Month: November 2016

Black Walnut Cake

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“An old almanac in the Goschenhoppen Folklife Library contains a woodcut showing a farm boy with a baseball-bat size club whacking away at a walnut tree. The late Thomas R. Brendle records the practice of waking-up young fruit and nut trees that are reluctant to start bearing by beating them with club. The folk practice dictates that the trees were to be beaten on New Year’s Day in the morning without speaking. A current arborist write that this is not complete nonsense. Apparently if a young apple tree, for example, has reached the age when it should start to bear and it just doesn’t flower, during the winter when it is dormant a beating with a padded club and a vigorous twisting of the limbs traumatizes and shocks the tree into its normal cycle.” – The Historian: Black walnuts in local culture, Berks-Mont News

A search of early era newspapers for “Black Walnut” turns up a lot of talk about furniture. And this may be what the trees are primarily known for today. But today, foragers know that the smelly, stain-causing green projectiles launched from black walnut trees contain a tasty little treasure for those willing to do the work to get them out.

It is actually surprising that black walnuts didn’t catch on sooner with Euro-Americans, because their flavor is very floral and perfumey – fitting in well with the rose or orange flower water flavorings that were common in desserts of the era. But with Chesapeake abundance, it could be easy to overlook such tough nut to crack. I harvested some black walnuts last year, dried them out, and had Burgersub drive over them with his car, but they came out too pulverized for use. Mom says that my grandmother smashes them with a hammer – but then she has smaller more nimble hands for picking the nutmeats out of the walnut chambers. This year, I bought them at the farmer’s market, conveniently shelled and ready for use.

Black walnuts were widely consumed by Native Americans, and the practical Pennsylvania Dutch (and their Maryland counterparts) have long used the nuts and the trees’ wood. One Pennsylvania writer has said that Black Walnut Cake was a Thanksgiving tradition in his family.

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Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s Black Walnut notes, “Domestic Cookery,” 1859

Many older Maryland recipes for Black Walnut Cake resemble a pound cake, but I chose a lighter cake from “Maryland’s Way,” contributed by a Ruby Duval of Annapolis (1891-1976). This cake contains baking powder, and uses only the beaten whites of the eggs. Food writer Clementine Paddleford wrote of a similar recipe, hailing from Kansas, in 1952.

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I recently learned from “Maryland’s Chesapeake” by Neal and Kathy Wielech Patterson that The Maryland Department of Natural Resources sometimes collects donated bushels of black walnuts in order to grow them into seedlings to be planted along streams. This program, called “Stream ReLeaf,” plants native trees to curb erosion and runoff – ultimately resulting in a healthier and cleaner Chesapeake Bay. If you’ve ever seen the piles and piles of nuts dropped by a black walnut when it’s having an abundant year, you may be reassured that you can have this cake and a clean bay too. Ugh, nevermind, just eat some cake and watch out for the shells because you can break a tooth.

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Recipe:

  • 1 Cup butter
  • 2 Cup sugar
  • 3 Cup flour
  • 2 Teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 Cup milk
  • 1 Cup black walnut meats
  • 5 egg whites
  • Powdered sugar
  • almond extract or other flavoring

Preheat oven to 350°. 

Cream butter, gradually beat in sugar, mixing until smooth and fluffy. Sift together flour and baking powder. Gradually add flour and milk to creamed butter/sugar, alternating, beginning and ending with flour. Gently fold in beaten egg whites and walnut meats, keeping light but mixing thoroughly. Pour into bundt pan that has been greased and floured; bake for 45 minutes or until lightly browned.

Wet powdered sugar with almond flavoring and/or water and mix until smooth. Spread over cake while it is still slightly warm.

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

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Cabbage Pudding or Stuffed Green Cabbage

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This is a good one if you are having some guests over and you want to be disappointed at how little impressed they are after you undertook a time-consuming process to present them with this delicious and elaborate stuffed cabbage. Don’t get me wrong: this was actually very good. It’s just that the end result out of the dutch oven makes one feel a little silly for going through the process of carefully peeling back cabbage leaves one by one.

