April 2017 - OLD LINE PLATE

Readbourne Quail

April 26, 2017April 16, 2019

On the suggestion of several friends, I recently watched “Fannie’s Last Supper,” a documentary about Christopher Kimball & company recreating a late 1800’s era meal based on the recipes of Boston Cooking School instructor Fannie Farmer. Although I thought that they could have been a little less rosy – this was an era of adulterated/tainted food and food poisoning – I did enjoy the film.

Most of all, it made me want to put forth a little extra effort with Victorian era dishes. I may not always have company coming, but some of these recipes were published with the purpose of impressing the reader with the sophistication and budget of the cookbook authors. They’re meant to be prepared with some pomp.

I recently spotted some quail in the case at the butcher shop and I was intrigued. I checked my collection for quail recipes. I only have six recipes specifying quail. This may be because the small game birds could be somewhat interchangeable. Still, quail seems like an elegant little fowl befitting the era.

One recipe suggested stuffing the birds with oysters and larding them with bacon. That sounds like a positively elegant idea, but I instead opted for a recipe from a positively elegant place – Readbourne manor. This recipe entailed browning the quails in butter and then cooking them in a gravy made with stock and sherry.

Readbourne, 1937, Frances Benjamin

Johnston, loc.gov

Like many old manors, Readbourne was built in phases, starting in the 1730′s with a final wing added as late as 1948.

It was first occupied by members of the Hollyday family, who you may remember from cookbook author Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s first marriage.

This quail recipe was contributed to “Maryland’s Way” by the wife of William Fahnstock, Jr., a wealthy New York Banker. The Fahnestocks restored the Readbourne mansion in the 1940′s. The land and surrounding grounds continue to be privately owned today.

Illustrations, Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management

The illustrations from Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management (1861) are ideal inspiration for a dainty presentation. If the photos that accompany most modern restaurant reviews are any indication, we still live in an era of asymmetrical food platings, jaunty stacks of cuisine, and sauce strewn around in squiggles and dots. I bet it won’t be long before Beeton’s showy precision and generous piles of garnish makes a comeback.

Ultimately, all that I did was make two concentric rings with rice and peas, and a dollop of jelly to the side promptly slid down the plate into the peas. Hey, I tried my best. Also, I poured my Budweiser into a goblet.

I think the quail may have tasted better for my effort. The beer, not so much.

Recipe:

4 quail
4 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour
2 Cup chicken stock
.5 Cup sherry
salt, black pepper to taste

Wash and truss four quail; place them in a heavy frying pan and brown in about four tablespoons butter.After browning on all sides, place them in a dutch oven or casserole dish with lid. Make gravy by adding 3 tablespoons flour to remaining butter in frying pan and whisk in slowly about 2 cups of chicken stock and ½ cup of sherry. Blend until thickened, add salt and pepper to taste, and pour over the quail. Cover tightly and cook at 350° for about 1 hour. “The birds are good and moist when cooked this way. Wild rice should be served with the quail.”

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

Frank Hennessy’s “Chicken-Boh-B-Q”

April 21, 2017January 12, 2019

Frank Hennessy never passed up a chance to promote National Beer. It was his job to do so for 18 years (1957 to 1975), and he approached the job with legendary gusto.

Advertising executive John Schneider III (1918-2009) has been credited with “making Boh synonymous with Baltimore.” He may also share part of the credit for making the name “Frank Hennessy” synonymous with Boh. It was Schneider who put Hennessy aboard a skipjack named “Chester Peake” and sent him “to every corner of Tidewater Maryland” as the “Roving Ambassador of the Chesapeake Bay.”

The sail of the 1915 skipjack was embroidered with the face of the iconic “Mr. Boh.”

Afro-American, August 1966

When Hennessy passed away in 2000, the Sun had many stories to share:

“Dubbed “Commodore of the Chesapeake” by Gov. Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, Hennessy was a familiar figure to Bay yachtsman as he cruised the Bay from the the C & D Canal to Smith Island, dressed in a snappy nautical cap, white duck pants and blue blazer.

“During the summer months we’ll be cruising the Chesapeake Bay, attending races, regattas and other special events, hoping that Chester Peake will serve as a graceful symbol of the wonderful Land of Pleasant Living,” [Hennessy] told The Sun.

Hennessy, an excellent outdoors cook who gained honors as the Male Barbecuing Champion at the national chicken grill-off in Selbyville, Del., was the creator of the Chesapeake BAYke.

“We have our wonderful crab feasts, oyster and bull roasts but there’s no identifying name like New England clambake or Hawaiian luau, and my wife and I got to thinking about a Chesapeake BAYke,” he told The Sun in an interview.

