Sweet Strawberry Cake with Meringue Frosting, ca. 1899

Tags

cake, dessert, meringue, strawberries, vintage desserts, vintage recipes

I learned something new this week. Cakes don’t have to be frosted with frosting.

Revolutionary, eh?

I was searching for a unique cake to take to a cookout. I had some strawberries in the frig and I came across this gem of a cake recipe in The American Pure Food Cookbook and Household Economist, published in 1899. I love this cookbook, because it was given to me by a friend and it’s done in old-fashioned type. These silly details make me happy.

I love the font… I’m weird like that.

The one thing that threw me off was the meringue frosting. I had never heard of meringue on cake. But it worked-and it was fun-and it just looks cool. I might do this all the time!

The cake itself tastes like a layered pound cake. It’s rich and delicious, and the meringue frosting is a nice, light compliment.

Ingredients
• One tablespoon butter
• 1 ½ cup granulated sugar, divided
• Three whole eggs, well beaten
• Three egg whites
• ½ cup milk
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 10 good sized strawberries

Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two circular cake pans.

Adding the flour to the wet ingredients.

Cream the butter, one cup of the sugar and the three whole eggs in a mixer. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add that to the butter/sugar/eggs mixture, mixing as you add. Add the milk and mix thoroughly.

It looks like regular yellow cake from a box!

Pour the batter divided between the two pans and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick places in cake comes out clean. Let the cakes cool thoroughly, for at least half an hour.

Dice the strawberries up in a small bowl and mix with ¼ cup sugar, mashing the strawberries as much as you can. Set aside.

I used a fork because it’s old fashioned but you can get smoother paste by using a food processor!

Line a pizza pan with parchment paper. Place one layer of cake on the parchment. Cover the layer with the strawberry mixture and then top with the other cake layer.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In your mixer, whip the three egg whites until soft peaks form. Add the last ¼ cup of sugar to the egg whites while the mixer is running, one tablespoonful at a time, and whip until stiff peaks form.
With a rubber scraper, spread the meringue all over the outside. Place the cake pan in the oven for five minutes, or until the meringue is brown. Watch closely!

It has a unique look, don’t you think? Keep leftovers in the refrigerator.

And that’s it! Enjoy!

Coconut Cream Pie, ca. 1895

Tags

coconut cream, dessert, heritage recipes, historical food, pie, vintage recipes

My girls have developed an obsession with coconut cream pie. We’ve ordered it in restaurants and gotten it frozen in the grocery store. I thought it was high time that I tackled a homemade version for the blog.

This was my first attempt at meringue and I’m quite proud of myself. But as I watched Babs, my KitchenAid mixer, deftly whipping egg whites into stiff peaks of loveliness, my arms ached in sympathy for those historic cooks, including my grandmother, who has no mechanical help. God bless them.

I got this recipe out of the Century Cook Book, published in 1895, by Mary Ronald. I downloaded a free copy on my Kindle-you should too! (And they spelled it Cocoanut. I wonder when they dropped the “a”?)

The pie was delicious-creamy and really pretty.

Ingredients
• 1 pie crust
• Two cups plus two tablespoons of milk
• 4 eggs, separated into whites and yolks
• ¼ cup plus three tablespoons of sugar
• Two tablespoons of corn starch
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 ½ cup of shredded coconut
• ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Instructions
Bake the pie crust and set aside to cool. If you want to make one from scratch, here’s my easy recipe. Just bake it at 350 for about 15 minutes or until slightly brown.

To make the filling, beat three of the egg yolks together with the sugar in small bowl and set aside.

Mixed together

Moisten the cornstarch with the two tablespoons of milk in a small bowl and set aside. Whip two of the egg whites to frothing stage and set aside.

Heat the two cups of milk in a saucepan over medium-high heat until it’s boiling. Boil for five minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning. Reduce the heat for a moment or two, then add the yolk-sugar mixture. Keep stirring to prevent the eggs from cooking.

Add the cornstarch mixture and stir until the filling is thickened.

Add the vanilla and the frothy egg whites.

Egg whites and vanilla added to creamy milk mixture.

Cook one minute on medium heat. Pour the mixture into another bowl and set aside to cool at least a half an hour.

The creamy filling ready to be cooled.

Once the filling is cooled, stir in one cup of the shredded coconut.