This recipe came from “Maryland’s Way,” the Hammond-Harwood House cookbook, and the instructions were to place the cabbage on a draining rack in the sink and to “pour boiling water over it, a little at a time, carefully separating the leaves to open out cabbage head.” Between cooking and metalworking, my hands are like leather gloves but this still required me to carefully coax the leaves using a chopstick. If I had done my homework I might have found this helpful video with a much better method for opening up a cabbage.

As mentioned in the video, this was apparently a favorite dish of Thomas Jefferson’s. Mary Randolph also includes a version of the recipe in “The Virginia Housewife,” without explicit instructions for the stuffing. 19th century recipes often call for “forcemeat” which is any combination of ground meat, seasonings, bread, eggs, etc. – some recipes contain no meat at all.

In Maryland’s Way, the source is listed as “Miss Ann Chase’s Book,” dated 1811 and noted to be “Sophia Ridgely’s receipt, revised.” I am not positive of Sophia’s husband William’s relation to the Ridgelys of Hampton (shad roe croquettes) but I am sure there is one. Sophia was born Sophia Plater – of the Sotterly Plantation (jumbles) Platers.

Samuel Chase,
by Ole Erekson, Engraver, c1876, Library of Congress

Ann Chase was the daughter of Samuel Chase, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Justice of the Supreme Court. Thomas Jefferson, with the assistance of John Randolph of Roanoke (a distant relative of Mary Randolph, in fact,) impeached Chase, but Chase was acquitted.

They would have saved time just having some stuffed cabbage together since they all love it so dang much!

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Recipe:

  • 1 large green cabbage, savoy is best
  • 1 Tablespoon butter
  • 1 bunch onion, cut fine
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 Lb ground veal*
  • .5 Lb ground pork, or more
  • 1 slice crumbled bread
  • 1 Tablespoon chopped parsley
  • .25 Teaspoon thyme
  • .25 Teaspoon marjoram
  • salt
  • black pepper

Aauté onions and garlic lightly in the butter, then add ground meat, bread crumbs, parsley and seasonings, browning slightly and blending together. Plunge cabbage into pot of boiling water and peel back the leaves, a little at a time, scalding cabbage again as necessary. Remove a small amount of the innermost leaves if necessary. Drain, then spoon stuffing between the leaves and over the center. Fold up outside leaves, closing cabbage in original form, and tie up with string or in a bag.

For the dutch oven:

  • 2 Tablespoons  butter
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 3 carrots, sliced
  • 1 cup meat broth
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 Teaspoon caraway seed
  • salt
  • flour

Melt butter in Dutch oven, arrange onion and carrots in bottom of pot and place stuffed cabbage on them. Pour stock around cabbage and add bay leaf and caraway seed. Sprinkle cabbage lightly with salt. Return lid to Dutch oven and bake in 250° oven for 1.5 to two hours, or until thermometer inserted registers safe meat temperature. Remove cabbage and vegetables to serving platter. Thicken sauce with flour serve over cabbage and vegetables. Serve the remainder in a tureen.

*I used all ground pork and it was fine; the key is to use good stock.

Recipe Adapted from Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House cookbook

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One Hundred Dollar Fudge

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In 1971, a woman in Fruitland, MD, recovering from an illness, took out an ad in the Salisbury Daily Times to express gratitude towards the “many friends who contributed in any way” towards her recovery. She thanked friends, neighbors, ambulance drivers, doctors, her Pastor, and she praised the Lord. She also thanked “Bill Phillips and the many Party Line listeners” – for the cards, flowers, phone calls and cash donations that they provided in her time of need.

