Hot Buttered Rum a la Wayne Curtis

This doesn't even belong in this blog, because it's not in the NYTHB, but if you are like me, and were at one time fascinated with the idea of Hot Buttered Rum, I thought you might like this recipe. We had this at the tree trimming party. The idea is, you make the mix and every time you want hot buttered rum, you take it out of the freezer. It didn't quite work out that way. Some of us ended up eating the mix. We did not make the whole thing, so it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I think, because of the ice cream, that this recipe is better than Hewlett's. The question is, whether or not you like sweet stuff.
Wayne Curtis is the author of And a Bottle of Rum, a History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.

Hot Buttered Rum a la Wayne Curtis

1 pound butter
1 pound brown sugar
1 pound granulated sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
one quart vanilla ice cream

Bring the butter to room temperature and mix all the ingredients except the ice cream. Add slightly softened ice cream and mix well. Store mixture in freezer. To make drinks by the mug, add 1 1/2 ounce rum, one tablespoon of ice cream mix, then, fill mug with boiling water.

Hot Buttered Rum a la Hewlett

This represents the end of one entire section--the drinks section. Now, it only has four recipes, but there is still a sense of accomplishment. We had cookbook Hot Buttered Rum on Christmas Day, when we sat ten people down to dinner, and served Hot Buttered Rum to everyone, including one of my Girl Scouts, who dropped in because she happened to be a few blocks away. Disclosure. My Girl Scouts graduated from high school in 2003 and have an average age of 25.
There was a lot of vibrant conversation to go with the steamed up windows in the kitchen. This recipe isn't the easiest thing for a group, although it seemed to be just the ticket on a cold day. You have to mix each cup individually, and having to stop, locate the brown sugar and the rum, and pour a glass for whoever wanted it was somewhat time-consuming.

Hot Buttered Rum

1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon minced lemon rind
3 shakes cinnamon
1 shake nutmeg
1 jigger light rum ( a jigger is about 4 tablespoons)
Boiling water
Sweet butter

1. Combine the brown sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, nutmeg and rum in a warmed ten-ounce glass.
2. Fill with boiling water and rop in a generous teaspoon of sweet butter.
One serving.

Baked Wild Rice with Carrots

To me, game, which I did not particularly like as a child, goes with wild rice, another grown-ups delicacy that I did not particularly like. Wild rice comes from Minnesota, so, another non New England recipe. Wild rice takes a long time to cook. I did not find that the amount of time given in the book was sufficient to cook it. The recipe says boil vigorously for ten minutes and then let it stand for twenty minutes so absorb the water. I would say, make it three cups of water, and boil for half an hour. Check the tenderness of the rice and the amount of water. The wild rice I remember burst open its kernels to reveal a whitish interior. Our rice was tender and good, but did not burst open much.
This recipe calls for bacon, but I left it out to accommodate vegetarian members of the family. It was great.

Baked Wild Rice with Carrots

1 1/2 cups wild rice, rinsed well in cold water
2 1/2 cups water
2 teaspoons salt
4 slices bacon cut into tiny cubes
1 onion finely chopped
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 cup finely grated carrots
1/2 cup light cream
1 egg

1. Combine the rice, water and salt in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook vigorously ten minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and cover. Let stand twenty minutes, or until water, has been absorbed.
2. Cook the bacon. With a slotted spoon, remove the cubes to drain on paper towels. Reserve the drippings.
3. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
4. Cook the onion and mushrooms in the bacon drippings until onion is wilted. Add the reserved bacon cubes, wild rice and carrots. Stir to blend.
5. beat the cream and egg together and stir into the wild rice mixture. Cover and bake in a buttered one-and-one-half quart casserole for one-half hour. Stir with a fork and bake fifteen minutes longer.
6. Remove the cover and stir once more. Bake fifteen minutes longer.
Makes 6 servings.

Wild Duck Country Captain

For Christmas Eve dinner itself, I was forced by ingredients to branch out of New England. Last Sunday, we all went out to Mount Airy, Maryland to cut down our Christmas tree. We take this pilgrimage most years. One year, we were on our way up Connecticut Avenue to get the tree when we were rear ended by a woman who wasn't paying attention. That year, we got our tree at John Eaton School. Last year, we didn't get a tree at all because we were going to London. But most years, we drive up 270, get off at the exit for Damascus, and argue about whether we turn right or left at the pond.
After we got back from cutting down the tree, and having lunch at the Italian deli in Mount Airy and shopping at Retro Metro, the quirky gift shop, we had a modest tree trimming party. Jake, a friend of my son's, drove up and conferred with son on the phone.
"Mom, does the cookbook have any recipes for wild duck?" Son inquired.
"Yes. Why do you ask?'
"Because Jake went duck hunting and he has some extra ducks. Do you want them?"
"Have they been plucked?" I asked, suspiciously.
They had in fact been plucked, and gutted, for which I was grateful. My father, the farmer, was a hunter. He had springer spaniels and went after duck and pheasant. I remember my mother yanking the feathers out of his catch, and removing various innards. I'm not so citified I couldn't do it, but I didn't think I was going to enjoy it.
But these ducks came frozen in plastic bags, with those neat little paper diapers that come under packaged meat and soak up the blood. I learned two more important things about cooking wild duck a couple of days later in a text message from my son. A. They must attain an internal temperature of 185 degrees. B. Watch out for the buckshot. This was one of a whole series of text messages on what must have been a slow day in the federal government. The rest of us went on a holiday expedition to a vineyard in Clifton, Va. As we were coming back along I-66 about 3:00, the west bound lanes were swollen with early rush hour traffic. I joked, "There go the federal employees, after a hard day of texting their mothers."
Anyhow, the recipe was amazing. It has curry powder, which made me go, uh oh, they won't be happy with this. My family likes curry, sort of. But it turned out wonderfully. One thing about duck. It has a much different structure than chicken. The bones are bigger and tougher. It's harder to cut it up. A pair of really good shears would be a gift.

