Tag: cheese

Welsh Rarebit, Margaret Gadd Ashley

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I actually cooked this dinner quite awhile ago but I haven’t posted it because of frustrations. The recipe was contributed to “Queen Anne Goes to The Kitchen” by Margaret Gadd Ashley of the Centreville area. Despite some obvious relation to Janet Gadd Doehler of “Cheddar Chowder,” I couldn’t find out much about Margaret Gadd Ashley. I believe she was born in 1908. She passed away in 1980. Her husband descended from a family of blacksmiths who operated in Kent and Queen Anne’s county from the late 1800s up until World War II when a scarcity of materials made the trade impractical.

The story of the Ashley blacksmiths, as well as every grueling detail of a property they once owned can be found in this epic Maryland Historical Trust report.

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Weird comic from 1940.

There are a few specious ideas about the origins of Welsh Rarebit and its name that annoy me too much to even write about… so I’ll stick to Wikipedia on this one.

Michael Quinion writes: “Welsh rabbit is basically cheese on toast (the word is not ‘rarebit’ by the way, that’s the result of false etymology; ‘rabbit’ is here being used in the same way as ‘turtle’ in ‘mock-turtle soup’, which has never been near a turtle, or ‘duck’ in ‘Bombay duck’, which was actually a dried fish called bummalo)”. – Wikipedia

Wikipedia also claims that “The word rarebit has no other use than in Welsh rabbit” but this recipe in Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland contradicts that:

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No cheese in sight. The above actually sounds like a recipe for panhas/scrapple. The conflation is indeed curious.

In his 1926 edition of the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the grammarian H. W. Fowler states a forthright view: “Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong.” – Wikipedia

Aside from that recipe, the only other Welsh Rarebit/Rabbit recipe in my database is from Mrs. B.C. Howard’s 1881 “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.”

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Origins and etymology aside, this is obviously a delicious and satisfying dish and a good meal for a cold winter night.

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1887 rarebit humor

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Recipe:

  • 1.5 Tablespoon butter
  • 1.5 Tablespoon flour
  • 1.5 Cup milk
  • 2 Cups sharp cheese
  • .5 Teaspoon mustard powder
  • .5 Teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Make a roux of butter & flour on low heat. Gradually add milk. Add cheese and let it melt slowly; then add other seasonings. Pour over Uneeda biscuits, English muffins, or toast. Optional: Gently broil for a minute or two before serving.

Recipe Adapted from “Queen Anne Goes to The Kitchen”

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Broccoli Crab Soup

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Published in 2003, “I Can Cook You Can Cook” may not be the most historic in my collection, but it does offer a snapshot of a Maryland food personality and a time and place from whence it came. (Most cookbooks do, which is why I love them.)

The book itself hearkens to a less “sophisticated” era in cookbooks, in contrast to modern photo-laden coffee-table cookbooks. The recipes are mostly simple weeknight fare.

More importantly, the book serves as a record of its character of an author, Wayne Brokke. While you may not find artfully-composed photos accompanying each recipe, instead the book is peppered with Brokke’s stories and humor.

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Beginning in 1978 Brokke operated a restaurant in Federal Hill called.. “The Soup Kitchen” (I know). He later opened a second location in the exciting new 1980 Harborplace development and later branched out into barbeque.

Following the trajectory of Brokke’s restaurants (and eventual advisable name changes) leads to documentation of the vicissitudes of Harborplace since its opening in 1980. Baltimore was abuzz with high hopes for this pocket of commerce. The press followed up occasionally as it experienced seasonal slumps in winter, business turnover and eventual stability.