Here’s where it gets good!

Put the two remaining egg whites in a small bowl and brush the bottom of the baked pie crust with the whites. You won’t use much. Set aside the remaining egg white for your meringue.
Sprinkle the pie crust with the remaining coconut.

Coconut sprinkled along the pie crust bottom

Pour the filling over the top.

The filling is now in the crust!

To make the meringue, beat the two remaining egg whites until soft peaks form. Add cream of tartar and beat. Add the sugar, very slowly, beating on medium high speed constantly until still peaks form. Spread meringue over the filling and sprinkles with a little coconut.

It’s ready to be browned!

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Set your pie in the oven, with the rack on the highest level, and let it there for about five minutes or until the meringue just begins to brown. You might want to really watch it the first time you do this to make sure you don’t burn the meringue.

Finished!

Once it’s brown, remove the pie and refrigerate until serving!

Time to dig in!

Greenfield Village Dandelion Stew

Tags

dandelion soup, dandelions, greenfield village, soup

I have been searching for a year and a half for this recipe. It’s one of the dishes our family enjoyed while dining at Greenfield Village in July of 2011, the meal that started this blog. My eldest daughter ordered dandelion soup and we all had a bite and we were all hooked.

So I was ecstatic to stumble across the recipe on Food.com. So happy, in fact, that I ran outside to dig up some weeds before my husband revved the engines of his super-mega huge mower for the first time this spring.

This was my patch.

This is the perfect example of how historic cooks used what nature gave them to make a meal. In the days before people became obsessed with creating the perfect field of green grass, dandelions had free reign over fields and pasture, hill and valley. And some inventive cook must have looked at all those flower yellow buds and said, hey, I bet that would make a great soup. Kudos to her!

I did a little research before tackling this recipe. First, the entire dandelion plant is edible. Experts suggest you pick wild, free growing dandelions to avoid chemicals and also because dandelions like most of us have, which have been cut repeatedly by mower blades, tend to be more bitter than their wild cousins. But I live in the city and there aren’t a lot of free growing prairies from which to pick the perfect basket of dandelions, so I had to make do with my yard, which is not sprayed for chemicals (much to the chagrin of my neighbors, I’m betting). The blanching step rids the dandelions of their bitterness.

They’re healthy and pretty. Don’t be afraid of weeds!

Dandelions are also super healthy. According to the USDA Bulletin #8, “Composition of Foods” (Haytowitz and Matthews 1984), dandelions rank in the top 4 green vegetables in overall nutritional value. Minnich, in “Gardening for Better Nutrition” ranks them, out of all vegetables, including grains, seeds and greens, as tied for 9th best. According to these data, dandelions are nature’s richest green vegetable source of beta-carotene, from which Vitamin A is created, and the third richest source of Vitamin A of all foods, after cod-liver oil and beef liver! They also are particularly rich in fiber, potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and the B vitamins, thiamine and riboflavin, and are a good source of protein.

So here’s the soup we love-it makes a full pot, enough for several days worth of leftovers for a family of four. It’s really delicious.

If you can’t find any dandelions, you can substitute spinach.

Ingredients
• 1 cup (about 4 regular size) carrots, diced
• 1 medium size onion, diced
• 4 teaspoons dried basil (or 4 tablespoons fresh)
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano (or 2 tablespoons fresh)
• 1 ½ tablespoon cumin
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 4 tablespoons of butter
• 8 cups of dandelion greens, blanched and chopped
• 8 cups of vegetable or chicken stock
• 1 can corn
• 1 can beans (white or black)
• 1 large potato, peeled and diced
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons pepper

Instructions

First pick the dandelions! If you can, look for young greens with buds that haven’t bloomed yet. I took a small garden rake, loosened the dirt around the roots, and pulled the plant up entirely. Chop off the roots and KEEP THEM in a plastic bag in a dark and dry place for use in a future blog recipe!

I used almost this whole basket in the recipe.

Rinse the plants at least twice to remove all the dirt.

“God made dirt, so it don’t hurt.” But rinse well because dirt in your soup is gross.

Then soak the dandelions in cold water for about two hours. (I have no idea what this does, I was just following directions!)

I soaked them in cold water for 2 hours.

