Changes, good and bad

Image by Joy Coffman.
Wikimedia Commons.

Well, I haven't fallen entirely off the face of the planet, but it feels like it.  Some dramatic changes have occurred, including the changing of my career (for the present), and moving to another house.  I have left the history museum where I worked for 14 years, and I'm currently working at an elementary school while I plan for graduate school, which is what I had planned to do before beginning work at the museum.  I'm working more hours than I used to work, which is both a good thing and a bad thing: I'm glad for the extra wages, but I am so exhausted that I have very little energy, even on weekends, and none during the week, for sewing and cooking like I used to.  I hear that my energy level will change as I get used to it, but we'll see.  I am so behind on my writing, sewing, and historic cooking!  The new living situation doesn't allow for much, if any, cooking, unfortunately.

A failed Florentine of Marrow -- Historical Food Fortnightly challenge #14

ingredients for a Florentine of Marrow.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

The Challenge: #14 -- Fear Factor.

What foods have you always wanted to attempt, but were afraid to attempt to make - or afraid to eat? Choose a dish that is either tricky to create or nerve-wracking to eat, and get adventurous! It’s historical Fear Factor!

I could have re-done Calf's Foot Jelly from earlier in the year, but I had trouble finding fresh calves' feet.  I could have done Beef Tongue, but a few other people chose the same thing, and while I will probably try it myself later, I preferred to work with a different ingredient, to give the challenge postings more variety.  I also thought about doing stuffed beef heart, or kidneys, but had trouble finding fresh ones, even at the local Filipino grocery store.  Then I saw beef marrow bones at my regular grocery store, and that sealed the deal.  I've heard of marrow bones being a popular dish even into modern times, but never having had them before, I didn't know what the commotion was about.  I was a bit turned off by the thought of eating blood, but the bones didn't look very bloody when I bought them, and I was intrigued.  Instead of making a modern recipe like Osso Bucco, I looked through my historic recipes and saw that marrow could be substituted for suet and butter in boiled puddings, as well as used as the filling for fritters, tarts, and other sweet dishes, mixed with spices, dried fruit and candied citrus peel. 

The history of eating bone marrow goes back to prehistoric times.  Archaeologists are always finding bones and bone fragments in the kitchen refuse heaps that are dug up, and it seems that until the Medieval era, the bones were simply roasted or boiled for broth, and then broken to extract the marrow, which was then eaten as a dish by itself.  Removing the marrow and using it as an ingredient in other recipes became very common by the 16^th century, with recipes for rissoles, pies, puddings, and tarts containing marrow in the filling, with sugar, spices, and dried fruit.  The 17^th and 18^th centuries seem to have been the heyday of marrow's popularity, with multiple recipes for marrow puddings, both boiled and baked, marrow tarts, pasties, fritters, and other sweet dishes.  By the 19^th century, marrow seemed to be most popular as a dish of beef-bones, roasted or broiled, replaced by suet and butter in puddings and other desserts, although many Victorian cookbooks still include a recipe for marrow pudding. 

Recipe books, along with other publications, record the rapid increase in knowledge and innovation characteristic of the Enlightenment, with new dishes, and new names for old dishes, abundant.  The Florentine is one such dish; a variation on a regular custard tart, Florentines are baked puddings, in a puff pastry crust, or simply in a buttered dish with an edging of puff pastry, with a filling of eggs and cream or milk, with any combination of sugar, marrow, butter, suet, fruit, sweetmeats, spices or other flavorings, and bread crumbs.  Generally sweet, Florentines could also be savory, with vegetables, herbs, marrow or suet, and gobbets of meat as the filling.  I chose to re-create a recipe from 1674 because I had all the ingredients already; the book, English and French Cook, is on Google Books.

Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge: The Frugal Housewife, with Shrimp Curry from 1942.

ingredients for the Shrimp Curry (with trout).
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

The Challenge: # 9 The Frugal Housewife

Throughout history, housewives and housekeepers have kept a close eye on their budgets and found creative ways to pinch pennies while providing delicious and nutritious food. Create a dish that interprets one historically-documented method of frugal cooking.  

