Cheese biscuits

Yesterday Josh and I had a simple night in. Cooking dinner, watching the latest New Girl episode, talking about our days. As part of our goal to become more mindful, healthful eaters, Josh made a delicious vegetarian chili, chock-full of sauteed veggies, onions, and spicy peppers, ladled over brown rice.

Before he started cooking, I thought about what else we could add to the meal to round it out (my brain is full of terms like this ever since I started obsessively reading Bon Appetit and Cooking Light). I'd been eyeing a cheese biscuit recipe in the Williamsburg cookbook, and that seemed like the perfect accompaniment.

Hah.

All went well as I mixed the dough. It's a simple recipe, flour and salt and butter and cheese. I love cheese, friends. It makes everything better. Someday I'll have to give you my rapturous ode to cheese (when I'm feeling more positive about it). But then it came time to cut the biscuits for baking.

Why yes, that is one half of a tea ball infuser sitting right next to the cut biscuits. What's that, you say? They're the same size? I must have cut the biscuits with a tea infuser?

Sigh. It's true.

See, back in ye olde colonial Williamsburg, "biscuits" meant "crackers." Or "biscuits," too; it was one of those catch-all terms. This lovely recipe, which put me in mind of fluffy, substantial cheese biscuits in the style of Joy the Baker, actually tells you to make them cracker-sized. So I did. With my tea infuser.

These "biscuits" cook up nice and crispy, with a subtle cheesy bite. But they're just the same size as quarters or buttons, and when you prick them with a fork before baking, they kind of start to resemble banana chips. Or buttons.

(I called them "cheese buttons" in the privacy of my kitchen.)

So, Josh and I turned to another recipe I messed up in the past: vegan quinoa cornbread. Last time we tried it we were also making soup with barley, and I may or may not have mistaken the barley for quinoa. And made barley cornbread. This time I was determined to get it right! If we couldn't have fluffy cheese biscuits (though they did make a wonderful pre-dinner snack), we would have fluffy vegan cornbread.

And let me tell you, friends, we did.


Cheese Buttons
(adapted from The Williamsburg Art of Cookery)

1 cup flour
1/3 cup butter, cubed
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup grated cheese (I used cheddar and leftover asiago)
1-2 tbsp cold water, as needed

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Whisk the flour and salt together until combined. With your fingers, rub the cubed butter into the flour mixture until it resembles cornmeal. Add the cheese, and mix it into a stiff dough. If needed, add one tbsp of water at a time until the dough comes together.

On a flat, floured surface, roll out the dough to a 1/2-inch thickness, and cut with very small pastry/cookie cutter (your tea infuser, if you have one, makes a very nice-sized cracker). Arrange the crackers on an ungreased cookie sheet and prick with the end of a fork. If you like, prick crosswise so the crackers resemble buttons. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the bottoms of the crackers are just beginning to turn golden brown.

History 101: Colonial Virginia

This little blog has always been something of an experiment; heck, it's even in the name! And like the way my students pepper me with questions when I haven't taught a lesson clearly enough, for some time now this space has been nagging me (in my own mind) for more clarity. I jump from cookbook to cookbook depending on my mood, with no logical connection between either (Little House to colonial Williamsburg...), and with very little sense of how the cookbook reflects the history of the time. So to set things straight in my mind, I'm going to lay out a brief history of the time periods I've looked at so far. Hopefully this will lend the blog a little more organization. And I do hope you'll enjoy it as well, dear readers.

First up: colonial Virginia.

Time Period

the cookbook in question

The Williamsburg Art of Cookery takes its recipes from cookbooks published/written between 1732 and 1922. These later books were compilations themselves, meant to represent "Housekeeping in old Virginia." That makes our job--figuring out when most of these recipes were created--a little tougher.

Since the book we're using was created by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, I think we can safely assume that most of its recipes date from between 1699 and 1780, the years when Williamsburg served as the capital of colonial Virginia. These are also the years (roughly) represented by the current Colonial Williamsburg living history site.

So, to be clear, we're talking about pre-independence America here. Virginians are still supposed to be loyal to the British king, and while the Revolutionary War might have begun (1775) and the Declaration of Independence issued (in 1776), America won't officially become its own country until 1783.

