August 2015 - OLD LINE PLATE

Atholl Corn Sticks

August 28, 2015January 13, 2019

Not only did this recipe give me a chance to utilize a corn-stick pan, it also involved one of my favorite (non-Maryland) historical topics – spite houses!

I got this recipe from Maryland’s Way. There it is listed as the receipt of a “Miss Fanny,” of “Atholl” in Anne Arundel County. I couldn’t determine who this might be so my guess is that she was a servant. I did however, learn this about the home known as Atholl:

“’Atholl’ was built in about 1860 by Richard W. Hardesty. According to local stories, Hardesty wanted to build his house on a rise nearby, called “Virginia Hill” because one should be able to see that state from the highest point. The Murrays, living in “Cedar Park” (AA-35-T-c) refused to sell the land to Hardesty so, for spite, he situated “Atholl” on his own land, on the other side of the road, in such a way that he was in direct view of the Murrays and could see the bay through their parlor windows.” – Maryland Historical Trust

Atholl, Maryland Historical Trust

I renamed my version of this recipe to “Spite House Corn Sticks” and added a jalapeño. If you wanted to make them extra spiteful you could add 10 jalapeños.

Opinions vary strongly about whether cornbread should have sugar in it. My personal preference is “no,” and Miss Fanny seemed to agree. I find that cornmeal is quite sweet to begin with. I can enjoy a sweet piece of cornbread at the end of a meal but less sweet cornbread goes better WITH the meal. I served these with some lion’s mane mushroom gravy. It was tasty but not particularly picturesque.

Recipe:

2 eggs
.5 Cup flour
1.5 Cup cornmeal
4 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Cup milk
1 Tablespoon butter
Jalapeños, drained green chiles, etc as desired

Beat eggs until foamy. Sift flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt together and add to beaten eggs, alternating with the milk. Mix in melted butter. Heat oven to 425°. Grease iron corn stick molds well and put in oven to become hot. Drop about 1 Tb of batter in each mold. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until brown.

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

An Eastern Shore Tomato Tasting

August 24, 2015April 30, 2019

When I think of an emblamatic Maryland food – something that represents the abundance that Marylanders have enjoyed, the unique terroir, a key component of past economy – I think of Eastern Shore Tomatoes. My passion for Eastern Shore tomatoes (and watermelons) cannot be over-stated.

Three standard meals fed us during the summers at my grandparents’ Chincoteague trailer. Scrapple folded into a piece of white bread was a typical breakfast. A feast of the days’ haul of flounder was often fried up dinner. And lunch and/or an afternoon snack: sliced, salted tomatoes – sometimes between two slices of white bread.

I’m forever chasing the flavor of those tomatoes. Even with our CSA in full swing, I can’t pass through the Eastern Shore in August without coming home with some tomatoes. This week I took that to extremes.

The tomato corridor along route 50 can be daunting. Stand after stand of tantalizing produce.

interactive map!

We stopped at the first ten stands on the westbound side of 50, starting at Rt 13. A few more stands exist after that but this is Tomato Alley, mostly located in Hebron, MD.

This is far from a thorough survey and we may not be experts. I used a wine-tasting guide as an outline.

Tomatoes can vary in flavor from year to year, plant to plant, and even fruit to fruit. One example of the questions raised by this sampling is the difference in rating between The Farmer’s Wife and S&H Farms. As it turned out, these stands are operated by the same people. Yet we found the Farmers Wife tomatoes to be most attractive in appearance but not up to the flavor of the S&H tomato.

We generally agreed that the tomatoes from Oakley’s Farm Market and S&H were the best, at least on this day. It’s fascinating trying them all side by side and seeing how different they really are. Some have little to no aroma, some smell like tomato vines, some are perfumey and floral. All were superior to a grocery store tomato.

“Crab Burgers“

August 18, 2015January 13, 2019

We had some crabs with friends and had a few leftovers. What a crisis! So many options.

I usually have a weird hangup about combining crab-meat with cheese… it seems disrespectful or something. A few weeks ago we went to Gertrudes and they served some crab up on an English muffin with some melted cheese. Who am I to disagree with John Shields? It was pretty tasty.

Furthermore, who am I to disagree with Helen Avalynne Tawes aka Mrs. J. Millard Tawes – Crisfield native and first lady of Maryland from 1959-1967.

Until very recently, Tawes remained a big name in Maryland, from Frostburg to Princess Anne. That is slowly fading but Crisfield will surely maintain its shrines to J. Millard Tawes for years to come..

Helen Tawes cooking terrapin, ca. 1960. Maryland State Archives

Mrs. Tawes beams with pride and appreciation for the Eastern Shore in the introduction to her 1964 cookbook “My Favorite Maryland Recipes.”

She also says, in her own words:

“Since I love to cook, and, above all things, love my State’s characteristic cookery… I set about experimenting. I wanted to see if the traditional Maryland deliciousness could be preserved with modern methods… I helped [my husband] in his campaigning every way I could, but, when I had time, I worked on my own project – in my kitchen. The result was that, to my astonishment, I produced what politically experienced people have called a ‘piece of campaign literature.’
It was a cookbook, nothing more.”

Whether the book changed the course of an election I could not say, but the book stands today, in all its reprints, among the canon of Maryland cookbooks.

Mrs. Tawes and artist Stanislav Rembski with portraits of Mrs. McKeldin
and Mrs. Tawes, 1966.

Eleven years after her 1989 passing, the Baltimore Sun gushed:

Known as Lou to close friends, she studied music at the Peabody
Conservatory in Mount Vernon Place and later sang on a Salisbury radio
station. And while living in the governor’s mansion, she wasn’t the
least bit shy about playing an electric organ, which prompted the
governor to quip, “She’s got more nerve than a jackrabbit.”

