Rhubarb Country

Perhaps leaves like these will win a contest in Aledo, Illinois.

Rhubarb is in full swing in my corner of Western Massachusetts right now, pushing up outrageously large leaves to protect its red and green stalks. I love living in Rhubarb Country.

Areas like mine with a relatively cool climate are ideal for rhubarb, which must have temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit in order to grow. It is cultivated extensively in the northern United States, in Canada, and in Europe and England. Rhubarb plants are hardy and don’t need a lot of care. (This is a major reason for my own love of rhubarb.)

Obviously, we’re not the only people enjoying rhubarb right now. A quick internet search lately yielded word of rhubarb festivals in a variety of places. I wish I could go to every single one of them. Instead, I’m mentioning just a few here—just in case readers feel like a spot of travel.

In Yorkshire, England, in what is known as the “Rhubarb Triangle,” rhubarb became a popular winter crop beginning in the 1880s. It was cultivated outdoors and moved in the fall into indoor rhubarb sheds, where it was forced and harvested by candlelight in February.

The rhubarb sheds are disappearing from the Yorkshire landscape just as my Pioneer Valley is losing its historic tobacco barns. Nevertheless, the dwindling tradition of the candlelight rhubarb harvest is still treasured by the remaining growers and rhubarb lovers in the area.

They organize an annual rhubarb celebration in February. This year’s festivities included a rhubarb lassi drink from a local Indian chef. (I’d love to have that recipe!) The festival also included tastings of rhubarb cheese made by a local cheesemaker (and monger), Cryer & Stott.

Lanesboro, Minnesota, calls itself the Rhubarb Capital of that state. Its annual Rhubarb Festival is scheduled this year for June 10. It features rhubarb games known as the Rhubarb Olympics, including rhubarb golf, in which participants use a stalk of rhubarb to propel balls into the air. Naturally, it also sponsors a cooking contest, as well as a Rhubarb Rant Speakers Corner for people who love to spout off about this controversial plant.

Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse, Pennsylvania, has just concluded its annual Rhubarb Fest, which included a dance called the Rhubarb Stroll and an automotive Rhubarb Derby.

Aledo, Illinois, will hold its Rhubarb Festival on June 5 and 6. This event features sales by local businesses, a whole lot of rhubarb pie, and a contest to see who can grow the largest rhubarb leaf.

Conrad, Montana, will celebrate its Rhubarb Festival on June 13 and 14. This shindig will be combined with something called “Whoop-Up Days,” which include a car show and a rodeo.

Finally, L&S Gardens, a nursery in La Pine, Oregon, will sponsor a Rhubarb Festival this weekend on May 30. L&S’s Linda Stephenson sprinkles vendors all over her nursery. Visitors can also find live music and of course rhubarb—much of it prepared in various forms by the local Dutch Oven Cooking Club, of which Linda is president.

She and her husband Sonny became interested in cooking in outdoor cast-iron Dutch ovens after reading about Sonny’s great-grandmother’s cooking methods in an old family diary.

The nursery also sells fresh rhubarb and rhubarb plants that day as well as a small cookbook Linda has written, appropriately titled Rhubarb Country. She lures customers with samples of her favorite rhubarb salsa, which can be served on chips or on crackers spread with cream cheese.

Linda was nice enough to share her recipe with me so I’m passing it along to you, along with a few other formulas that show off this versatile spring plant. Perhaps it will inspire another festival or two next rhubarb season—even in my own area!

L&S Rhubarb Salsa

I know readers are probably thinking that both Linda Stephenson and I are taking our passion for rhubarb a stalk too far with the concept of rhubarb salsa. I must write in our defense that this salsa is AMAZING, my favorite combination of sweet and spicy so far this year. I served some to my friend and neighbor Will Cosby, who is emphatically not a rhubarb fan. He devoured it.

So please reserve judgment and try it. (You may halve the recipe if you feel timid.)