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1980, Baltimore Sun

“Wayne Brokke, proprietor of Wayne’s Bar- B-Que and one of the harbor’s original merchants, told me that Harborplace had experienced ups and downs over the past two decades. After an initial surge of success there was a period, about 10 years ago, when restaurants were closing and things were looking sketchy, he said. But in the past three years business has been on an upswing, he said, and now the harbor is booming – literally. As Brokke spoke, the Pride of Baltimore II fired its cannon, its way of saying good- bye to the crowd on the docks. “ – Rob Kasper, Baltimore Sun, 2000

Most Baltimoreans don’t spend much time in the Harbor, and I don’t actually remember Wayne’s Bar-B-Que. Sun reviews range from considering Wayne Brokke to be a fixture and a culinary master, to dismissing his restaurants for being too “trendy” and his cooking “a joke.” After reading these reviews plus stories about the various lean times and rent hikes, I shared in Brokke’s relief at leaving the industry.

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Harborplace ad featuring Wayne Brokke front left

In a Baltimore magazine article he lamented the high rents and unoriginal shopping options left at Harborplace.

“Over the years, what was Baltimore’s main street got turned into just another mall,” says Wayne Brokke, who ran Harborplace eateries, like Wayne’s Bar-B-Que, for 23 years

“In the early going, the Rouse company celebrated the tenants and appreciated how we all put our blood, sweat, and tears in there,” Brokke says. “After a while, they shifted focus more to the bottom line.” – Brennen Jensen, Baltimore Magazine, 2010

According to a 2007 article updating his whereabouts, he was dabbling in commercial acting, real-estate and earning a philosophy degree from UMBC. During the 1990s, Brokke had also done a cooking segment on WBAL-TV. Readers, if you have recordings of this please do share.

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Since Wayne Brokke is most famous for his soups – award winning crab soup being foremost- I made a soup recipe that he declared to be a “favorite of Mayor Schafer.” We had some broccoli from the CSA so “Broccoli Crab Soup” seemed as good as any.

I felt some reservation buying crabmeat, considering that I could have simply made this recipe without but I must say that the addition was DELICIOUS. This soup was so good, so wonderfully rich, and the crab flavor spread throughout to really enhance the dish.

As soups often do, it improved the next day. There was no day after that because we ate it all.

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Recipe:

  • 1 lb crab meat
  • 4 cups stock
  • 2 Cups half-and-half
  • 1 lb chopped broccoli
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 2 teaspoons chopped garlic
  • 1 stick of butter
  • 4 oz flour
  • 1 Teaspoon hot sauce
  • a few drops of Maggi (my addition – optional)
  • salt
  • black pepper

Sauté chopped onion in butter with Maggi (if using) until onions are translucent. Add curry powder and garlic and stir to combine. On medium heat, add flour and stir a few minutes until smooth. Gradually add stock, whisking to combine. Bring almost to a boil and stir in broccoli. Cook for 15 minutes. Add half-and-half and bring to a simmer. Stir in hot sauce and add salt and pepper to taste before gently folding in crab meat. Allow to simmer for about 5-10 minutes. Serve hot.

Recipe adapted from “I Can Cook, You Can Cook!” by Wayne Brokke

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“Crab Burgers“

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We had some crabs with friends and had a few leftovers. What a crisis! So many options.

I usually have a weird hangup about combining crab-meat with cheese… it seems disrespectful or something. A few weeks ago we went to Gertrudes and they served some crab up on an English muffin with some melted cheese. Who am I to disagree with John Shields? It was pretty tasty.

Furthermore, who am I to disagree with Helen Avalynne Tawes aka Mrs. J. Millard Tawes – Crisfield native and first lady of Maryland from 1959-1967.

Until very recently, Tawes remained a big name in Maryland, from Frostburg to Princess Anne. That is slowly fading but Crisfield will surely maintain its shrines to J. Millard Tawes for years to come..

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Helen Tawes cooking terrapin, ca. 1960. Maryland State Archives

Mrs. Tawes beams with pride and appreciation for the Eastern Shore in the introduction to her 1964 cookbook “My Favorite Maryland Recipes.”

She also says, in her own words:

“Since I love to cook, and, above all things, love my State’s characteristic cookery… I set about experimenting. I wanted to see if the traditional Maryland deliciousness could be preserved with modern methods… I helped [my husband] in his campaigning every way I could, but, when I had time, I worked on my own project – in my kitchen. The result was that, to my astonishment, I produced what politically experienced people have called a ‘piece of campaign literature.’
It was a cookbook, nothing more.”

