How to render suet for cooking

Back when I first started this blog, I learned a few things right away about historical cooking. First, some old recipes are very similar to their modern counterparts (like pie). Second, animal fat is wonderful. From salt pork to lard, it's all delicious.

Lard may have fallen out of favor with the onset of fat-free food, but used sparingly, it can make all the difference in a recipe. It gives pastry dough that beautiful flaky texture, and it adds depth to dishes when used to grease pans before cooking or baking. Historical cooks knew this well, since they didn't have margarine or canola oil at hand (though butter was a delicious alternative). Today, it turns out there's a small but thriving population of cooks who use (and talk about) animal fat regularly, including those paleo enthusiasts who only eat what our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have eaten. (We're talking waaay back when.)

You can substitute butter for animal fat in most historical recipes, but if you'd like to see what all the fuss is about, you'll need to prepare the fat. Alas, this was a hard-learned lesson for me, one that explains why I had so much trouble making those delicious apple turnovers a few years ago. But you, ah! dear reader, you can benefit from my experience.

First, you need to find out what kind of animal fat you're dealing with. In the United States, you'll most likely wind up with one of two kinds:

• Suet, or raw beef or lamb fat
• Lard, or pig fat (can be rendered or not)

If you are lucky enough to wind up with rendered lard, your job is done! You can proceed directly to your favorite recipe. If you have suet or unrendered lard, you have a little more work to do.

Rendering fat refers to processing "waste" animal products, like the fat around kidneys (suet), into an edible form. If you look at raw suet, you'll see why: it's stringy and piece-y, and hard to work with. You need to cook it and remove the sinews in order to use it. (Whereas I just worked in bits of raw suet to the turnovers...a difficult enterprise.) Here's what to do:

1. Chop the suet or lard into small dice, removing as many sinews and tissues as possible.

2. Place a heavy Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Pour in enough water to cover the bottom of the pot, and place the diced fat in the pot.

3. Heat, stirring occasionally, until the fat has completely dissolved into something that looks like oil and there are little browned bits floating around in it. Time varies wildly; it took me about an hour and a half to render 1/4 lb of lamb suet, but that's also because I had to start over.

4. Strain through a cheesecloth to remove all the browned bits.

5. Store in a jar or other container and let harden, then refrigerate indefinitely.

Then try it out in your favorite recipe and see what you think. It's different! Do any of you cook with animal fat? What do you like about it?

Pumpkin pie

This time of year, Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" always seems to be stuck in my head. Yes, I did play it in class because it connected to our Lord of the Rings discussion, but it's also just so seasonally appropriate. "Leaves are falling all around....time I was on my way." It's the perfect thing to sing while crunching through the gold and red leaves on the sidewalk.

Erin of Reading My Tea Leaves made the funny, and true, observation that bloggers are totally obsessed with the seasons. These days, blogs are all about spiced apples and warm cider and crisp fall days. I'm guilty of this, too. But it seems appropriate that blogs about food and simple living--the ones I read--are focused on the seasons and their changing, because in many ways we're still closely tied to the land and the weather. Maybe we aren't farmers, but many of us purchase food from farmers' markets, and our meals therefore depend on what's in season. Our outdoor activities, the shapes of our days, our clothing--all determined by the seasons. It's a lot easier to run down the block for a morning coffee when the weather's still crisp and cool, not yet biting. And I always find myself heading outside more often in every season but winter. For some reason, bundling up in scarves and puffy coats makes venturing outside for a walk just a bit more difficult.

With that in mind, I've been trying to enjoy these last days of beautiful autumn. We've been lucky in Providence, with golden days and warm temperatures and just a few cold snaps in between. It's perfect weather for picking apples and going for long walks and sitting on the porch with hot mulled cider (see? I can't get away from it!).

Last weekend, filled with the spirit of fall, Josh and I headed out to Seekonk to pick pumpkins. The pumpkin picking itself was majorly disappointing; picture a field dotted with pumpkins already plucked from the vine, so little kids didn't have to work too hard. But we had fun walking around the farm, getting lost in the corn maze, and talking to goats. (Josh hates goats, by the way--the shape of their pupils makes them look evil or something.) Then we loaded up on carving pumpkins, decorative gourds, and a sugar pumpkin for baking.