One caveat: the salsa is a little wet. Next time I make it I’ll probably try omitting the water (I’ll mix the rhubarb, orange peel, and sugar in the saucepan and let them sit overnight; the rhubarb and sugar will combine to form juice). This will cut down on the water but not get rid of it altogether. One can always drain the salsa before serving it, however. Or serve it with lots of cocktail napkins!

By the way, Linda’s original recipe called for adding the ginger with the raw ingredients at the end. I decided I’d like it to blend a little more with the rhubarb so I popped it in halfway through the cooking process.

Ingredients:

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons finely shredded orange peel
6 cups rhubarb, chopped 1/2 inch thick
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/2 cup diced green bell pepper (yellow would do well, too)
1/4 cup finely chopped sweet onion (I used Vidalia)
1/3 cup fine chopped red onion
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Instructions:

In a non-reactive saucepan combine the sugar, water, and orange peel. Bring the mixture to a boil over fairly high heat.

Add the chopped rhubarb, and reduce the heat to medium. Simmer gently until the rhubarb is tender (about 10 minutes). After the first 5 minutes of simmering, stir in the ginger.

Remove the rhubarb mixture from the heat and allow it to cool to room temperature. When it is cool add the remaining ingredients. Mix well. You may serve this salsa chilled or at room temperature. As I noted above, it is tasty with tortilla chips or on crackers with cream cheese; it would also blend well with chicken, pork, or fish.

Makes 4 cups of salsa, more or less (depending on the juiciness of your rhubarb).

Will Cosby smiles over rhubarb salsa.

Mr. Peabody and Friends

Last week I attended the Peabody Awards in New York. No, I wasn’t being honored for my work in broadcasting since I don’t currently do any work in broadcasting. (I hope one of these days to offer podcasts and videos on this blog, but at the moment I’m still mastering the mechanics of putting printed words and still photographs up on the thing!)

Each year I am invited to the Peabodys by a man with a big brain and a big heart, my graduate-school professor Horace Newcomb. I studied with him at the University of Texas. Now he directs the Peabodys at the University of Georgia.

During my doctoral studies Horace taught me a lot about Magnum P.I., I Love Lucy, and Dallas—and a lot about Walt Whitman and Theodore Dreiser as well. Like me, he came to media studies with a humanities background. That background helped him appreciate the narrative qualities in television and radio.

Horace was also a wonderful source of calm advice whenever I felt as though I was NEVER going to pass my comps or finish my dissertation or survive my doctoral defense. I think he must have been a therapist in a past life.

Horace Newcomb, a.k.a. Mr. Peabody

As director of the Peabody Awards Horace shepherds a diverse and distinguished group of academicians and media professionals as they evaluate the hundreds of entries that come in each year. The awards don’t have set categories so what the board is looking for is excellence. It’s a hard quality to quantify, but through days of thought and discussion they always manage to come up with programs that exhibit it.

The resulting slate of radio, television, cable, and internet fare is always diverse. This year’s winners included national news programs like Washington Week, local news features like a Las Vegas station’s controversial series about the rerouting of rural water to Sin City, fictional programs like Breaking Bad, and a number of American and international radio and television documentaries.

Some awards went to traditional entities seeking new venues. The Peabodys recognized the Metropolitan Opera HD broadcasts that are thrilling opera lovers across the country, including those in my local metropolis of Shelburne Falls, and The New York Times web site. (Host Brian Williams mentioned that he had heard a rumor that the Times was thinking of launching a print edition as well.)

Others went to organizations for bodies of work; these included Turner Classic Movies, our TV cinematheque, and You Tube, our online video omnibus.

The clips from the honored programs and the speeches by the recipients were inspiring. We hear so much about the death of news in American radio and TV that it’s wonderful to hear people talk about the support their parent companies have given to strong investigative reporting.

For me as a writer it’s also wonderful to be in a room full of people who take their work seriously and spend the time it takes to get telling stories right—whether those stories are cartoons about an Asian Avatar, conversations about the financial crisis on This American Life, or the disparate election coverage of Saturday Night Live and CNN.

I go home every year with a renewed hope that I, too, will tell useful stories with heart and humor. I also go home with happy memories of Horace and his wife Sara—and with flowers from my table at the Waldorf Astoria, which my mother always appreciates.

