Two Grandmothers' Cake

My mother celebrated a big birthday a few days ago. I won’t say exactly how old she is, mostly because it makes me feel incredibly old myself. Suffice it to say that she is at an age at which every birthday is a big birthday.

We were visiting my brother and his family and faced a couple of requirements for the birthday cake.

It had to be relatively small since all of us (except my mother) need to lose a little weight. And it had to be simple. My brother was in the hospital at the time. He is happily and healthily home now, but we didn’t want to make a complicated family time more complicated.

I had recently rediscovered my grandmother’s recipe for chocolate cake and decided it might fit the bill.

I recalled this cake well from my youth, when it was one of my mother’s standbys for a quick cake. She called it “Mother’s Chocolate Cake” (on my grandmother’s recipe card it is called “My Favorite Chocolate Cake”) and iced it with cream-cheese frosting.

My mother’s own version of the recipe had long since disappeared so I was happy to find my grandmother’s. It’s a great cake—and she was a lovely person. Here is she as she looked when I was little. (I do so admire a woman who can wear hats.)

The recipe turned out to be a teensy bit more challenging that I had imagined.

First, it was just old fashioned enough to be very confusing. My grandmother provided a range of oven temperatures and a range of flour quantities.

Second, she was unclear as to which ingredients were added when.

I standardized it as best I could and proceeded.

In hindsight, it seems to me that one could easily bake this in two layers for a bit less time, but the 8-by-8 inch pan made a nice thick cake that was easy to eat and frost.

According to my grandmother’s recipe card, she used a cooked icing on the cake. I stuck with my mother’s standby cream-cheese version, which is ever popular in our house.

My nephew Michael took charge of decorating the cake. He began with the word “Nana” written in orange lettering. He then went to town with candy corn and sprinkles. At ten, Michael takes the “more is more” school of decorating very seriously.

The birthday girl was pleased as punch with the results.


Tinky’s Grandmother’s Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

2 ounces bitter chocolate
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter at room temperature
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour an 8-by-8-inch baking pan.

Place the chocolate in a small saucepan, and pour the boiling water over it. Stir to dissolve, turning the heat below on very low if necessary.

In a mixing bowl cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time. Beat in the baking soda.

Add the flour and milk alternately, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir in the chocolate mixture, followed by the vanilla.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 50 minutes.

If you want to be informal and serve the cake out of the pan, that’s just fine. To be a bit more festive, let it cool for 10 minutes and then invert it onto a cooling rack.

Ice with cream-cheese frosting.

Serves 8 to 10.

Pizza Margherita

Tomatoes are still with us, joy of joys, and I was recently inspired by the bounty around me to make one of the world’s simplest and most delicious pizzas.

Pizza Margherita is about as basic as pizza can be—a crust topped with fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced fresh tomatoes, and fresh basil leaves. (One can use tomato sauce when fresh tomatoes are not in season, but the taste of the fresh tomatoes really comes through if you have them.)

This classic Neapolitan pizza was named after Margherita, the consort of Umberto I of Italy. Umberto was the second king of Italy, which was still gathering itself together in the 19th century. In 1889 she asked one of the premiere pizza makers in Naples to make her some pizza, then considered peasant food.

Margherita was delighted with the red, white, and green of this pizza, which reflected the colors of the Italian flag. It is still made in her honor at the Antiqua Pizzeria Brandi in Naples—and elsewhere.

I told my nephew Michael and his friend Carson about Queen Margherita, and they immediately grabbed red, white, and green ingredients to celebrate her pizza.

Pizza Margherita embodies the “less is more” philosophy that I frequently try to espouse when cooking (although I don’t always succeed). The fresh, high-quality toppings really shine here. At this season of the year it’s my favorite pizza.

Play with it a bit if you will—flavored oil would be nice—but don’t mess with its simplicity.

Ingredients:

1 pizza crust, store bought or homemade
olive oil as needed
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced thinly
grated Parmesan-Reggiano cheese to taste
2 to 3 medium-sized ripe yet firm tomatoes, sliced thinly
salt and pepper to taste
several basil leaves, torn

Instructions:

Bring the pizza dough to room temperature and preheat the oven as indicated in your dough instructions.

