Trifle

Trifle is a Virginia recipe and excellent for a summer dessert. Since the South is hot, it  it figures that Southerners know about cold desserts. Of course, now, it is hot in New England too, but the cooks of the 1950s hadn't reckoned with global warming.  The trifle did have a little bit of New England in it because I made it with leftover New York Passover Spongecake, much to the amusement of Rich, the only Jew to actually hear about my Passover baking in person.
Rich has a very dry sense of humor. "Passover? " he said. "Passover?" in very quiet, unbelieving tones.
I don't think he actually bought my explanation, or even understood it, because it may have been somewhat garbled. Everyone liked the trifle, especially me, who ate all the leftovers during the clean up.
Even though I like trifle, children may not, since the cake is soaked with sherry. I never liked any food with what I termed "liquor" when I was growing up. If you are making this for a family dinner you might want to leave the sherry out.
I made the trifle the night before the party because it had to chill. The first order of business was to walk down to the Exxon station, the only grocery store in our neighborhood, and buy a half gallon of milk. That being accomplished, I made the custard. The important instruction to remember while making the custard is, do not allow the custard to boil. I actually did allow the custard to boil. It makes it somewhat grainy. Better not to let it boil.
The recipe says to spread the cake with strawberry or raspberry preserves. I dug around in the refrigerator and found some grape jelly which was eked out with Polaner's All Fruit, something I used to eat when I ate bread.
Although this is technically not a day before recipe, I would advocate making it the day before, because it has to chill. You can stick it in the refrigerator and forget about it until dinner time.

Trifle

8 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups milk, scalded
1 teaspoon vanilla
24 ladyfingers, or a comparable quantity of spongecake, torn into bite-size pieces
1/2 cup medium-dry sherry (use the Duff Gordon amontillado you bought for the game sauce)
1 cup strawberry or raspberry preserves
1/3 cup slivered blanched almonds or crumbled macaroons (optional) (I left these out.)
1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped
glace cherries or one tablespoon slivered blanched almonds

1. Combine the egg yolks, sugar, and milk in a heavy saucepan, beating with a wire whisk to mix well. Heat over medium heat until mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Do not allow custard to boil.
2. Remove from the heat and pour into a cold bowl. Stir in the vanilla and cool to lukewarm.
3. Sprinkle the ladyfingers or spongecake with the sherry and let stand five to ten minutes.
4. Place a layer of the soaked ladyfingers in a two-quart serving bowl, preferably glass.
5. Spread with one-third of the preserves and one-third of the almonds or macaroons. Repeat the layers until all ladyfingers are used.
6. Pour the cooled custard over the ladyfinger arrangement and chill several hours.
7. Decorate with the whipped cream, piped through a rosette tube, and garnish with the cherries or almonds.
Serves 10.

Hancock Shaker Village Pork and Milk Gravy (Gluten Free)

This recipe definitely has  overtones of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books. During the summers, her family virtually lived on salt pork, since the deer and bear they ate in the winter months were raising their young. Salt pork seems to be easy to find in the supermarket. I have a feeling that living in an area with a large Africa American population might have something to do with that, but, then again, I might be wrong.
The salt pork was thin, about an inch thick, and had a thick, hard rind. I found that that cooked up into a chewy, jelly-like substance, however. Because of the salt pork, this is a very salty recipe from the git-go. I would not advise adding more salt. Pepper is good. You might sauté an onion along with the salt pork to liven things up. I made it gluten free by substituting rice flour for wheat flour. A year ago, I was advocating Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free flour, which was made of dried beans and other stuff. Rice flour is much better. It does not have the sour taste of Bob's.

Hancock Shaker Village Pork and Milk Gravy

1/4 pound salt pork cut into cubes
1/4 cup flour (use rice flour if you want a gluten free recipe)
2 cups milk
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place the salt pork cubes in a saucepan and cook, stirring until they start to become crisp. Remove cubes from the saucepan and set aside.
2. Add the flour to saucepan and cook briefly, stirring without burning. Add the milk, stirring rapidly. When mixture thickens, and is smooth, add salt and pepper. Simmer ten minutes or less, stirring
3. Add the pork cubes to the sauce. Serve with fish balls. Makes 2 cups.