Whether the book changed the course of an election I could not say, but the book stands today, in all its reprints, among the canon of Maryland cookbooks.

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Mrs. Tawes and artist Stanislav Rembski with portraits of Mrs. McKeldin
and Mrs. Tawes, 1966.

Eleven years after her 1989 passing, the Baltimore Sun gushed:

Known as Lou to close friends, she studied music at the Peabody
Conservatory in Mount Vernon Place and later sang on a Salisbury radio
station. And while living in the governor’s mansion, she wasn’t the
least bit shy about playing an electric organ, which prompted the
governor to quip, “She’s got more nerve than a jackrabbit.”

While
music may have had a place in her heart, it was in her kitchen,
surrounded by black iron frying pans and a larder overflowing with the
bounty of the Chesapeake Bay country, that Tawes truly excelled. She
exulted in old-time, stick-to-the-ribs 19th-century fare while avoiding
what she called “fancy seasonings.” – Her crab cakes were renowned 7/22/2000

And so, I chose her decadent recipe for “Crab Burgers,” essentially crab salad with cheese on a burger bun. Being that she was a mid-century lady, I will forgive her use of Miracle Whip – mayonnaise worked just fine for me, however. The 1995 version of “Maryland Seafood Cookbook I” included a variation under the moniker “Crisfield Crab-Burgers”, using mayonnaise, “cubes of mild cheese” within the salad, and Parmesan on top.

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crab hand

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I halved this recipe to accommodate my quantity of crab-meat

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Recipe:

  • 1 Lb crab meat
  • .75 Cup celery
  • 2 Tablespoon finely grated onion
  • 2 Tablespoon green pepper
  • 1 Cup medium-Sharp Cheddar
  • 1 Cup mayonnaise
  • 2 Teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 Teaspoons hot sauce
  • .75 Teaspoon salt
  • hamburger rolls

Mix all ingredients before adding crab meat, gently folding in the meat to keep lumps together. Cut hamburger rolls in half, butter lightly and toast with the buttered side up. (This forms a crisp surface so that mixture will not be absorbed in the bun.) Spread crab mixture on the bun; sprinkle with shredded cheese. Place under broiler for 3 to 5 minutes until browned and bubbly. Serve hot, immediately.

Recipe adapted from “My Favorite Maryland Recipes” by Mrs. J. Millard Tawes

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twarożek ze szczypiorkiem i rzodkiewką

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I’m making a quick post before the holiday weekend to share this recipe which we make frequently in the summer with our CSA radishes. So that makes it a Maryland recipe.

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Burgersub has been making this for years but was uncertain of its origin although he knew it was possibly based on something his Polish mother makes. I google’d it and found “twarożek z szczypiorkem i rzodkiewką”, a Polish radish salad. Some websites call for cottage cheese or a combination with sour cream.

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However, the one ingredient that Burgersub insists upon is this Polish style farmers cheese. Well, the radishes are essential but we have used chives instead of green onions on occasion. We get the cheese at Krakus here in Baltimore. I always pick up some chocolate or krówki (caramels) when I go in there.

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We like to serve this quick spread on bagels for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

In some roundabout way I’m getting at some melting pot idea, thinking about how these recipes on this site found their way rough and tumble, through confusion, appropriation, renaming and improving, to become what we have. After all, if we didn’t have Google it would just be “radish salad.. a Polish type thing.”

Thomas Jefferson, flawed character though he was, had a much different vision of Independence Day than we know today (John Adams was more on the mark.)

Jefferson had a sort of charmingly naive understanding of (free) humanity and so he thought we would spend the day in quiet reflection or something. “..Let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

I do agree that we should spend some time thinking about what this country means to us, atrocities and all, and reflect upon what we can do in this day and age to build something better and perhaps maintain what is already good.