Roll and/or stretch the pizza dough out gently (this may take a few tries) so that it forms a 14-inch circle (or a rectangle to go onto a cookie sheet if you don’t have a pizza pan). Use a little flour to help with this if necessary.

Spray your pan lightly with cooking spray and oil it even more lightly. Place the dough on the pan. Spread a very thin film of olive oil on top.

Arrange the mozzarella pieces over the crust, and top them with the grated cheese. Arrange the tomato slices on top. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top, and drizzle a tad more olive oil over all.

Bake the pizza until the cheese is nicely melted and the bottom of the crust turns golden brown. With my crust (from Trader Joe’s) and my oven this took about 20 minutes.

Remove the pizza from the oven, and arrange the basil leaves on top of the tomatoes.

Serves 4 to 6.

Queen Margherita (Photo by Henri Le Lieure)

P.S. I would be remiss if I wrote about Pizza Margherita and forgot to mention my favorite place to eat it, the Green Emporium in Colrain, Massachusetts. It’s a bit far flung from Naples, but the ambiance and pizza can’t be beat. (The entertainment is pretty fabulous, too!)

Kate's Punjab Eggplant

As regular readers know, I ran a Blogathon a while back. Loving Local was designed to attract bloggers throughout the state to explore the tastes, the politics, the sights, and the comforts of food produced here in the Bay State. It spanned Massachusetts Farmers Market Week in late August.

One reporter unfamiliar with the term “Blogathon” asked whether as organizer I would have to type on my computer for 24 hours straight. Happily, this was not the case, although it was certainly a busy week.

My job was to keep track of and list the different internet essays as people posted them on their blogs. I also encouraged contributors to keep on writing and answered questions via the Blogathon’s Facebook page.

In addition, I posted a couple of brief recipes on my own blog. I would have written more, but I barely had time to cook!

Of course, along the way I found lots of new writers to follow and lots of fun new recipes to try. Here is one of those recipes, courtesy of Kate Carcio of Village Veggies.

Kate lives smack in the middle of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, where she and her husband have transformed what used to be a front yard into a huge garden. She began blogging last year. At Village Veggies she shares her adventures, some of her recipes, and the tally of how much food she has put up so far this year. (It’s impressive!)

Kate contributed a local chocolate-chip cookie recipe to the Blogathon, which I will try in the winter, but this recipe really stole my heart because I’m a big fan of both eggplant and Indian spices.

Here is her recipe without a lot of change. (You can see her original post here!) I did mess with it a bit when I made it, using regular salt instead of garlic salt (because that’s what I had), and adding a few different spices as well as a sprinkling of lemon juice at the end. And I only made a half recipe (using three teeny tiny eggplants) since I wasn’t feeding a crowd. I didn’t try the alternate method.

Feel free to adapt the recipe to your taste. Whether you make it your way or as Kate wrote it, it should end up aromatic and satisfying.


Ingredients:

2 medium eggplants
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 large tomato (about 1-1/2 cups chopped)
1 cup rehydrated beans of your choice (Tinky used lentils)
1/2 teaspoon garam masala

Instructions:

Slice the eggplants and place them, center down, on a greased baking pan. Bake at 400 degrees until the eggplants are soft to the touch, about 30 minutes. When they cool, scrape out the eggplant flesh, mash it, and set it aside, discarding the skin. (You may perform this step a day in advance and refrigerate the mashed flesh until it is needed.)

Alternate method: You may also chop up 1 of the eggplants and placed it in a greased baking dish. Then roast it at 400 degrees for 30 minutes for broiled eggplant. This way the overall dish will be a little chunkier, but you must roast at least 1 of the eggplants in the manner described above to make a good sauce.

In a large sauté pan, heat the oil and sauté the onion and garlic until tender, approximately 7 minutes.

Add all the spices except the garam masala and continue to sauté another minute until the vegetables are fragrant.