Wild Duck Country Captain (Alabama)

1/2 cup flour
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 two and a half pound wild duck or two smaller birds, cut into serving pieces.
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/3 cut finely chopped green pepper
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
2 cups Italian plum tomatoes
3 teaspoons dried currants
1/4 cup toasted almonds

1. Combine the flour, salt and pepper and coat the duck pieces with the mixture.
2. Heat the b utter in the large skillet and brown the duck pieces in it. Remove duck pieces and reserve.
3. Add the onion, green pepper, garlic, curry powder and thyme to the skillet and cook, stirring, until onion is golden brown. Add the tomatoes and duck pieces. Cover and cook forty minutes or until duck is tender. Stir in the currants and almonds and serve with buttered rice tossed with chopped parsley.
With two ducks, four servings.

Brownie Drops

These are excellent cookies, and not hard to make. They are like their name, like Brownies. The instructions, also are well written, telling the cook how long to beat the eggs, so he/she will have some vague idea when things are thick enough. After about five minutes, the beaters start to leave tracks though the batter, although it's just eggs and sugar. The cookies started out an afternoon of cooking. When the kids were younger, I initiated a tradition of making some sort of baked item for the fire fighters at the local fire house who had to work on Christmas. It was a minor way of urging them to think of others.
We had let the tradition lapse, but at my husband's urging, I reinstated it. I planned to knock off five recipes, but stopped at four. We were having our usual Christmas Eve dinner with both children-adults but not son the lawyer's fiance, since she was at her mom's house. My brother was there from Anchorage as well.

Brownie Drops

2 four square packages German sweet chocolate
1 tablespoon butter
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup finely chopped pecans
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees .
2. Melt the chocolate and butter together in top of a double boiler over hot watter, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
3. Beat the eggs until foamy. Add the sugar, two tablespoons at a time, beating constantly until the mixture is very thick. (This takes at least five minutes with an electric mixture at high speed. It is egg, not flour that thickens this mixture.)
4. Blend cooled chocolate mixture into egg mixture. Add the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, pecan and vanilla.
5. Drop from a teaspoon onto greased baking sheets. Bake ten to twelve minutes or until the cookies feel set when lightly touched. Cool on a rack. Store in a tightly covered container.
Makes about three dozen cookies.

Slemp

Slemp is described on the Internet as a Dutch children's beverage. It's made up of hot milk, saffron, cloves, cinnamon, mace, sugar and a little bit of loose tea. It has a subtle flavor. It was variously described by the assembled multitudes as "not my thing," "okay--like chai," and "an acquired taste." It wasn't horrible, but I probably won't make it again. Even though the recipe says to simmer the milk for an hour, and I did, the milk doesn't have much taste.
I made it on Christmas Eve, when I was making the cookies for the fire fighters.

Slemp

1 one inch piece cinnamon stick
pinch saffron
2 whole cloves
small piece blade mace or one-half teaspoon ground mace
4 cups milk
peel of half a lemon in strip
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspooon loose tea
2 tablespoons sugar

1. Tie the cinnamon stick, saffron, cloves and mace in a muslin bag. Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan. Add the lemon peel, salt, tea and the spice bag. Simmer one hour.
2. Remove the spice bag and add the sugar.
Makes four servings.

Pate Maison

This recipe was a real triumph for Safeway, the temple of culinary experimentation. The first ingredient is gizzards and hearts from six to eight chickens, ducks or geese. Well, where to buy these? My daughter suggested I special order them. We happened to be in Middleburg, Va., heart of the chichi horse country, and home of a incredibly high end butcher emporium. Ah, ha, thought I, the perfect place for an ingredient that only people making pates would want. Wrong. Although they had all manner of sumptuous looking meats, they would have to order chicken hearts and gizzards "from their farm." The Middleburg Safeway didn't have them either. By this time, all this talk of gizzards had us punchy, and talking about "chicken lizards," My daughter then broke into a chorus of a children's song that goes "Chicken lips and lizard hips and alligator eyes..."
Then, last night, on my way home from the airport, I stopped at my local Safeway, having basically given up hope of making the Heritage Cookbook recipe and happening to glance into the poultry case I saw...chicken gizzards!!! They were presented in a neat package from Perdue, and labeled Chicken Gizzards and Hearts, (mostly gizzards.) It was not clear to me if the gizzards were packaged whole, so eight hearts and gizzards seemed to be about half a package. When it came to the livers, I counted out eight, then dumped the whole container into the frying pan and fed two to the dog.
This is one of those recipes that should not be undertaken without a food processor.
When we got home, although I had my husband and my brother, newly arrived from Alaska, waiting for dinner, I leapt into action, simmering gizzards and chopping onions. The result is a mildly flavored chicken liver mousse type thing,. I ended up adding salt and pepper a couple of times to give it more flavor.

Pate Maison

Gizzards and hearts from six to eight chickens, ducks or geese
Water or chicken broth
2 onions finely chopped
1/3 cup butter
6 to eight chicken, duck or goose livers
2 tablespoons cognac
2 hard cooked eggs finely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
Toast triangles

1. Cover the gizzards and hearts with water or broth. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer until tender, about twenty-five minutes. Drain. Chop finely or grind.
2. Saute the onions in one-third cup butter in a heavy skillet until golden and add to the ground giblets. Fry the livers quickly in the skillet, adding more butter if necessary.
3. Chop finely and add to the giblet mixture.
4. Add the cognac, eggs, salt, pepper, thyme, and marjoram. Mix well. Pile into a crock and chill well. Serve with toast triangles.
Makes ten servings.