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!

Scalloped Turkey, ca. 1896

Tags

easy weeknight meals, holiday, holiday recipes, main dishes, old recipes, quick meals, turkey, vintage recipes

First, I want to say a big thank you to my readers. I celebrated the first anniversary of my blog on Christmas Eve! My enthusiasm for cooking and researching food of the past continues after nearly 100 recipes, many messes, and quite a few screw-ups! Thanks for supporting me!

Once the family and friends clear out after the holidays, most of us are left with plenty of leftovers. And there are only so many times you can serve them plain before your family and your taste buds start to get bored.

The vintage cook had the same problem-and she had lots of little ways to dress up leftovers and turn them into different dishes. This one is yummy-and simple. It’ll use some of your leftover meat and stuffing. It took me less than 10 minutes to assemble and another 20 minutes to heat up.

This recipe comes from the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, published in 1896. It makes enough for four people.

Ingredients
• Two cups leftover stuffing
• One cup leftover turkey or chicken meat, shredded or diced
• Two tablespoons butter
• Two tablespoons flour
• One cup chicken or turkey stock (for an easy recipe, click here!)
• ½ sleeve buttered round crackers, crushed
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
Spray a square 8×8 baking pan with cooking spray. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Spread the stuffing in the pan.

Stuffing makes up the bottom layer of this casserole dish.

Layer the turkey on top of it.

Next, use up some leftover turkey!

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour, the stock, and salt and pepper.

All you need is this stuff, plus some butter and flour. I used Penzey’s Seasoned Salt for extra flavor.

Stir constantly while cooking the liquid just to the boiling point. Remove from stove and pour over the turkey and stuffing.

Pour sauce over the stuffing and turkey mixture.

Layer the crushed crackers on top. Put pan into oven and bake just until mixture is bubbly and crackers on top start to brown, about 20 minutes.

30 minutes to table-how easy is that?

Serve and enjoy!

The Vintage Dinner Party

Tags

food, heritage recipes, historical food, history, old recipes, party, vintage recipes

If you’ve wondered why my blog posts have been infrequent lately, I have a good explanation: I’ve been busy. And a warning: I’m going to do A LOT of recipes for you between now and the New Year. So buckle up!

Besides trying a green tomato pie recipe which was a complete flop (therefore, I will not subject you to the details), I’ve been busy planning my first-but hopefully not last-vintage dinner party.

In the days before TV, iPods, DVR’s, and Netflix, evenings were a time of quiet… boredom. To break the monotony, women planned dinner parties to bring together friends for food and conversation, music and games.

I’ve really been itching to throw a vintage themed dinner party for months now… but finding a free evening in amidst the schedules of myself and my friends is like finding a needle in a haystack. Undaunted, my good friend Jennifer Hill and I put our heads together and hatched a plan to make it happen. She offered me her insanely gorgeous house/kitchen and I offered to make all the food.

That’s me, serving up the salad!

I just had to share this photo. This was my view from Jen’s kitchen window while cooking. Groups of wild turkeys could be seen at various parts of the day across the lawn in the field.

Thus it was that on a cool, fall evening, we gathered an intimate party of 12 people around one table for a feast of old-fashioned food. I like cooking for groups of people. I know that sounds insane but, a news producer by profession, I am totally comfortable plotting a meal, timing its elements, and trying to serve it all up in an orderly and delicious fashion. Plus, I learned, it’s a great way to try a whole bunch of recipes at once-and get outside opinions on their success-or lack thereof.

Jen’s family, my family, and our mutual friends The Lippert’s prepare to dig in!

Because it was my first such party, I chose a menu based on my cooking strengths, available ingredients, ease of preparation, and presentation.

The menu. I didn’t actually make the bacon dish but I’ll do it for the blog soon!