Back at home, we carved some impressive jack-o-lanterns, which proceeded to mold within one week (damn this warm weather!). The sugar pumpkin I cut into pieces and baked in the oven, until it felt soft under the touch of a fork. (I made sure not to follow my dad's example, where he stuck an entire, whole pumpkin in the oven to roast. He realized that something was wrong when he heard a bang and found the entire kitchen covered in pumpkin guts.)

Baked pumpkin looks a little yellower than the canned stuff, but it tastes just as good. Fresher, even, though that may be my imagination. Pureed, it goes nicely in an old-fashioned pie. I returned to Little House on the Prairie for this one, because there's just something about fall and harvest time that makes me long for the Ingalls family. And Ma Ingalls did not disappoint. This is a simpler pie than pumpkin pies we make today--fewer eggs, less milk. Prairie housewives wouldn't have much spice on hand, so I used just a dash of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

The best thing about it? Instead of covering up the squashy taste with sugar and intense spice, the flavorings only enhance the pumpkin, so the pie tastes like...well, a pumpkin pie. But not the sweet custard kind. The kind where the pumpkin is the starring ingredient.

Tell me, what are your favorite things about fall? What foods do you find yourself making this season?


Pumpkin Pie
(adapted from The Little House Cookbook)

for the pie shell:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the work surface
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, cubed
3 tbsp ice water

for the filling:
2 cups pumpkin puree (homemade or canned)
2 eggs
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cup rich milk or half-and-half
pinch of salt
1 tsp maple syrup
pinch of spices (I used cinnamon, cloves, and ginger)

Make the pie shell:
Sift the flour and salt together, and with the tips of your fingers, work the butter into the flour until it feels like coarse meal. Add the ice water 1 tbsp at a time until the dough comes together when you work it with your hand. Turn out onto a floured surface and roll into a flat circle. Transfer to a 9-inch pie pan and even out the sides. Let sit while you make the filling.

Make the filling:
Preheat the oven to 425 F. Beat the eggs in a large bowl, then add the brown sugar, maple syrup, milk, salt, and pumpkin until well blended. Pour into the pie shell.

Bake the pie in the center of the oven at 425 F for 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 350 F and bake until a toothpick inserted into the filling comes out clean. NOTE: the baking time will vary depending on the fat content of the milk you use. I used 1%, which took about an hour and a half to bake total. With half-and-half, the baking time should be about 40 minutes.

Cool pie before serving.

Frontier House (II)

A few days ago I gave an overview of PBS' miniseries Frontier House, where three modern families live for five months on Montana homesteads as though it were 1883. Here are just a few things that were fascinating about the series:

• the historically accurate division of labor. The men build the houses, sheds, and fences, while the women cook, do never-ending laundry, and try to sew (there's just never any time). The kids care for the animals, do the milking, haul water, and help with the harvest. As you might expect, the women get the raw end of the deal. As soon as they're finished making breakfast, it's time to start making lunch for all those hungry workers who will be expecting a hot meal. And that's without considering that they have to wash all their families' clothes by hand.


• the importance of family size. The families with four kids split up their work much as I described above. The newly-married couple with no kids has a much more flexible division of work: the woman helps her husband build fences and do a lot of outdoor labor, in addition to cooking and laundering. Now that I think of it, that's just more work for the woman.


• the families' reactions to the hardships of homesteading. There's a lot of crying. Mostly out of frustration (like when a mom finds out she can't wear makeup for their family portrait, or when the dogs eat the breakfast that same mom spent hours cooking). And while some of the people try to work together, one family resists cooperation, which just leads to tension and conflict. This is probably the most "reality-show" part of the series.


• the families' reactions to poverty. They're not given a lot of food to start with, since most homesteaders only had what they could bring with them. One family budgets their goods, while another family burns through their food and then spends all their money at the general store. To make more money, the father of that family builds his own still. And makes moonshine.


• health concerns. One woman gets tendinitis in her arm because she's doing so much housework. One man, who's lost a good deal of weight, worries that he's starving. The doctor who examines him reports that he's actually much healthier than he was at the start of the show, he's at a healthy weight, and his only problem is dehydration. 


• the emotional impact of killing animals. Periodically they take stock of the hens and realize they have to kill the ones that aren't laying. If they can't harvest eggs, at least they can benefit from the meat. But one of the kids grows emotionally attached to every animal, and protests mightily when it's time to chop off the head of his favorite chicken. "Then you shouldn't have named her!" his mom says. Ah, the reality of knowing where your food comes from.