I chose to interpret frugality as a way to use pantry staples, including canned meat, to pull together an easy dish.  You could also use leftover fish from another meal in this recipe!

The Recipe: (where did you find it, link to it if possible)

Found in my grandmother's cookbook, Burnt Toast Recipes: Victory Edition, published in Los Angeles in 1942, this recipe for Shrimp Curry takes advantage of pantry staples to make it economical as well as tasty.  The recipe book is a collection of recipes put together by the Women's Auxiliary to the Women's and Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, which took care of the wives and families of servicemen who were stationed in the area during WW2.  My grandmother worked as a candy striper at the hospital during the summers, taking the train out from Omaha, NE where she lived and taught school during the rest of the year.

California seemed to be lucky in comparison to other areas, because of our climate enabling food to be grown year-round, as well as the large number of dairies and poultry farms, and everyday residents who kept a cow and a few chickens around for butter, eggs and milk.  Fish were being caught and canned in Monterey throughout the War, and while much of it was sent to other parts of the U.S., and overseas to our armed forces and our allies, there was still quite a bit of food available, with or without food rationing.  This recipe is frugal in its use of butter and imported spices, and makes good use of canned fish.  Although it calls for shrimp, any canned fish can be used.  (Ignore the mushrooms in the photo above -- they were part of another recipe but mistakenly got into the photo for this dish.)  

Shrimp Curry
Sautè 1 small minced onion in 2 tablespoons butter until onion is soft but not brown.  Stir in 1 ½ teaspoons curry, 2 teaspoons flour and ½ teaspoon salt.  Simmer tightly covered for 20 minutes, then add 1 can shrimp (cleaned and shredded), 2 teaspoons lemon juice.  Simmer for 5 minutes and serve with browned rice.  – recipe from Alberta Austin.

Historical Food Fortnightly: Challenge #7 -- The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread -- Raspberry Jell from 1945.

Calves' feet boiling for jelly.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach. 

Having tried (and failed) to make jelly the old-fashioned way from calves' feet, it was a very quick and easy job to make jelly with packaged gelatine.  The calves' feet need to be cleaned, covered in water and boiled gently for 4 hours, until the meat and cartilage fall off the bones and are dissolved into the broth.  Then the bones and meat chunks and any undissolved cartilage need to be picked out of the broth and the broth needs to cool and settle overnight.  Then the fat that rises to the top of the broth needs to be cleaned off the top, and the sediment that sinks to the bottom needs to be scraped off as well.  The resulting jelly is a transluscent, meaty brown color that needs to be melted again and strained through a jelly bag or a few layers of cheesecloth or wet muslin to remove more sediment.  Then the jelly needs to cool and settle again, and if it's not yet clear and flavor-less, it needs to be melted and run through a jelly bag again.  Once it's clear, only then can you add the flavorings and pour it into a mold and let it set into its finished shape!  That takes at least a day, just to prepare the unflavored gelatine! 

World War 2-era gingerbread for the new year!

Image from http//clipart.edigg.com

 Happy New Year!  While I didn't get Mrs. Beeton's Christmas Cake made this season, I did do a batch of my gluten-free cuccidati for my aunt and cousin, my rum-soaked fruit cake, and one of the recipes from my grandma's World War 2-era cookbook Burnt Toast Recipes: Victory Edition.  I have to be careful when making the recipes from this book; sometimes they're great (like the fruit cobbler recipe), but sometimes they're weird (like the mashed baked bean sandwich recipe) ... This one is a good one.  Of course, I didn't have all the ingredients so I had to improvise a bit, but it turned out a really yummy gingerbread that puffed up nicely in the oven (although it sank down once it cooled), and smells and tastes nice.  Here's the recipe [with my alterations in brackets]: