May 2015 - OLD LINE PLATE

John Ridgely’s Shad Roe Croquettes

May 28, 2015January 13, 2019

Shad Roe season is over but I somehow forgot to post this one. As though you’re cooking along at home. Well if you are, you can make croquettes from basically anything, as my cookbooks frequently demonstrate. I had some leftover shad roe so I made these.

The recipe comes to EDBM care of “John Ridgely” of Hampton. Three generations of John Ridgely’s existed but my guess based on the time frame of “Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Maryland”, and the fact he is not named “Captain” in the book is that it was Captain John Ridgely’s son John Ridgely, Jr. (1882–1959).

John Ridgely, Jr. with wife, Jane Rodney Ridgely, and servant in 1948. Photo by A. Aubrey Bodine

This page gives a rundown of the familiar name of Ridgely in the area – note the transition to our concept of modernity between John Ridgely Jr’s two wives.

The main house at Hampton was completed in 1790 – at the time, the largest private home in the United States.

1950s postcard of Hampton mansion

In the 1800s it came to be one of Maryland’s largest slaveholding estates, with more than 300 enslaved people working the house and fields.

Hampton Slave Quarters, Discover Black Heritage

Much of this population was freed upon the death of Maryland governor Charles Carnan Ridgely, but his son John Carnan Ridgely is shown to have purchased many more during that time period. A case study by the Maryland Archives offers a possible glimpse into the life of enslaved people living at Hampton.

“It must have been a surreal experience for blacks moving into and out of slavery at Hampton, literally passing each other on the way to different futures.” – Ridgely Compound of Hampton Towson, Baltimore County, Maryland By Dr. David Taft Terry

The lavish and famous property became harder to maintain without slave labor after Maryland enacted Emancipation in 1864 and reduced in size and grandeur over time.

Between 1948 and 1979 the mansion changed hands, including Preservation Maryland, a few times as a historic site before coming under the care of the National Park Service. Hampton and its surrounding structures including slave quarters, dairy and dovecote are part of the historic site and tourist attraction.

Historical marker, burgersub.org

Shad roe croquettes appear in many cookbooks, especially in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

These instructions make them from scratch and suggest boiling the roe sacs. I’d say simmer them in about ½” of water and then flip.

I served them with a tartar sauce of sorts made from some pickled beets. Very tasty. If you are frying things and dipping them into some mayonnaise-based sauce and it is not delicious then you need to get it together.

Recipe:

shad roe, cooked
Salt to taste
1 Tablespoon butter
3 Tablespoon flour
.5 Pint cream
1 Teaspoon juice lemon
1 Tablespoon minced parsley
2 egg yolks
1 egg, beaten
1 Tablespoon boiling water
breadcrumbs
lard

Heat cream to boiling point in double boiler, cream butter and flour, add to cream. Add 2 eggs and stir until thickened. Remove from heat and add salt, add lemon juice, and parsley. Add drained shad roe. Chill mixture. When thorughly chilled mold into chops. Beat 1 whole egg, add 1 tablespoon of boiling water and mix thoroughly. Dip chop first into egg and and dip it into the bread crumbs, then fry in boiling lard or oil.

(tiny skillet)

recipe adapted from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland”

Baked Acorn Squash

May 20, 2015January 13, 2019

This recipe was contributed to “Maryland’s Way”, the Hammond-Harwood House cookbook by Mrs. J Reany Kelly, known as Elizabeth Frances King until she married Mr. Kelly in 1921.

Reany Kelly was a historian of Anne Arundel county and beyond, archiving photos of many Maryland historic homes for a collection now belonging Maryland Historical Society.

Surprisingly, I can’t find too much information about either of them other than involvement in the Anne Arundel County Historical Society.

That leaves me only to talk about Acorn Squash and Maryland. But there’s not too much to say about that either… uh its a fall and winter vegetable and is not really in season right now.

Well hey I’m sure everyone’s still reeling from Maryland Fried Chicken so lets just kick back.