Firing up his gigantic Weber Big Smokey grill, Hennessy and his wife, Rita, whom he married in 1938, used such strictly local Maryland ingredients as rockfish, clams, oysters, blue crabs, corn and broiler chicken to create the feast.

Hennessy, who was born in St. Louis and reared in Memphis, always claimed one of his grilling secrets was using Arkansas swamp hickory chips.” – True Chesapeake Character, Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, 2000

The concept of the somewhat-awkwardly-named Chesapeake BAYke provided Hennessy with more opportunities to promote Natty Boh in local newspapers.

He copyrighted the term in 1964.

In 1960, Hennessy took home the prize in the Barbeque division of the Delmarva Poultry Industry’s National Chicken Cooking Contest (more on that event can be found in this post). His recipe for a broiled and basted chicken features a not-so-secret addition. You guessed it.

National Beer TV ad 1960s, youtube.com

I remember my own introduction to Boh. After watching a friend’s band at the Ottobar in the late 90s, we migrated to the bar upstairs. Someone asked what beer was the cheapest. “Natty Boh-boh!” was a friend’s lyrical reply. At a buck fifty, no one needed any further rationale for drinking National Bohemian.

A lot of Baltimoreans still carry the banner of Natty Boh from bars to backyard barbecues, despite the fact that the beer is now brewed in North Carolina and Georgia. It no longer costs a buck fifty, but neither does anything else. Nor are you likely to hear about raconteurs cruising the bay for the sole purpose of glorifying a beer. The unchanging label of Natty Boh remains a reminder of a time when Baltimore was a little bit cheaper and a little bit weirder.

Rita & Frank Hennessey in 1984, Baltimore Sun photo: Anne Kornreich. ebay.com

Recipe:

Recipe notes: I didn’t have straight up MSG so I used Sazón, a wonderful seasoning composed primarily of MSG. No regrets. I cooked the chicken in the middle of a ring of coals for even heat. Salt the chicken the day before. It’s called dry brining, get the net.

The Southern Heritage Cookbook Library + “Sweet Potato Pound Cake”

April 19, 2017January 12, 2019

The books that got me curious about Maryland food were not Maryland cookbooks, strictly speaking. This cookbook set had been a constant in my household growing up, and I never thought of them as regional at all, despite the “Southern” in the name.

On my mother’s kitchen bookshelf they served as a source of inspiration and reference. Everything we could need was in “The Southern Heritage Cookbook Library.” When, as a child, I wanted to try and make cheesecake. We turned to the “Just Desserts” volume which gave us a decadent cake with mounds of cream cheese and sour cream, seven eggs, and which required about five hours in the oven.

That cake became an annual birthday tradition for me and it was what eventually led me to discover the concept of “Maryland food.” Feeling nostalgic in my 20s (and wanting to impress my friends), I borrowed “Just Desserts” for that cheesecake recipe. Thumbing through the book I noticed all of the information – illustrations, ephemera, anecdotes. I fell in love with this cookbook in a new way, and I began to acquire copies of the entire series for myself.

Illustration from “All Pork”

Eventually, I noticed various recipes with names like “Old Maryland Baked Ham,” “Maryland White Potato Pie,” and “Maryland Fried Chicken.” Aside from feeling surprised to see Maryland in a cookbook dedicated to the South, I was surprised that Maryland had any food tradition outside of crab cakes. Some of these dishes were unknown to me. I had to try them for myself. And maybe… blog about them?

So here we are.

The Southern Heritage cookbook series was first published in 1983 by Oxmoor House (Southern Living Magazine.) My mother remembers it as a subscription – one book a month for 19 months (the 19th is a master index to the entire book set). Copies of any of the books can now be found cheaply online, or occasionally in thrift stores or Book Thing in Baltimore.

Several of the cookbooks (e.g. “Company’s Coming,” “Sporting Scene,” “Breakfast & Brunch”) take a menu-based approach, listing a sample menu with the story behind them.

menu in “Company’s Coming” volume

For example, “Maryland Garden Pilgrimage Luncheon” features:

Old Durham Church Crab Cakes
Green Peas with Spring Onions
Cold Slaw
Jubilee Rolls
Maryland Fudge Cake
Glazed Strawberry Tarts

The “Cakes” book or “Plain and Fancy Poultry” might include recipes but also instructions on icing a cake or trussing a chicken, respectively.

Basically, they were the only reference I needed throughout my 20s, right up until I decided I wanted to, say, try to cook Vietnamese food… or to collect every Maryland cookbook just for the heck of it.

While it is true I now have many more ‘authentic’ sources for Maryland recipes, the Southern Heritage Cookbook library has continued to be a useful reference and a visual delight.