Add the eggplant flesh, the tomatoes, and 1 cup water. Mix well. Bring the mixture to a boil; then reduce the heat. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the eggplant and tomatoes have made a thick paste.

Remove the cover, add the beans and the garam masala, and continue to cook for 5 more minutes.

Serve over rice or with naan—or both! If you have a lot of eggplant, double the recipe and freeze some for a later date. The flavors will be better the longer you wait!

Serves 6.

Dishpan Cookies

I recently heard from Ramona Lynam, a reader of this blog who lives in Iowa and write about life, food, family, and books on her own blog, Chances R.

Ramona had just written about her mother’s “dish pan” cookies and wondered whether I could use a recipe for my “Twelve Cookies of Christmas” series.

Could I ever! I’m actually BEHIND on the series, having neglected to post a cookie recipe in August.

Ramona recently put her mother’s recipe on her blog, and I definitely urge you to try it as she wrote it up. Her cookies look lovely and chewy. Ramona thinks their name comes from the fact that a whole recipe (this is only half) could probably fill a dish pan.

I altered the recipe a bit when I tried it. Ramona, this has nothing to do with you, just with my family’s circumstances!

My nephew Michael’s nutritionist has asked him to cut back on gluten for the moment. So I decided to reduce the gluten in the cookies.

I started out with a fun new product from Trader Joe’s, peanut flour. (I’m sorry about the weird photo; the flour really looks all scrunched up like this when one buys it.)

Peanut flour is basically ground up peanuts that have had some of their fat taken out. It’s a bit lumpy so I was glad Ramona’s mother’s recipe involved sifting the flour. (Note: if you try this with peanut flour, make sure you use a fairly wide sieve. The peanut flour doesn’t go through a tiny one.)

The end result was darker than Ramona’s version and tended to be crunchy rather than chewy. It also tasted a bit like a peanut-butter cookie. We all LOVE peanut-butter cookies in the Weisblat household so this was just fine with us. Michael ate the first one and couldn't stop smiling.

If you’re thinking about playing with less gluten, or even if you’re not, I urge you to try it.
While you’re munching, think about your own mother or grandmother. Here’s what Ramona had to say about her mom:

She was the sweetest, kindest, do anything for anyone woman you could meet. Probably much like your Mom. When Dad died and we kids were out on our own, she shared her almost daily cooking creations with her neighbors. She lived 66 years on the farm she and Dad moved to after they married in 1937 continuing to raise pigs, cattle and chickens and a big garden on her own when she was widowed at age 59. I miss her every day.

Thank you, Ramona, for sharing your memories and recipe. Your mother sounds like a lovely person, and I enjoyed trying her cookies. (I’m going to try them with regular flour soon!)

Here’s a photo of Ramona’s mother, courtesy of Chances R. She obviously loved to feed everybody around……


Ramona’s Mom’s Dish Pan Cookies (altered to be ALMOST gluten free)

Regular Ingredients:

1 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar (I packed mine, but not super firm)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups peanut flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup oatmeal (Ramona uses quick, but I only had regular, which worked fine)
2 cups cereal—I used rice cereal, which is ALMOST gluten-free, having only a small amount of barley

Optional Ingredients:

3/4 cup coconut
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup pecans or other nuts

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream together the oil and the sugars. Beat in the eggs, followed by the vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir them in to the wet mixture, followed by the oatmeal and cereal. Stir in any or all of the optional ingredients. I used a generous cup of chocolate chips since that was the only option I was using.

The dough will get stiff and a bit hard to stir. Drop teaspoonsful of batter onto greased or silicon-lined cookie sheets. You will probably have to press the individual clumps of dough together with your hands to make them stay together.

Bake for 8 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool for a few minutes before removing them from the cookie sheets.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies. Eat them quickly; like most low-gluten foods they grow stale quickly.

Bread and Butter Pickles

My friend Cathy in England wrote a while back to ask whether I had a recipe for bread-and-butter pickles. She says she can’t get them in the U.K. but loves them when she’s in the States.