• the adjustment back to modern life. One couple reflects that they don't know what to do with their ocean-front mansion (it's too darn big!). Another couple separates to work out the tensions that emerged during their homesteading experience. One girl discovers her affinity with animals and carries that back to her life in Tennessee. Two other girls reflect that they're "bored" with modern life.

Josh commented that the final episode (showing the adjustment to modern life) was designed with a very specific message in mind: that modern life isolates family members from each other and makes it hard for people to be self-reliant. The producers of the show definitely emphasized this aspect. But to some extent, it's an accurate message. How self-reliant are we really? Do we really need these big houses? Do we use computers and television to mediate our interactions with family and friends?

This show has given me a lot to consider. Now I want to hear from you: are there weaknesses in our modern lives? If so, what do you think they are? How could we change for the better?

Previously:

Frontier House

Frontier House

It's 1883. You've arrived in a desolate part of Montana with your family and all your worldly belongings, ready to create a homestead and start your new life as a farmer. You have only the woods and the tools you brought with you to build your house. You have only the animals you brought with you to raise and work the farm. There are only two other families nearby.

Oh, and don't forget to describe your experience for the cameras. They're filming everything.

So begins the fascinating PBS miniseries Frontier House (2001), where three modern American families volunteer to be transported back in time to live on Montana homesteads for five months. I'd watched one of these shows before--1900 House, where a British family lives in a Victorian brownstone for three months--and loved it. So on a suggestion by Josh's dad, I checked out Frontier House from the library.

Normally I hate reality shows, but this intersection of history and modernity hits all the right notes. Most of the participants in Frontier House have no idea what they're in for. The family members who signed them up expected life in Montana to be like Little House on the Prairie (the TV series): running around the prairie, putting up their hair in braids, teaching their kids important life lessons. Most of them are unpleasantly surprised to discover that life is much more like the book version of Little House. Complete with endless days of baked beans, freak snowstorms, and hard physical labor.

The families have to leave behind everything from the 21st century, including makeup, toilet paper, and modern methods of contraception. (The adults have a funny conversation about this over cold pints of beer, after they learn that the most widely-used method of contraception on the prairie was a condom made of pig intestine.) Historical experts teach the families how to cook on a wood-fired range, how to chop wood and construct houses, and how to ride horses. Then the families are outfitted in 1880s clothing (corsets and bustles for the ladies, jackets and string ties for the men) and transported to their new homes via horse and wagon. After that, it's only the families, the film crew, and the great outdoors.

I could go on and on about this show. It gave me a lot to think about, especially since I nurture a secret dream to be able to go back in time to live in the 19th century. Rationally I know that so much about 19th-century life would be difficult and frustrating, especially for women. But as you've probably guessed by now, part of me wants to do that anyway. So watching Frontier House was a great way to live that dream vicariously through three unsuspecting families.

Check back on Monday to find out what I loved about this series!

One year

Dear blog,

You are one year old today. To celebrate, I doctored this photo of a decidedly unhistorical chocolate beet cake. I hope you like it.

It's been quite a year! In one year of blogging, I have...

• worked with two cookbooks and started a third
• learned what salt pork is
• discovered the joys of cooking with animal fat
• tried and failed to make cornbread
• decided to eat more mindfully (a co-resolution with Josh)
• cooked with fish, shrimp, veal, chicken, pork, and a rabbit despite said resolution
• survived a snowstorm using my mad hearth cooking skills
• shared the tools needed to cook over a hearth fire, if others should wish to survive snowstorms
• started a container garden (and fallen in love with it)
• studied colonial Williamsburg
• survived a school trip to Washington, D.C.
• considered (and discarded) historical cleaning methods
• had only one complete cooking disaster that I couldn't eat

Dear blog, it's been much more fun having lovely readers along for the ride. Truly, thank you for reading, friends. It's such a blast to discuss historical cooking methods and weird foods with you.

Here's hoping the next year is just as fun!

Love,
Abby

Fried Parsnips

I have always been wary of parsnips.

When I was little, our dinner vegetables tended toward the traditional: peas, green beans, corn, carrots, salad. For a long time I didn't know what parsnips were. Based on the name I thought they were something like turnips, which I knew all about from reading the Molly McIntire series of American Girl books. Remember those? In the first book, Molly refuses to eat her plate of mashed turnips. They're pale, mushy, and definitely gross. But the housekeeper tells Molly she can't leave the table until she's eaten her entire dinner, and by the time Mrs. McIntire returns from her WWII factory job (late at night, it's implied), Molly still hasn't left the table. I remember this chapter vividly: how cold and unappetizing the turnips looked by then. I assumed that parsnips, with their similar name, must be the same.