Sister Lisset's Shaker Fish Balls (Gluten Free)

About a week ago, I sat down and made a list of all the recipes I have to cook before I can wash my hands of the Northeast section of this cookbook and move on definitively to the South. It's a lot. Over 60 recipes, and I thought I was doing really well this year, knocking them out. So, focus, I said to myself. I started pawing through the fish section, which probably has the most uneaten recipes to find one, just one, that Bob, my shellfish allergic spouse, could actually eat. There are a couple. Gefilte fish is one, but complicated, and makes a lot, and I don't know what time of year one actually eats it. Shaker Fish Balls were another.
I stopped off at the fish counter at the Giant on Connecticut Avenue. I don't normally shop at Giant, except for the times I forget to bring lunch to my volunteer job at the Girl Scouts, but since I was working upstairs, it was worth a try. They had cod for a reasonable price. I bought a pound and a half, and made a dish called skillet chowder with half of it, and cooked the rest for the fish balls.
Now, there are a couple of things about this dish, caveats, so to speak. First, it says chop the fish in a wooden chopping bowl. My kitchen is pretty well equipped. I have a lot of stuff that even dedicated modern cooks may not have, but I don't have a wooden chopping bowl, or that curved tool that was used to chop fish, veggies, etc. in the old fashioned days. I always blow instructions such as this off and say use the food processor. Well, in this particular case, the food processor isn't what you want. It tends to make the fish and potatoes into a sort of fishy mashed potato of the wrong consistency. Too mushy. No way would this stuff form into balls. They were fish cakes.
Also, these are supposed to be deep fried. I do not possess a deep fryer. I shallow fried the nonballs in a regular frying pan in vegetable oil. This did not work real well. They stuck to the bottom of the pan.  On the up side, they were good. Bob liked them. He even liked the accompanying pork and milk gravy, which was okay, but limited in its palate range.

wooden chopping bowl and mezzaluna

 

So, I would advise, if you really want to do a good job with these, get yourself a wooden chopping bowl and a curved chopping tool to go with it. A few seconds of clicking on the Internet produces a source for these things. www.hollandbowlmill.com has a 9 inch wooden chopping bowl and a knife, which is called a mezzaluna for $46.50. If you want to compare sources, just google wooden chopping bowl and chopper.
The second caveat is, try to figure out some way to deep fry the fish balls. Maybe you could use a soup pot. Maybe, just maybe, you could bite the bullet and go out and buy a fry basket.  Lard is not readily available, but I have used vegetable shortening.
If you are interested in the origin of this recipe, it probably came from Hancock Shaker Village in my native Berkshire County, Massachusetts

Sister Lisset's Shaker Fish Balls

2 cups leftover cooked fish, bones removed with fish flaked
4 cups chopped cooked potatoes
2 egg yolks beaten
1 tablespoon minced parsley
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
lard or fat for deep frying
salt pork and milk gravy (next recipe)

1. Put the fish in a wooden chopping bowl and add the potatoes. Chop together until very fine.
2. Add the egg yolks, parsley, salt and pepper. Form into balls the size of a goose egg. (Goose eggs are bigger than hens' eggs. Say, a little smaller than a baseball.) Deep fry until golden brown. Serve with gravy. Makes six servings.