For a full list of this year’s Peabody Award winners visit the Peabody web site.

Meanwhile here is a (vaguely) Peabody-related recipe. One of the honorees this year was the HBO miniseries John Adams, which I adored (although I had always pictured Abigail Adams as much less bleak than her portrayal by the talented Laura Linney would suggest).

I called the Adams House in Quincy, Massachusetts (technically Adams National Historic Park) and asked the curator there, Kelly Cobble, whether Abigail had any favorite recipes.

Abigail Adams (portrait by Gilbert Stuart, Courtesy of Adams National Historic Park)

Kelly told me that Abigail Adams was known to be fond of Indian Pudding. She emailed me a quotation from Henry Bradshaw Fearon, an Englishman sent to the United States in 1817 by a group of families who wanted him to look for a place on this continent in which it might be suitable for them to settle.

On Sunday, September 17, of that year Fearon wrote:

In the afternoon of this day, young Mr. Adams came from Quincy to conduct me to his grandfather’s… The ex-President is a handsome old gentleman of eighty-four; his lady a seventy-six; -she has the reputation of superior talents, and great literary achievements.

…first course, a pudding made of Indian Corn, Molasses and butter; Second, veal, bacon, neck of mutton, potatoes, cabbage, carrots and Indian beans: maderia vine of which each drank two glasses. We sat down to dinner at one o’clock, at two, nearly all went a second time to church. For tea, we had pound-cake, sweet bread and butter, and bread made of Indian corn and rye…

In honor of Abigail Adams and the Peabody Awards, then, here is a recipe for Indian Pudding.



Indian Pudding

True to its name, this dish was a gift to New England settlers from Native Americans, a variation on their cornmeal mush. It was probably the most popular pudding in 18th-century America.

As Henry Bradshaw Fearon indicates in our nation’s early decades pudding came at the beginning of the meal. You may eat this one for dessert if you like, however! It looks pretty pathetic when it first comes out of the oven (like a not very appetizing mud pie). It looks a lot better with a spot of whipped cream and is most satisfying to eat.

Like most puddings, it is adaptable; feel free to omit (or add to) the apples and to experiment with spices!

Ingredients:

5 cups milk
1/3 cup molasses
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons sweet butter
2 medium apples

Instructions:

Heat 4 cups of the milk in a saucepan and add the molasses, sugars, cornmeal, cinnamon, salt, and butter. Cook until the mixture thickens (between 10 and 20 minutes), stirring frequently.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Peel and core the apples; then slice them thinly onto the bottom of a 2- to 3-quart baking dish. Pour the cornmeal mixture into the dish on top of the apples. Pour the remaining milk on top, but do not stir it in.

Bake for 3 hours without stirring. Serve warm with cream, whipped cream, ice cream, or hard sauce. Serves 8.

Tammy's Tangy Kielbasa

Tammy Hicks postmarks an envelope.

I fully intended to post a poppy-seed cake for Memorial Day in honor of my favorite Memorial Day poem, “In Flanders Fields.”

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place…….

Somehow, I never got around to making the thing. Next year, I promise I will!

Luckily, I found an easy and tasty substitute on Friday while at the Post Office in Charlemont, Massachusetts. Postmaster Tammy Hicks and I started comparing notes on our weekend cooking tasks. Tammy said she was going to throw some sweet-and-sour kielbasa into her slow cooker a couple of hours before she needed to serve it at a Memorial Day picnic.

When I asked for her recipe it sounded so good (and so much NOT like work) that I ran to the store and bought the ingredients.

There are only three of them (ingredients, that is). No kidding.

You may certainly dress this dish up by buying really good kielbasa (we have a terrific local smokehouse, Pekarski’s in South Deerfield). And you may use homemade jelly and homemade barbecue sauce.

I just bought what was available at Avery’s General Store and went home and cooked. It was yummy.

Tammy usually makes a LOT of this, tossing between two and five pounds of kielbasa into her slow cooker. For one to two pounds she uses the amounts of jelly and barbecue sauce I indicate here. For more she doubles them.