(Never mind that Mrs. McIntire proceeds to reheat the turnips with brown sugar, making them surprisingly delicious.)

But this blog is all about adventure, so last week I decided to end my accidental life-long boycott of parsnips.

To cook parsnips prairie-style, you trim the ends and boil the parsnips until a fork can pierce them easily. Once they're cool, you shave off the skin with a table knife. It's a tricky maneuver that can make you extremely grateful for the invention of vegetable peelers. Once peeled, you slice the parsnips into thin strips, dredge the strips in flour, and fry them up in a few tablespoons of butter.

The verdict? Well, parsnips taste kind of....bland. Like carrots that have lost their color and flavor. Of course, frying them in butter adds a rich dimension to the taste, but I'm not sure I'd like them cooked in another way. Also, I'm growing tired of this prairie method of frying all vegetables in some kind of fat.

But perhaps the prairie method is the problem. Anyone have suggestions for making parsnips tasty? Otherwise I'm likely to keep my misconception of them as the equivalent of Molly McIntire's turnips.

Fried Potatoes

I'm starting to notice something about this project. Are you?

There's not a lot of color in prairie food. It's mostly shades of brown. Which could go to a gross place, but I'd rather think of it as a commentary on the limited availability of food and storage out on the prairie. It seems that once fall rolled around, people had to hunker down for the winter with a tasty selection of root vegetables and salt pork that would keep in the cellar.

And hey, I'm not against salt pork! Or root vegetables. I had some last night.

But if I'd been eating variations on potatoes, carrots, and salt pork all winter long, I might not have been so enthusiastic about that meal.

Potatoes are a kind of comfort food for me. Maybe it's my Irish background,* but potatoes taste darn good any way you cook them. Baked, boiled, mashed (my sister's favorite), fried, deep-fried....yum.

These are pretty straightforward. Boil whole, unpeeled potatoes until just tender, then peel with a knife while still hot. (The skin comes right off.) Slice into 1/4 - 1/8 inch rounds, and fry until brown in leftover drippings. Eaten with carrots and grilled pork chops, they taste of crisp fall days spent crunching through leaves.

*Nerd note: Did you know that if Columbus had never arrived at the New World and initiated the Columbian Exchange, the Irish potato famine might never have occurred? The potato was introduced to the Old World following Columbus' exploration, and it quickly became so central to the Irish diet that it was only a matter of a few centuries before a potato blight devastated the population in the 19th century. I just (re)learned that for the course I'm teaching this year.

Johnny Cake

Back when I was a youthful graduate student, my roommates and I decided to explore the best of Rhode Island. We made it to the Hope Street farmer's market and a harvest festival before papers, reading, and student teaching took over. Then, in May, we emerged from the cave of school. We realized that we only had a few weeks left to explore the best of Rhode Island before graduation.

My roommate had been talking about jonnycake since we read about them in Edible Rhody that past fall. Jonnycakes are a signature Rhode Island dish. They're like pancakes that had a steamy affair with cornbread: you fry a cornbread batter on a griddle, then serve the cakes with maple syrup. Yum. So together with my roommate's science cohort, we arranged a trip to quaint Little Compton, solely so we could try jonnycake at a local restaurant. (But we did visit a lovely beach afterwards.)

The jonnycakes were delicious, and we came away satisfied. It turns out that there's a bit of controversy surrounding how to cook jonnycake, depending on where you live in the Ocean State. But generally, you want a small, pancake-like patty that will travel well (indeed, the name might have come from "journeycake").

The Ingalls family, on the other hand, would beg to differ.

Prairie jonnycake, or johnny cake, as they spelled it, is baked in a flat sheet that you cut into squares. It crumbles easily, so it probably wouldn't travel well. About the only things it has in common with Rhode Island jonnycake are the ingredients: cornmeal, baking soda, some fat and sweetener.

But it does serve as a tasty vehicle for maple syrup! I drizzled my prized syrup on top of several squares of johnny cake, and they were gone in no time. While this prairie version doesn't have quite as many fond memories attached to it as the Rhode Island variety, it serves as an easy weekend breakfast in the fall.