The weathered page of my beloved cheesecake recipe

Two Illustrations from “Cakes”

menu in “Family Gatherings” volume

Recipe:

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2.5 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
.5 teaspoon ground nutmeg
.25 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
.5 cups flaked coconut
.5 cups chopped pecans

Cream butter. gradually add sugar, beating well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add sweet potatoes and beat until blended.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt; gradually add to sweet potato mixture, beating well after each addition. Batter will be stiff. Stir in vanilla, coconut, and pecans.

Spoon batter into a well-greased 10-inch tube pan. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until take tests done. Cool in pan 15 minutes, remove to rack and cool completely.

May be glazed with lemon or orange glaze if desired.

Recipe adapted from Southern Heritage “Cakes” cookbook

Recipe notes: This is not a Maryland recipe as far as I know but it was very tasty; “a keeper” as they say. I’ll probably make this in the fall with black walnuts.

Southern Maryland Stuffed Ham

April 12, 2017January 12, 2019

“Just before Easter the air in St. Mary’s County is permeated by the odor of stuffed ham a-cooking.” – Maryland Farewell To Lent, Katherine Scarborough, Baltimore Sun 1950

It takes over an hour to drive from Baltimore to B.K. Miller Meats, but St. Mary’s County resident Bertha Hunt told me that that is where she gets her corned hams, so I made the trip.

When you enter B.K. Miller, you walk through a large liquor store, towards a back doorway. As I passed the aisles of booze I wondered what vestige of a deli I was about to encounter. To my surprise and delight, the back room was bustling. A woman was cooking up sausages and the smell was heavenly. I spotted scrapple, braunschweiger, liver pudding(!), and all the hog parts that are fit to eat stacked within the fridges and freezers.

After I requested the corned ham I’d called ahead for, some attention was drawn to me. “Are you going to stuff it?”, a woman asked. She fondly recalled stuffed ham and we chatted as I filled my arms with impulse purchase charcuterie. The atmosphere was jovial; some people were probably grabbing some meats to grill on that nice day. Others shopped for specialty items.

I lugged my ham to the front, glancing around at the liquor selection as I made my way to the register. It takes a long time to cook a ham… Alas, my hands were quite full.

It is fortunate that I enjoyed the B.K. Miller atmosphere so much, because it turns out, in a bit of irritating irony, that the ham was produced right in Baltimore by the Manger Packing Corporation.

When I’d inquired about a corned ham from a place in Catonsville, they told me that they don’t get corned hams until “closer to the holidays.” Thinking that they meant some time in April, I asked, “how much closer…?” “November” was the reply. “Oh,” I realized. “THOSE holidays.”

Stuffed ham may be available year-round in St. Mary’s county, but their Catholic origins means that stuffed ham for Easter is a must.

Baltimore Sun, 1960

Whenever I enjoy stuffed ham I am always reminded of how odd it is that it hasn’t “taken off” as at least a minor trend in the upscale restaurants that peddle in heritage foods. I will no longer wonder about that because now I know – stuffed ham is a real pain in the ass to make, and the options are a minefield of treacherous missteps.

The first point of contention is the type of ham. A 1950 Baltimore Sun article about Easter meals cited a St. Mary’s County authority, Mrs. Mervill Loker, who used a smoked ham. Others emphatically disavow this practice. Since a corned ham is the most commonly used, (and the most obscure and annoying item to get) I figured that was the way to go.

Once the corned ham has been rinsed comes the first real dilemma – to bone or not to bone? In 1988, Sun writer Rob Kasper explored the controversy.
“Ham Bone advocates cook the ham with the bone still in it. They argue that the bone gives flavor and posture to a stuffed ham,” he wrote. But then, “Anti-bone forces contend that with the bone removed, the ham is easier to slice and ‘you can fill up the bone-hole with more stuffing.’”

While that is a valid and intriguing point, I have no idea how to debone a ham. The bone stays in the ham.

I don’t even know where to begin with the whole greens thing. Cabbage, Kale, Mustard, Cress? While many people say this is a regional preference, I went ahead and got what was easily available at the farmer’s market, which happened to be a little of everything.

In “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland,” Colonel John Douglas Freeman includes shallot tops. Since I happened to have some in my garden I threw those in as well. Modern recipes blanch the greens first; I did this because it shrunk them down a bit, allowing me to pack more into the ham.

This is where it gets embarrassing. I don’t know my ham anatomy very well. I did get a few holes stuffed well (with the aid of a wooden spoon handle), but a real expert would have fit WAY more stuffing-holes into the ham. Live and learn.