She suggested cooking the dish in the slow cooker for two hours on high or for four hours on low.

I am only serving four people at my Memorial Day picnic--and my slow cooker is in another state--so I as you can see from my recipe I cooked one pound of meat on low heat on the stove top.



The Very Easy Recipe

Ingredients:

1 pound kielbasa, cut into bite-sized pieces (turkey kielbasa will do—ANY kielbasa will do)
1/2 of a 12-ounce jar of grape jelly
1/2 of an 18-ounce jar of good quality barbecue sauce

Instructions:

Stir the ingredients together in a 2-quart saucepan. Cover, and cook for 2 hours over low heat. Stir once or twice if you’re worried.

Serve on Memorial Day with cornbread, devilled eggs, and coleslaw.

Serves 2 teenage boys or 4 normal people.

Taffy's Asparagus Penne

My Sad Asparagus Patch

Here is one more asparagus treat, perfect for the weird miscellaneous stalks that come up in my alleged garden every year. (I know that they would be healthier if I actually weeded the bed, but weeding has never been my specialty.) Since I cut the stalks into small pieces they don’t have to match in any way.

My family served this to my mother Jan (a.k.a. Taffy because she likes to swim in salt water) for Mother’s Day one year. It has become a May staple for us.

Cousin Jane (left) and Sister Leigh present the Penne to Taffy.

Ingredients:

1 pound penne
2 pounds fresh asparagus, washed, trimmed, and cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (plus a bit more if you like)
10 large cloves of garlic cut lengthwise into thin pieces
freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional—if you put lots of salt in the penne and asparagus water you won’t need it) 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) sweet butter
1/2 pound Prosciutto, thinly sliced and then shredded (optional) freshly grated Italian cheese (such as Parmesan or Pecorino Romano) to taste—at least 1 cup, and maybe more
1 handful fresh parsley, finely chopped

Directions:

First, cook the penne according to the package instructions. When it is cooked al dente drain it, rinse it in cold water to cool it off, and drain it again.

While the pasta is cooking, place the asparagus in boiling water, and boil for 2 minutes. Carefully drain the asparagus, rinse it with very cold water, and drain it again.

When the pasta is ready and drained, pour the oil into a LARGE skillet, and let it heat over medium heat for about a minute, until it begins to shimmer. The oil will be very hot. Carefully add the pieces of garlic to the oil and cook, stirring vigorously, until the garlic begins to brown. (This won’t take long.)

Add the asparagus, salt (if needed), and pepper to the garlic. Cook for another 2 minutes, shaking or stirring gently. Add the pasta and the butter and cook until the vegetables and pasta are hot and well mixed, 3 to 4 minutes. Turn off the heat, and toss in the Prosciutto.

Carefully transfer the mixture to a serving bowl, and toss in lots of Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle the chopped parsley on top. Serve it to your mother and other guests immediately. Serves 8.

Eggs Beatrice

Here’s another recipe for my beloved Sparrow Grass–or perhaps I should say Spearage, which according to Kathleen Wall at Plimoth Plantation was a common 17th-century term for asparagus.

I’m not a big Eggs Benedict Girl—the consistency of the ham never seems to me to go with the rest of the ingredients—but alter the recipe a little and incorporate asparagus and I’m hooked. (You may of course add ham as well!)

I’m always a little cautious about poaching eggs, but I found a helpful new product at the Lamson & Goodnow retail store in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, that banishes my fears. It’s called an eggshell™ and comes in packages of two that look like little cracked eggs.

To use one of these silicone products, lightly grease the inside, pop your egg into it, and float the eggshell in boiling water. Cover the pot, and cook for 5 minutes. Your poached egg pops easily out of the silicone and onto your English muffin.

