Dining at Downton: Kedgeree

Kedgeree is the very first dish served on Downton Abbey. Mrs. Patmore sends a steaming bowl up for breakfast, and with that we're immersed in the sumptuous world of Edwardian cuisine. Brits still eat kedgeree today, and it's one of those dishes that carries a few hundred years of British history along with it. Plus, the name is fascinating, since it directly reflects British colonialism.

Kedgeree originated as khichri, an Indian meal of rice and lentils, often served with chopped, hard-boiled egg. During British occupation of India, the English adapted the dish to their own tastes and eventually brought it back to the home country, where it caught on as a breakfast food. Kedgeree, as it became known (note the Anglicization), featured rice, fish, and egg, with a variety of spices and garnishes depending on the recipe. It was a great way for cooks to use up leftovers in the days before refrigeration, and it was seen as a rather "adventurous" dish. By the time Mrs. Patmore served it at Downton, kedgeree was entrenched in the British breakfast menu.

To make my own, I turned to Mrs. Beeton, that domestic goddess of the Victorian era. Surely, if anyone knew how to make kedgeree, it would be she. But after following her recipe to the letter, I did some comparison research and discovered that she is basically the only person who made it this way.

Beeton calls for leftover rice, "any cold fish," and two soft-boiled eggs, along with assorted seasonings and mustard. Every other recipe I've found, historic and modern, calls for smoked fish and hard-boiled eggs, with mustard seeds (or none at all). These are subtle but noticeable differences, friends. I can't help wondering if this is one of those old recipes where you really had to know what the writer meant in order for the dish to turn out remotely well. Like, did Mrs. Beeton mean "mustard seeds" when she called for mustard? Did "soft-boiled eggs" back in the Victorian day actually mean "hard-boiled"? In other words, is this recipe just code for a completely different recipe?

We'll just have to keep on wondering.

I've set down my version of Beeton's recipe below, and it's not bad. I used cod, which has a pleasant, mildly fishy flavor, and the seasonings and egg actually blend nicely. But it bears little resemblance to anything that originated in India.


Kedgeree
(adapted from Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management)

1/2 lb cod fillet
1 1/3 cup brown rice, cooked
2 tsp mustard
2 eggs
1 tsp butter, cubed
salt and cayenne pepper, to taste

To make the fish:
Set the fish in a pot and cover with cold water. Set the pot over a high flame and bring to a boil. Immediately remove from the heat and let sit for ten minutes. Remove the fish and let cool.

To make the eggs:
Boil a small pot of water over high heat. As soon as the water boils, turn the heat down to a simmer. Crack the eggs in a small bowl and slip into the hot water, using the side of the pot to guide the eggs into the water so they don't break. Cook for 5 minutes and remove from water.

To make the kedgeree:
Flake the cooked fish into small pieces. Mix with the brown rice, mustard, eggs, and butter. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Serve hot.

Dining at Downton: Fried oysters

How many of you watched the Season 3 premiere of Downton Abbey last night? We did, after some technical difficulties, and it was every bit as lavish and funny and swoony as we'd hoped. While a certain someone (cough Josh cough) kept inserting comments about one character's rumored departure from the show, I was on tenterhooks every time it seemed like things were finally going right for the Crawleys. This show, I tell you! Every time you think it's going to end happily, someone dies or loses their reputation.

Last night's episode also provided an inside glimpse at the complicated dining rituals at Downton, courtesy of O'Brien's clumsy nephew. He's been hired as a new footman, but since he trained as a hotel waiter, he bungles the dinner service. Instead of offering a dish and allowing each diner to serve him or herself, he tries to place the vegetable or fish directly onto the diner's plate! Oh, the horror! Who knew that dinner was so fraught with peril?

(Then again, Branson would surely agree with that sentiment.)

For families like the Crawleys, it was fashionable to dine a la russe, or in the Russian style. Rather than serve all courses on the table for diners to help themselves (service a la francaise), staff would bring each course out individually. With the butler supervising, footmen would serve guests from the left, allowing them to take what they wished from the proffered plate.

It seems like a lot of extra work, with too many complicated rules, but that was exactly the point. Dining a la russe allowed hosts and hostesses to show off their wealth--"Look! I can afford this many footmen!"--as well as their social status. The host would give the signal for all guests to eat, stop eating, and for each course to be served. It was the perfect environment for a host accustomed to power.