Stewed Jack Rabbit and Dumplings

Up to this point, I've been playing it safe. The recipes I've chosen have at least mildly resembled something I've eaten in the past. But that all changes today.

That's right. I cooked a bunny.

I understand that this post may lose me some readers.* That's okay. The nineteenth-century prairie wasn't all dry cornbread and apple turnovers. Pa Ingalls went out hunting, and he brought back turkeys and blackbirds and deer and rabbits. It's about time I investigated some of the squishier aspects of prairie meals.

Now, The Joy of Cooking informed me that while rabbit stew may seen like a foreign concept, many people still enjoy rabbit today. This unfortunately led me to believe that I could procure a dressed rabbit at my local Whole Foods. Not so, friends. I had to call around to a few specialty butchers before I found Central Meat Market, which offers beef, poultry, rabbit, goose, quail, whole pigs, and even partial cows (with a special order). Having never ventured into a specialty butcher shop before, I was a little nervous. But the butcher was quite friendly, and he even chopped up the rabbit for me.

Then I proceeded to psych myself up for this recipe. Josh and I went to the Coggeshall Farm Harvest Festival a few hours before I started to cook, which proved inspiring and...um...guilt-inducing.

We visited a hearth cooking site (manned by a well-dressed young fop), where a whole turkey was stewing over the fire. We heard all about heritage breed chickens. We strolled past a pony ride and tried our hand at checkers. Then we stopped by a crafts tent and petted the angora rabbits on display. They were so, so soft and sweet.

That's when the guilt set in. It's hard to think about cooking an animal for dinner when you're petting its relative at a festival.

Nevertheless, I had to soldier on. So that evening I tried to forget the cute bunnies and focus on the meal at hand.

I started off with salt pork (as if I'd use anything else). I browned some diced-up pieces of pork in a Dutch oven, then removed the pork for later. The rabbit pieces went into the fat to brown (while I tried to look at the pieces as abstract bits of meat. Rabbit ends up looking disconcertingly like chicken, which I wasn't expecting). Meanwhile, I simmered the giblets (heart, liver, etc.) in a separate saucepan with water, and added the liquid to the Dutch oven to simmer with the rabbit.

At this point I wasn't at all sure I wanted to eat this stew for dinner.

But still, on I went. I toasted some flour to a nice cocoa-brown, then mixed it with the chopped-up giblets and some water to form a dark gravy. Then I prepared some dumpling dough (your basic flour-salt-buttermilk-baking soda mixture) and got ready for the final stretch. When the meat was tender, I mixed the gravy and the salt pork pieces back into the Dutch oven, and dropped the dumpling dough on top. After about 10 minutes, the dumplings had puffed into a nice crust, and the stew was ready.

Was I ready?

I tried the sauce and dumplings before I tested the rabbit. The sauce was incredibly rich and earthy--definitely the giblets' doing. It was a little too much for me. The rabbit, on the other hand, was lightly gamey and a delicious combination of chicken and venison. So tasty.

I definitely wouldn't make this stew again (that sauce), and I'd have to work up the courage to buy another skinned rabbit from the butcher before I ventured near it again. But preparing for this stew was a surprisingly sobering experience. It wasn't until I visited that butcher that I realized just how sanitized our mainstream American experience of food has become. I've been accustomed to seeing only beef, chicken, turkey, and pork in the supermarket, wrapped up nicely in plastic packages. Were it not for this project, I doubt I would have fully considered how limited that meat selection really is.



* But not you, Lyuda. You've eaten rabbits before, right?

Apple Turnovers

These are the two things I've learned so far from this project:

1. Pies and pie-like things haven't changed much since the 19th century.
2. Animal fat is sinfully delicious.

You already know that I'm a salt pork enthusiast. Having only cooked with butter and oil prior to starting this project, the pork was a pleasant surprise. But now I've discovered lard.

Oh, lard.

Now, lard isn't as obscure as salt pork. Bakers still use it to make pie dough (and maybe other things? I'm not sure). But I'd never seen it before, and I wasn't sure how to procure it. Luckily, my friendly neighborhood farmer's market boasts several meat stands, and on my weekly visit, one of them happened to be selling leaf lard. "For Serious Cooks," the sign said.* I bought a package and took it home.