I do, too. These sweet-and-sour cucumber pickles were a staple in our household when I was growing up, as ubiquitous as the bread and butter after which they are named. My grandmother learned to make them from her foster mother, and my mother learned to make them from my grandmother.

SOME DAY I hope to make a version of these with maple syrup. This year, however, I didn’t think about pickling until last week, when cucumbers were suddenly disappearing from gardens and farm stands in our area!

To get something pickled this year, I’m sticking with my mother’s recipe, which probably came from Fannie Farmer long ago. She’s a Fannie Farmer cook. It’s simple, and the brown sugar gives it a mellow flavor.

Ingredients:

6 cups thinly sliced pickling cukes (leave the skin on, but remove the ends)
2 cups thinly sliced onions
1/2 green bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1/4 cup kosher salt
2 cups brown sugar (do not pack)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 tablespoon mustard seed
3/4 teaspoon celery seed
2 cups mild cider vinegar (I used a store brand rather than the more robust version from my local apple orchard)

Instructions:

In a nonreactive bowl combine the cucumbers, onion slices, pepper strips, and salt. Cover the bowl and let the mixture stand for 3 hours to drain some of the liquid out of the cucumbers.

In a large nonreactive pot combine the brown sugar, spices, and vinegar. Bring them slowly to the boil. Boil for 5 minutes.

Drain and rinse the vegetables thoroughly. Add them to the liquid on the stove and heat just until the liquid is about to simmer once more.

Spoon the vegetables into 4 hot, sterilized pint jars, and cover them with the cooking liquid. Fill the jars but leave 1/2-inch headspace.

(If you’re a little short on liquid, add a small amount of vinegar to the bottom of the cooking pot—where there will still be a residue of the spices—and bring it to a boil; then add that to your jars.)

Cover the jars with two-part lids and process them in boiling water for 10 minutes. (For more information on this process, check out the USDA Guide to Home Canning.)

Now, here’s the hard part: wait at least 6 weeks before you open the first jar. We’re counting the days in our house.

Makes 4 pints.

Just Peachy Upside-Down Cake

Peaches are about to go by in our little corner of the world. Hager Brothers in Shelburne, Massachusetts, ran out last week, and Clarkdale in Deerfield has just announced that this will be its last week!

I’m hoping Apex in Shelburne can hold out a little longer, but the Smiths did seem to have more apples than peaches when I stopped by the other day! I haven’t checked this week at Pine Hill Orchard in Colrain, but last time I was there apples were taking over shelf space from their softer cousins. Sigh….

Of course, this should be expected. It IS September. And we DID first see peaches in July, a premature treat. But I’m a bit downcast nonetheless. I could keep eating them all year. And of course cooking with them.

Today I’m making a batch of peach jam so we’ll have a taste of peaches in months to come.

Meanwhile, here’s a very peachy recipe. I took this upside-down cake to a party a few days ago, and it was a huge hit. Make the recipe if you can still find peaches. Or tuck it away until next year.

Mother Jan arranges the peaches.

The Cake

Ingredients:

for the topping:

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) sweet butter
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
the juice of 1/2 lemon
2 cups peach slices

for the cake:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1-3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

First make the topping (which goes on the bottom!).

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the brown sugar and lemon juice. Cook, stirring, until the combination melts and bubbles—3 to 4 minutes.

Transfer the brown-sugar mixture into a 9-inch-square cake pan. Spread it through the bottom of the pan. Arrange the peach slices on top as artistically as you can. (My mother did ours, and like me she’s a better cook than an artist.)

For the cake cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time. Add the baking powder and salt. Stir in the flour alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir in the vanilla, and pour the batter over the rhubarb mixture.

Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted into the center (but not too far down; don’t hit the peaches!) comes out clean, about 40 minutes. If the cake is brown but not done before this happens, decrease the oven temperature and continue baking.

Allow the cake to cool for 5 to 10 minutes. Loosen the edges with a knife, and invert the cake onto a serving plate held over the skillet. Turn upside-down. Remove pan.

Serve alone or with whipped cream. Serves 9.