Not surprisingly, it was also the perfect environment for new footmen to mess up. And though the Crawleys might gloss over the footman's mistake in front of their guests, that kind of difficulty showed the cracks in a family's perfect facade.

Josh and I dined in a more modest environment last night (i.e. the couch and coffee table), but our meal was no less elaborate. I bought a dozen oysters from the Matunuck Oyster Bar stand at the farmers' market, and proceeded to learn quite a lot about how to open oysters without an oyster knife. It's tricky! In the end, I resorted to heating the oysters in the oven for a few minutes, then prying them open with a butter knife. That did the trick, but it also turned me forever against preparing oysters at home.

This recipe, taken from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, would have been well-received at the Crawleys' dinner table. It's basic, using only a few ingredients (and who knew the Victorians used ketchup?), but the taste is sublime. Buttery, salty, with a hint of the sea.

And thankfully, Josh and I don't care if one of us bungles the dinner service.

Fried Oysters
(adapted from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management)

1 dozen oysters, scrubbed
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp ketchup
1 tsp lemon juice

Open the oysters. If you need to do it the MacGyver way, heat the oven to 400 F. Set the scrubbed oysters in a pan in the oven for 5-7 minutes, then dunk them in a bowl of ice water and drain. Hold each oyster in the palm of your hand, deep shell down, and use a butter knife to pry the hinge of the oyster apart. Drain the liquid into a bowl and scrape out the oyster meat into the same bowl.

Heat the oysters and their liquid in a small pot until boiling. Boil one minute. Drain the liquid. Heat the butter in a small frying pan over medium heat until sizzling, then cook the drained oysters for 3-4 minutes. At the end of cooking, stir in the ketchup and lemon juice until oysters are evenly coated. Serve immediately.

Dining at Downton: Afternoon tea

When I graduated from college, I moved to New York City to work at a children's literary agency. I knew almost no one and quickly discovered that I am really not cut out for big city living. While I quietly raged against the masses of people crowding the sidewalks of Manhattan, I tried to carve out a space for myself in this city of millions. I reconnected with a few high school friends, and together we explored restaurants and museums and out-of-the-way shops. Still, there were days when homesickness for small-town Ohio would overwhelm me, and I'd need an afternoon pick-me-up.

That's how I discovered Tea & Sympathy, an adorable British tea shop in the heart of the West Village. On the recommendation of my mom's British colleague, I visited the shop one lonely August afternoon and snagged a tiny round table for myself. Wedged in between a table of chatting women and the front window, I ordered a pot of Earl Grey and a plate of scones with clotted cream and jam. The tea arrived steaming hot, accompanied by milk, sugar, and a little tea strainer. (This is where I learned how to pour tea that's been brewed with loose-leaf.) Balancing my book on my lap, I sipped tea and nibbled on light-as-air scones long into the afternoon. When I re-emerged into the heat of the city, I felt lighter, relieved of some of that loneliness.

Afternoon tea, it turns out, is good for what ails you.

The British knew this well. Once the concept of tea as a meal was firmly established in the late 19th century, it took on different meanings depending on your social class. The working class took tea as their final meal of the day, since they often couldn't afford a full meal with meat and vegetables. On the other hand, the extremely wealthy (like the Crawleys) took tea as an afternoon snack, dining on fancy cakes and dainties while they gossiped. As those of you who watch Downton Abbey know, this is the time for scheming, when the Crawley ladies plot out what suitors to cultivate and how to manipulate issues of inheritance in their favor. It's also the time for nursing broken hearts and talking discreetly about intense emotions. As I've discovered, there's nothing like a bracing cup of tea and delicate treats to make you feel better.

While we Americans often think of afternoon tea in conjunction with sweets, the Edwardians also took tea with savory treats like tiny sandwiches. French food was in vogue, so hors d'oeuvres like canapes were on the rise. This brings us to today's snack: canapes de maquereau.

Why yes, we are throwing around a lot of French today.