Passover Spongecake

Why, readers might reasonably ask, is this woman writing about Passover recipes after Passover? Well, it's like this. After letting this blog trail on for three years, supposedly trying to write and eat my way through the Northeast section, I vowed that this year would be the year I actually finished the Northeast and moved on to the South. Passover Spongecake is in the recipe section of the Northeast, and I still have a goodly amount of Passover ingredients, to whit, matzo cake flour (or meal) and potato starch. So, the Episcopalians got another dose of Passover baking for their Monday night religious study. They like it just fine. Helen, one of the participants, took the leftovers home in delight.
If you have never made, or eaten a Passover cake, you are in for a treat. Even Jews may not be aware of how good Passover baked goods can be. I say this because my Jewish expert, Rabbi-in training Margaux Yael Buck of St. Louis, told me that Passover baking was "very heavy" because of the lack of leavening. Well, girl, you wrong there, although your scholarship in other Judaic matters is not to be faulted. All the Passover recipes in this book are marvelously light concoctions, made so by beaten egg whites. And so it is with spongecake.
If you are not Jewish and find yourself intrigued by these recipes, ask your Jewish friends if they have any matzo cake flour or potato starch. They probably do. I doubt if you would be able to find these ingredients in your average supermarket now, since it is after Passover. You probably can find Elite Chocolate, but the rest of it, ehh, probably not. I confess, I haven't looked. I was combing the stores for the stuff before Passover, but then, I was able to find it, so I stopped looking.
I only had about 1/3 of a cup of potato starch, so I put in an extra 1/4 cup of matzo cake meal. This seemed to work fine. I do not advocate fooling around with baking recipes as a regular practice however. Baking always seems to me like chemistry. Follow the recipe or dire events ensue.
If you are not Jewish, or even if you are Jewish, but do not keep Kosher, I encourage you to ignore the instructions about pouring the cake into an ungreased cake pan. Doing that makes it well-nigh impossible to get the cake out of the pan in one piece. Grease the pan, cooks. If you do keep Kosher, you will know better than I do what to use to get the cake out of the pan.
This spongecake is light and delicious, with a mild lemon flavor. If you like lemon, you can increase the lemon juice to the juice of a whole lemon. Bob spread lemon curd and current jelly on top in place of an icing. It is possible that spongecakes are not meant to be iced. I don't know for sure. Anyone out there have any opinions on the matter?

Passover Spongecake

8 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups sugar
grated rind of two lemons
juice of half a lemon
1/4 cup matzo cake meal
3/4 cup potato starch
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Beat the egg whites until stiff. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, lemon rind and lemon juice until yolks are thick and lemon-colored. (This takes about a minute.)
3. Sift together the matzo cake meal, potato starch and salt. Fold the egg whites and dry ingredients alternately into the yolks. Pour the mixture into two ungreased (see narrative) eight-inch layer pans and bake one hour, or until done. Invert in pans, on a rack and let cool thoroughly. Makes 12 servings.

Jelled Veal (Gluten Free)

Jelled veal is one of those 50s recipes in which the jelled state was thought elegant. I remember eating vast quantities of jellied beef consume for a first course was I was growing up. My husband, when he encountered it, called it beef jello and declined to eat it. Jellied consume was punctuated by jellied chicken soup. or chicken jello, if you will. I also remember a cousin's wedding in Westchester County somewhere about 1959 or 1960 which featured tomato aspic or tomato jello.
I must say, nowadays, the idea of jelled veal does not inspire universal delight in the populace. My extremely polite daughter-in-law made a very minor face when I was telling her and her husband about the jelled veal I made for Bob's cookout. So I was  gratified when Karen, one of the guests at the cookout, demanded to know if it was head cheese, and told me she grew up eating head cheese and just loved it. She was not dismayed by learning it was jelled veal.
I made it for the cookout because I have a theory about this nontraditional food. I figure if a large group of people is given the opportunity to try it, along with the hamburgers and hot dogs, some of them will try it and like it. It is unfair,  however, to serve it as the main dish. People who are repulsed by the very idea of veal would have to go hungry, and that is not hospitable.
Jelled veal is a day before dish. You have to boil 4 veal shanks and a veal knuckle for three hours, until the meat falls off the bones. Then, you boil down the broth, pack the meat into a loaf pan and pour the broth on top of it. Then, let it chill overnight.
I did all these things. Bob got the veal shanks at Union Meat in Eastern Market. I started boiling everything on Friday afternoon after I got back from the gym. The boiling was interrupted when Bob and I decided we really needed some coffee, and so walked up to Starbucks in Chevy Chase for an infusion of caffeine. I finished the whole process after we came back from a cabaret night at church. I took the meat off the bones, chopped it and shredded it, and poured the reduced broth on top of the meat.
The next morning, I checked it. Jelled to perfection.
To be honest, not too many people ate it at the cookout. Karen said she encouraged people to try it, and some did. My brother had some, and liked it well enough to eat some more for breakfast on Sunday morning.
So how does it taste? Well, like bits of cold meat, lightly held together with...veal jello. It's a little bland. It might be good on a sandwich with mayonnaise. But it is not in any way repulsive. So, if you want to recreate the 50s elegance of a summer buffet, try jelled veal and maybe tomato aspic.

