This unusual casserole is one of the less notable recipes from Mrs. J. Millard Tawes’ “Favorite Maryland Recipes.” I love her little book for easy weeknight dinners but this recipe may have confirmed my suspicion that her book contains a lot of filler between the classics.
It’s fitting then for me to post it today because it is essentially filler on my own site. I have some great interviews and research-heavy posts coming up but it’s just not happening this week.
I thought I might write some fun facts about American Cheese but you can just head on over to Wikipedia for that.
In conclusion, try this recipe if you looooove black walnuts and have a lot to spare, but don’t try to swap this one out for the Thanksgiving mainstay or your family will disown you.
Recipe:
4 Tablespoons butter
6 Tablespoon flour
1 bay leaf
2 Cups chicken stock
3 Cups cooked string beans
.25 Lb American cheese
.25 Cup chopped black walnuts
If using fresh green beans, trim, halve and blanch or steam them until cooked but crisp. Brown butter in sauce pan over low heat with bay leaf. Add flour and stir until blended. Gradually add stock. Cook until smooth and thickened. Fold in cheese and stir until melted. Arrange beans in casserole dish. Pour the sauce over the beans and top with walnuts. Bake for 20 minutes at 350°
Recipe adapted from “My Favorite Maryland Recipes”
After all of that cookbook genealogy last week I need a little rest so here’s a crab recipe from “My Favorite Maryland Recipes.” Many people who may not be familiar with the Tawes name were made so recently when Maryland’s current governor elected to attend the J. Millard Tawes Crab & Clam Bake instead of the Republican Convention.
In all honesty this dish was just okay. Crab custard was winning a lot of recipe contests in the 1960s and a lot of those recipes were more seasoned than this. I recommend more mustard powder, Old Bay or hot sauce.
Mr. & Mrs. J Millard Tawes, Maryland State Archives
I will add a little bit of filler in the form of clippings showing the long-standing tension between Maryland’s and Virginia’s natural resource management strategies. It seems that Maryland had long been begging Virginia to enact a law against harvesting female crabs with their eggs, aka “sponge crab.”
Daily Times, Salisbury, 1944
Star-Democrat, Easton, 1951
Daily Times, Salisbury, 1962
As you can see, the resentment simmered for decades.
Virginia finally did pass such a law in 2010.
Recipe:
1 Lb crab meat
2 eggs, beaten
1.5 Cup milk
.25 Teaspoon mustard powder
salt
pepper, black
butter
Beat eggs and add milk, mustard, salt and pepper to taste. Gently stir in crab meat. Place in a buttered casserole and dot with butter. Bake at 325° about 20 minutes, or until set.
Recipe adapted from “My Favorite Maryland Recipes”
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..
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.
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.
crab hand
I halved this recipe to accommodate my quantity of crab-meat
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