Colonial Virginia

engraving by Theodor de Bry, 1590, of Virginia Indian chief

Virginia was the first North American colony founded by Europeans, in 1607. Its early history is one of failures and, in my opinion, utter ridiculousness. Most of the first settlers in Virginia were gentlemen expecting to mine for gold.  They nearly starved their first few winters in the New World, since few of them knew how to farm, and it was only the kindness of the Native Americans (including Pocahontas' tribe, the Powhatans) that carried them through. After a while John Rolfe (yes, the one who married Pocahontas) introduced tobacco, and that cash crop turned Virginia into a thriving colony.

For a while most Virginians were young bachelors hoping to make a buck or two on the tobacco trade. Then women started to arrive in 1619, along with indentured servants and African slaves to work the tobacco fields. The colony began to expand, especially after it was made a royal colony in 1624 (governed by the king of England). Finally, African slavery became entrenched in Virginia and the other southern colonies around 1700.

How It All Relates to Cooking

By the mid-18th century, Virginian society was pretty hierarchical, because of its status as a royal colony and its reliance on a cash crop. Here's how it broke down:

• Royal Governor (the big kahuna)
• Wealthy Planters (who were also political)
• Small Farmers (rather poor)
• Landless Whites (very poor)
• Indentured Servants (who worked out apprenticeships)
• Slaves (owned by the wealthy or small farmers)

"The Good House-wife" of the 18th century

The Williamsburg Art of Cookery is billed as the "Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion." The author goes on to describe the wonders of old Virginian hospitality, even to utter strangers. Apparently this book is full of recipes that an "accomplished gentlewoman" would have served to visiting dignitaries, family members, etc.

In other words: this is not a cookbook for the small farmers, the landless whites, the indentured servants, or the slaves. It represents what the governor or wealthy planters would have eaten--only they would have wives known as "gentlewomen."

My uncle recently visited Colonial Williamsburg, and he told us about his visit to a small 18th-century farm where people ate an extremely limited diet, often 1-2 types of food per day. So as I'm cooking all these recipes, it's helpful to keep in mind who exactly would have been eating this food, because this cookbook certainly doesn't represent all of colonial Virginia.


I hope this was helpful for you, friends! Do you have other questions about old Virginia? Or cooking in general? Or what on earth an indentured servant was?


Works Consulted: The American Pageant, 13th edition. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Photos: 1. Author. 2. History of Virginia. 3. "Women and Education in Eighteenth-Century Virginia."

Kitchen garden (I)

I've thought about starting my own little garden for a while now. My front windows are filled with plants, sure, but of the amaryllis and African violet variety rather than the edible kind.

When I graduated from college and first started living on my own, my parents gave me a set of lucky bamboo as a housewarming gift. Somehow I managed not to kill the bamboo, and now, four years later, they're growing strong in my kitchen. In the morning the leaves catch the sunlight, and they make the whole room feel cheerful.

However, I've had mixed results with other plants. Flowers? I've been growing iris bulbs in pots for two years and they have yet to flower. The African violet is quite happy, though. Trees? This winter's Christmas tree--a miniature pine in a pot--is now browning quickly and might keel over come summer. Too bad we named him. (Lord Conington: Josh's invention, of course.)

decorating, back when the tree was lush

I've had the most success with herbs so far: basil, chives, rosemary. Having just the tiniest flavor of food that I grew myself makes cooking so much more exciting, and now I want to branch out to other foods. Besides, having my own little garden could give me one more insight into the past, back when people relied more on what they could grow themselves.

Since I'm a complete novice at gardening, though, I didn't want to make the first try too hard on myself. This is strictly container gardening for now, anyway, so I decided to start off with easy plants and a couple handy guides to urban gardening. (The City Homesteader by Scott Meyer and Apartment Gardening by Amy Pennington: both inspiring, neither intimidating.) In an epic trip to the home improvement store, I bought all the seed-starting, planting materials I'd need, plus a few varieties of lettuce, peas, and herbs to try. (Who knew that wandering the gardening aisles of Home Depot could be so exciting?!) Finally, my parents brought an extra grow lamp when they visited this past weekend, and we set it up and tended to Lord Conington (my dad was full of ideas to save the poor tree). Once I return from chaperoning a five-day field trip this week, I'll be all ready to start those seeds.

And in one of those serendipitous coincidences, a friend gave me nine little tomato plants to inaugurate my kitchen garden. They're not historic in the least--Americans were suspicious of tomatoes until the 1900s, and therefore didn't grow very many of them--but they're familiar as childhood, and just the right thing to start my garden.