It's a simple recipe: thinly slice a piece of smoked mackerel, and bake in a dish greased with cayenne pepper and butter. Top little rounds of toast with the baked fish. It's a salty, spicy dish (perhaps spicier than the Crawleys might like), one that will make you drink gallons of tea. But after all, when you have matters of the heart to discuss, nothing else will do.


Canapes de Maquereau
(adapted from Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire)

4 oz piece of smoked mackerel
1 tbsp butter
1/8 - 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
4 - 5 slices light bread

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Combine the butter and cayenne pepper and grease the bottom of a baking dish with the mixture. Slice the mackerel into thin pieces and lay on the greased baking dish. Bake at 350 F for 10 minutes, or until the butter melts and the fish is warmed.

Meanwhile, toast the bread. Top immediately with the fish mixture once you remove it from the oven; be sure to sop up any leftover butter with the fish. Serve with tea.

Sardine sandwiches

Yep, you read that right.

As you may recall, I'm one of those weird folks who actually enjoy foods deemed disgusting by many Americans: anchovies and sardines, in particular. Anchovies don't just add a unique umami flavor to pasta sauces and Caesar dressing, they make a delicious topping for white pizza, too. Unfortunately, few people in my life agree. So it's always exciting to find someone else who enjoys salty, oily canned fish; it's like a special club made up of friends you'd never expect to know.

Like my freshman suitemate's grandmother.

My living situation freshman year of college was...well, interesting, as is the case with basically all college freshmen. My college arranges students in suites, which are made up of a few bedrooms (single or double) all connecting to a common living room. So instead of getting to know just your roommate really well, you also get to know four other suitemates pretty well, too. And since you don't have much of a say in who these suitemates are, you end up in one of three situations: becoming best friends; hating each other; or being surprised every day with unexpected stories and experiences.

Mine was definitely the latter, courtesy of my suitemate Charysse.

Charysse had a single, and she kept to herself for much of the first month of college. We all did, when we weren't sticking like glue to the few friendly people we found. (My roommate Daena and I pretty much went everywhere together.) But around October, something changed, and Charysse started spending more time with us in the common room, and we got to know each other real fast. Charysse posted her graded chemistry lab reports up on the walls, because she goaded her TA with ridiculous conclusions comparing the study of chemistry to the study of love. The TA responded with outraged comments, which made for excellent posters. Charysse also led us in afternoon singing sessions, which she taped on a little hand-held recorder. We discovered a shared love of Led Zeppelin and rocked out to Kashmir on quiet weeknights. It was one of those friendships that can only develop in college, when you're thrown together with people you wouldn't normally get to know. You discover how much you actually have in common with them.

Jacques Pepin Celebrates! (actual poster from PBS)

One of the most memorable aspects of that freshman year, aside from all of the above, was coming home to discover that Charysse had gotten another package from her grandmother. Her grandmother loved to send her all sorts of random gifts, which, while thoughtful, rarely had anything to do with anything. A typical package might include a creased PBS poster of Jacques Pepin (which went up on the walls, of course) and six can openers (one for each member of the suite). We had a lot of fun trying to decipher what these gifts meant.

But the strangest package was the one with the sardines. Her grandmother sent some big cans of sardines, along with a few other items that I can't recall. And after a long discussion of what this latest gift meant, Charysse opened up the cans and ate the sardines. I don't remember if I joined in--this was early on in my anchovy-sardine career, and I may not have even tried them by that point. But something about those little fishes nestled in their tin packet of oil appealed to my adventurous side. And I mentally added sardines to my list of approved foods.

It's a silly little story, one that makes me smile the way college stories do. But I always think of it whenever I'm dealing with sardines.

Unfortunately, The "Settlement" Cook Book's version is less than stellar. You mash up sardines and hard-boiled eggs into a kind of paste, which you then spread on sandwiches. It's a perfectly serviceable meal, but it lacks flavor. Perhaps the eggs cut the fishy flavor of the sardines. Honestly, when I'm eating sardines, I want the full experience. You're wrinkling your nose, I know, but it's true. Go big or go home, they say, and it's the same with sardines.

Just ask Charysse and her grandmother. They'll tell you.

What about you? Do you have any weird food preferences? I'd love to chat...


