As I hopefully made clear last year, the results of the “Eastern Shore Tomato Tasting” are in no way definitive. Taste and quality can vary from year to year, day to day, and tomato to tomato.
Why bother, then? For fun.
This year I roped in some assistance from Kit Pollard, local food writer and author of the Mango & Ginger blog, as well as Erik Morgan, a Maryland pal who is a chef at Aldine in Philadelphia, and occasionally presents enviable culinary artistry on Instagram.
The usual panel of anonymous friends was also present, plus a baby who hated all of the tomatoes.
Not much has changed along Tomato Alley, with the exception of last year’s nameless stand now identified as Cosquay Farms. (A historical Maryland farm in fact!)
Demonstrating the fickle nature of this endeavor, Wrights Market was this year’s favorite – last year it was second from last. S & H and Oakley’s continue to be strong contenders. Oakley’s was an early favorite, but the variety between tomatoes took them down a peg.
Wright’s Market, Hebron
A few notes on the tomatoes..
Cosquay Farms:
“[The] only one that has an aroma.”
“Attractive, rich red. Smells ‘like a tomato.’”
“Not much aroma.”
Oakley’s Farm Market:
“Super sweet!”
The Farmer’s Wife:
“More flavor. Good texture.”
“Light mottling on the inside, good deep red. Nice bite.”
“Pleasant, lingering tomato musk.”
Wright’s Market:
“Very red! Good amount of goo. Tart! Mild sweetness, good lingering umami.”
Crab-cakes may be king now, but it wasn’t always so. From the 1800′s right on up through the 1950′s, if you wanted to impress some guests, you’d serve them crab meat picked from the crab, mixed with an assortment of seasonings, packed back into the crab shell with some breadcrumbs on top and baked until golden brown. Très Élégante!
Not to be confused with the Southern dish of the same name, “Deviled Crab” is essentially crab salad or crab imperial, broiled in a crab shell. Some recipes, such as those from “Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook” (1981) and the Baltimore Evening Sun’s “Fun with Sea Food” (1960) just refer to this dish as Crab Imperial. With those recipes included, the Deviled Crabs recipes in my database out-number the crab cake recipes.
Whereas crab-cake formulas are all but set in stone these days (”NO FILLER YE INFIDELS!”), Deviled Crab is a nice alternative that allows a little leeway. Recipes from the late 1800′s books “Queen of the Kitchen” and “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” simply place the picked crab meat in the shell, top it with breadcrumbs and butter, and broil.
Later recipes stuff the crab shells with a salad containing a variety of ingredients. Most contain some combination of breadcrumbs, egg, milk or cream, pepper, Worcestershire, mustard, parsley, mayonnaise and lemon juice. Other optional add-ins include onion, mushroom, green pepper, horseradish, sherry and Tabasco sauce.
I didn’t have all of the ingredients to make any one particular recipe, so I just winged it. The results were actually pretty fantastic… better than many crab-cakes I’ve had. Tasters attributed the success primarily to the flavorful shallot, and the fact that the crab meat was a combination from the entire crab. Such features included in a crab-cake recipe would have me pilloried.
Recipe:
(things I had around)
½ lb crabmeat
½ cup breadcrumbs
1 shallot, minced fine
½ cup mayonnaise
juice of 1 lemon
½ tsp Worcestershire Soy Sauce
½ tsp mustard powder
dash hot sauce
salt, pepper
topping: breadcrumbs, butter, paprika
Pick meat from crabs & clean shells thoroughly, if using. Mix mayo with shallot and seasonings and gently fold in crabmeat. Gently drop into crab shells or ramekins. Top with breadcrumbs, dot with butter, sprinkle with paprika. Cook for 15 minutes at 375° or until topping is browned.
Outside of the German peach cake, or the Indian chutney that made its way into Mrs. B.C. Howard’s recipe collection, non-English and African influences aren’t always obvious in the recipes I work from. A lot of cooking traditions were passed down orally in immigrant communities, or else handwritten recipe manuscripts of everyday citizens didn’t make their way into historical society collections and the like. The remaining option is to reference “old world” sources and attempt to fill in the gaps.