As with my recent rhubarb cake I should think you could absolutely bake this pan in a 10-inch iron skillet (heating the butter, brown sugar, and lemon juice in it first, and then piling on the other ingredients). I couldn’t find my skillet, however—I think it must be in storage in another state!--so I used a square pan and can only report on those results.

Hilo to Hawley Barbecue Sauce

Generally, I know what I’m going to get when I test a recipe. Every once in a while, however, I’m completely surprised.

Surprise was definitely the word of the day when I tried this recipe.

Devany Vickery-Davidson is a writer and ceramic artist who lives in Hawaii. Her blog, My Hawaiian Home, features delectable recipes and stories of her adventures in her tropical milieu.

Her dog Valentine is NEARLY as cute as my Truffle. And Valentine has her own lei. (I refuse to show this picture to Truffle!)

Valentine in Paradise (Courtesy of Devany Vickery-Davidson)

Devany recently sent me her homemade ketchup recipe. I was determined to try it out.

I had a lot of tomatoes in the house (not enough, it turned out—Devany DID warn me that one needed a huge garden to make her recipe!). And my nephew Michael is a ketchup fanatic.

I adapted Devany’s Hawaiian-oriented recipe to reflect local ingredients around my home in Hawley, Massachusetts. Devany often uses palm vinegar; I used cider vinegar from Apex Orchards. She uses raw cane and brown sugar; I used maple syrup. She uses a Maui onion; I used a local Vidalia type.

I cooked and cooked and cooked the ketchup. When it was still wet but getting thicker I tasted it.

It didn’t taste ANYTHING like ketchup. My local cider vinegar was way too robust.

At the suggestion of my friend Chef Michael Collins I added more maple syrup and kept cooking. When I tasted the revised ketchup, it still wasn’t very ketchup like.

I was just about to give up when I tasted it again and experienced a moment of epiphany.

My concoction still didn’t taste anything like ketchup. BUT … it DID taste like really good barbecue sauce.

So that’s what I’m calling it.

You’ll only want to make this recipe if you have lots and lots of tomatoes in your garden or farm share; it’s quite expensive per ounce if you go out and buy the darn things.

It’s worth trying if you have a surfeit of tomatoes, however. It’s dark, sweet, and tangy—perfect barbecue sauce, in other words.

Thank you, Devany, for leading me on this adventure! Whatever this stuff is called, it’s delicious.


Devany’s Sauce Adapted by Tinky

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1-1/2 teaspoons celery seeds
2 teaspoons whole cloves
8 black peppercorns
1 fresh bay leaf or 1/2 dried bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1 nutmeg nut, grated
12 pounds (5 kilograms) chopped tomatoes—6 to 7 quarts (Devany suggests using Roma or paste tomatoes, but any tomato will do; regular tomatoes, which I used, just have more liquid and will therefore yield less sauce.)
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 large sweet onion, finely chopped
2 Serrano peppers, seeded and finely chopped
1 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon kosher salt (Devany uses 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt, but I used what I had)

Instructions:

Place the vinegar in a saucepan. Tie the mustard seeds, allspice, celery seeds, cloves, and peppercorns in a piece of cheesecloth. Place the cheesecloth bag in the vinegar along with the bay leaf, cinnamon stick, and nutmeg.

Bring the mixture slowly to a boil; then turn off the heat and let the vinegar sit with the spices for 1 hour. Discard the spices (except for the nutmeg, which will be in the vinegar!) and set the vinegar aside.

In a large nonreactive kettle combine the tomatoes, garlic, onion, and peppers. Heat the ingredients over medium heat, stirring frequently to avoid scorching on the bottom of the pan. Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce the heat; allow the mixture to simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in the spiced vinegar and continue to simmer for another 1/2 hour, still stirring from time to time.

Remove the pot from the heat and put the tomatoes and other vegetables through a food mill. Try to extract as much pulp and juice as you can. Discard the leftover solids, seeds, and skins.

Stir the maple syrup and salt into the tomato mixture, and return it to the heat. Continue to cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until your barbecue sauce achieves the desired consistency. (This took me about 4 hours.)