Recipe:

3 acorn squash(es?)
6 Teaspoons butter
6 Teaspoons brown sugar
6 Teaspoons Bourbon
1 Teaspoon salt

Cut squashes in halves and remove the seeds. Place in lightly oiled baking dish and put a teaspoon each of butter, sugar, and Bourbon in each squash half. Sprinkle with salt and nutmeg. Cover and bake at 400° for about 30 minutes or until tender. Serves 6.

Adapted from “Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook”

Don’t throw these away, roast and eat them!

Pork chop and rice make it a (not photogenic) meal

Leftovers in a crepe with scrapple sticks! Now “Scrapple” was a much better entry than this one.

Sources: “Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805″

May 15, 2015January 17, 2021

It’s the time of year for Maryland cooks and gardeners to feel excitement for all of the seasonal thrills to come.

The curtains part with asparagus and it all builds up to a kingly feast of tomatoes and more tomatoes and some watermelon and then it’s back to the sedate old winter crops and canned things.

I found the book “Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake” a few years back, while browsing the excellent collection of Marylandia offered by Johns Hopkins University Press. I knew it would be a good source of information for my food database, but it delighted me overall in general with information and background on pleasure gardens as well.

The book was my introduction to Annapolis Citizen William Faris who kept a diary of life and garden between 1792 and 1804.

Faris was an urban gardener who grew some of his food, cultivated flowers, “with thinning hair pulled back into a queue and covered with a familiar frayed hat, who gossiped too much and drank gin too freely.” Sounds alright, maybe.

Barbara Wells Sarudy paints a lovable picture of him and selects relatable garden observations from his life, as well as essential information to understand the food system of a man of his (middle) class in his time.

The garden illustrations from Warner & Hanna’s Plan of Baltimore from 1801 show a faint idea of what was growing underneath the places I frequent today.

Warner & Hanna’s Plan of the City and Environs of Baltimore

Most importantly to this blog I get a look at what was grown in Maryland during that time period, what was popular and beloved, and how our ways of growing and eating these things was viewed by visitors from Europe.

Carrot and Strawberry illustrations Bernard M’Mahon, The American Grdener’s Calendar 1806, from Gardens & Gardening in the Chesapeake

This book provided me with a few of my favorite anecdotes about food and gardening, such as the “passion for peas” that swept the French royal court.

“The subject of peas continues to absorb all others. The anxiety to eat them, the pleasures of having eaten them and the desire to eat them again are the three great matters which have been discussed b our princes for four days past. Some ladies even after having supped at the Royal table and well supped too returning to their homes at the risk of suffering from indigestion will again eat Peas before going to bed. It is both a fashion and a madness ” – Madame de Maintenon

There’s also the story of the cocky runaway convict gardener and his fraudulent treatise on pineapples… more on that when I cook something with pineapples in it.

Author Barbara Wells Sarudy now has a nice art history blog featuring frequent tie-ins to historic gardening.

William Faris’ complete diary is also available from Hopkins Press.

Maryland Fried Chicken: lets do this

May 12, 2015January 13, 2019

Much like scrapple, Maryland fried chicken is a topic that I intend to revisit on Old Line Plate many times. There’s a lot of background, a lot of recipes, and enough confusion to go around.

So what IS “Maryland fried chicken”?

There is a European dish known as Chicken Maryland or Chicken a la Maryland, usually featuring bananas. This is probably the dish that is now famously known to have been on the menu of the Titanic.

There is a vanishing regional chain (outside of Maryland) known as Maryland Fried Chicken. Their main website is now shilling viagra and I never had the chance to try this chicken.

There are also some who would insist that Old Bay is essential to Maryland fried chicken. Old Bay and chicken make a fine combo but that is the kind of myopic thinking this blog stands firmly against.

There is also a controversial, questionable step included in some Maryland fried chicken recipes that flies in the face of modern fried chicken preference. That step entails steaming the chicken in the pan after frying it. This results in a very tender chicken but eliminates the crispiness. Sacrilege to some!

Fear not, that step is not essential. I am not sure when it became popularized but BC Howard’s book “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” mentions no such thing. It appears in two of the five fried chicken recipes in Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Maryland.