Ingredients:

for the Hollandaise sauce (makes about 1 cup of sauce):

1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter
3 egg yolks
the juice of 1/2 small lemon
2 tablespoons hot water
a pinch of cayenne pepper
a pinch of salt

for assembly (per person):

1/2 English muffin
butter as needed for the muffins
1 slice Prosciutto (optional)
3 spears cooked asparagus (either whole or cut up)
1 poached egg
a generous dollop of Hollandaise sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

First, make the Hollandaise sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan. In the top of a double boiler over warm (but not boiling!) water, whisk the egg yolks until they are smooth. Whisk in the lemon juice. Slowly whisk in the butter in a thin stream.

Slowly stir in the hot water, cayenne, and salt, and cook for 1 minute more, whisking constantly. Set the sauce aside while you poach the eggs and cook the toast.

For each person, butter half of a toasted English muffin, and lay the Prosciutto on top if you want to use it. Depending on your preference, put the asparagus on next or the egg (my mother and I liked it both ways!).

Cover with a little Hollandaise sauce, and season to taste. Serve immediately. One recipe of Hollandaise makes enough sauce for 4 to 6 eggs.

The Eggshells

Sparrow Grass

When I’m asked one of those silly hypothetical food questions—“What one food would you want to eat on a desert island?” or “What would you choose to eat for your last meal on death row?’’—I never have trouble making a decision. I’m an asparagus girl to the end.

Of course, asparagus is a cool-climate vegetable so it’s unlikely to grow on a desert island. And a prison chef would probably cook it until it was soggy. Nevertheless, I could eat even poorly cooked asparagus every day and be reasonably happy.

This time of year my favorite green vegetable is everywhere in the Pioneer Valley. As David Nussbaum recalled in Saveur magazine a few years ago, the Connecticut River Valley was the world’s asparagus capital between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Hadley Grass, as it was called, was shipped throughout the northeast and occasionally even overseas, where it was purportedly enjoyed by the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace.

When a blight hit the crop in the mid-1970s, Nussbaum wrote, asparagus in the area was hard hit. It took a while to find a blight-resistant strain, and many farmers moved on. Today it is mainly we locals who enjoy what remains of this formerly dominant crop.

Many western Massachusetts asparagus fans still use the term Hadley Grass, adapted from a popular nickname for the vegetable in the 1700s and 1800s, “sparrow grass.” Lexicographer John Walker wrote in 1791, “Sparrow-grass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry.”

I was seven when I first tasted freshly picked asparagus. My family was visiting one of my father’s graduate-school professors in Wisconsin. Like many Midwesterners the professor and his wife had a huge garden.

When I took my first bite of fresh-from-the-garden asparagus I was amazed at the flavor and texture. It tasted more like butter than any vegetable should. I kept eating—and eating—and eating.

I haven’t consumed that much asparagus at one sitting since then, but I still remember that visit with pleasure. And I celebrate asparagus season every year. One of my yearly ambitions (one spring I’ll fulfill it!) is to taste a unique asparagus treat served about an hour away from me.

A fabulous dairy in Hadley, Massachusetts, Flayvors of Cook Farm, makes asparagus ice cream at this time of year. I haven’t tried it myself, but every other flavor I’ve tried there has been freshly made and imaginatively conceived.

Every summer when we take my nephew Michael on his annual pilgrimage to the Eric Carle Museum we end up indulging ourselves at Cook Farm on the way home.

Just to get you going on your own asparagus journey I’ll be posting a few sparrow grass recipes, starting with this easy roasted grass formula. Don’t feel that you have to use any of them, however. Nothing beats this vegetable simply steamed or boiled, topped with a little butter and/or lemon juice.

Roasted Asparagus

Ingredients:

1 pound asparagus, washed and trimmed
a generous splash of extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 handful feta cheese (optional)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In an ovenproof dish, toss together the asparagus, oil, salt, and pepper. Lay the oiled asparagus in the dish in a single layer.

Bake the asparagus for 6 to 10 minutes (depending on its thickness; I had fairly thick asparagus so I used the full 10 minutes), turning once.

If you want to use the feta, lay it on top of the asparagus after turning. It won’t melt, but it will become warm and soft.

Remove the roasted asparagus from the oven, and garnish it with chives if desired. Serves 3 to 4.

Mother Jan is happy that Sparrow Grass season is here.