For over thirty years, Party Line was one of the most popular radio shows on the Eastern Shore. Hosted by onetime station manager William Phillips on the WICO country music station, “Party Line” served as a forum where listeners could call in to buy, sell and swap anything from outboard motors to exotic birds. The idea of Craigslist as a morning talk show may seem confusing, but by all accounts, the show’s popularity could be attributed to Phillips himself, who charmed listeners with “folksy chit-chat” – and a sense of community so strong that it mobilized listeners to care for one-another in times of need. An oft-repeated anecdote about the show involves a woman who called to report that her husband lost his dentures on the beach – later found by another Party Line listener, of course.

The nature of radio broadcasts is somewhat ephemeral – and an on-air flea-market even more so. But the show has left behind a lasting legacy in the form of a beloved cookbook sourced from its many listeners. Eastern Shore natives still seek out copies and share memories of the tattered copies of this book serving faithfully in their family kitchens. According to the book’s preface, “What is Cooking On Party Line” received 1400 contributions from listeners.

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The resulting book gives an overview of what was cooking in Eastern Shore kitchens around 1983. From the first recipe for “Cheddar Cheese Balls” to the final recipe, “Red Pepper Jelly,” the collection demonstrates that food habits from a particular time and place can’t be easily pigeonholed or stereotyped. While there are many convenience recipes associated with the 1970s, featuring processed ingredients such as Kool-Aid and Cheez-Whiz, there are also recipes that have obviously been passed down for generations, for pickling and preserving, or serving up game like muskrat, possum, and woodchuck. Eight different corn pudding recipes are included. There are, of course, nearly 40 recipes featuring crab. The book also weaves prayers throughout, a constant reminder of spirituality and its ties to the kitchen.

My own copy has a previous owner’s index of favorite recipes hand-written in the back cover- mostly for some of the cakes. When the compilers of “What is Cooking on Party Line” received multiple submissions of very similar recipes, they attribute the recipe to multiple names. It’s interesting to observe the way the recipes had spread and been shared, even before this popular cookbook was published.

I decided to make one of the more ‘popular’ recipes and so I made “One Hundred Dollar Fudge,” a recipe with seven names listed underneath. I didn’t have marshmallow fluff so I made it from marshmallows. I would actually recommend this step to others who make the fudge. The corn syrup in the fluff controls sugar crystallization, and my fudge came out so smooth that it got comments on that fact.

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1966 ad for a political appearance on “Party Line”

William Phillips passed away in November 1994, and the show came to an end. WICO Program Director Dave Parks recalled “he was one of the last local superstars in radio. One of a dying breed. He was known all over the Eastern Shore. He was like a Hollywood star here. He endured because of his personality. He really was Mr. Radio.”

Some younger cooks who have inherited copies of the book may have never heard the show, but many people still recall it fondly and can sing the jingle by heart.

“Hello.
Is this the party line?
Yes, it’s your party line and it’s time for all the gossip on your party line.
What’s goin’ on, tell us who, when and how?
Well, just listen in to your party line now.
WICO Radio brings you the latest on your party line, party line.”

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Recipe:

  • 2 sticks margarine or butter
  • 4 ½ c. sugar
  • 1 can evaporated milk

Cook over medium high heat and bring to a rapid boil, stirring constantly. Boil exactly 5 minutes, remove from heat and add:

  • 3 c. (18 oz.) chocolate chips
  • 9 oz. jar marshmallow creme

Stir until melted. Add:

  • 2 Tbsp vanilla
  • ½ c. nuts
  • 1 c. peanut butter (optional)

Pour into buttered 13 x 9 inch baking pan. Set in refrigerator overnight. Then set out two hours before cutting or it will crumble. Makes 5 lbs. of fudge.

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Sweet Potato Pone, Jane Dotson

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“In a year of low incomes from cotton, such as 1934, tenants speak of their [winter] store of sweet potatoes in terms which make it clear that they regard this store as life itself. A man’s sweet potatoes are his banked resources, his protection against starvation and destitution until advances begin in the spring.” – Natalie F. Joffe and Tomannie Thompson Walker, quoted in “Soul Food: The Surprising History of an American Cuisine” 

Although sweet potato pie is now widely known as the ultimate sweet potato incarnation in soul food, the closely-related pone has had its share of appreciation in the recipe pages of newspapers such as the Afro-American and The New York Amsterdam News.

