Shortbread fans (and a bit about ovens)

It's the last gasp of summer, friends. The air is getting cool at night (sometimes). Stores offer apple cider in big displays. And this week I go back to school.

To mark the occasion, let's look at one more recipe from this summer's Canadian vacation. It's a pretty basic shortbread recipe, one that calls for three ingredients and a modicum of decoration. But things get interesting with the instructions.

First, the original recipe calls for "washed butter." Why would you need to give your butter a bath? According to the many homesteading blogs that encourage you to make your own butter, you have to wash fresh butter well in order to drain away all traces of milk. Otherwise it goes rancid. The only other reason I can think of for using "washed butter" here is to make sure your butter is, well, buttery. Shortbread depends on a specific blend of butter, flour, and sugar, and there's no room for anything else.

Once you've mixed all the ingredients and prepared the cookies, you're instructed to "bake in a slow oven (325 F)." What?

cooking range, c. 1910

The phrase "slow oven" comes from a time before ovens had regulated temperatures. You'll find it in early American cookbooks when food was baked in Dutch ovens and in later ones when women used monstrous ranges, the predecessor to today's stove-oven combination. Until the 1920s, when most families had made the transition to gas ovens, women had to rely on their understanding of heat to put on enough wood or coals to bake bread, or to let the coals burn out to bake something more delicate, like cookies. Even into the 1920s and 1930s, some families didn't have "heat regulators," as the editors of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book called them. And if that was the case, "judgment and experience must be the guides."

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, from where this recipe originates, used both points of reference ("slow oven" and a specific temperature) because many Americans were in the middle of switching over when it was published in 1930. Some readers had heat regulators, while others didn't. It's fascinating to see how the smallest details can illuminate a turning point in American domestic history.

I am hopelessly reliant on temperatures, just as I am pretty dependent on recipes. But I was pleased to see that when reading colonial recipes, my interpretation of "slow oven" as 300 to 325 F was right on the mark.

Shortbread Fans
(slightly adapted from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 325 F (yes, we use temperatures around these parts). In a medium bowl, whisk flour and sugar together. Work in butter with your fingertips until well blended.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 1/4-inch thickness and cut out rounds with a measuring cup. Slice each round in half and press each half-moon four times with the tip of a knife, creating a fan-like decoration. Bake for 10 minutes at 325 F, or until browned on the bottom.


Works cited: Cooking range photo from Family Lineages and History.

Hand wash only (II)

A few days ago, I started thinking about the difficulties of looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Let's face it: life without electricity, equal voting rights, or antibiotics would be way harder. To explore this point further, let's look at life without two rather nice appliances (albeit just for the two weeks that we were on vacation in Canada).

1. Life Without a Dishwasher

At the island, we usually use two big enamelware basins for washing, one with hot rinse water and one with warm soapy water. We take turns, going two at a time, one to wash the dishes and one to dry. There are fun things about this. For as long as I can remember, we've sung old camp and vaudeville songs while drying dishes after dinner. (My grandfather is a big fan of Cole Porter.) I have fond memories of my cousins harmonizing over "Lida Rose" from The Music Man. And when you're not singing, it's a good time to chat with your dishwashing partner.

But those dishes add up: this year, we had six people up for two weeks, plus two visitors for several days. That's six to eight sets of dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every. Single. Day. Sometimes the mice get into the silverware drawer and you have to wash every fork, knife, and spoon. Your hands get dry from the soap. I've lived in apartments without dishwashers, but cleaning the dishes of two people is way different from doing the dishes of six or eight.

2. Life Without a Washing Machine

This is where the real pain lies. And funny enough, we used to be more modern when my mom was growing up. My grandmother and great-grandmother would haul a freestanding washing machine onto the rocks and set the thing going to wash clothes. Apparently it made an awful racket, but it did the job. Now that we no longer have such a handy appliance, we wash clothes by hand.