Sardine Sandwiches
(adapted from The "Settlement" Cook Book)

1 4.25 oz can of sardines in oil
2 hard-boiled eggs, shelled
1-2 tsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
3-4 tsp olive oil

Rinse the sardines with fresh water and drain. Pick out the spine and other prominent bones from the fish. With a fork or potato masher, mash together the sardines and eggs in a small bowl. Add the lemon juice and salt and pepper, then add just enough olive oil to bring the mixture together into a paste. Serve on toasted bread with fresh greens.

Chowder, a sea dish

Despite the cold, rainy weather (in June, no less), I have summer on my mind.

The beach, in particular.

Having grown up in Ohio, where the only large body of water was Lake Erie (of questionable cleanliness), I was excited to move to a place called the "Ocean State." Little Rhody is such a tiny state that you can get to the ocean in about half an hour or less. But for some reason, in the three years I've lived here, I've only made it to the beach a handful of times.

It's shameful, that's what.

But no more. This summer, it's going to be all about the beach. As soon as the weather warms up.

And in the meantime, I'll just stare longingly at these photos that I took down in Matunuck last June, on my birthday trip to the beach with Josh and my sister.

And I'll make chowder.

This is one of the better Williamsburg dishes, friends. And so deceptively simple. You chop up some onion, parboil some salt pork (it's back!), soak some crackers in milk to soften them up. In a small dutch oven, you layer slices of firm white fish on top of the salt pork, and sprinkle the onion and mashed crackers on top. Cover with crisp white wine and water, and simmer for 40 minutes. You can thicken the gravy if you'd like--the recipe describes this as more of a fish dish with gravy than as the thick stew we've come to know as chowder--but you don't have to. It tastes delicious all the same. Redolent of the sea and scented with wine, it's just the warming meal to eat on a chilly June afternoon while you wish for summer to actually get here.

Now I'm off to grade some history exams. And perhaps have another bowl of chowder.

Fish Chowder
(adapted from The Williamsburg Art of Cookery)

6 oz firm white fish, cut in six-inch pieces
1/2 cup salt pork (about 3 slices), cut in small pieces
1 small onion, chopped
10 - 12 wheat crackers
milk to cover the crackers
1 cup white wine
1 cup water
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp butter
1/3 cup parsley, chopped

Set the crackers in a bowl and pour the milk over to cover. Set aside.

Fill a small saucepan with water and set over high heat. When the water boils, drop the salt pork into the water and cook until foam forms on top, about 2 minutes.* Pour off the water and scatter the pork pieces around the bottom of a small dutch oven.

Cover the pork with the pieces of fish, and scatter the chopped onion on top. Pour the milk off the wheat crackers and crumble the crackers (they'll be mushy) on top of the fish mixture. Pour the wine and water on top.

Heat the dutch oven over high heat until the liquid boils, then turn the heat down to low and cover. Simmer for 40 minutes, or until the fish is in pieces and cooked through. Remove the dutch oven from heat, and using a slotted spoon, remove all the fish, pork, and onion from the pot.**

Heat the remaining liquid over high heat and whisk in the flour, butter, and parsley. When the liquid boils, turn off the heat and put the fish, pork, and onion back in the pot. Give it a good stir and serve with more wheat crackers.


* This is my interpretation of the vague instruction "about half boiled," since parboiling worked out so well before with salt pork.

** This is the other place where I made up my own instructions--apparently the fish should still be in one piece, but that was not the case for me. Perhaps that's because I used tilapia, which isn't the firmest fish in the sea.

To butter shrimps

Last weekend it felt like summer. 80 degrees, not too humid (so, more of an ideal summer than a real one), sunny. I spent Saturday afternoon setting up my tomato and pea plants outside, in a sheltered spot with plenty of sun. Josh and I took our time at the farmers' market, grilled some corn quesadillas, had a long, lazy lunch at our favorite bakery on Sunday. I almost believed that school was actually over, that we had nothing more pressing than figuring out what to eat for dinner.

Of course, then reality set in. Those last few weeks of school are always so agonizing, don't you think? Summer's just within reach--except it's a little too far away.

So maybe it was masochistic of me to cook shrimp for Sunday dinner. Shrimp always reminds me of summer--really, any seafood does--and while I was making it, I definitely forgot that the next day would bring teaching, not sleeping in. The kitchen was a little too hot from the stove, so I wore a tank top and jeans, sipping ice water as I worked. Physically it felt like summer...dinner tasted like summer....so why is it still only May?