Start a pot of boiling water. Once it’s at a rolling boil, throw the dandelions in and let them cook for about 15 minutes. Strain them in a colander and let them cool before chopping.

They look like spinach

In the same pot that you used to blanch the dandelions, melt the butter over medium heat. Saute the carrots, onion, basil, oregano, cumin and garlic for about 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently, or until the vegetables start to get tender.

Add the rest of the ingredients to the pot and bring it to a boil.

Ready to simmer!

Reduce the heat to low and let the whole thing simmer at least an hour or until the potatoes are tender. Correct the seasoning if desired.
Serve and enjoy!

Doesn’t it look good?

Enjoy!

Vintage Garden: Planting the Early Crops

This past weekend, we enjoyed two beautiful spring-like days in a row and I took advantage of it to start my Vintage Garden Project. Getting started is the hardest part, right??

My youngest daughter is 9 years old and still has an interest in digging in the dirt. She and I headed out with gloves and spades and hoes in hand, ready to put in the early crops.

Ella, my youngest. She’s the nature lover of the family.

I used a shovel to turn over the dirt in one of my four raised beds. It’s positioned for partial shade/partial sun and it’s the bed in which I meant to plant the cooler weather crops like lettuce and spinach and peas. Shovel use is totally vintage, don’t you think? I mean, since I don’t have a horse and plow or one of those old-fashioned disk and plows.

Turning over the soil is good exercise!

The soil, which I have mulched and tended for a year, is in pretty good shape. I raked it nice and even after turning over about a foot of soil in-depth and then, we were ready to plant!

We decided to do short rows this year. We got in two rows of peas, two rows of spinach, and row of parsley, and two rows of green ice lettuce. I did not fertilize yet-I will once the seedlings appear, using one of the recipes from my vintage cookbooks.

She chose which varieties to grow.

A few hours after the planting, we enjoyed a light rain. Now do you magic, nature! By my calculations, we should have spinach and lettuce ready to eat in mid-May and peas in mid-June. I’m hungry already.  And there are lots of salad and pea recipes in my cookbooks which I’m dying to try.

Little hands are best for sowing seeds, in my opinion. Especially when the seeds are tiny lettuce and spinach seeds!

When the seedlings appear, I’ll let you know. And stay tuned, because when we plant the warmer weather crops, Ella wants me to put dead fish in the rows, like the Indians. That ought to smell lovely!

Cream of Chicken Soup, ca. 1780

Tags

chicken, colonial williamsburg, historical food, soup, vintage recipes

We tend to think of vintage cooking as a long, tedious process, requiring hours of time and careful tending to create the perfect dish. But I bet that there were times, particularly for farm wives, in which a long day in the field left little for dinner preparation. Those ladies could sympathize with the modern mom, who rushes in from work or from running kids to various activities, and has limited time to get dinner on the table.

I found a beautiful soup recipe that is perfect for such occasions. It took me literally 20 minutes to get this soup on the table-and it was so good that my family was asking for seconds.

The recipe comes from a cute cookbook my husband got me for Christmas. The Williamsburg Art of Cookery was originally published under the name Book on the Art of Cookery, the Compleat Housewife or Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion. The editors, Helen Bullock and William Parks, confessed to readers in the preface that they’d collected the recipes from common cookbooks used in Virginia households-some of which were printed in America and some in England. The recipes that were tested in the kitchens of the towns’ three public houses- Market Square Tavern, The Travis House and Blair House- are marked with special stars. (This recipe, by the way, was starred).

Notice how all the S’s are written like modern “f’s. The whole cookbook is like that. It takes some getting used to.

The preface ends with this interesting quote from Helen: “Heaven sends good meat but the devil sends cooks.” Ooooo-kay.

What I do know is that this recipe, which I have modernized a bit, was on the table in 20 minutes flat. I pulled homemade stock from the freezer to speed up the process and used canned chicken. It serves six.

Ingredients
• 6 cups chicken stock (here’s an easy recipe)
• One 12.5 ounce can of cooked chicken
• One cup cooked brown rice
• Two eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
Heat your stock to bowling in a medium-sized soup pan.
Add the salt and pepper and correct to taste.
Add the chicken and rice and stir. Bring to just under a boil. Then, reduce the heat to low or medium low.

We’re nearly done already!