Jelled Veal

4 veal shanks, split (The veal shanks available for sale now are only about two inches high, so splitting is not necessary.)
1 veal knuckle bone
1 onion, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
2 ribs celery, diced
4 sprigs parsley
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
6 peppercorns, crushed
1 teaspoon chervil, if available (it wasn't)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped green pepper

1.  Place the shanks, knuckle bone, onion, carrots, celery, parsley sprigs, bay leaf, salt, peppercorns and chervil in a kettle. Add water almost to cover.
2. Bring to a boil and boil vigorously, skimming off scum, five minutes. Cover and simmer gently three hours, or until meat is very tender. Leave shanks in broth until cool enough to handle.
3. Remove and discard knuckle bone. Remove meat from shanks. Dice meat and place in a one and one-half-quart to two-quart bowl or ring mold. Add the chopped parsley and green pepper and toss.
4. Strain the cooking broth into a saucepan and reduce by boiling until liquid measures two cups. Pour over the meat mixture. Cool and chill until firm.
5. Unmold and serve as luncheon or buffet dish or as sandwich filling. Makes six to eight servings.

Boiled and Baked Country Ham

Country ham is similar to supermarket ham in the same way that the lowly, (and dysfunctional) Dodge Omni is similar to a Jaguar XKE. Yes, they both come from the ass end of the pig, but the resemblance ends there.
Country ham is dry, dense, salty and flavorful. According to the Virginia Cooperative Extension website at Virginia Tech, curing a country ham is a lengthy process, taking up to 8 months. First, fresh ham (pork legs) are rubbed with a mixture of  8 pounds of salt, 2 pounds of sugar and 2 ounces of saltpeter or sodium nitrate, which the extension tells us is available at drugstores.. It is left to cure in this mixture for one and a half days per pound of ham or, say, 18 days for the average 12 pound ham. Next, the ham has to be soaked, and then stored for 14 days in an environment with a temperature of 50 to 60 degrees. The ham is then smoked for three days and stored for 180 days. So we are talking about substantial investments of time and individual effort.
Nowadays, one may obtain country hams on the Internet, for a (high) price. Or, if you are lucky to live in an area with an old fashioned butcher, or even maybe a retro 30 something old-fashioned butcher, you can buy hams from said old fashioned butcher. I, or rather my husband, who is now retired, bought this ham, which was a butt ham of  five pounds, from Union Meat in Eastern Market on Capitol Hill. It cost about $5. a pound.
This recipe is a day before recipe. I was supposed to have taken care of all the boiling the day before my son and his wife were coming to dinner. Well, I didn't read the recipe, so there I was, at 5:00, ham sitting in its plastic packaging, when the yms were coming at 7:00. So I produced a boiled country ham and left the baking to another day. Frankly, I don;'t think anyone noticed. I plopped everything into the pot, turned on the burner at the back of the stove and went about my business. I didn't have six onions. I put in two. After two hours, I fished it out of the pot and sliced it.
People really liked this. There was nothing left on plates, and son was in a good enough humor afterward to agree to play a 30s era  board game involving pushing tiny wooden cars along dotted lines throughout the British Isles. Daughter-in-law was, as the politest person in the universe, aside from also being really nice,  as always,  agreeable.