That’s why I was grateful to find “Italian American Favorite Recipes” in a thrift store – even if it was printed in 1982. This Baltimore community cookbook benefitted the “American Committee on Italian Migration,” or ACIM, an organization created in “response to the immigration crisis resulting from the social and economic chaos occurring in Italy after two world wars.” [1] Lobbying by ACIM facilitated “The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965” which abolished a quota system of immigrants by nation of origin. One book calls the act “The Law that Changed the Face of America.”[2]
Although Italian Immigration to Baltimore dates back to the mid-1800’s, ACIM found that many newcomers in the 1960s still needed assistance with relocation to the United States. A 2015 Baltimore Sun article on ACIM (now American Citizens for Italian Matters) describes some of the organizations more recent efforts such as the restoration of Italian works of art, university endowments, and contributions to women’s center My Sister’s Place.
The ACIM cookbook was compiled in 1982 by member Margaret Rose Mastellone. Margaret was an ideal force behind such a cookbook; she and her husband Andrea owned and operated the Mastellone Deli and Wine Shop on Harford Road.
The Mastellone’s were venerated authorities on Italian food, frequently quoted in the Baltimore Sun on topics from olive oil (1984) to tiramisu (1989).
“I love being with people. I’ve been raised in this business. And it’s not just people of Italian extraction, all kinds of people come [to Mastellone Deli and Wine Shop] to shop. We share in what they do, no matter what their background may be. Thank God for the people who are interested in our type of food. We want to share with them. We have something that’s special.” – Margaret Rose Mastellone, “Preserving a way of life by cooking Italian style”, Baltimore Sun 1982
Andrea passed away in 2010, and Margaret two years later. Andrea’s renowned taste and knowledge of wine was celebrated, and it was said that “Customers who venerated Italian cooking quickly made [their] store into something of a gastronomic shrine.”
Ever since I made shad roe ravioli in the spring, I caught a fancy for homemade pasta. After months of pining I got a pasta roller to call my own. I brought home some clams from Chincoteague – my favorite – and turned to the ACIM cookbook for ideas.
Lo and behold, this recipe for white clam sauce was contributed to the book by the Mastellone’s son Salvatore; “White Clam Sauce alla Salvatore Mastellone.”
It turned out amazing and I’ve been rolling out fresh pasta on the regular ever since.
In a 1982 article about the cookbook, Margaret Rose Mastellone specified that clam sauce should be served with linguini. Presumably, she passed that preference onto her son. However, my pasta cutter only does spaghetti or fettuccine so I chose the latter, rather than buy dried pasta. I like to think that the Mastellones would understand.
Recipe:
24 cherrystone clams
.25 Cup olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
.5 Cup chopped italian parsley
.125 Lb butter
1 pinch red pepper flakes
1 Lb linguine or fettuccine
Clean clams and steam until open. Drain and mince clams; set aside. Brown garlic in oil; remove from oil and mash. Mix clams, parsley, butter, a pinch of pepper flakes, and mashed garlic. Boil pasta al dente. Add clam sauce and serve. “Have with a nice Italian white wine, chilled. Bon Appetito.”
Recipe adapted from “Italian American Favorite Recipes”
[1] The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia edited by Salvatore J. LaGumina, Frank J. Cavaioli, Salvatore Primeggia, Joseph A. Varacalli
[2] The Law that Changed the Face of America: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 By Margaret Sands Orchowski
“Every spring and summer, almost like clockwork, I receive multiple recipe requests for the Baltimore peach cake… Peach cake is one of those uniquely Baltimore things, like coddies, that
live long in people’s memories. The true Baltimore peach cake is always
a yeast-based cake, and most neighborhood bakeries make it as a large
sheet cake rather than as a round cake. That way it can easily be sliced
into nice, big squares and maximize the amount of peaches per slice.” – Baltimore Sun Recipe Finder 2014
Baltimore peach-cake, purportedly a contribution from the city’s German population, has been a celebrated summer tradition in the city for decades. Praise and nostalgia over peach cake has been issued by the Baltimore Sun on a nearly annual basis, with Jacques Kelly alone penning no less than three articles celebrating the dessert.