It's an inexact science. We need three or four big tubs, depending on the amount of clothes. The biggest tub we fill with warm, soapy water for washing; a smaller one with warm water for rinsing; and often one with bleachy water for serious stains. After letting the clothes soak in the soapy water, we (and by we I mean my mom, who always takes this on) use a clean metal plunger to mash them around and make sure the soap really gets in there. Stains you have to scrub out by hand. After a few rinses and some vigorous wringing, they're ready to hang on the line behind the cabin. Again, it's not all bad; it's a great time to catch up with my mom or talk through some teaching ideas.

Still, this is one of the most physical domestic activities I've ever seen. What with the plunging and the scrubbing and the wringing, you get a real workout. And we actually have it easy with running water, hot and cold, coming out of the pipes at the back of the house; there's no hauling of water up from the lake or pumps.

Imagine doing these chores for the rest of your life, lady readers. Laundry you could do once a week, but dishes every day. Is it any wonder that when 19th-century women had a little extra cash, they hired out their laundry before purchasing any other luxuries? I'm not dismissing the value of doing things by hand; certainly my family gets some enjoyment out of it, or we'd have invested in some appliances by now. But boy, do I love the 21st century.

Hand wash only (I)

It's easy to wax nostalgic about the "good old days," that halcyon golden age when kids didn't do drugs or drink underage, and life was simpler, without cell phones and social media complicating things. (Yes, I'm guilty of this!) There are a few things wrong with this kind of thinking, though: first, the "good old days" never truly existed. Kids have always gotten into trouble and American life has always been complicated, just in different ways (think about the extreme social demands of the Gilded Age, or the sweeping poverty of the Great Depression). Second, this kind of rose-colored thinking always glosses over the hard parts of living in the past, like chores done without modern conveniences, attitudes towards marginalized groups, and a lack of equality.

In particular, I have trouble remembering the second reason. Who knows why; I'm a proud liberal feminist and there's no way I'd give up my right to vote. And each summer, living rustically on vacation reminds me how much I love modern conveniences. But there's something about that image of a simpler life, uncomplicated by technology and consumerism, that gets me every time.

So this week, let's take a closer look at one of the reasons why yearning for the simpler days is actually counterproductive. We're going to examine life without two modern domestic conveniences: the dishwasher and the washing machine, both of which my family does without when we're on vacation in Canada. While we do enjoy "getting back to the land," each summer I sort of wish we'd installed both machines when we wired the cabin for electricity thirty years ago. Why? Check in on Thursday to find out.

Blueberry picking (and muffins)

It's been two weeks since we returned from vacation in Canada, and I can't stop thinking about it. Even though I've since joined my parents for a weekend in upstate New York. Even though Josh and I have entertained and seen friends and gotten thoroughly back into the Providence swing of things. Even though school starts soon (gah!). There's just something about vacation that grabs you tight and doesn't let go.

This year's visit, more than anything, was defined by blueberries. Blueberry bushes run wild over the island, bordering paths and leading into the woods. If we're making pancakes for breakfast, my mom will often step outside to pick a handful of berries from the bushes behind the cabin. We usually go blueberry picking at least once on vacation, hoping to put the produce towards a fresh pie. If we're lucky, we'll pick enough so we don't have to supplement with "store-bought," a phrase that gives my grandfather heart palpitations when we're up at the island.

No such worries this year. My sister, Josh and I picked enough for a pie just from the bushes outside the cabin. Venturing farther afield, the whole family picked enough for a double portion of blueberry cobbler. Then we had berry muffins. Then we picked enough for another pie. We ate blueberry pancakes three times during our two-week visit. And we certainly left enough for the next visitors.

Needless to say, we had a bumper crop.

There's something so peaceful and zen-like about picking blueberries. Cup or pail in hand, you can hike as little or as far as you want until you find a good patch. The best berries are fat and round, like little blue stars, and if you brush them with your fingers they fall right into your hand (or onto the ground, as so often happens). It's easy to work longer than you're expecting; each time you pause or talk about heading back, you'll spy the perfect bush a few feet to the right. "Just one more," you'll think, reaching for the fruit. Sometimes you might mistake a dark huckleberry for a blue, but that doesn't matter, since they're both edible, and you're on vacation, and who's really counting?

blueberries (L) and huckleberries (R)

These muffins are one of the better ways to consume a cupful of fresh blueberries, should you find your lucky self in possession of some. Light and barely sweet, tasting of milk and butter, muffins are a great vehicle for fresh fruit. Especially when you've tried out all the other ways to eat blueberries.