Once the soup stops bubbling intensely, add the beaten eggs slowly, stirring all the while. You have to make sure the soup isn’t too hot or the eggs will cook. Keep stirring for about three minutes.

Take soup off the heat, add the parsley and serve!

Yummy!

The Vintage Garden Project

Tags

food, gardening, greenfield village, vintage

Let me begin this experiment by confessing that I am, in fact, a terrible gardener.

I have seen people who are truly good at it-those with that enviable ability to lay out all their vegetables in perfectly neat, clean rows, in dazzlingly rich soil made more favorable by years of mulching, fertilizing, and careful tending-followed by rows and rows of tall, green, luscious plants straight out of Better Homes and Gardens.

This is just the flower bed. Her vegetable garden is a sight to behold. Photos will come later this summer.

My gardens tend to be small. They tend to be weedy. I tend to lose interest in August, when the weather gets unbearably hot and the air is thick and the thought of losing even one hour of precious lazy time before the rush of school and schedules takes over makes me take to the hammock swing or the pool chair with no intention of moving.

My garden in 2012.

I spent a lot of time in my mother’s garden growing up-and hated every minute. I believe that I even once told her, “When I grow up, I’m buying my vegetables in the store-like a modern person!” Don’t you love it when you end up eating your own words?

As soon as my husband and I moved into our first place, a duplex in a beautiful neighborhood in South Toledo, I convinced my landlord to let me plant a tiny garden in the backyard. The only available ground space was along the fence line, a plot about 20 feet in length and two feet wide. I planted beans and cucumbers and corn and tomatoes-not very many, but I tended it and watered it and weeded it daily and it yielded a delicious harvest that I could be proud of! I’m a natural, I thought.

Once we moved to Cincinnati, I commanded my husband to rent a tiller and plow up a section of ground that looked like it had been used for a garden by the previous owner. But it was too close to the house, and too shaded, to be successful. Also, I learned that the rabbits, deer and raccoons here are RUTHLESS when it comes to eating your plants. I had a couple of really terrible years and I nearly gave up. I’m terrible at this, I thought.

Eventually, I moved my plot into a more sunny location and went to all raised beds to avoid the native clay soil (OMG clay soil is the worst. I could have made some great pots and pitchers from my garden soil, if only I’d had a pottery wheel.) Now my biggest garden foes and disease and my own laziness.

I often spend my garden time thinking about the farmers who make up my ancestors-the Germans who came to this country in the 1830’s and settled in Ohio. What did my great-grandmother plant in her garden? Were her crops different from mine? How did she fight off pests and disease before the age of Roundup and MiracleGro?

My maternal great-great-great grandmother, Catherine Gertrude Pfeiffer. Born in Germany in 1808, died in 1881. I have no idea when this photo was taken but it was sent to me by the Henry County Ohio Genealogical Society.

This year, I decided to try something new-the vintage garden. Well, sort of. Here’s the way it’s going to work.

I am not starting with Heirloom seeds, which would be more authentic.  I have a whole box full of seeds from previous years and I’m going to use them. I have to believe my frugal ancestors would understand. Yes, I know there are gardeners who would advise against the use of old seeds. Honestly, I’ve done it before and they grow, in the right conditions, just as well as new ones. And anyway, who knows how long those seeds you just bought have been sitting in a store or warehouse…

This is the stash of seeds I’m pulling from this year. Not vintage. Sorry.

I am going to use methods and suggestions for weeds and disease and fertilization that I’ve found in the various cookbooks I’ve collected. Yes, those old cookbooks contain more than recipes-there are chapters on laundry and housework and gardening! For instance, Housekeeping in Old Virginia, published in 1879, has a recipe for strawberry fertilizer that involves mixing a concoction of nitrate of potash (also known as potassium nitrate), glauber salts (sodium sulfite), sal soda (Arm and Hammer Washing soda), nitrate of ammonia, and water. I wonder if it works!

I wish I had a garden like this! These are the fields at the Firestone Farm at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Sigh….

So that’s the plan. At the end of the season, I’m also going to try my hand at seed saving, which was common in the days before commercial seed marketers.

Wish me luck!