In my estimation, the main defining characteristic of Maryland fried chicken is the pan scraping cream gravy. Fried chicken is served up in this manner throughout the South but various sources throughout the years offer this style as “Maryland fried chicken.”

My primary source for cooking this time was ‘50 Years in a Maryland Kitchen’. I also referenced the recipes that appear in ‘Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland.’

Albert H. McCarthy of Carvel Hall Hotel (erstwhile and now once again the Paca House) contributed the instructions:

“Cut young chicken into pieces and rub with salt, pepper and flour. Fry in hot fat to half cover the chicken until right brown. Serve with a cream gravy and waffles.”

BC Howard included a step which I feel is indispensable – brining the chicken. Her brine consisted solely of salt and water but I took a cue from my modern reference, a book called “Heritage” by Sean Brock.

I checked this book out from the library and it is beautiful but a lot of the cooking is fussy for my purposes. However, the author seems charming and gained my trust so I went with his brine which contains salt, sugar, and the secret ingredient of tea. He pan fried the chicken in many fats and topped it with the gravy (no mention of Maryland…)

The resulting chicken was very good but to my surprise it tasted like tea. (I’m not the brightest..)

In the future, to make sure that I enjoy the most Maryland flavor in my chicken I will probably stick with a salt & sugar brine only.

My next iteration of Maryland Fried Chicken will include the steaming step and a discussion of those who employed it throughout my recipe collection.

Maybe we can decide once and for all whether it is worth the sacrifice of crispiness – or perhaps whether there is room for both in life.

Recipe:

1 gallon water
38 tea bags (optional! or use less!)
1 cup salt
1 cup sugar
salt
pepper, black
flour
fat (oil, lard, bacon fat, etc.)
chicken
more salt
more flour
butter
cream
parsley

Put the water in a pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove from the stove, add the tea bags, and let them steep for 8 minutes. Remove the tea bags, or strain the liquid if you used loose tea. Add the salt and sugar to the hot water and stir to dissolve them. Pour the brine into a heatproof container and cool it to room temperature, then refrigerate until completely cold.

Cut the chicken into 8 pieces. Rinse with cold water. Place in the brine, cover, and
refrigerate for 12 hours.

After the chicken has spent 12 hours in the brine, make an ice bath in a
large bowl with equal amounts of ice and water. Place the chicken in
the ice bath for 5 minutes. (the ice will rinse away any impurities.)
Remove the chicken and pat it dry.

Season the chicken with pepper and then cover with flour (lightly salted). Cook bacon in skillet and set aside. Add additional oils until frying temperature and add the chicken pieces, turning and stirring them about to keep them from burning. It takes half an hour. Move to a towel to drain. Pour off off all the fat and melt a tablespoon or so of butter with an equal amount of flour. Add cream, parsley, salt and pepper. Stir until thickened. Pour this over the chickens and serve with waffles.

note: due to the tea this chicken looks much darker than it would otherwise

Adapted from ‘Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Maryland’, ‘Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen’, ‘Heritage.’

Washington City Paper: The Mystery of Maryland Fried Chicken

Mid-Atlantic Cooking Blog: Maryland Fried Chicken

Shadfest in Lambertville

May 8, 2015January 17, 2021

On the weekend of April 25th I headed to Lambertville, NJ for their Shadfest. There’s a few other shad related festivals, most notably the Shad-Planking in VA, but aside from that event sounding actually awful to be at, Lambertville promised me shad hauling demos. I thought I’d share some photos from that.

Shadfest cookies, C’Est La Vie cafe in New Hope, PA

There were shad puns aplenty.

Lambertville (and it’s across-the-river counterpart New Hope) seemed like a really nice little town although we did get threatened by this guy along the canal.

This family holds the only license to commercially fish for shad here.

They head up the river and cast a net and haul it in. It seemed grueling.

Shadfest is primarily an arts festival but I won’t hold it against them because I have a lot of experience with thematic street festivals and they rarely immerse you in their theme. (Kennet Square Mushroom Festival broke my heart in this way.)

Besides, on the car there and back we listened to “Shad: The Founding Fish” by John McPhee and basically we learned that throughout history, everyone hates shad.