While
music may have had a place in her heart, it was in her kitchen,
surrounded by black iron frying pans and a larder overflowing with the
bounty of the Chesapeake Bay country, that Tawes truly excelled. She
exulted in old-time, stick-to-the-ribs 19th-century fare while avoiding
what she called “fancy seasonings.” – Her crab cakes were renowned 7/22/2000

And so, I chose her decadent recipe for “Crab Burgers,” essentially crab salad with cheese on a burger bun. Being that she was a mid-century lady, I will forgive her use of Miracle Whip – mayonnaise worked just fine for me, however. The 1995 version of “Maryland Seafood Cookbook I” included a variation under the moniker “Crisfield Crab-Burgers”, using mayonnaise, “cubes of mild cheese” within the salad, and Parmesan on top.

crab hand

I halved this recipe to accommodate my quantity of crab-meat

Recipe:

1 Lb crab meat
.75 Cup celery
2 Tablespoon finely grated onion
2 Tablespoon green pepper
1 Cup medium-Sharp Cheddar
1 Cup mayonnaise
2 Teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 Teaspoons hot sauce
.75 Teaspoon salt
hamburger rolls

Mix all ingredients before adding crab meat, gently folding in the meat to keep lumps together. Cut hamburger rolls in half, butter lightly and toast with the buttered side up. (This forms a crisp surface so that mixture will not be absorbed in the bun.) Spread crab mixture on the bun; sprinkle with shredded cheese. Place under broiler for 3 to 5 minutes until browned and bubbly. Serve hot, immediately.

Recipe adapted from “My Favorite Maryland Recipes” by Mrs. J. Millard Tawes

Fried Green Tomatoes

August 12, 2015January 13, 2019

Fried Green Tomatoes are far from a Maryland-specific food but they fit nicely among Maryland fare for a few reasons. The Southern-ness of Fried Green Tomatoes, mistakenly taken for granted since the 1992 film, is now being exposed as questionable. Maryland, though perhaps not Marylanders, can relate to this questioned Southern identity.

Recipes for fried green (and red) tomatoes, often served with cream gravy, appear throughout my Maryland cookbooks and newspapers from the 20th century onward.

Frying green tomatoes makes a lot of sense in Maryland, where we have a slightly shorter growing season than locations farther south. It is a handy technique come October, when the last of the crops refuse to ripen in time and you want to savor that final vestige of summer.

In this case I went the opposite route, using some of the beautiful early tomatoes that show up at the Waverly Farmers Market.

The simple recipe I used came from a community cookbook, “The Country School Cookbook II” printed in 1980. Although I cannot determine much about Amy Horne, the recipe’s contributor, this elementary school was founded in Easton in 1934 and is still operating today.

Country School founder Dorothy Starrt and original location from the Country School website.

The cookbook is most notable to me for its exceptional illustrations. They reflect the bounty of the Eastern Shore, of which this author considers the tomato to be the crown jewel.

Recipe:

2 Green tomatoes
1 egg
1tb water
salt & pepper or seasoned salt
oil or bacon grease (or both)
breadcrumbs (smaller than the ones I made! smash them small!)

Slice green tomatoes very thin (they are best when slightly tinged with pink). Dip in egg, which has been slightly beaten with seasonings, thinned with a little water. Fry in a thin amount of oil or bacon fat until brown and crisp, just under 2 minutes each side.

Recipe adapted from “The Country School Cookbook II”, 1980

Gooseberry Chutnee, An East India Receipt

August 6, 2015January 13, 2019

More preservation tactics of Mrs. B.C. Howard née Jane Gilmor, this time in the form of chutney.
Mrs. Howard has a number of Indian recipes in her cookbook, including three “East India Receipt”s for chutneys and pickled lemons.

She also includes a curry, a recipe for “Binderloo”, and “Indian Pilau.” From my modern vantage point they instill a kind of trust in her tastes and experience, although for the time they’re not entirely atypical.
The Bristish ‘Thacker, Spink & Company’ published a book on Indian Cookery the year before “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” came out. A sophisticated lady like Mrs. Howard may have come across these Indian-via-Britain recipes through friends, family or servants.

Gooseberries were unfamiliar to me before this undertaking. Some say that this “old world” fruit are so-named because they are served with goose. Wikipedia suggests that the name may just be an “etymological corruption.”

Also: “Gooseberry bush” was 19th-century slang for pubic hair, and from this comes the saying that babies are “Born under a gooseberry bush.”

I got these berries from Reid’s Orchard and turned to my beloved Punjab Grocery for some ginger, garlic, and tamarind.

There were no fresh tamarinds that day so I used paste – preserved tamarinds are possibly appropriate here, as I do not believe tamarinds to be cultivated in Maryland.
The package informed me that these tamarinds had been seeded but that was LIES and my food mill is lucky to be alive.

The results are fantastically tangy and beg to accompany meats. I wonder if they would go well with binderloo?

Recipe:

2 Lb gooseberries
1 Lb tamarind
.5 Lb sugar
.25 Lb raisins
.25 Lb ginger
.125 Lb garlic
.125 Lb mustard seed

Four pounds ripe gooseberries two pounds of tamarinds one pound of sugar half abound of raisins half a pound of ginger quarter of a pound of garlic quarter of a pound mustard seed Boil the gooseberries in a quart of vinegar with the sugar Grind the other ingredients with another bottle of vinegar and quarter of a pound of salt Mix with the fruit and boil for twenty minutes Let it cool then bottle for use.

Recipe halved from “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” By Mrs. B. C. Howard