So this summer, I'll hopefully be posting updates on gardening as well as cooking. I'm excited to use my own food for cooking--it feels more authentic, somehow, more rooted in nature and the past than in going to the grocery store. Are any of you gardeners? What are you planting this spring?

When cleaning house

Ah, spring! The daffodils are blooming, the grass is green, the air is crisp, the snow is falling...

Yes. Although it's the end of March, New England thinks it's still time to throw down a healthy mix of snow and rain. What a dirty trick, after 70-degree weather a few weeks back.

No matter. Spring has a sense of newness about it, a feeling of being able to start over again. Maybe that's why I got the urge to clean house recently. After a few weekends of hosting friends, dashing down to D.C. to meet fiances, and preparing to lead an upcoming field trip, I was ready for a quiet couple of days at home.

So last weekend I decided to hold a mini-spring cleaning in my apartment. I swept out all the nooks and crannies, discovered that my baseboards do indeed collect dust, and wiped down my sinks and dish rack. I took my winter clothes to the dry cleaner's and washed three loads of laundry. Then I settled down to all that schoolwork that still awaited me. By the end of the weekend, I was exhausted, but my apartment looked better for it.

But like the last time I deep cleaned the apartment, I started wondering what spring cleaning had been like before women had washing machines and vacuum cleaners. So I turned to Maria Parloa's Young Housekeeper (1894) once again. She didn't disappoint.

Miss Parloa introduced her chapter on seasonal cleaning with the following:

"The season of house-cleaning is greeted with different degrees of welcome, or horror, by the different members of the family."

Sounds intimidating, right? Well, with good reason. Miss Parloa goes on to describe in great detail how to clean the various rooms of the house. Here's a paraphrased list (with commentary):

1. Wait until you don't have to light daily fires for warmth (so you can clean the furnace and stove). I guess March is not really the time to start.

2. In the cellar, remove the cinders from the furnace, then clean the whole furnace in pieces. Sweep the whole room (including the ceiling!), then whitewash the walls. I am so glad I live in an apartment.

3. In each room, brush and wipe all storage boxes and closets, then saturate with naphtha to keep out bugs. Line each box with new paper before replacing the stored goods. I suppose I moved some of my winter clothes to storage boxes...but since I'd recently cleaned all of them in the January moth scare, this was as far as it got.

4. Brush down the furniture, then place outside the room. You wouldn't want the furniture to get dirty!

5. Brush down the walls, ceiling, and windows of each room. Sweep the floor, wash the windows, woodwork, and the floor. Let dry for an hour, then replace all the furniture.

6. To clean carpets, remove the carpet tacks with a tack-lifter, then roll up the carpets in old sheets. Take the carpets outside and beat them on both sides, then let them lie on the grass until the room is ready. I don't even know where to start with this one. I guess carpets were held down with tacks before the days of rubbery carpet liners--that makes sense. But tack-lifters? You need a whole different tool just to pick up the carpets?

7. Clean the floor of each room once the carpet has been removed. Sprinkle the floor with wet sawdust, then sweep it up. Clean all surfaces with a broom covered with flannel. Wash the floors with lime water to make the floorboards "whiter and sweeter." Parloa also includes a recipe for making your own lime water (unslaked lime and water). This is getting awfully serious, friends. I am suddenly grateful that there are companies who spend all their time making cleaning products so I don't have to.

8. In bedrooms, take each bedstead apart. Pour naphtha into the grooves of each piece to prevent bedbugs. Dip the ends of slats into a bowl of naphtha. The only time I plan on taking my bedstead apart is when I move. That thing is tricky.

9. When you replace the carpet, rub the soiled spots with naphtha and flannel. Then wipe the carpet with ammonia water (that you have also made yourself). How did these people not die of naphtha poisoning?

10. Repeat appropriate steps for downstairs rooms, and make sure to beat the draperies. Good Lord. We're only halfway done?

11. In the kitchen and pantry, remove all china and dishes from the cupboards, and wash and dry the shelves. Cover with new paper. Scour the tinware, tables, and sink. This is a little more like what I did last weekend...but it's pretty much the only similarity.

Then, when the young housekeeper is finished cleaning the house, Parloa also recommends that "the piazza and yard should be put in order." At that point, were any of them still standing? No wonder she recommends hiring extra help for the week (week!) of spring cleaning. I'm not sure how anyone could manage that by herself, much less keep the meals going for the rest of the family. Apparently whole families tended to dread spring cleaning because the woman of the house would be so harried, and because she could only provide cold meals (if anything). Poor husbands.