Appetizers
Colonial Williamsburg Cheese wafers
Winter Salad from Women’s Institute of Cookery, ca. 1920

Main dishes
Haricot of Venison from Dressed Game and Poultry A La Mode, ca. 1888
Pasty’s from Milwaukee Journal, 1948

Side dishes
Baked Potato Rolls from Dr. Allinson’s Cookery Book, ca. 1915
Escalloped Eggplant, The Golden Age Cookbook, ca. 1898
Jane Austen’s English Bread, ca. 1800

Dessert
Colonial Williamsburg’s Tipsy Squire
City Tavern’s Chocolate Mousse Cake

Dessert drink
Colonial Williamsburg Hot Spiced Punch

So, over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing these new recipes with you! Plus, I have planned a bunch of seasonal recipes to try and share. I don’t know about you, but I think the kitchen is the best place to spend October, November and December.

We’re also coming up on the one year anniversary of this blog and I thought it was be fitting to make some special dishes to celebrate that milestone!

So get your palates ready because Bite From the Past is kicking into high gear.

Dinner is served!

Egg Biscuits, ca. 1887

Tags

biscuits, bread, heritage recipes, historical food, old recipes, side dishes, vintage recipes

I think my epitaph should read: “She liked bread… all kinds.”

On a recent busy night, with a hankering for a side of bread but without the time to make a full loaf, I ran across this quick and easy biscuit recipe in the White House Cookbook, published in 1887. I halved the original recipe, and I still got two cookie sheets worth of biscuits, enough to last for several days for my family of four.

The taste reminds me a lot of Parker House Rolls-the consistency of the dough is similar-without all the work. They’re great warm out of the oven with butter or at room temperature with jam and tea!

Ingredients

• 2 cups of flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder
• 2 tablespoons of butter, chopped
• 1 well-beaten egg
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup of milk

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Mix together flour and baking powder. Mix the butter in thoroughly until it resembles course crumbs.

Everything tastes better with butter-even biscuits!

That’s the look you’re going for.

Add eggs, sugar, salt. Add the milk and mix all together quickly into a soft dough.

It should look like this before rolling.

Roll out nearly half of an inch thick. Cut into biscuits, and bake immediately for 15 minutes or until done and lightly brown.

Cutting biscuits with the cutter I inherited from my grandmother-in-law.

Delicious and super-easy!

Butter, anyone?

Enjoy!

Blueberry Muffins, ca. 1918

Tags

blueberries, historical food, muffins, old recipes, vintage recipes

Summer is a great for many reasons, not the least of which is that many foods are in season-including blueberries! This versatile fruit has been a part of American recipes since the time of the pilgrims-who were taught to gather and dry them by the Native Americans. This was a time-consuming process and before the days of canning, many cooks had to be satisfied with using the fruit in recipes during the time in which it was in season. I think we take fresh blueberries for granted now!

The blueberry muffin is arguably a staple of the American breakfast table. I find myself making a batch at least once a week. So for me, it was natural to go searching for a vintage version.

This recipe comes from the Woman’s Institute Library of Cookery, Volume 1, published in 1918. The cookbook was one in a series published by the Woman’s Institute of Domestic Sciences, founded in 1915 as a place to teach women the finer art of running a household!

The recipe is a pretty basic muffin mixture. Really, you could throw any old fruit in… but blueberries are the best! One side note: I tried this recipe using both butter and shortening. The shortening works better-the muffins hold together better and the muffins with butter turned brown on top while baking way before they were done in the middle.

Ingredients
• 3 tablespoons of fat (I used shortening)
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup milk
• 2 ¼ cups of flour, divided
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour muffin pans or ready the paper lining cups in the muffin tins.

Cream the shortening and then add the sugar gradually. Stir in the beaten egg and milk.

Sift the dry ingredients (2 cups of the flour, the salt and baking powder) and then add that mixture to the shortening and sugar.

Place the remaining ¼ cup of flour in a medium bowl and add the blueberries, stirring until they are coated (this keeps them from dropping down to the bottom of the muffin when you put the batter into the muffin cups). Fold the blueberries gently into the batter.

Fill the muffin pans two-thirds of the way full.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Delmonico Chicken, ca. 1939

Tags

chicken, easy weeknight meals, heritage recipes, main dishes, old recipes, quick meals, vintage recipes

Earlier this spring, I had the honor and privilege of serving jury duty. Don’t groan-I highly recommend it to everyone. It was a fascinating peek into the workings of the justice system.

One of the perks for me was the lunch hour. Normally I eat at a desk, answering phones in between bites. But for a week and a half, I got to spend an hour-sometimes more-wandering around downtown Cincinnati.

