Month: January 2023

Pączki

[Note: I wrote this in 2023. Krakus is now closed 😔. An alternative shop in Baltimore is At the Polish Table. – k]

I love going to Krakus deli on Fleet street. As soon as you step inside you’re greeted with the smell of the various sausages, which hang behind the counter. A small selection of Polish books, cosmetics and supplements always piques my curiosity. Towards the back, at the end of the rows of jams and jellies and pickles and soups, there lays a box of baked goods. When I go into Krakus to buy myśliwska, a type of sausage, or twaróg farmer’s cheese, I almost always leave with a pączek, a polish doughnut filled with jam.

Continue reading “Pączki”

Catherine’s Barbequed Spare Ribs, Mother McBride

When I created the map of the Baltimore Sun’s recipe contest winners, I thought a lot about what the city looked like in 1911, when the contests were run.

I looked at old maps, and imagined life on the city’s outskirts. The 1898 Bromley Atlas showed a sprinkling of buildings out in the Northeast. By the 1915 Atlas, there were many more. (The area appeared in the Baltimore County atlases as it was not yet annexed into the city.) The streetcars were making it possible for families to live along Bel Air and Harford roads, and commute into the city for work and play.

By the late 20th century, the neighborhoods in the Northeast were as much “city” as other neighborhoods were, and as much a party to the various problems the city was facing.

1915 Bromley Atlas of Baltimore County

In 1969, a group of church organizations banded together to form HARBEL, an umbrella organization encompassing social services and neighborhood associations. The name was a mashup of the two major roads through the area, Harford and Bel Air. Though HARBEL involved many religious groups, it also partnered with secular groups to offer mental health care, drug treatment, counseling, healthcare, food, housing, and more.

Continue reading “Catherine’s Barbequed Spare Ribs, Mother McBride”

Zucchini Spice Cake ala B.G.E.

“We have made several notices of various improvements and inventions for cooking and heating by gas,” read an article in the Baltimore Sun in 1854, “and we have no doubt the result will eventually prove important to the world.” At a fair in Philadelphia, a gas stove made by Andrew Mayer had been used to roast a 14lb piece of beef for two hours. “The meat was partaken by a number of persons,” the Sun wrote, “and highly enjoyed.”

Cooking was an ordeal that required the acquisition of wood or coal to heat a stove. Controlling the heat was a challenge. And the inconveniences affected more than just the cook. The fuel produced ash and smoke. Airborne cinders could cause mass destruction.

But gas stoves didn’t catch on immediately. In many homes, a stove served other functions, like heating the house. Some gas ranges accounted for this, while others did not. For some people, a cozy open hearth or a radiating wood stove were comforting presences. And learning to cook on a new device doesn’t exactly excite people who were tasked with cooking for a family day-in and day-out.

Gas gradually caught on, with the help of celebrity chefs like Alexis Soyer – a French author of popular cookbooks. Stateside, home economists like Sarah Tyson Rorer demonstrated how to cook on the new devices, and extolled the ways gas cooking could save time and money.

Continue reading “Zucchini Spice Cake ala B.G.E.”

Maryland Cream Waffles

A reader once contacted me, asking “why there were so many recipes labeled with Maryland?” She included an example in her email – a recipe for “Maryland Cream Waffles.”

I hadn’t heard of Maryland Cream Waffles before, so I went to my database. The first thing I found was a recipe in Mrs. B. C. Howard’s “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen,” for “Cream Waffles (Made In A Moment).”

In Howard’s recipe, saleratus interacts with soured cream for leavening while egg whites are beaten separately for additional air in the waffles.

Later recipes swap out baking powder for the saleratus and often use fresh cream or milk, but the formula didn’t change much, even as it was printed and reprinted in newspapers from the 1910s through the 1990s.

Continue reading “Maryland Cream Waffles”
Scroll to top
error: Content is protected !!