Many people are aware that sweet potatoes bear a similarity to yams, an unrelated but similar African staple. But according to “Soul Food: The Surprising History of an American Cuisine” by Adrian Miller, the candied/pie/pone treatment would be an atypical treatment for yams:

“Notably absent from West African cooking are past and present recipes or accounts of sweet yam dishes. Overall, nothing like the candied yam or a sweet potato existed in precolonial West African foodways. For West Africans, the idea of sugaring vegetables is nonsensical.”

The sweet treatment of sweet potatoes (which actually originate from Peru) was more influenced by ways that Europeans had been eating carrots, another root crop with similar possibilities. Historic cookbooks contain many recipes for carrot puddings that would be the forebear of sweet potato pudding or pone.

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Carrot Pudding,


The London Art of Cookery, 1785

Nonetheless, sweet potatoes became an important staple in the diet of enslaved people. For some newly arrived slaves this may have originally been a preference due to the alternatives being either hard to digest or unpalatable. Miller writes, “Sweet potatoes were an integral part of plantation foodways, and poor whites ate them as well. Southern planters were effusive about the benefits of using the sweet potato crops for slave food. William Summer, a South Carolina planter, wrote in 1845, ‘Such is the partiality of the plantation negroes for potatoes, as an article of food, that as soon as the season for digging arrives, they prefer an allowance of root to any of the cereal grains.’”

This is another example, along with the extensive eating of vegetables such as greens, where the diets of the enslaved may have actually provided better nutrition than the ostentatious diets of the people who enslaved them.

“The fact that the sweet potato got African Americans through hard times enhanced its cultural value, and we see that elevated status in the way sweet potatoes were cooked by African Americans during slavery and after Emancipation,” writes Miller, “A ‘survival food’ is often considered undesirable, something that is only eaten during hard times. For sharecroppers, the opposite was true with sweet potatoes. Farmers spoke of them with almost spiritual reverence.”

So much so, in fact, that there is an exception to the West African indifference to sweet sweet potatoes: Liberia. A recipe search for Liberian Sweet Potato Pone will turn up a dish made from grated potatoes, sweetened with molasses and seasoned with ginger. It seems apparent that this recipe made its way to Liberia with the enslaved people who were freed and resettled there in the mid 1800s. The descendants of this population now make up only about 5% of the population of Liberia, but the country observes Thanksgiving on the first Thursday in November. An adaptation of American Thanksgiving, it is a day to celebrate freedom and independence, give religious thanks, eat roast chicken… and of course sweet potato pone.

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Afro-American, 1973

I chose to make one of two Sweet Potato Pone recipes from “300 years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County,” contributed by Jane Dotson of “Dotsonville.” Internet searches don’t turn up a Dotsonville but there are many Dotsons living in and around Mechanicsville in St. Mary’s County.

Unlike recipes that use grated raw or cooked sweet potatoes, this one uses mashed potatoes. I lazily chose to roast the potatoes and puree them with an immersion blender. The resulting pone came out creamy and satisfying. Served à la mode with some cardamom ice cream, it was an absolute treat.

Most of us will thankfully not ever know the need to rely on one crop to keep us fed during the winter months. Still, the enduring affinity for sweet potatoes among those who did should be enough to remind us that these nutritious tubers deserve a place on the table throughout the season.

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Recipe:

  • 1.5-2 lbs sweet potatoes
  • 1.75 Cups sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • .5 Teaspoons cinnamon
  • .5 Teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 4 tb butter

Cook the sweet potatoes until tender. Peel, then beat with an egg beater, adding the other ingredients. (I used roasted potatoes and an immersion blender.) Beat until smooth. Pour into a buttered casserole dish and bake in a 375-400° oven until evenly browned. About 20-25 minutes (5 servings)

Recipe adapted from “300 years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County”

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This dang potato had a hole that went this deep!

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