I ended up with a little less than 1 quart of sauce, but one would probably achieve a larger yield (and a shorter cooking time) with the tomatoes Devany recommends.

Rosh Hashanah Very Sweet Corn

Here’s a quick recipe right in time for the Jewish New Year. Corn is NOT a traditional Jewish food since it is native to the Americas. (If they’d had it in ancient Israel, I’m sure it would have become traditional in no time flat.)

Honey is as traditional as the Jewish New Year gets, however. Serving one’s guests dishes flavored with honey wishes them a sweet New Year literally and figuratively. Two years ago I posted a recipe for honey cake. Last September I shared a recipe for honey chicken from Kosher.com.

This year I’m making my honey dish even easier.

I came across the idea for this recipe last year on a visit to Texas. Knowing my love of food, my hostess, Mary Cantu, took me to Central Market—an amazing emporium exploding with fresh food and Texas products.

Corn had just come into season in San Antonio, and a Central Market employee was serving it sautéed with native wildflower honey at a demo table.

The next day I called the store and talked to Emily Carlos, who told me that the recipe was based on a dish her grandmother used to make.

Unfortunately, Emily didn’t actually have a recipe. She just said, “Take fresh Texas corn sliced off the cob. Sauté it in a little butter with salt and pepper, and drizzle in a little wildflower honey.”

The proportions below were just a guess—but a very delicious guess! Naturally, I used fresh Massachusetts sweet corn instead of importing it from Texas.

I threw in the chipotle on a whim, and I liked it a lot. It adds excitement to the New Year in addition to the honey’s sweetness.

Happy Rosh Hashanah……..

Honey Corn

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons butter
2 cups raw corn kernels
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon honey
a pinch of ground chipotle pepper (optional but good)

Instructions:

In a small nonstick skillet melt the butter. When it starts to “talk” to you stir in the corn and sauté for 3 to 5 minutes, until it looks cooked. Stir in the salt and pepper, followed by the honey and chipotle (if desired).

Serves 2 to 4, depending on what else is being eaten.

Emma DuPuy Reed's Pickled Peaches

This photo and others come courtesy of Sue Haas.

Canning season is in full force—and as usual I am thinking about putting food up more than I’m doing it.

Thanks to Sue Haas of Seattle, however, I have made my first ever batch of pickled peaches. This lovely old fashioned recipe comes from Sue’s grandmother, Emma DuPuy Reed.

Miss Emma was born in 1871 and died in 1962 and was, according to Sue, “quite a lady.” Sue is working on a young-adult novel about her grandmother’s life. In the meantime, here are a few recollections she shared with me.

Emma Louisa DuPuy was born and grew up in a French Huguenot family in Philadelphia. Her father, Charles Meredith DuPuy, an engineer and inventor, was one of the founding members of the Huguenot Society of America. He also wrote a book about the DuPuy Family. She and her sisters were neighbors of and friends with Cecilia Beaux, the American Impressionist portrait painter, in West Philly. There are several portraits of DuPuy family members painted by C. Beaux. One is now at the Williams College Museum of Art….

Emma was a tall, dignified, beautiful lady with big blue eyes, a generous smile, and a wonderful sense of humor. She married William Ebenezer Reed, an engineer (from Manchester, VT), in 1902. Emma lived in a rent-controlled high-ceilinged, elegant apartment in Manhattan for over 50 years. Emma and “Eben” raised their five children there and Grandma gave birth to all of them at home. They had a maid and a cook and kept the traditions of Victorian table settings. I still remember dipping my fingers in thin, glass finger bowls placed on lace doilies–possibly necessary after eating sticky pickled peaches!

Emma DuPuy in 1901, a year before her marriage

Emma loved peaches. Peach ice cream was her favorite. She made her pickled peaches in Blue Point, L. I., where she also made raspberry jelly. I remember catching soft-shelled crabs in Blue Point, too, and occasionally seeing them escape from their bucket and scramble around on the kitchen floor before being plopped into boiling water.