On one of those lunch walks, some of my fellow jurors and I stumbled upon a quaint vintage bookstore called Ohio Books. Of course, I made a beeline to the cookbooks. The owner, an elderly man with a quiet voice, literally has a floor to ceiling area full of vintage cookbooks. I nearly didn’t make it back to court on time! But I walked away with a fascinating book entitled “American Dishes for English Tables” by Ambrose Heath, published in 1939… for $4!

I find this book to be fascinating because of American’s obsession with foreign foods-here is proof that the English want to cook like Americans! Are our dishes really all that different? And how will our staples be translated for an English audience?

For my first try, I settled on this recipe… and let me tell you, it was really delicious. If you like honey mustard chicken, you’ll like this one.

Ingredients
• Six chicken thighs, skins removed
• 6 tablespoons of butter,divided and softened a bit at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon of prepared mustard
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• ½ teaspoon paprika
• 3 slices of bread
Instructions
Remove the skins on your chicken.

Salt and pepper the chicken and grill for 8 minutes. I used my George Foreman but if you use a regular grill, be sure to flip the chicken after 4 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the chicken in a baking dish that’s been greased. Mix three tablespoons of butter with mustard, salt, vinegar, and paprika. Spread a bit of this over each piece of chicken.

Shred your bread slices in a food processor until they become crumbs. Put them into a medium bowl. Melt the remaining three tablespoons of butter and mix in with the bread crumbs. Put a bit of the buttered bread crumbs over each piece of chicken, until they are all used.

Bake about a half an hour, until the chicken is done and the bread crumbs are browned. I put the baking dish on the bottom shelf of my oven for the first 20 minutes, and moved it to the top for the last 10 to avoid burning the bread crumbs.

Like I said, this was a really delicious chicken dish. I don’t know who Delmonico is… but he/she has my compliments. Enjoy!

Chocolate Cinnamon Cake, ca. 1913

Tags

cake, chocolate, cinnamon, dessert, historical food, old recipes, vintage recipes

My eldest daughter is about to turn 12 years old. We hosted a birthday party for her friends and she requested a chocolate cake. Poor girl. She knows by now that nearly everything I cook is for the blog.

Turns out, mom sometimes finds a gem that can pass the approval test of a pack of skeptical 12-year-old girls who think they know everything about chocolate.

This cake comes from the book “Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners” published in 1913 by Elizabeth O. Hiller. I’ve read that the cookbook itself is a big advertisement for a product called Cottolene, which was a lard made of beef tallow and cottonseed oil. Indeed, that’s the first ingredient in the original version-but I substituted butter and it turned out splendidly.

The original title of the recipe was “Rich Chocolate Cake” but the one teaspoon of cinnamon adds a depth and uniqueness to the taste-and I decided to change the title a bit to reflect it because the flavor doesn’t hide behind the chocolate. I’m saying this because, if you don’t like cinnamon, this is not the cake for you. If you do, here’s how you make it!

Ingredients
• 8 tablespoons of butter
• 4 eggs, separated into yolks and whites
• 1 ½ cup sugar
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/3 cup hot water
• ½ cup milk
• 2 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour cake pans (I used a 9×13 sheet pan).

Cream butter and sugar together, adding a little sugar at a time to the butter until well blended.

Melt the chocolate chips in your microwave. It took me about 5 minutes at 50% power. Stop every minute to stir the chips. Add the hot water to the chocolate chips and stir well, then pour that into the creamed butter and sugar.

Beat the eggs yolks until fluffy and add to creamed butter/chocolate mixture.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the wet, alternating with the milk until all are well-mixed. Add the vanilla.

Finally, beat the egg whites until stiff and foamy and fold into batter.

Pour batter into pan and bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I served it frosted with commercial vanilla frosting and shaved chocolate.

The girls at the party loved it! It’s really a unique take on chocolate cake and I hope you enjoy it too!

Fried Mushrooms, ca. 1764

Tags

heritage recipes, historical food, mushrooms, old recipes, side dishes, vintage recipes

Fried mushrooms-there’s no better compliment to nearly every main dish, in my opinion. I found this gem of a recipe recently in a very old cookbook compilation and in making it, realized I’ve been frying mushrooms incorrectly for 18+ years!