Blueberry Muffins
(adapted from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer, 1930)

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
2 tbsp melted butter
1 egg
1 cup blueberries, picked over and rinsed

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Line a muffin tin with liners, or brush with oil or butter. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar, and whisk to mix. In a separate, medium bowl, combine the milk, butter, and egg. Don't worry if the butter clumps when you add it.

Quickly add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir a few times. Before it's fully incorporated, fold in the berries. Stir a few more times until just combined. Drop the batter into the prepared tins and bake at 400 F for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Away

For the next few weeks I'll be away on vacation with my family. Swimming, canoeing, reading, and cooler weather (fingers crossed) await! I'll be back at the beginning of August. In the meantime, you can read posts from last year's vacation here and here. Hope you're all enjoying summer!

Supposedly delicious (II)

As I mentioned earlier, I love perusing the old cookbooks at the cottage to see what earlier generations enjoyed eating. People of my great-grandparents’ generation apparently cooked with quite a lot of lard in the 1930s, while those of my grandparents’ generation liked to cook entire meals in casserole dishes. (The 1950s and 1960s were apparently full of food fads like that.) These cookbooks are also entertaining for the quaint illustrations, like this one of a woman rolling out pastry dough in the 1960s Joy of Cooking:

I don’t know about you, but I can’t roll out dough using just my index fingers.

A number of the 1940s cookbooks claim American home cooking as the one thing that will win the war. The introduction to Cook It In A Casserole, 1943, argues that by forcing a wartime economy on America, Hitler is encouraging Americans to return to the good old casserole: “the oldest and the most satisfactory mode of cooking.”

And of course, there are also a few recipes that give me pause. Where I think to myself, Did readers actually eat that? And what does it taste like? (This is the moment where I contemplate making it myself. That moment is usually short.)

Of course, I know that many people still happily consume organ meat today, so I’m not trying to be critical. But as a young Western cook of the 21^st century, I’m often surprised by how quickly food fads have changed.

So what do you think? Would you try any of the recipes below?

• Baked Brains and Eggs (from The Joy of Cooking, 1967). The way the recipe title rolls off the tongue reminds me of the Monty Python Spam skit.


• Heart Pie (from Cook It In A Casserole, 1943). Sounds quaint, right? Heart pie for Valentine’s Day? Oh wait.


• Frizzled Beef a la King (from Cook It In A Casserole, 1943). It’s basically dried beef cooked with veggies, milk, and sherry. But why is it “frizzled”?


• Scrambled Brains (from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1930). Scrambled eggs for breakfast plus a special ingredient.


• Frozen Cheese Salad (from Meals Tested Tasted and Approved, 1930). Cream cheese + mix-ins, which actually sounds promising. But the title doesn’t.


• Whale (from The Joy of Cooking, 1967). The editors begin with: “Last—but vast” and go on to describe how you have to cook it like beef, “which it resembles more than it does fish.” I can’t picture a Midwestern, suburban white family of the 1960s sitting down to a meal of whale. I do want to try whale, but unless I visit a northern Native American reservation, that probably won’t happen anytime soon.

Special vacation edition: Cinnamon buns, or snails

During my mom’s senior year of high school, her family hosted a Norwegian exchange student, and they’ve stayed in touch with her ever since. Fast-forward many years later to when I was in middle school: we were lucky enough to visit this Norwegian friend and her family on their small island in Norway (there’s a theme here somewhere). While much of that trip is obscured in my memory by my own awkwardness (it was middle school, remember), I do recall the amazing food we ate there. My mom’s friend made these flaky butter biscuits with seeds on top, and before we left I asked her for the recipe. She said something along the lines of, “Make the dough and put butter on it, then roll it out and put more butter on it, and keep doing that.”

Not very specific, but all you need is that general principle: roll copious amounts of butter into dough and it will bake up light and flaky. Our favorite Providence bakery follows this idea to the letter.

And it only took me 10 years to actually try it myself!