“I believe that like so much in Baltimore, the perfect peach cake has no frills. But many devotees will give me a loud argument on this one. Just as Old Bay seasoning has no place in a crab cake recipe, apricot or raspberry jellies — or cinnamon — have no place in a proper peach cake. Sometime in the past 30 years, a glazed topping has insinuated itself into local baking. I think of this glazing as Formstoning what was once a simple and delicious product. Whoever came up with cinnamon needs an evaluation at the Phipps Clinic.” – Jacques Kelly, “The time is ripe for Baltimore peach cake”, 2010
Since “peach cake” can mean many things, it’s hard to know just how far back Baltimore Peach Cake, in its known form, has been around.
1905, Baltimore Sun
“Unless you’re a true Baltimorean,” [said Julia Logue-Riordan], “you don’t know about Baltimore peach cake and how wonderful it is. I grew up on it… everyone always seems to remember eating it way back but nobody seems to know exactly how it developed.” – “Peach cake mystery has a sweet ending”, Baltimore Sun, 1983
I certainly do not qualify as a true Baltimorean; the existence of Baltimore Peach Cake being news to me in the past few years. This was the first time I’ve actually tried it.
I’ll just own up right now that this recipe was not a huge success. Popular peach cake lore says that this Baltimore specialty should be bought from a bakery, and I should have probably listened considering that I don’t even own the right pan. As you can maybe see in the photo, the edges burned due to being cooked in a pie pan.
BGE Cookbooks from 1983, 1975
My recipe, the same one that gets reprinted in the Sun, is from an old BGE cookbook, the 1985 “Maryland Classics.” Gas and electric companies started publishing cookbooks in the 20th century to encourage the use of… gas and electricity, and the books remained common through the 1990s. This particular BGE cookbook is somewhat impressive for its thoroughness with the Maryland recipes. In addition to Baltimore Peach cake there’s Smearcase, Maryland Fried Chicken, and even Maryland Stuffed Ham. Hats off to the “Home Economics Staff” at BGE.
The BGE recipe includes several features that are the source of some controversy. The cinnamon is disavowed by some, as is the glaze. Jacques Kelly campaigns against these “frills” in each of his articles, with back-up from interviewees. Fenwick bakery’s Walter Uebersax asserted that “There’s no monkey business with glaze here,” in Kelly’s 1993 article “Peach cake gives the summer its sweetest taste.”
Also controversial is the question of whether to peel the peaches. In a 1991 article, baker George Simon told Kelly that he “never knew a baker who peeled his peaches for the cake. Some just broke open the peaches, threw away the pits and split the fruit into fours and set them into the dough,”
Those who witnessed the gradual closing of the dozens of bakeries that sold Baltimore Peach Cake may believe that the tradition is dying. Jacques Kelly rattled off a list of them in 1993: “Years after Silber’s, Glaser’s, Gerstung’s, Heying’s and Doebereiner’s bakeries went out of business, their former customers still rhapsodize over the merits of their remembered peach cakes.”
I’m inclined to believe that nothing could die out with this much interest and passion surrounding it. Still, it helps to actually buy the cake. Not just once as a novelty, but year after year. Ultimately, I resolved to do just that. After some gnocci at DiPasquales I walked on over to Hoehns (aside – Highlandtown is pretty great!) and ordered up a slab. I’m adding this, like shad roe, to the list of annual purchases to look forward to. It came in a nice little box, tied up with string. Pulling the ends of the bow was like opening a gift.
Recipe:
1 ¾ cups unsifted all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 package (¼ ounce) active dry yeast
2 tablespoons softened butter or margarine
½ cup very hot tap water
1 egg
1 ½ to 2 cups peeled, sliced peaches
3 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup apricot jam
1 drop red food coloring, optional (I did not have but would look nice)
In a large mixing bowl, thoroughly mix ½ cup flour, sugar, salt and undissolved yeast. Beat in butter or margarine. Gradually add water to dry ingredients and beat 2 minutes at medium speed of the electric mixer, scraping bowl occasionally. Add egg and ½ cup flour, or enough flour to make a thick batter. Beat at high speed for 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally.
Stir in remaining flour and spread batter evenly into two greased, 9-inch round pans or one 9-inch square pan.
Arrange sliced peaches on the cake batter. Combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle mixture over peaches. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk, about 1 hour.
Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.
Heat apricot jam in a 1-quart sauce pan and add food coloring, if using. Brush on warm peach cake
* No claims to be the one true authentic peach cake are made with this post