Pork Sausage Patties on Fried Mush, ca. 1920

Tags

corn mush, historical food, main dishes, old recipes, pork sausage, vintage recipes

If you have been reading this blog since I began 18 months ago, you’ll recall that a meal at the Eagle Tavern at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan was the catalyst for my journey into historic food. That day, I ordered pork sausage patties. They were spicy, thick, and delicious. I love Bob Evans sausage but these vintage babies made commercial sausages look like clay cakes. So when I stumbled across this recipe, I immediately recognized it as an opportunity to recreate that influential meal.

My Eagle Tavern pork sausage was not served over fried mush but this recipe, from Mrs. Wilson’s Cookbook, published in 1920, called for mush and I saw it as a chance to make another staple of the vintage kitchen.

Mush is a basic grain dish created thousands of years ago. It requires water, a heat source, and some corn meal. It’s cooked for a long time over a simmering fire. When I was cooking it, I could imagine prehistoric civilizations using this combination as a simple, inexpensive means of sustenance. In more modern times (think 1700’s and later), the mush was left to gel after cooking, then sliced, pan fried and served with meat or topped with sugar or maple syrup.

Mush is not a staple of the modern kitchen-in fact, I was the only person in my house who had eaten it before. But everyone should try it at least once and you’ll see just how easy it is to make. I got this recipe from The Century Cookbook, published in 1901.

One other note-the sausage portion of this recipe calls for a bread preparation that I still, frankly, do not understand. I did it just to be authentic. I think you can just add bread crumbs instead of going through the trouble of drying out and then re-soaking bread. I often think that some of those vintage cooks did a lot of unnecessary work… and this is one good example.

Ingredients
• 1 pound ground pork
• 2 medium onions, chopped as fine as possible
• Four slices of bread or two whole hamburger buns OR ¾ cup plain bread crumbs
• Two teaspoons salt
• One teaspoon paprika
• Three tablespoons parsley
• ½ cup boiling water
• 1 can tomatoes or two fresh tomatoes, chopped
• 4 cups tap water
• 1 cups corn meal

Instructions
If you’re using bread or buns, set them on a plate the night before and allow them to dry out and get stale.  I used bread and an old hamburger bun that was getting hard anyway.

My bread left out to dry.

The mush should also be made the day before. In a saucepan, boil the four cups of tap water. Add the corn meal, stirring constantly. Cover, reduce heat to low and cook for one hour stirring frequently to prevent burning.

The cornmeal mush toward the beginning of the cooking process..

And toward the end. See how it’s gumming up?

Transfer mush to a bread pan that’s been sprayed with cooking spray. Let it cool, then cover and allow it to sit overnight. When you wake up the next morning, it will have gelled. Turn it onto a cutting board and slice into pieces, ½ to one inch thick.

This is after I left it sit covered overnight.

Fry them in butter until brown, about five minutes on each side. Set aside.

Soak the stale bread in a bowl of cold water, one slice at a time until soft.

This is where it gets strange.

Press the water out of the bread.

Yep, that’s me, squeezing water out of the bread. Why are we doing this again?

Run the bread through a sieve to remove lumps and set aside.

Maybe it makes the sausage patty moist but in this state, the bread does not look very appetizing.

Mix the pork, onions, bread, salt, paprika and parsley in a bowl and form into round patties.

Now we’re talking!

Warm a skillet sprayed with cooking spray over medium heat. Roll the sausage patties in flour and brown, about 5 minutes on each side.

And browning!

Add ½ cup of boiling water and the tomatoes to the skillet. Cover and let simmer for about a half an hour, until patties are no longer pink. The cooking time will depend on how thick you’ve made your patties.

With the tomatoes

To serve, place a few slices of fried mush on your plate and place a pattie on top, then spoon some of the tomato sauce over the whole thing.

MMMM it was very delicious!

Enjoy!

Edwardian Baked Potato Rolls

Tags

vintage recipes, heritage recipes, historical food, side dishes, potatoes

While putting together my menu for my vintage dinner party, I made a vow to include a potato dish for my husband, who is not a lover of salad or eggplant.

This is a super easy recipe appropriate for solving that common post-family dinner problem-what to do with all those leftover mashed potatoes!

The recipe comes from Dr. Allinson’s Cookery Book, published in 1915. Thomas Allinson was a British doctor who advocated the vegetarian diet and the consumption of whole-grain breads.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds cold mashed potatoes
• One boiled onion
• 3 tablespoons butter plus small dish melted butter
• Yolk of one egg
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Chop onion fine and mix it in a large bowl with the potatoes. Add the rest of the ingredients.