This method was first published in “English Housewifry” (sexy title) by Elizabeth Moxon, published in 1764. (Scroll down to the bottom for the verbatim title page description of the book-it’s really flowery and awesome)! Elizabeth says you have to boil the mushrooms before frying them (did everyone know that except me?) Turns out, that was the key to making the best fried mushrooms ever.

Here’s how the instructions appear in Elizabeth’s cookbook:
Take the largest and freshest flaps you can get, skin them and take out the gills, boil them in a little salt and water, then wipe them dry with a cloth; take the eggs and beat them very well, the wheat-flour, and a little pepper and salt, then dip in your mushrooms and fry them in butter. They are proper to lie about stew’d mushrooms or any made dish.

Ingredients
• 1 pound mushrooms
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup flour
• Salt, pepper, spices to taste
• 4 tablespoons butter

Instructions

First, slice the mushrooms.

Place them in saucepan about half full of water, already boiling with a little salt added to the mix. Boil for five minutes. Drain and pat dry.

In a bowl, beat the eggs. In a second bowl, mix the flour and whatever spices you want to give it flavor-I used a dash of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, and about 2 teaspoons of my favorite Penzey’s Fox Point.

Meanwhile, heat the butter in a saucepan, set at just below medium. When the butter is melted and sizzling, use a fork to stab about five of the mushrooms in a row. Dip them in the eggs and then the flour and slide them into the pan of butter.

Saute’ the mushrooms for about five minutes until the coating is just brown. Serve!

The mushrooms tasted like butter-so good! I hope you enjoy!

PS. Here’s the title page description of Elizabeth’s cookbook:
Exemplified In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts, Giving Directions in most Parts of Cookery; And how to prepare various Sorts of Soops, Cakes, Made-Dishes, Creams, Pastes, Jellies, Pickles, Made-Wines, &c.With Cuts for the orderly placing the Dishes and Courses; also Bills of Fare for every Month in the Year; and an alphabetical Index to the Whole. A Book necessary for Mistresses of Families, higher and lower Women Servants, and confined to Things Useful, Substantial and Splendid, and calculated for the Preservation of Health, and upon the Measures of Frugality , being the Result of thirty Years Practice and Experience .By Elizabeth Moxon. With An Appendix containing,Upwards of Sixty Receipts, of the most valuable Kind, communicated to the Publisher by several Gentlewomen in the Neighbourhood, distinguished by their extraordinary Skill in Housewifry.

Brevity was not her strong suite, apparently.

Lemon Creme Cake, ca. 1920

Tags

cake, dessert, heritage recipes, historical food, old recipes, vintage recipes

I’ve mentioned before that I’m known by my friends as the official birthday cake baker. I love cakes. I even like the way the word “cake” sounds-fluffy and sweet.

But after making several vintage cake recipes, I realize our perception of the dessert has changed in the last 100 years or so. Blame Betty Crocker. Cakes in the old days were delicious and sweet-but they were flat. They lacked baking powder. This can be disconcerting until you get used to it.

I’m telling you this because this lovely lemon crème cake is flat. So if you make it for guests not used to the look of a vintage cake, they might think there is something wrong with it!

I made this for my friend Michelle. I was so thrilled to get a request for something other than chocolate (yes, a girl CAN get tired of baking chocolate cakes) and it was really good. I sent the leftovers home with Michelle, who tells me it was even better after sitting for a day so try making it a day ahead of when you want to serve it.

The recipe comes from the book Desserts and Salads (I love how they put Desserts first in the title!) by Gesine Lemcke, owner of the Brooklyn and New York Cooking Schools. It was published in 1920. Here’s how you make it.

Ingredients
• ½ cup butter
• 1 cup (don’t skimp) plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3 eggs, divided into whites and yolks
• 1 1/4 cup milk, divided
• 1 ½ cup flour
• 3 lemons
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch

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

Cream the butter and one cup of the sugar. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and add them to the butter and sugar alternately with the flour and ½ cup of milk. (I went around in thirds-egg white, beat, flour, beat, milk, beat, repeat!) It will look something like this:

Zest and juice two of the lemons. Add the zest and juice to the batter and mix. Divide the batter between the two cake pans.