The next ordeal came when it was time to begin the 5-hour boiling process. My pot was too small. I ended up having to borrow a turkey frying pot from my mom. Honestly, if I do this again I might just boil the whole thing on the turkey-fryer burner and spend the day outside.

There are many Baltimore Sun articles about stuffed ham, but the St. Mary’s College Slackwater oral histories offer local accounts. Interviewees talk about growing greens to stuff the ham with, personal preferences, learning to make the ham, and of course their own processes. An interview with Mary Drury goes into the most detail, describing “the tedious job, almost agony sometimes, of stuffing it until you have as much stuffing in there as you can get in the ham.”

I certainly didn’t find it agonizing but it is a lot of work.

When the process was done I was left with several byproducts – the thick layer of fat from my ham, some extra greens, and gallons of pot liquor. The agonizing thing was admitting that I could only use a few quarts of the pot liquor at most.

According to Rob Kasper’s 1988 Sun piece, “Almost everybody agrees that the best way to enjoy a stuffed ham is to slice it and serve it in sandwiches.” The rest of the particulars are enough to make your head spin but that is some advice I am glad to take. Now, for potato bread, white bread, or wheat….

Sally Lunn

April 5, 2017January 12, 2019

It’s hard to know where to begin with Sally Lunn. As Wikipedia points out, “the origins of the Sally Lunn are shrouded in myth,” and I am not exactly the caliber of historian capable of cracking the Da Vinci Code of bread. That might be a good movie to someone though*.

Sally Lunn is a delicious brioche that takes the form of a bun in England, where it originates, but tends to be made in a tube pan in the U.S. Although the first recorded mention of the bread was in 1780 in the town of Bath, England, there isn’t really any historical remnant of Sally Lunn’s supposed namesake.

One legend is that she was a Huguenot refugee named Solange Luyon. Another theory is that the bread’s name is a mutation of the French phrase “Sol et lune” – sun and moon – referring to the golden crust and white interior.

1964, Daily Capital News, Jefferson City Missouri

One thing we know for certain is that Sally Lunn has been a Southern mainstay for over two centuries. Although Mary Randolph did not call the bread “Sally Lunn” in her book “The Virginia Housewife,” the basic recipe appears there as French Rolls. A recipe for “Sallie Lund” appeared in the classic 1881 African-American authored “What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking,” one of the definitive collections of Southern recipes.

I have about 30 Sally Lunn recipes in my Maryland database, starting with several hand-written manuscripts from around 1850. When the spate of published Maryland cookbooks came out in the late 1800s**, each had at least one recipe for Sally Lunn. The recipes are all essentially the same. Even the frugal Elizabeth Ellicott Lea includes a staggering quarter pound of butter in the Sally Lunn recipe appearing in her 1859 cookbook. Later recipes start to substitute baking powder as leavening. This is such a quick bread to make that I usually stick with the yeast versions.

The Southern Heritage cookbook library includes many recipes that are sourced from “Maryland’s Way,” updated for clarity. Sally Lunn is one such recipe. It is included in the “Breakfast and Brunch” volume as a part of a Thanksgiving Breakfast. The menu includes:

Hot Apple Toddy
Buttery Fried Oysters
Old Maryland Baked Ham
Fresh Broccoli Salad in Lettuce Cups
Tomato Pie
Beaten Biscuits
Sally Lunn
Baked Ginger Apples
Maryland Rocks

The mystery that interests me is why this bread came to be known as so particularly “Southern.” I suppose it is possible that British foods like tea, pudding and Sally Lunn may have remained popular in the South on the eve of the Revolution, which was originally seen as a New England-centric cause. Anti-British sentiment may have been stronger in the northern colonies. Or maybe I’m reading too much into this.

It is a really convenient bread when your time is better spent dedicating 45 minutes to beating the hell out of some biscuits then getting *&@#!ed up on that toddy.

Recipe:

1 package yeast
.5 Cup lukewarm (105°-115°) water
1 Cup lukewarm (105°-115°) milk
.5 Cup melted butter
.5 Cup sugar
2 Teaspoon salt
3 well beaten egg
5.5 Cup divided flour

Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water in a large mixing bowl. Let stand five minutes or until bubbly. Stir in milk, butter, sugar, salt, eggs, and 3 cups flour. Beat at medium speed of an electric mixer 1 minute or until well blended. Stir in remaining flour to make a soft dough. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85°), free from drafts, 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.

Stir dough down; spoon into a well-greased and floured 10-inch Bundt pan. Cover and repeat rising procedure 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk. Bake at 400° for 25 minutes or until bread sounds hollow when tapped. Let cool 10 minutes in pan. Remove from pan; place on a wire rack to cool. Serve warm or cold.

Note: Cold bread may be sliced, buttered, and toasted, if desired.