of processing to turn into pudding.

After a light washing, they are squished up and pushed through a wire mesh strainer to separate the persimmon pulp from the seeds and skin.

Persimmons are one of those fruits with surprisingly large seeds. Of course, the wild persimmons are relatively small, but still.

Pulp is pretty good on its own, but now we’re ready to make it into pudding!

To truly get our retro on, we used a recipe from “Indian Cookin,” a small, rather odd 1973 cookbook.  Buzz got it at Fort Michilimackinac when he was six or seven.  While on family vacations, he was allowed to get one modestly priced souvenir per trip.  On that particular visit to northern Michigan, he decided to get the book, since it combined his strong interests in cooking and Indian culture.  It has some reasonable looking recipes, like this one, and some that sound completely off-the-wall, like yellow jacket soup.  Never having had occasion to cook groundhog, opossum, or any of several varieties of frog, this was the first time Buzz had ever actually used one of the recipes in the book.

Persimmon Pudding

1-3/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 lb. butter
2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 cups persimmons

Press enough persimmons through a colander to make 2 cups. In another bowl beat eggs, add milk, sugar and melted butter, now the flour and persimmons. Mix well, pour into 9×12 baking dish. Bake 400 degrees until even brown.

The pudding only bakes until it is set in the middle; you’re not trying to crisp it up or anything.

This goes well with whipped cream (or vanilla ice cream, mmm), but doesn’t really require any toppings. Persimmon pudding is very sweet, and has one of those flavors you really have to taste to understand. Unless you’ve eaten persimmons, I don’t know how to describe it. But I definitely do recommend tasting it if you ever get the opportunity — whether you make it from scratch after picking your own persimmons, or just happen to run across it in a restaurant!

* Buzz has a good knack for finding edible fruit on random hikes, combined with enough botanical knowledge to be sure he’s picking persimmons and not something poisonous. If you are interested in similar scavenging and cooking adventures, please make sure you have enough basic knowledge to not poison yourself and your family. Reading this blog is not going to provide that education.