A Regal Birthday

Lorelei Lee is a queen on her birthday (and on every other day as well).

Happy Birthday, Lorelei Lee! Today my personality-filled cat turns 18. I think we’ll wait a few days to register her to vote, but it’s a milestone worth marking.

I remember reading many years ago (I THINK in a book by feminist historian Gerda Lerner, but I’m afraid I can no longer find the reference) that the domestication of dogs is seen by some scholars as a milestone in the development of the human psyche since it springs from altruism.

At some point humans moved from relying on dogs for protection and hunting to bringing them into the home as pets. The dogs had no function other than to give and receive love–so the people who cared for them were operating from a need for sociability and empathy rather than survival.

The domestication of cats, although not mentioned in the work I vaguely recall, must have taken even more altruism. Dogs bolster our egos. When Truffle gazes at me with her big hazel eyes I know that I am her beloved protector.

In contrast, when Lorelei Lee gazes at me with her big blue eyes I know that I am supposed to get her whatever she wants–preferably pretty darn quickly. With one feline glance I am reduced from beloved caregiver to abject slave.

The domestication of cats is therefore a little more complicated than the domestication of dogs. True, cats do sometimes fulfill a household function; before her retirement (which stemmed from impaired vision) Lorelei was a fierce killer of mice and large insects.

Mainly, however, cats teach us to live with uncertainty and with creatures who are significantly different from us. I accept Lorelei Lee’s demands and quirks and even what we euphemistically term her “love bites” because she is part of my family even if I’ll never completely understand her.

Despite their martial spirit, I would argue that the domestication of cats may therefore have been a bigger milestone in the development of the human race than that of dogs. True, dogs promote world peace by example, showing us how to be patient and loving.

Cats, however, promote world peace by behavior therapy, forcing us to become patient and loving. So today I celebrate Lorelei and her challenging yet endearing sisters and brothers throughout the world. May we continue to learn their life lessons with grace and humor.

I've been trying to think of an appropriate recipe to post for LL's special day. Like everyone in our family she’s partial to cheese so I've decided on blue cheese dressing. Who can resist that signature combination of fat, salt, and creaminess?

We humans eat this concoction as a veggie dip or on a salad. Lorelei will have a small amount tonight on a morsel of asparagus. (It’s good on broccoli, too, but asparagus is coming into the garden, and anyway it’s Miss Lorelei’s favorite vegetable!)

Snappy Blue Cheese Dressing/Dip/Whatever

Ingredients:

3/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
1 clove garlic, finely minced
3/4 cup sour cream or yogurt
a few drops of Worcestershire sauce
salt to taste (you don’t need a lot since the cheese is salty!)
freshly squeezed lemon juice as needed (about 1/2 large lemon for the dip or for Lorelei’s asparagus; more for the dressing)

Instructions:

Combine the cheese and garlic; then stir in the sour cream or yogurt, Worcestershire sauce, and salt. Finish with the lemon juice. Chill the dressing for at least 1 hour before you use it.

When I served this with salad I gave guests lemon wedges so they could add extra lemon when they dabbed the dressing on the greenery. You may also mix in the lemon juice yourself and toss this creamier dressing directly into the salad bowl.

Makes a little more than 1 cup of dressing (the ingredients lose volume when you combine them).

Here's the salad with dressing before the extra lemon juice was added.....

My Grandmother's Johnnycake

My grandmother as a young woman (right) with her older sister Alma (I love that hands-on-hips attitude!)

My mother tells me she has been thinking of her own mother a lot lately. So as Mother’s Day approaches I’m paying tribute to both of them by publishing a recipe from my grandmother’s files.

My mother’s mother, Clara Engel Hallett, was the proverbial good plain cook. Brought up on a farm, she helped her adopted mother with chores and cooking. She polished her culinary skills the summer before her marriage in 1912 by attending Fannie Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston. One of my great regrets is that I learned about this too late to ask my grandmother what the legendary Fannie Farmer was like!

I do know that a couple of her cooking techniques echo Miss Farmer’s trademarks. My grandmother was scrupulously exact in her cooking and recipe transcriptions, as befitted someone who sat at the feet of “the mother of level measurements.”