Ingredients, ready for mixing. You’d think the nutmeg would be a weird addition but it gives the “dough” a unique flavor!

My friend Jen demonstrates how to separate an egg yolk and white without an egg separator. Basically, you just juggle the egg between the two halves of the shell until all the white is removed.

Roll the mixture into balls, about 2-3 inches round and place on greased cookie sheet.

Ready for the oven!

Brush over them with pastry brush dipped in melted butter and bake at 400 degrees for 10-20 minutes.

Potato, or po-ta-to… they’re cute and easy!

Serve while still warm!

Michigan Pastys, ca. 1943

Tags

beef, easy weeknight meals, heritage recipes, historical food, main dishes, pie, potatoes, vintage recipes

When I was in the midst of trying to choose recipes for my vintage dinner party, I received a Facebook message from a high school friend named Mark who shares my love of history, nature, and food. He’s an accomplished cook, gardener, canner and fisherman and his recipes are like little treasures.

Mark included a lovely recipe for pastys. A pasty is basically a pot pie you can carry. I hope he doesn’t mind, but I included his explanation of the history of the pasty because, before this, I’d never heard of them!

Our family had cabins in the UP of Michigan growing up. Whenever we went North, the trip was not complete until we had each had a trifecta of the UP… a beef pasty, a smoked whitefish, and a good hung of maple walnut fudge from Mackinac Island. We stayed in Cadillac, in mid Michigan this year, and I found a store like the ones in the UP when I grew up that sold traditional Pasty (traditional has to have rutabaga), We all had some and my wife said you need to do this, you can do this. The kids love them too. I thought you would enjoy it. They were originally brought to Michigan by the Cornish miners. , I believe. Definitely a hardy filling dish that can be varied depending on what you have around-basically, hardy root vegetables mixed with ground meat in a pastry crust. I have had them with turnips, parsnips, onions, rutabaga, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc… There is also a way to make these a two course where there is a main meal in two-thirds of it and a desert filling in the last one-third, separated by a wall of dough…I am sure you can do much with this recipe!

Mark included a photo of his batch of pastys-which, by the way, were way prettier than mine-I decided that this would make a great second entrée for the dinner.

Mark’s pastys.

Mark’s recipe comes from the March 28, 1943 edition of the Milwaukee Journal.

Ingredients
• 3 cups flour
• 1 ½ sticks butter, cold and cut into bits
• 3 ½ teaspoon salt, divided
• 6 tablespoons water
• 1 pound round steak, coarsely ground (I used ground chuck)
• 1 pound boneless pork loin, coarsely ground (I used ground pork-Mark used ground rabbit!)
• 5 carrots, chopped
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
• ½ cup rutabaga, chopped (I substituted turnip)
• ½ teaspoon pepper

Instructions

In large bowl, combine flour, butter, and 1 ½ teaspoon of the salt. Blend until well combined and add water, one tablespoon at a time, to form a dough. (I had to add an extra tablespoon).

Dough, just before I formed it into a ball.

Toss mixture until it forms a ball. Knead dough lightly on smooth surface with heel of the hand to distribute the fat evenly. Form into a ball, dust with flour, wrap in wax paper and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine meat and vegetables plus remaining salt (2 teaspoons) and pepper in a large bowl.

Hearty goodness!

When the dough is chilled, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Divide dough into six pieces. Roll each piece into a 10 inch round on a lightly floured surface. Put 1 ½ cups of filling on half of each round.

Ready for sealing!

Moisten the edges and fold over to enclose the vegetables. Pinch the edges together and crimp with fork. Cut several slits in top. Repeat for the other pieces of dough.

It’s a delicate job.

Bake pastys on a lightly buttered baking sheet for 30 minutes. Place 1 teaspoon butter through a slit in each pasty and continue baking for 30 more minutes. Remove from oven, cover with damp tea towel, and cool for 15 minutes.

Not as pretty as Mark’s but still tasty. Mine look rustic… yea, that’s it!

The pastys at the party got rave taste reviews, especially from the guys! Enjoy!