Boiled and Baked Country Ham

1 country-style ham (If you are feeding a small group, get a butt ham. If feeding a large group, get a whole ham.)
6 onions
2 cups cider vinegar
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup unsulphured molasses
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons dry mustard
1 cup soft bread crumbs
whole cloves

1. Day before, scrub the ham, removing any pepper coating and mold. Place in a large kettle, cover with water and let soak overnight. (I skipped this step. If you buy a ham wrapped in paper, you probably should do it.)
2. Next day, drain ham. Put back in the kettle and cover with fresh water. Add the onions, vinegar, bay leaves and molasses; stir to mix. Bring to a boil and simmer gently fifteen to twenty minutes to the pound.
3. Allow ham to cool in the broth.
4.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
5 Remove skin from ham and score fat in diamond pattern. Combine the sugar, mustard and bread crumbs. Place cloves in centers of diamonds and pat bread crumb mixture over all. Bake twenty minutes, or until brown. My five pound ham would have served 6 people. A twelve pound ham serves 10-15 people.

Potato Kugel for Passover

Passover? scream the Jews. Passover is over! True. However, you can eat turkey at other times than Thanksgiving, can't you? So here's a really good potato pudding recipe that tastes like a giant latke, or potato pancake. You should not have to wait for Passover to eat  this. Besides, Jewish people, who probably are not reading this anyway because Passover has passed over, (heh, heh) undoubtedly have extra matzo meal in their cupboards, left over from Passover baking and here's a way to use it up. So if you are not Jewish, but are reading this, ask a Jewish friend of he/she has any matzo meal left over from Passover. It will go stale by next year, so the friend ought to give it to you.
I made this to go along with the country ham for my son and daughter-in-law. I had never eaten or made Kugel before, so this was a revelation. Who knew it was just a big latke? It's easy as well. You have five to ten minutes of grating potatoes, a few seconds to beat the eggs, a teary, sniffy minute grating the onion, and a few more seconds to mix the whole thing up and pour it into a baking pan.
The ham and the Kugel came out at exactly the same time. But I forgot the asparagus! We had to wait until it cooked, all standing around in the kitchen, my son offering advice on what to do.
Kugel dates from the 1200s, when it was first mentioned in Germany as a bread dumpling cooked overnight in the Sabbath stew. It went through various evolutions, the website, joyofkosher.com tells us, until the mid- 19th century when home ovens became popular so people could actually bake their dough. The potato part came from the introduction of potatoes to the Jews of Eastern Europe. There is apparently a Yiddish folksong which goes, Monday, potatoes, Tuesday, potatoes, Wednesday, potatoes, until it gets to “Sunday potatoes, Monday potatoes, Tuesday and Wednesday potatoes, Thursday and Friday potatoes, but Shabbos, for a change, a potato kugel.”

Anyhow, our kugel came out crisp on top and flavorful in the middle. Because of me not paying attention to  the magic words, medium-sized, we made enough kugel to feed at least eight people.The cook is supposed to grate three cups of potatoes. I counted out six potatoes and began to grate. I must have grated at least five cups. I added an extra egg and and extra quarter cup of matzoh meal. It was just the thing to make with a country ham recipe (gasp!) from Kentucky. I did follow the directions and grate the potatoes into cold water. I don't know why this is important to do. Possibly it washes the starch off the potatoes. But I would not skip that step. Why mess with success?

Potato Kugel for Passover

6 medium-sized potatoes, peeled
3 eggs
1/2 cup matzo meal
1/2 teaspoon potato starch
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 onion, grated (the recipe says optional. It is not optional. You must put in the onion if you want your kugel to taste of anything at all.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grate t he potatoes into cold water, then drain. There should be three cups.
3. Beat the eggs until they are thick. stir in the potatoes and remaining ingredients.
4. Turn the mixture into a one-and-one-half quart casserole and bake, uncovered, about one hour.
Makes six to eight servings.