Lard looks, unsurprisingly, like a solid lump of whitish fat. The label read "Pork Suet," making me doubt momentarily that I'd bought the right kind. But I gamely sliced off enough lard to fill a 1/3 measuring cup, separating the fat from stringy parts. Then I rubbed it into the flour and salt just like it was butter, and brought the dough together with some ice water. My hands felt a little greasy, but all seemed well so far.

The rest was relatively simple: I rolled out the dough and sliced it into squares, then put a dollop of apples mixed with cinnamon and brown sugar in the middle of each square. Then I folded the dough over the apples to create triangles, and sealed the edges with a fork. The turnovers baked for half an hour and came out steaming and smelling of spice.

Admittedly, I was a little nervous, what with the pork suet confusion and so on. But, my god, that lard made the flakiest, tenderest crust I've ever tasted. These are little pockets of apple deliciousness, my friends, and it's all due to that animal fat.

Salt pork may get my enthusiasm, but lard gets my everlasting devotion.


*I got really excited by the sign. Apparently this project has elevated me to the level of Serious Cook!

Fried Fish

Every summer my family spends a few weeks on a small island on a lake in Ontario, Canada. It's pretty rustic--apparently my sister and I just missed the outhouse years--but it's my favorite part of the summer. We spend our days reading on the porch, swimming before every meal, and canoeing around the bay, just soaking up the quiet. The inland bay used to be full of fish, too; my parents tell stories about the giant pike my uncle caught off Bongarde's Rock, and about the prehistoric muskie that spent one summer under the island dock. When my sister and I were little, we could go down to the boathouse and fish off the side of the slip with our plastic Mickey Mouse fishing poles. We never caught anything special, just a few baby rockfish, but we loved to watch the fish swim up to our hooks and dare a nibble.

When we were older, our dad took us out to the better fishing spots in the bay (Bongarde's Rock was a regular stop, what with its legendary history). For a few years we caught bass big enough to eat for dinner. My dad showed me how to clean and gut the fish, and we'd throw the innards to the gulls. Then my mom and my grandmother would fry the fillets to crisp perfection.

(Lest you think we adhered to traditional gender roles, my grandmother was the one who taught my dad how to clean a fish.)

I've been thinking about the island for the past few days, wishing I were still there, so Ma Ingalls's fried fish seemed like the perfect way to end the summer. I'm not quite brave enough to clean fish on my own (and without gulls to take away the remains), so I just used tilapia fillets.

It's quite simple. You start by frying up some salt pork until it's golden, and you remove the salt pork to a platter but keep the drippings hot. (And you know it's going to be good when it starts with fried salt pork.) Then you dredge the fish in cornmeal and a bit of pepper, maybe brushing the fish with a beaten egg beforehand so the cornmeal sticks. Fry the fish in the hot drippings until one side is golden brown, then turn the fillets over to finish cooking.

If you'd like, you can make a gravy to pour over the fish at the table. Once you've added the fillets to the platter, stir about a cup of milk into the drippings until it foams. Then sprinkle the fish with a bit of vinegar, and serve with the gravy.

I tell you, I am a salt pork convert. The fat added a new dimension to the fish, making it salty and rich.* I'm still not used to this pioneer way of pouring a milk-based gravy over a savory meat or fish, but it did taste better than the salt pork gravy. It was absolutely delicious, and the perfect way to end the summer.


*I later found out that my grandmother fried fish exactly the same way, with bacon fat instead of salt pork. That revelation made it all the better.

Huckleberry Pie (a.k.a. Hurricane Pie)

Hello again! I didn't get much historical cooking done this past month, due to a tremendous amount of traveling. Josh and I determined that we spent the equivalent of a weekend in the car driving from state to state (and out of the country), and that my pet hamster is now the most well-traveled hamster in history (since she came with us). And once we got back home, we had a hurricane to contend with. Thanks, Irene.

So on Saturday night we hunkered down for the storm with some new friends, a card game, and pie. Huckleberry pie, to be exact, although I cheated and used blueberries, because Stop & Shop has never heard of huckleberries. Still, Barbara M. Walker writes in her introduction to the recipe that many pioneers also cheated and used blueberries, which are apparently better than huckleberries. So my cheating has historical precedence.

