There’s a lot of tempting 19th century options for tomato preservation. In addition to catsup, tomatoes were preserved spiced, in piccalilli, chow-chow, or stewed and strained into “soyer.” Tomatoes have one of the highest concentrations of naturally-occurring MSG, and these sauces and pickles all provided ways to add some umami to meals throughout the winter….
This isn’t the official Smearcase post- that’s to come later. (Update: Click here for Official Smearcase Post) This is just a brief post with two recipes from Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s book. I thought they might offer some insight into the history of smearcase. Many Baltimoreans know “Smearcase” as a beloved cheesecake of German origin, available at many…
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…
I’ve been gradually getting to “know” Elizabeth Ellicott Lea a little better, and coming to really like her. At first her no-frills thrift seemed unexciting and maybe even a little stern. Certainly she doesn’t radiate the Maryland pride of other authors who boast their Maryland-ness in the titles of their cookbooks. Lea was a Quaker…
While vacationing in 2015, on a day drive down the Delmarva peninsula, we found ourselves in the relatively sparse landscape of Bloxom, VA. We spotted a striped truck off of Route 13 with stenciled letters announcing “Mi Pequeña Taqueria” and pulled over into the scorching parking lot where this taco truck stood. We enjoyed classic…