Bake until just golden brown and done in the middle-about 15 minutes-remember, they’re thin layers so they don’t take long to bake!

While the layers are cooking, dissolve the cornstarch in ¼ cup cold milk, set aside. Boil 1/2 cup milk with the 2 tablespoons of sugar. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk and sugar mixture, whisk until smooth and let it boil a few more minutes. Add a pinch of butter (about a teaspoon) and salt and remove the mixture from the heat.

Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the cornstarch-milk-sugar mixture. Juice and zest the last lemon and add that to the mix.

When the cake has cooked, take out one layer and put it on a plate or in a size-appropriate container that has a rim to keep liquid from spilling. Using a ladle, pour some of the crème filling you just made onto the cake. Add the second layer, and pour the rest of the crème filling onto the cake. Allow to sit, up to a day if you can, to let the filling soak in. When you’re ready to serve you can either dust it with powdered sugar or cover just the top with a thin layer of commercial lemon frosting(that’s what I did).

As I said, it was a big hit at our little birthday bash. I hope you enjoy it!

Chicken and Bacon Baked in Rice, ca. 1841

Tags

chicken, easy weeknight meals, heritage recipes, historical food, main dishes, old recipes, vintage recipes

When I started this blog, I told myself I wasn’t going to worry about how many hits I got, whether anyone “followed” my blog, and I certainly was not expecting a Julie/Julia kind of fame. I simply wanted to cook vintage recipes in a way that the modern woman could appreciate and recreate. And my creative writing skills needed a little stretching.

Three months into it, I have a few loyal followers, a few comments, and some amazing friends who encourage me, verbally and with their ready forks. One of them surprised me today with an amazing gift-three beautiful cookbooks full of vintage recipes.

I am truly touched by this gesture-it shocks me that someone actually thought of me in this way, actually! And you should see these cookbooks. I literally drooled and cried at the same time when I got a chance to flip through them. And of course, I had to cook from one of the books… right now… TONIGHT.

I picked Chicken Baked in Rice from “The Good Housekeeper”, published in 1841. It’s my favorite kind of vintage cookbook-with recipes printed in paragraphs, all the ingredients hidden within so you have to read the whole thing to figure out what you need. Plus it’s ending chapters include hints for domestic help, housekeepers, taking care of the sick, and several stories about homeowners and their cooks. Big thanks to my friend Jen for this cookbook-I LOVE IT!

Here’s the recipe in its original form:
Cut a chicken into joins as for a fricassee, season it well with pepper and salt, lay it into a pudding dish lined with slices of ham or bacon, add a pint of veal gravy and an onion finely minced, fill up the dish with boiled rice well pressed and piled as high as the dish will hold, cover with a paste of flour and water and bake one hour in a slow oven. If you have no veal gravy, use water instead, adding a little more ham and seasoning.

Here’s my modern version:
Ingredients
• 10 slices bacon or turkey bacon, cooked
• 2 cans of cooked white meat chicken, 9.75 ounces each or 2 cups of leftover cooked chicken
• 1 package of microwaveable brown rice or boil in a bag brown rice, or 2 cups brown rice, prepared
• ½ jar of any kind of gravy or ½ package of prepared dry mix gravy (I used white biscuit gravy)
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup cold water

Instructions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 8X11 inch shallow baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Line the bottom of the dish with bacon.

Now add a layer of the chicken, then onion, then rice, and pour the gravy over top.

In a medium bowl, mix your flour and water together until it forms a paste. It should not be thick or pliable like a pie crust-you’re looking for a thinner consistency which you can spread. If it seems too thick, add a tablespoon of cold water at a time until you think you’ve got it right. Spread this over the top of the meat and rice. You might not even need all the crust that you mix up-just layer on enough to cover the rice.

Set casserole on a cookie sheet to prevent spills in case it bubbles over. Bake for 30 minutes or until flour layer is golden brown. Let rest 5 minutes before serving.

This is a rather heavy dish so a small scoop will fill you up but the bacon and onion really give it a nice flavor. Enjoy!
PS Thanks for the cookbook Jen!!