The moral of this story is practically banging me over the head. Thank goodness for modern conveniences, and for the fact that we don't have to worry about bugs to the extent that 19th-century families did. It's fun to read between the lines for details like that: dust seems to have been a big issue, too, given the sweeping of walls and ceilings. I'm guessing soot from the furnace and gas lamps would have built up in the house as well.

Now I'm curious to hear about your spring cleaning. What have you done (or what are you planning to do) to get ready for spring? Hopefully no one's going to haul out their tack-lifter...

Williamsburg veal partridges

Some days are just full of questions. Like, why aren't there more movies like Back to the Future? Why do my students all wear feather extensions in their hair? If I walk around a lot while I teach, does that count as the day's exercise? Why is my dwarf hamster still afraid of everything that moves? And when were toothpicks invented?

I promise there's a reason for that last one.

Last week I made veal partridges, a dish which is a mystery in itself. Why call it "partridges" when the only meat involved is veal? I think it has something to do with the way the dish looks once assembled:

See, you roll up thin strips of veal and stuffing, then secure the rolls with toothpicks inserted crosswise. The resulting meat looks a little like partridges (or any bird) that have been trussed for roasting. Personally, I thought they looked more like pigs in a blanket, but I had a pretty good feeling those hadn't been invented yet in colonial America.

I also had a pretty good feeling that toothpicks hadn't been invented yet in colonial America.

{you probably couldn't buy toothpicks in a store}

Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by the answer to that question. Turns out that people have probably been using toothpicks since they first got food stuck in their teeth. However, these early toothpicks were found or whittled from bigger pieces of wood, and it wasn't until the mid-19th century that toothpicks were first mass-produced the way we know them today. (For more on the "glorious" toothpick, check out this article.)

So, jury's out on how historically accurate these veal partridges are. They may have been secured with little spikes of wood, but it's more likely that a cook would tie them in bundles with a piece of string. Still, they're quite tasty, which is really all that matters at the end of the day, right?

Williamsburg Veal Partridges

(adapted from The Williamsburg Book of Cookery)

half an onion, chopped

3 tbsp butter, divided

one piece of bread, diced or shredded into crumbs

salt & pepper

1/4 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp sage

1 tbsp milk

5-6 thin slices of veal

1/4 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 300 F. Melt 1 tbsp butter in a pan and brown the chopped onion for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, assemble the stuffing: mix the bread crumbs, herbs, and salt and pepper to taste in a medium bowl. Add the onion and mix well, then moisten with the milk.

Lay out the veal strips and spread them with the stuffing. Carefully roll up the veal and stuffing to make rolls, and secure with two toothpicks stuck crosswise. Roll each veal bundle in flour.

Melt the other 2 tbsp butter in the pan and cook the veal rolls in the butter until browned. Place the rolls in a baking dish, along with any unused stuffing, and pour the fat over the veal. Cover the baking dish and bake for 40 minutes. Serve with brown rice.

Old Virginia batter cakes

Language is such a powerful tool. You can learn so much about the writer, about a different culture, or about a past time just through the words the writer chooses. As a history teacher, I end up thinking about this a lot, especially when we're looking at primary sources in class. Of course, it's hard to get my students to appreciate this; they spend most of their time wondering why Thomas Jefferson didn't capitalize his letters and what the word "scission" means.*  But all that unconventional spelling, those weird word choices, they help you imagine the time period in a way that other tools just can't.

One of my favorite historical novels, A Northern Light, tells the story of Mattie, a girl growing up in the Adirondacks in 1906. She wants to be a writer, but it's hard to stand up for what she wants when she's expected to look after her sisters. The author, Jennifer Donnelly, puts you immediately in Mattie's shoes with strong, vivid words:

"When Mamma was alive, she could make breakfast for seven people, hear our lessons, patch Pa's trousers, pack our dinner pails, start the milk to clabbering, and roll out a piecrust. All at the same time and without ever raising her voice. I'm lucky if I can keep the mush from burning and Lou and Beth from slaughtering each other."

Trousers. Mamma and Pa. Dinner pails. Clabbering. You don't just know it's 1906, you feel it with those words.

But really, what the heck is "clabbering," anyway?