The base for these cinnamon rolls is a Scandinavian coffee cake, which becomes light and flaky after it’s been rolled with butter and left alone to contemplate the joys of milk fat. I like to think that if I hadn’t gotten out of control and sprinkled cinnamon sugar on top, too, this dough would have turned into something very like those buttery Norwegian biscuits. But in the end, I don’t really care that much. These cinnamon buns are amazing.

However, there were just a few slight problems while baking. Remember how we have to adapt to our circumstances as we cook at the island? Well, during the making of these buns I...

• discovered that we had no white sugar (so I pounded up some raw sugar cubes)


• learned that 1960s cookbooks still gave yeast measurements as “1 cake compressed yeast” (so I made an educated guess)


• thought that we had no rolling pins (so I used a beer glass)

All in a day’s baking, though, right? Just think, when you try out this updated recipe in the comfort of your modern kitchen, it will seem downright easy. Or at least it will to me, when I make these again.

Because I will be making these again. These cinnamon buns are glorious. The copious amounts of butter may send the Wellness Brigade into hysterics, but hey, it’s vacation (as I justified it). They’re as flaky and light as those Norwegian biscuits, and just sweet enough to feel like a dessert or a sinful breakfast.

Lesson learned: those Norwegians (and 1960s American Joy readers) know how to live.

especially if you enjoy it with a cold brew

Cinnamon Buns (Snails)

(adapted from The Joy of Cooking, 1967 edition)

for the dough:

2 eggs

¾ cup warm water

2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

2 cups butter, divided

for the filling:

1/3 – ½ cup brown sugar

1/2 – 1 tsp cinnamon

To make the dough:

Beat the eggs together in a small bowl, then add the water and the yeast. Stir to dissolve and let sit in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the flour, salt, sugar, and ½ cup butter together until well blended. When the yeast mixture has proofed, make a ring of the flour mixture in the bowl and pour the yeast mixture into the center of the bowl. Stir to combine. With your hands, knead the dough for about 2 minutes, until most of the floury bits are incorporated. Cover the dough and let it rest in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes.

Beat the rest of the butter until it’s creamy, and prepare a floured surface. When the dough has rested, turn it out onto the floured surface and roll into an oblong shape about ½ inch thick. With a knife, smear about ¼ of the butter onto 2/3 of the oblong dough, like so:

Then fold the unbuttered third of dough onto the center third, and fold again over the last third. The dough should look like a pamphlet. Rotate it 90 degrees and roll out the dough again to 1/2 inch thickness, and repeat with the next ¼ of butter. Continue to fold the dough, rotate 90 degrees, roll out, and cover with butter until you’ve used all the butter. The dough should then have been rotated 360 degrees and rolled out and buttered four times. Put the dough back into the large bowl, cover, and refrigerate for 2 hours or until doubled in bulk.

When the dough has doubled in bulk, turn it out onto the floured surface and roll into an oblong shape about ¼ inch thick. Spread with butter (just a little will do at this point) and sprinkle evenly with brown sugar and cinnamon. Roll the dough over on itself like a jelly roll, and lightly pinch the loose ends to seal. Cut into 1-inch slices. Grease 2 muffin tins and place each slice at the bottom of each muffin container (you can squash them in if necessary). Sprinkle with brown sugar. Preheat the oven to 350 F and let rise for 30 minutes.

Once the buns have risen, bake for 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

Special vacation edition: Brown sugar blueberry pie

We’ve just returned from a relaxing week with family on Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada. My mom’s side of the family has been spending summers up here since the 1940s, when my great-grandfather (appropriately named “Granddaddy”) built a boathouse on the island he’d just purchased. The island has since grown to include a main cabin and two smaller cottages, but the cabins themselves haven’t changed much since the 1940s. Think bare beams, no insulation, and nights where all you can hear is the overwhelming chirp of crickets and the creak of the docks. It’s in the middle of nowhere and we like it that way.

And if you haven’t guessed by now, I also like the fact that so little has changed since the 1940s. But I’m reasonable: I like having electricity and running water, and indoor plumbing. My mom grew up here with outhouses and kerosene lamps, but that’s a little too prehistoric for me.