These are the questions Josh and I ask each other, at least three times a day now.

In the meantime, I torture myself exquisitely with shrimp.

There's actually very little butter in this recipe, despite what the name suggests. The sunny hue comes from beaten egg yolks, which set in thin swirls to make a sort of egg-drop soup studded with shrimp. Thanks to the vagueness of colonial recipes, I'm not sure if that's what the soup should have looked like, or if it should have taken on a thicker consistency like avgolemono. Either way, it's rich and delicious and ridiculously easy to make.

I was surprised that the colonial Virginians ate shrimp, but after doing a bit of research it made sense. John Smith, recorder of the earliest European explorations in Virginia, wrote a lot about how the rivers and waters teemed with fish,

"lying so thicke with their heads above the water, as for the want of nets we attempted to catch them with our frying pans.”

The frying pan bit is, well, ridiculous, but it says a lot about the availability of fish that they even tried to catch them that way. It's no wonder that colonists touted Virginia as a veritable Eden of abundance. And in his list of fish the colonists recognized, Smith lists "shrimps" along with sturgeon and oysters. So the colonists were eating shrimp right from the beginning.

Now, of course, shrimp are much more dear--I shudder to recall how much these cost. It's sobering to think about how much fishing has changed since the 17th century. But these were worth it. For just a few hours, it really felt like summer.

Buttered Shrimp

(adapted from The Williamsburg Cookbook)

1 1/3 - 1 1/2 lbs shrimp, deveined
1 1/3 cup white wine, divided
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp nutmeg
4 egg yolks
lemon slices for garnish

Rinse the shrimp and place in a large pot, along with 1 cup white wine, the butter, and nutmeg. Cook over medium-high heat until liquid boils and the shrimp is starting to turn pink (the butter should be melted--this is the colonial way to tell if the timing's right). Now beat the egg yolks together with the last 1/3 cup white wine, and pour into the pot. Give the liquid a good stir and cook for a few minutes longer, until the shrimp is pink and the liquid has thickened slightly. Ladle the soup and shrimp into bowls, and garnish with slices of lemon.

Smith source.

A Sallad of Anchovies

Yesterday was a cobbled-together sort of night. Chores like cleaning the hamster's cage. Piano practice. A dinner of leftovers and random bits and bobs. Some schoolwork. The 1959 version of The Shaggy Dog (I don't care how silly it is, it was one of my favorite movies when I was little). Mulled wine before bed.

Overall, a very nice night.

Let me tell you about this anchovy salad. I'm one of those weird people who loves anchovies. LOVES. In a Caesar salad, on pizza (much to Josh's dismay), in pasta, mixed in with tuna salad....they are salty and deliciously fishy. I tend to keep a can or two in my pantry in case of emergencies.

Yes. I am one of those weird people who considers anchovies to be lifesaving in case of food emergencies.

(very modern anchovies)

Luckily, anchovies seem to have been quite the thing in colonial Williamsburg. The very first entry in the "Garden Stuff & Salads" section is this Sallad of Anchovies. It's quite simple: you rinse the anchovies until the water (or wine, whatever your rinsing preference)* runs clear. Then you trim the tails and fins and "flip them from the Bones," which I skipped because I was using scandalously modern canned anchovies. I also cobbled together the salad part; you're supposed to garnish the anchovies with onion, parsley, lemon, and beetroot, but I only had onions and carrots. (I didn't think Williamsburg would mind.) The final touch is a dressing of "sweet Oil with Lemonjuice." According to the internet, that font of wisdom, sweet oil was the archaic term for olive oil. Apparently it was thought of as sweet! Who knew. Anyway, arrange your salad nicely on a small plate, and drizzle the dressing over the salad.

Now, if you're ever tempted to give straight anchovies a try, this would be the recipe to use. The dressing dampens the intensity of the anchovies, while the carrots and onion slices complemented the flavor. This salad was definitely the best of my cobbled-together dinner.

But I can't be the only one over here enjoying the anchovies. Come on and join me! They're great!

...Anyone?


*I used water, but really, I'd love to live in the kind of world where wine is an appropriate rinse.

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.