This pie isn't much different than the modern blueberry pie we're used to, but it does have a few changes. First, you make the crust with lard instead of shortening. (Since one of our guests was vegetarian, I just used butter.) Then, once you've lined the pan with the bottom crust, you layer the blueberries and a mixture of brown sugar, flour, and nutmeg in the pan (instead of mixing everything together in a sugary medley beforehand). I laid the top crust on in stripes, so some of the brown sugar crystallized in the oven instead of soaking into the blueberries.

All in all, a pretty good recipe. The crystallized sugar made for a nice crunch, and the blueberries were tender and not too sweet. But I think I prefer the Joy of Cooking method of mixing the sugar in with the berries beforehand--it makes the filling melt together like jam.

Nevertheless, it was a good pie to snack on while getting to know new friends and swapping predictions about the upcoming storm. And it was even better the next morning for breakfast. I had a big slice with coffee and milk while watching the wind whip branches into the street.

We were incredibly lucky with this hurricane; we lost neither electricity nor property. I know it caused great damage further south, and even in other parts of Rhode Island. I'm thinking about all the people without power, or transportation, or perhaps shelter, and I don't know what to say. So I wrote about a pie, and about new friends. Good food and companionship--I wish that for anyone who's been hurt by the hurricane.

Cornbread

Oh, friends. I knew it couldn't last long. Three tasty meals right out of the gate? It was time for something bad. I just wasn't expecting it to be the cornbread.

I love cornbread. I don't have it all that often--it's one of those foods that I forget I like until I find it at a restaurant or someone else makes it. People often serve it with chili, but I associate it with maple syrup. My family makes maple syrup every spring, and when my sister and I were little, our classes took field trips to our house to see the process first-hand. The field trips always ended with a snack of warm, fluffy cornbread and maple syrup at our kitchen table. Understandably, I was excited to return to this snack of my youth.

This was not that cornbread.

And really, the recipe should have given me a hint. All you do is mix almost two cups of boiling water with three cups of cornmeal, and a pinch of salt. No rising agent, no sweetener. The only flavoring is the salt pork drippings,* which you use to grease the pan.

I went in with an open mind, I really did. I even pressed my hand into the dough like Ma Ingalls did, or so the cookbook informed me. I tried it hot out of the oven with cheese and soup, and the next morning with strawberry jam. But nothing could help that cornbread escape the dismal fact that it was, in Josh's words, "cornmeal and water mushed together."

I think I'll stick to the twenty-first century method for my cornbread.


*Remember those? You saved them for a reason!

Stuffed Roasted Hen

For my birthday yesterday, I tricked Josh into eating a Laura Ingalls Wilder roasted chicken.

It was a good day.

While he slaved away on grade reports, I got to work in his kitchen. First I made the stuffing: a savory blend of bread, butter, sage, and salt and pepper. As Walker recommended, I melted a quarter cup of butter in the roasting pan as the oven preheated. Meanwhile, I tried to slice up the bread I'd gotten for free on a tour of our favorite bakery.

Then I remembered that Josh's roommate had moved out earlier that day. And realized that she had taken all of the sharp kitchen knives with her.

We did find a bright green, plastic serrated knife in the drawer, so Josh sawed away at the bread in a manly fashion while I assembled other ingredients. Then, instead of grating the bread into teeny tiny little crumbs like Walker instructs (this seemed like it would lead only to madness and sliced-up hands), I tore it into little pieces and tossed it with the melted butter, a tablespoon of chopped fresh sage, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

It sure didn't look like the stuffing of my childhood, but hey, this was my own personal prairie, this kitchen lacking in utensils. I made do.

Next, the chicken. We quickly discovered that the bright green knife would not puncture the plastic encasing the chicken. Josh, ever resourceful, sliced it open with a potato peeler. He then vowed to buy kitchen knives as soon as he had free time.

Once we'd gotten the chicken free, though, the preparation was pretty straightforward. Rinse and dry the chicken, rub its insides with salt, fill the cavities with stuffing, and rub the skin with a tablespoon of butter and salt. I was supposed to sprinkle flour on top, too, but Josh's roommate had, sadly, taken that as well. So I slid the roasting pan into a 350 degree oven and let it cook for 2 hours, pausing to turn the chicken over halfway through. Then I shared the news with Josh that we would be eating a Laura Ingalls Wilder chicken.

"Oh, boy," he said.

And yet: despite the lack of knives; despite eating at 9:00 at night because I had once again forgotten to backwards-time the project; despite neglecting to make the gravy because the giblets weren't included and there wasn't any flour; the chicken was delicious. Succulent, juicy, full of flavor. It might be better than my stand-by roasted chicken recipe. Even Josh approved.

