Food History

A link to BlogCatalog (because I want to know how it works): http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/food_drink

Just when I get back up and running, the server for my blog had issues. It hasn’t been a bad week, but it’s certainly been one of curious niggles. The niggle of my neck (now down to panadol strength relief) can make way for the happiness that is community cookbooks. I have two for you: one for today and one for tomorrow. Then my little pile of birthday presents will have been examined, rejoiced in, and put away.

Today’s cookbook is one that’s dear to my family. I didn’t go to Wesley College, but many of my kin were (and if my language has strange twists today it might be that my brain has strange twists today – I wish it were possible to press a button and switch on normalcy). anyhow, because some of my close family are/were and probably will be Wesley students, my view of this book is quite different to other cookbooks I’ve introduced you too.

The thing is, it’s hard to be even vaguely objective when something is close to home. Writing about the history of next door or round the corner is quite different to writing the history of a time much past or a country much different. The loss of objectivity doesn’t necessarily make worse history, but it certainly makes different history. Our particular knowledge of the place or foodstuffs colours what we write and pushes what we think in particular directions. It’s something all historians tend to be aware of, but it’s particularly important for food history.

How many times have you looked at descriptions of this close past and seen yourself reflected? How many times have you looked at a more exotic past and thought that the people were more exotic?

In this case, the Wesley Cookery Book offers a bridge to a different view of the past for me than for anyone less connected to Wesley and a different history again for my relatives who know every brick of the place and every person mentioned. There are degrees of this differentiation for every cookbook we look at, but for this particular one and me, those degrees are not that high.

My neck is slowly wending its way to normal. From tomorrow I should be able to spend more time on the computer, which means back to proper posts by Friday at the latest. Until then, all I can say is “Sit down and write all your recipes out, so that you, too can be helpful to grandchildren posthumously.”

Egg-au-Gratin
Poach the eggs & arrange in a fireproof dish on a layer of grated cheese. Add a little butter, salt, & pepper, cream, & a few mushrooms. Cover with grated cheese & a little melted butter & brown in oven.

Vienna Steaks
1 lb lean beef (raw) 2 onions 1 egg, salt & pepper. Mince meat & add finely sliced onion. Bind with the white of egg & form into meat rounds. Dip in the beaten yolk of egg & roll in breadcrumbs & fry in oil.
Serve with slices of lemon & mushrooms.

Stuffed Tomatoes
Take a tomatoe to each person. Cut a piece off top & scrape out some of the pulp. Mix the pulp with chopped applies & celery. Refill the tomatoes with this mixture & serve on lettuce leaf with mayonnaise.

Lemon Sponge
Rind & juice of 3 lemons 1 pt water, 1 oz gelatine, 3 whites of eggs, 4 oz lump sugar. Put rind, juice, sugar, & gelatine into water & cook for ¼ hr. Cool. Beat the whites of egg stiffly & add mixtures slowly beating all the time. When it begins to thicken pour into a wet mould & set.
Serve with whipped cream.

I still have neck trouble. My late grandmother to the rescue! Given the speed of healing, I ought to be back to normal Thursday or Friday. Whatever ‘normal’ is. Anyhow, Grandma’s recipes are comforting at times like this.

Egg & Spinach
Pick over some young spinach & wash well. Drain it well, then chop it very finely, & a little chopped onion. Arrange on slices of tomatoe; pour over some mayonnaise, & garnish with hard boiled egg.

Honey Crispies
½ cup chopped peanuts, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 cup coconut, 2 cups rolled oats, 1 tablespoon honey ½ teaspoon carb soda and 4 oz butter or good dripping.
Put all dry ingredients into a bowl. Melt butter and honey, dissolve soda in a little hot water and mix all together. Pat down flat in a greased tin, and cook in a moderate oven till nicely browned. Cut into fingers while still hot.

Orange Marie Baskets
Six smooth skinned oranges 1/3 rd cup water, 1 teaspn gelatine 2 eggs, 1 desertspn lemon juice, ½ teaspn grated lemon rind 1 oz marshmallows. With a sharp knife cut off top of orange skink leaving handle straps. Cut flesh from oranges leaving neat basket shells. Remove pulp from flesh & chop finely. Dissolve gelatine in water. Mix sugar & lemon rind & juice & add to beaten egg yolks. Cook over boiling water to a custard consistency. Coll & add gelatine & chopped orange pulp. When nearly set add chopped marshmallows. Chill & serve piled in orange baskets. Serve with finger biscuits.

Madeira Salad
1 cup grated carrot, ½ cup each minced cucumber & ripe apple, ½ cup mayonnaise, lettuce, 1 orange. Mix carrot, cucumber, apple & mayonnaise together. Srve in crisp lettuce leaves & garnish with orange slices.

I am very clever. Where any decent person would pull one muscle somewhere like they’re little finger and type round it, I pulled two whacking great neck muscles yesterday. My head hurts; my neck hurts; my ears hurt; my throat hurts. Please feel free to make deeply sympathetic noises in my direction.

In four days time I shall frolic like a lamb. Today it hurts to do too much of anything. Since ‘anything’ includes reading, sitting at the computer or watching TV, my day has been spent doing little bits of things and lying down contemplatively. I didn’t dare ring anyone lest that hurt, too, and lest I complained at them.

What this means is that some of this post will be recipes from my grandmother, and all the posts until my neck feels less nauseating will be extracts of things. This is the most typing I can manage, and even this is not easy, in other words. So please accept my apologies and I’ll try to find interesting excerpts for you while my muscles heal then learn flexibility again.

The special extra for tonight is me giving you a recipe that Grandma actually annotated. It’s nice to know that she particularly liked Lemon Puff Custard. She must have made it often, given that the baking dish is left out of the instructions.

Lemon Puff Custard
Cream 1 tablespoon butter with ½ cup sugar, add yolks of 2 eggs, grated rind and juice of one lemon, 2 tablespoons flour and 1 cup milk. Fold in stiffly beaten whites of eggs and bake in moderate oven in dish of water for 30 to 35 minutes. (Delicious)

Winter came early this year, but the winter fruits have only just truly arrived. Medlars and persimmons have been decorating my kitchen and lounge for a couple of weeks, taunting me with the cold.

As a child I learned how to be patient with persimmons, how to wait for that precise instant when all the foul astringency has magically transmuted into fragrant patterned jelly. This year I couldn’t wait. We’ve had below zero temperatures for a month and I wanted the fruit to match the weather. The result was a mouth that puckered for a day and a half and a brain that wondered how the transmutation happened.

Medlars don’t go sweet. They go spicy. Date and apples and cinnamon, all together. My first medlars are only a day away and there’s only a small bowl of them. The rest are doing a different kind of transmutation, into liqueur for 2009 and beyond.

I don’t understand why the fruits of the bitter dark are so much more bright and tempting than then ones of summer. I adore stone fruits, and one of the great joys of the hot season are the melons. The persimmons of this world are more evocative, though, and make me feel that winter really is worth it. As long as my toes and fingers and ears are warm and there is a bowl of gold fruit, gently softening and sweetening, I’m happy in this season.

My secret might be the liqueurs I made last year. Or they might be the secret stash of summer-dried plums I have waiting for the bitterest and darkest month of all. Or it might just be that certain foods make me very, very happy.