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“Recipe”

  • about a pint of radishes
  • one or two green onions (or use chives)
  • 16 oz farmers cheese (twarog wiejski) [note: don’t get ‘Chudy’ style that means ‘skinny’]
  • salt to taste
  • optional: a little sour cream to thin

Slice or dice radishes, mince green onion, mix into farmer’s cheese with a pinch or two of salt. Tastes better the second day but the radishes will get chewy on the third day! Serve on bagels, toast, crackers, etc.

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Pizza Chicken, Mrs. William Strieber

Well let me preface this with some (ugh) personal facts.

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I live with this fellow burgersub. He is allergic to chicken.

That is weird, right?

But I made this recipe as a family meal so I got some fake chicken patties and went for it, ‘his and hers.’

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So anyway, Maryland is all like ‘crabs oysters blah blah blah’…

But in truth, as of the last century, Maryland has distinguished itself with a robust poultry industry.

(It may be that same poultry industry had an effect on our once-famous seafood industry…)

Up until this year, the big public event of the MAryland (and DELaware, and VirginiA) poultry industry was the annual Delmarva Chicken festival.

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According to the source:

“The National Chicken Cooking Contest was the first of the big national food contests having been started in 1949. Delmarva poultry industry people originated it as a highlight for the Delmarva Chicken Festival that year. It was devised as a replacement for a then ensuing national contest to develop a better breed of chicken.

In the early years, participants were just from the tri-state area. Later, the entire northeast.. became involved. Now, interest in the Contest has expanded until it has become an important chicken promotion for all broiler producing areas throughout the United States.”

“Pizza Chicken” represented Maryland in the 1971 cooking contest, whose winners by state were published in the annual booklet of recipes (also containing prize-winning recipes from previous contests.)

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According to the bio of contestant Mrs. William R. Strieber aka Shirley, she “cooks to please her family” and combined their loves of pizza and chicken. Shirley is not a Maryland native; she was from Iowa, her husband a vet with the USDA. “Hobbies include cooking, reading, bicycling, gardening and bird-watching.” I wrote a letter to Shirley in AZ but she passed away on March 21, 2015. She was 88 years old.

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This is 1971 but the booklet still has a pretty strong mid-century vibe. For the most part the cooks are self-described home-makers, although there are a few men and teens as well.

The pizza craze is reflected in a handful of other recipes, as is a lot of pineapple for “exotic appeal,” and a lot of smothering chicken in some special sauce and baking it.

Shirley did not take home the first prize – that honor went to Norma Young of Arkansas.

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Norma Young, Baltimore Sun Photo. I am sorry I can’t buy these but YOU can!

Still, the all-expenses-paid trip to Ocean City and the thrill of competition in an era before the bevy of miserable competitive cooking shows had to be a memorable experience.

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Shirley Strieber, Baltimore Sun Photo

Somewhere between 1950 and 1971, the requirement to use some Mazola Corn Oil was added. I used some other kind of oil.. I also used chicken breasts because a broiler-fryer seemed like a messy hassle to eat.

Recipe:

  •     1 chicken, broiler-fryer
  •     1 Teaspoon salt
  •     .125 Teaspoon black pepper
  •     .25 Cup Mazola corn oil
  •     10.5 oz pizza sauce
  •     1/3 Cup water
  •     2 Tablespoon grated Parmesan Cheese
  •     1 medium onion, sliced
  •     1 green pepper,  cut into rings
  •     4 thin slices Mozzarella cheese

Sprinkle chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Heat oil in large skillet; add chicken and cook until brown on all sides. Place browned chicken in a medium shallow baking pan (about 13 x 9 x 2 inches). Combine pizza sauce, water and Parmesan cheese; pour over chicken. Add onion and green pepper rings. Cover and bake in 350°F (moderate) oven 45 minutes. Remove cover and place cheese slices on top. Return to oven for 15 minutes or until chicken is tender and cheese is melted. Makes 4 servings.  

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2014 was the last ever Delmarva Chicken Festival, but we will soon revisit the festival, their super-large gigantic frying pan, the booklets of chicken recipes, and other winners including a beloved Baltimore character.

Until then let us gaze upon fellow 1971 contestant Beverly Chiles, who represented her home state in cooking as well as in hairdo.

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