Like I said, it was a good day.

Baked Beans

These baked beans were a two-night project, mostly because I am not organized enough to plan my cooking 5 hours ahead of time. Interestingly, I was organized enough to pre-soak a few cups of navy beans overnight, but I completely lost track of time the next day. So I spent a quiet Sunday night doing the preliminary assembly, and raced home the next night to bake the beans all evening. This dish required commitment. And a LOT of water. These are high-maintenance beans, my friends.

ready for simmering

So, night one: after the beans were finished soaking, I simmered them in a new batch of water for 40 minutes and poured in half a teaspoon of baking soda, which sent up a nice fizz of bubbles when it hit the beans. Then the beans had to simmer for 30 more minutes, this time with 1/4 pound of salt pork thrown in for good measure. It felt a little like the beans were taking the best bath of their lives, and I was the attending servant. They ended their night in the refrigerator, stored in an enameled casserole dish.

Night two found two small onions and a green pepper joining the beans, as well as a drizzle of molasses. (Apparently the molasses helps the dish taste more like the baked beans we're used to.) Then I stuck the whole thing in the oven and let it bake for 4 hours.

I have to be honest: this was not a pretty dish. It didn't look like the baked beans I'm used to, all silky and deep red-brown. I'm almost afraid to show you the picture.

but this is for historical purposes, so i will include it

Even Josh thought I was weird for eating it. But what it lacked in beauty, it made up for in taste. Like the fried salt pork, these beans are to be savored in small quantities. I liked them best accompanied by a warm cheese biscuit and some fruit. If you're looking for a hearty dinner that will last you all week, and you're up for some front-work (and bean-attending), try them.

Fried Salt Pork with Gravy; Drippings

Our inaugural recipe is a real winner. A slab of salt pork, sliced and fried into the crispiest, unhealthiest morsels. It's doused with a gravy made from milk and the pork fat left over in the pan. Oh, my--I could feel my arteries hardening just as I read through the recipe.

Salt pork is a slab of pork, often fatback, that's been salted into submission. In the 19th century, the salt helped the pork keep without refrigeration, so you could stock up at the country store and then dip into your cellar storage when needed. Despite knowing this beforehand, I'd never actually seen salt pork, and I wasn't sure what to expect.*

It came out of the package as a dense white chunk, sparkling with salt crystals. It hardly smelled like anything. But it sliced up easily enough, and I set the slices in a skillet of water to boil off some of the salt. (I later found out that most salt pork has at least some red meat in it--I guess I ate only fat that day. Alas.)

Once the pork had boiled, I rolled the slices in flour and set them to fry. The pork fried up fast, brown and crispy.

I poured off most of the drippings (all that glistening pork fat in the pan) to keep for later, since this stuff was prime cooking fat back on the prairie. Better than butter for those pioneers! Then I whisked flour and milk into the tablespoon of drippings left to make a gravy. I served the whole dish on a plate, with a generous salad to off-set the pork (and the guilt). Tentatively, I took a bite.

That pork tasted like the best bacon I have ever had. Crispy, melt-in-your-mouth, almost too rich for a full serving. The milk gravy dulled the taste a bit, which maybe was the point--I can't imagine eating an entire meal of fried salt pork. But if I'd been out working in the fields all day, maybe I'd approach it with a little more abandon.

Good, rich food, a simple recipe--it can't all be this easy...


*I've found salt pork in the meat section of my local Whole Foods and Stop & Shop.

Book One: The Little House Cookbook

I confess: I'm cheating. Our first book is technically not a historical cookbook.

I prefer to think of it as easing into this project. Baby steps.

Barbara M. Walker created The Little House Cookbook after she and her daughter recreated practically every recipe described in Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiographical Little House series. Drawing from period resources, Walker remained as faithful as she could to the original recipes while updating the measurements for twentieth-century use. The book is full of helpful hints about how to make the foods more palatable to our modern tastes--for example, you might want to serve Laura's cornbread (made only of cornmeal, salt, and drippings) with maple syrup. Walker also provides a short quotation from the series with every recipe, filling in the context so we know exactly when Laura might have eaten blackbird pie.

In a way, the historical background and the connection to a beloved literary character make this the perfect book to start off the experiment. It's a link between the past and the present.

So tie on your aprons and let's start cooking!