And even when she was all alone she took care to make sure that every meal she prepared was attractive and well balanced, as Miss Farmer decreed it should be. I wish I had inherited this instinct; when I’m alone I eat anything from a salad to a bowl of cereal, and balance pretty much goes out the window.

Fannie Farmer’s influence lives on in our family through our near veneration of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Some of my friends identify The Joy of Cooking as their cooking primer; others, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.

For my mother and me the cooking bible has always been Fannie Farmer. We own hundreds of cookbooks but somehow almost always turn to that one volume when we’re looking for a simple, tasty way to prepare something basic.

Clara and Bruce Hallett with Baby Janice

The recipe below doesn’t come from Fannie Farmer–unless it’s one Miss Farmer herself taught my grandmother to make that long-ago summer. (There’s no attribution on the recipe card.) It’s a basic cornbread. My grandmother grew up in Vermont and used the old New England name Johnnycake, a.k.a. Jonnycake or Journey Cake, for her bread.

When I make it I think of this thrifty, versatile Yankee woman–and of her daughter, my mother Jan. And of course of Miss Farmer, a culinary mother to millions! Happy Mother's Day to all......

Clara Hallett’s Johnnycake

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) sweet butter
1 cup buttermilk or thick sour milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 to 4 tablespoons sugar (depending on how sweet you like your cornbread)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease an 8-by8-inch baking pan or a 9-inch iron skillet. Sift the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together three times. Set them aside.

Melt the butter. While it is melting, whisk together the buttermilk, egg, and baking soda. Mix them into the melted butter, along with the sugar. Stir this mixture lightly into the flour mixture.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the johnnycake until it is firm and browned a little on the edges, about 20 minutes. Serves 6.

My grandmother later in life (she was almost 90; I, 21).

A Taste of the Hearth

We sometimes take our kitchens for granted. They are much more than just rooms in which food is prepared. They serve as the centers of the home, places of warmth figuratively as well as literally.

My kitchen is like my life—colorful, messy, and full of projects in various stages of preparation!

Historic New England has dubbed 2009 the Year of the Kitchen and has put out a wonderful book, America’s Kitchens (of which I’ll write more soon!). I hope to follow its lead, not just by going to some of the events it has scheduled to celebrate this special year, but also by writing about the kitchens of neighbors and readers.

My first personal Year of the Kitchen event took place recently in East Brunswick, New Jersey, where I observed food historian Susan Luczu give a talk called “A Taste of the Hearth” at the East Brunswick Museum. Susan (shown above to the left) lives in an early-18th-century house near the museum. She collects historic kitchen equipment, which she uses to cook authentic, tasty foods in her house’s huge original fireplace. Susan brought several of her treasures and several of her foods to share with museum visitors.

The East Brunswick Museum

The East Brunswick Museum is a tiny jewel located in a 19th century church in the historic village of Old Bridge. It is celebrating its own Year of the Kitchen with an ongoing exhibition called “What’s Cooking” that features kitchen tools and accessories. Some are part of the museum’s permanent collection while others are on loan from supporters like Susan.

Susan began with a bit of background about her interest in culinary history. She then showed off a number of the 18th-century kitchen tools and utensils she has collected over the years, which ranged from heavy pots to a portable toaster. “People back in that period were pretty sophisticated in their cooking,” she said of our colonial forebears.

Susan is almost as inventive as the 18th-century cooks she studies. She described how she had recreated some of her props. One of these was a sugar cone; she explained that people in the 1700s bought and stored sugar in cones and showed us how to extract a little sugar at a time using her antique sugar nipper (it looked a bit like pliers). Another homemade tool was a corn pot-scrubber for cleaning cast-iron pots, which she made from a whisk broom.

Nipping Off Some Sugar

Naturally, Susan concluded her talk with a lavish tasting. She was nice enough to share her recipes with her audience so I can pass one of them on to you.