Gasp! I actually enjoy some modern conveniences!

Anyway, my sister is determined to march our little cabin into the modern age, step by refurbished step. So this summer we’ve replaced a few ancient mattresses with brand-new pillow-top dreams, and Lissa’s put up new curtains and laid out fresh bedspreads. My dad strung up new lamps to hang in the porch so we can read at night. All these changes add some much-needed freshness to the place, and I like it. But I also love the things that stay the same. These are the little details that I grew up with every summer, and the ones I greet like old friends each time I visit.

There are the kerosene lamps the family converted into electric lights. The reed pump organ supplied only with old hymnals and compilations of folk songs. The collection of baskets woven from dyed porcupine quills. The sketchbooks filled with drawings and watercolors done by my grandmother and my own mother. The old comics from the 1970s—Archie, Richie Rich, and Batman—that my sister and I used to reread every summer, because they’re just so much different from (better than) today’s comics (and Archie wears bellbottoms!). The wooden boats we sailed at the sandy beach when we were little.

And, of course, the old cookbooks.

There’s quite an interesting collection up here. It’s small but reflects the changing values of each generation: the Fannie Farmer from the 1930s, the “Cook it in a Casserole” special of the 1950s, the classic Joy of Cooking from the 1960s, and more recently, one of Mark Bittman’s tomes. Before I started this project, I used to peruse the cookbooks and delight at the copious amounts of lard the 1930s cookbooks would call for, or the occasionally bizarre recipes found even in Joy (more on that in a few days). This year I came with a mission: to use one or two of these cookbooks and to report the results back to you, my devoted readers.

The first report is on an old classic that I’ve presented here before: blueberry pie. We always make a blueberry pie at the island, often with berries we picked ourselves. Sadly, there weren’t any berries growing when we arrived, so we made do with store-bought. And since there wasn’t any white sugar at our tiny local grocery store, I turned it into a brown sugar pie. But the family, fresh from swimming, pronounced it delicious.

It’s fitting, then, to open the special vacation edition with this kind of pie. It reflects the adaptations and adjustments we make each year at the island, when we realize we’re out of this ingredient or can’t find that utensil. It also reflects the somewhat odd 1960s habit of making pie crust with flour paste. But who cares when it tastes so good?

Brown Sugar Blueberry Pie

(adapted from The Joy of Cooking, 1967 edition)

makes one 9-inch pie

for the filling:

4 cups fresh blueberries

3-4 tbsp flour

2/3 cup brown sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

1-2 tbsp butter

for the crust:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

¼ cup water

2/3 cup butter

To make the filling:

Rinse and drain the blueberries, making sure to pick them over for leaves and stems. Place the berries in a large bowl and sprinkle with the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and mix gently. Let sit while you make the crust.

To make the crust:

Preheat the oven to 450 F. In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt together. Remove 1/3 cup of the flour mixture to a small bowl and add ¼ cup water, mixing to form a paste. To the remaining dry flour mixture, cut in the butter with knives or work it in with your fingertips. Once the grain is the size of peas, add the paste back into the dough and mix with your hands until the dough forms a ball. You may need to add a little more water to make sure it comes together.

Turn out the dough onto a floured board and separate into two balls. Roll out the first ball into a circular form slightly larger than the bottom of a 9-inch pie pan. Fold the dough in quarters and place in the pie pan, unfolding to cover the pan. Cover any gaps with extra dough. Pour the filling into the pie dish and dot the top of the filling with the remaining butter.

Roll out the second ball of dough as you wish. I like to make a lattice crust: roll out the dough into an oblong shape and use a knife to cut the dough into long strips about ½ inch wide. (See vintage 1960s diagram at left.)


Lay the strips over the filling in one direction, then in the other, making sure to weave them together into a loose lattice. It’s okay if the strips break; you can mush them back together with your fingertips.

Bake the pie at 450 F for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 F and bake for 35-40 more minutes.

Away

For the next week, I'll be enjoying some time with family in Ontario, Canada. There will be lots of swimming, canoeing, picnicking, reading, and, of course, cooking. I'll be back soon with more recipes and stories. Hope you're all enjoying August so far!