I remember, as a child, helping my mother, Mary, make pickled peaches…mostly I remember peeling them after they’d been dipped in boiling water. Sometimes my fingers would turn purple and I remember my mother telling me to use lemon juice to get rid of the stains. (I didn’t notice that happening when I made the pickled peaches this summer, though.)

This summer my own daughter, Alysa, wanted me to teach her how to can. So we canned raspberry jam. She was busy on the day I canned the pickled peaches but I’m passing the recipe on to her.

I remember, as a child, eating juicy, cinnamon-y pickled peaches with roast turkey on Thanksgiving at Grandma’s Manhattan apartment many years ago. And I can’t wait to serve them to my own grandchildren at our Thanksgiving table this year in Seattle.

Sue’s recollections of her grandmother struck me as perfect for a project called In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens. So did this recipe. I did get pretty sticky handling the peaches, but what sweet stickiness! I can hardly wait to eat them with a festive meal.

Sue suggests serving them with roast pork or ham as well as turkey. You may either take the cloves out of the peaches yourself before serving or let your guests remove their own.

Now, if I only had a rent-controlled apartment in New York City………..


Miss Emma’s Pickled Peaches

Ingredients:

8 pounds fresh peaches (about 16 medium peaches)
4 pounds sugar (about 9 cups)
1 pint white vinegar
whole cloves (6 per peach = 96 cloves)
4 sticks cinnamon

Equipment:

large canning pot with rack
large cooking pot for heating water to peel peaches
large cooking pot for syrup and peaches
cheesecloth (cut a piece about 8 x 12 inches)
string
teaspoon
4 to 5 sterilized pint canning jars, new lids, and screwbands (sterilize in dishwasher or in boiling water in large canning pot with rack)

Instructions:

Preparation of canning pot:

Fill large canning pot with enough water to cover the two quart-size canning jars. Bring water to boil and keep hot.

Peeling peaches in hot water & adding cloves:

Boil about 2 quarts of water in a big cooking pot. Remove from heat. Place peaches in hot water for about 1 minute, or long enough so that skins may be peeled off easily. Remove peaches from water and cool in colander. Peel peaches and discard peels. You may cut peaches into halves or leave them whole. I cut them in half, but it's tricky to keep them intact. Whole peaches are easier. Insert 3 cloves into each peeled peach half. Set aside.

Cinnamon spice packet:

Make a spice packet with 4 sticks of cinnamon wrapped in a piece of cheesecloth. Tie a string to close the bag. Leave one end of string long enough to reach over the side of the pot to pull out when syrup has thickened. You may tie the long end of the string to a teaspoon to weigh it down so it won't slip back into the pot.

Note from Tinky: I just made a little knot in the cheesecloth and removed the cinnamon with a slotted spoon later. I couldn’t find my string!

Syrup:

Mix sugar and vinegar in a large cooking pot. Add the cinnamon packet to the pot. Heat on stove to boiling. Turn down and let simmer about 30 minutes until syrup turns golden and thickens.


Cook peaches in syrup:

Place peaches in the syrup and cook about 10 minutes on medium heat until soft. You may have to add the peaches in batches, depending on the size of the pot. When the peaches have finished cooking remove the cinnamon packet from the liquid. (You may save the cinnamon sticks and place one in each jar of pickled peaches if you like.)

Canning peaches:

Place peaches in the jars and pour syrup to about half an inch from the top of each jar. Seal with new canning lids and screw on screwbands. Place sealed jars on rack in hot water bath in large canning pot, making sure tops of jars are covered with water. Boil gently for about 10 minutes. Bubbles of air will come out of the jars.

Remove jars from water bath and let sit on a tray without moving them for about 24 hours. You'll know jars are sealed if you hear the lids pop, and they are flat (not convex) when you press the tops with your finger.

Makes 4 to 5 pints. You will have quite a bit of leftover syrup. You may use it to can more peaches, serve it as an appetizer over cream cheese, or make a cocktail with it. (Tinky here: I’m thinking maybe something with rum?)