Susan’s next presentation at the Museum in East Brunswick New Jersey will be a Victorian Tea Day on Sunday, May 17. The Museum asks participants to reserve seats in advance; here is the web page with contact information. (Attendees are encouraged to dress in garden-party finery.) I highly recommend this event: Susan is knowledgeable, smart, funny, and down to earth.

New Englanders looking for a Year of the Kitchen event may want to attend the Spring Herb Sale this weekend at the Lyman Estate Greenhouses in Waltham, Massachusetts, or take the tour “A Tale of Two Kitchens” in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Saturday, May 9. Information about both of these events is available on Historic New England’s Events Calendar.

To learn more about Susan, visit her web site.

I’ll be looking for more kitchen events to write about soon. Meanwhile, here is one of Susan Luczu’s recipes. She baked this gingerbread in a lovely Turk’s Head mold.

Part of the East Brunswick Museum's Kitchen Collection

Taste of the Hearth Gingerbread Cake

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup powdered sugar for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan or a small (4-cup) cake mold.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, soda, and spices. Set aside.
Cream the butter until it is fluffy. Add the brown sugar and beat well. Add the egg and molasses, and beat for 1 minute more.

Gently add the flour mixture, alternating with the water. Stir (or mix on low speed) until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake it until the top springs back when lightly pressed with a finger—or until a cake tester comes out clean (35 to 45 minutes).

Cool the cake for 5 minutes in the pan; then turn it out onto a plate and let it cool completely. Sprinkle the top with powdered sugar.

Serve the cake warm or cold with vanilla sauce, lemon curd, or butter. Serves 8.

By the way, we have a winner for the Lamson Good Now Green Tool! Chris Miller of Lebanon, New Jersey, will receive a potato masher. Thanks to Lamson & Goodnow and to all who participated in the drawing. I’ll announce another prize at the end of this month………

Tortilla Soup

Tomorrow is el Cinco de Mayo, the fifth of May. This day commemorates the victory of Mexican forces over the French army at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. It’s also a day on which we in the United States celebrate the heritage of our Mexican residents and neighbors.

For many Mexicans this year the Cinco de Mayo holiday will be dimmed by worry about the flu epidemic. Chicken soup can’t cure colds and flu, of course, but any mother will tell you that the soup’s warmth comforts those who are sick. So let’s celebrate the ability of the Mexican people to rise above challenges—epidemiological or military—with a little chicken-based tortilla soup.

This soup comes in many different versions so feel free to change it to your taste. Some people like to put the tortilla pieces in the soup to cook for a while (to make a sort of chicken-noodle soup). If you have a fresh hot pepper, feel free to substitute it for the red pepper flakes in the recipe; I was sticking to ingredients I could purchase at my local general store so I didn’t have one on hand.

Tortilla Soup

Ingredients:

canola oil as needed for frying
1 onion, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 15-ounce can stewed tomatoes
1 4-ounce can green chiles
4 cups chicken stock (preferably homemade)
1 tablespoon chili powder
salt to taste
red pepper flakes to taste (these provide spice)
3 to 3-1/2 cups corn kernels (at this time of year I use frozen)
4 corn tortillas
2 to 3 cups shredded cooked chicken
chopped cilantro to taste
grated cheese to taste (Monterey Jack or cheddar; the first melts better and the second has more flavor)
2 limes, cut into wedges

Instructions:

In a small frying pan, sauté the onion and garlic in a little oil until they brown. Pop them into the blender with the canned tomatoes and the green chiles. Blend well.

Add the tomato mixture to the chicken stock. Stir in the chili powder, salt, red pepper flakes, and corn. Bring the soup to a boil; then reduce the heat, almost cover the soup, and let it simmer until the flavors have blended (at least 1/2 hour).

While the soup is cooking, cut the tortillas into small strips. Let them sit on paper towels for at least 15 minutes to dry out; then fry them in oil until they are crispy. Set them aside to drain on the paper towels.

When the soup is almost ready, stir in the chicken and cilantro. Cook for a few minutes more, until the chicken is heated through.

Ladle the soup into bowls, and have your guests add tortilla strips, cheese, and lime juice from the wedges to taste. Serves 4 to 6.