Julia Child’s Chicken Fricasse with Wine-Flavored Cream Sauce (Fricassee De Poulet A L’Ancienne)

Tags

chicken, chicken fricassee, chicken with vegetables, French cooking, french dinners, Julia Child

I was craving a Julia recipe. I haven’t done in one in ages-for good reason. For one, they’re terribly unhealthy. Secondly, they take forever and leave your kitchen a complete mess.

But oh my gosh, they’re good and I crave them, like I crave McDonald’s Filet O’Fish sandwiches and Oreo cookies. Don’t judge!

Doing a Julie recipe may seem painstaking, even to the most patient cook. In this age of crock pot and one-skilled dinners, the number of steps, pots, and preparation needed to pull off a French dish is overwhelming. But it is so worth it. So don’t be intimidated by this or any other Julia Child recipe. I’ll give you some advice.

First, have all your side dishes ready and waiting on the stove. I made rice and veggies to accompany this dish and had both in saucepans waiting by the stove so I could just turn on the burners at the right time.

Second, read through her recipes 3-4 times before you do them. Make sure you understand all the steps. Get out all your pans and ingredients. Cut up your veggies. Have a sink of soapy water for the dirty dishes.

Third, pour a glass of wine because it makes it more fun-and it’s more French. Then, get started!

This delicious chicken dinner is great for a Sunday supper. It’s tender chicken, stewed in broth, wine and vegetables and finished with a cream sauce. Is your mouth watering yet?

Ingredients
• 4 chicken leg quarters, skinned
• ½ pound fresh mushrooms
• 1/3 cup water
• ½ tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 stalk of celery, thinly sliced
• 1 carrot (or 6 baby carrots), thinly sliced
• 5 tablespoons of butter, divided
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons of flour
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup dry white wine
• Herbs to taste
• 2 egg yolks
• ½ cup whipping cream
• Pinch of nutmeg

Instructions

Wash the mushrooms and cut them into quarters.

So pretty!

Bring to a boil the water, lemon juice, a tablespoon of the butter and a dash of salt. Add the mushrooms and toss them to cover with liquid. Cover the pot and boil on medium high heat for five minutes, tossing frequently. Take off the heat and set aside.

Stewing the mushrooms ahead of time in lemon juice keeps them firm and white.

Place the rest of the butter in a fireproof dutch oven on the stove on medium hit. Once it’s melted, add the carrots, celery and onions and cook for five minutes or until they are almost tender but not browned. Remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside until later.

I love cooked carrots, celery and onions. So tasty!

Place the chicken stock in a saucepan and bring it to boil, then let it simmer. You’ll need it boiling or near boiling in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, place the chicken in the casserole. Cook on medium heat for 3-4 minutes, turning the pieces every minute until the meat has stiffened slighting, without coloring to more than a light color.

Just a slight color change-you want to cook it slowly to maintain its flavor.

Lower the heat, cover, and cook the chicken slowly for 10 minutes, turning it once. It should swell slightly, stiffen more, but not deepen in color.
Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper and flour and turn the pieces so all the sides are coated with flour and cooking butter. Add the veggies back in, cover, and cook slowly for another four minutes, turning the chicken pieces halfway through.

Chicken, dredged in flour and reunited with the veggies!

Now, add the boiling stock, the wine, and herbs to taste. (It really starts smelling delicious at this point!).

Stewing the chicken in butter, wine and stock. Holy goodness.

Bring the whole thing to a light boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer slowly for 25 to 30 minutes or until the chicken is done and the juices run clear. Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon and set into a covered dish to keep it warm.

Bring the mixture left after the chicken is removed to a boil, stirring frequently, until the sauce reduces and thickens enough to coat a spoon. This took me about 10-12 minutes of heavy boiling and constant stirring. Turn off heat for now.

In a mixer, beat egg yolks and cream. Ladle out one cup of the boiling liquid and slowly add it to the egg yolk and cream mixture. You don’t want to add it too quickly and cook the eggs. Whip it all on medium high. Once you’d got a whole cup in with the cream and eggs, ladle out a second cup and add that to the cream and eggs.

Then, take your creamed sauce and pour it back into the dutch oven. Set it over medium high heat against and boil it for one minute, stirring constantly. Take it off the heat for the final time and add the pinch of nutmeg and stewed mushrooms.

That’s your cream sauce!

Serve your chicken pieces with ladles of the cream and veggies and mushrooms over the top. Enjoy!