"Clabbering" means curdling milk. Cooks would use "clabber," or curdled milk, the same way we use buttermilk today: to create a tender crumb in baking or to lend a tangy taste. Back in the day when people got their milk fresh from cows instead of fresh from the supermarket, raw milk would naturally curdle when left out. You can still do that today, of course, but most of us can only access pasteurized milk, which will only sour when left out.

So if you're, say, reading an old recipe for pancakes from colonial Williamsburg, and it happens to call for clabber, you're more than welcome to substitute some buttermilk. You'll still get the same light texture, and you won't have to worry about germs.

And that's what I mean about language: not only do the words themselves provide a window into a different time, but the meaning behind them also shows you the daily rituals of the past. Cooking techniques used for centuries by women who had to milk the cow if they wanted to bake for their families. Techniques that we've mostly forgotten about thanks to the magic of mass-produced meals, pasteurization, and industrially modified food.

The pancakes, by the way? Delicious. Tender, tangy, and just substantial enough thanks to the addition of cornmeal. Since there's no sweetener in the cakes themselves, they're more versatile than modern-day pancakes: equally excellent with a salad for dinner or with maple syrup for breakfast.

Old Virginia Batter Cakes
(adapted from The Williamsburg Art of Cookery)

2 large eggs
2/3 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup water
2/3 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour, plus more if needed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
butter for the pan

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs until frothy. Add the buttermilk and water and whisk to combine; whisk in the cornmeal, flour, and salt. Let stand. Meanwhile, brush a griddle or frying pan with butter and set over medium heat. Just before you start cooking the pancakes, stir the baking soda into the batter. If the mixture is too thin, add flour by tablespoons until thick enough.

Working in batches, fry the pancakes in the heated pan, using about 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. When the pancakes have set and bubbles have formed in the middle (about 1 1/2 minutes), flip and cook another 30 seconds to 1 minute. Serve with savory or sweets according to your fancy.


* True story: I had this conversation today with my 9th graders.

Turnip tops

What is it about being on vacation? You sleep better. You get to spend long hours reading or flipping through magazines. You go for long, chilly walks. You actually crave vegetables for lunch instead of pizza.

For me, the first three all lead to the last. Because I'm more mindful of my habits and what my body wants, because I sleep as long as I need to instead of as long as the time available, because I have the luxury of time to just be. I look less to food for immediate comfort, and so I start eating salads and soups, and in the end I feel even better.

Funny how it's all interrelated, isn't it?

This week, while I'm on February break, I've been focusing more on incorporating vegetables into every meal--it seems easier to do it while I have the time and energy to shift my eating habits. So a few days ago I tossed up a big salad with fennel and tomatoes and red onion, and boiled some turnip greens as a historical side dish.

That's the thing about colonial vegetables (or "Garden Stuff," as the Williamsburg author likes to put it). There's not a whole lot that women did to alter them from their natural state. Sure, they could boil the heck out of vegetables and serve them up with a nice butter sauce, or mash up the boiled veggies with butter and cream, but they tended not to do much else. It's a stark difference from more modern-day recipes, which ask you to saute blanched kale with chorizo and drizzle a nice honey vinaigrette over the finished product, or toss roasted cauliflower with a garlic-orange sauce. (Both are delicious, by the way.) So colonial vegetables are not that exciting, and they probably don't maintain the nutritional value of just-picked greens (thanks to all that boiling). Certainly this has a lot to do with the foods that were widely available at the time. Most women would cook what grew in their kitchen garden, and exotic spices were hard to come by and expensive.

Still, that doesn't mean that our boiled turnip greens have to be boring, right? It was a little tricky figuring out how to make them more palatable, but a squeeze of lemon and a dash of salt improved them tremendously. Both additions seemed historically accurate. Apparently turnip greens "are still better boiled with Bacon in the Virginia Style," but I didn't have any bacon on hand, and besides, that seemed to defeat the point.


Turnip Tops
(adapted from The Williamsburg Art of Cookery)

1 bunch turnip greens
1/2 lemon
a few pinches of salt, divided

Trim the stems off the turnip greens and cut into 3-inch slices. Bring a large pot of water to boil, and season with several pinches of salt. Boil the turnip greens for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain in a colander, and press down on the greens to squeeze out the remaining water. Squeeze the lemon over the greens and sprinkle with the remaining salt. Serve as a side dish with something more interesting.