Pure Pork Awesomeness

Kevin Gillespie is the brother, son, guy-next-door(who owns a really big grill) that I have always envisioned.  I loved him the first time I saw him on TV and have followed his career since then.  Let's just get it out of the way: most of the really talented, on-TV, own-my-own-restaurant(s), James Beard Blah-Blah-Blah appear to be a-holes! (Hey, you know it's true and you know which one you want to slap!) Lord knows, Kevin Gillespie's momma and grandma raised him right!  And who doesn't love a guy who puts a Ray Stevens epigraph in his cookbook?

Pure Pork Awesomeness is a love letter to the pig. It is also a love letter to the world.  Lest one think for a moment that Pure Pork Awesomeness is simply a barbecue book, it is not.  It is exactly what the title conveys, a look at the pure awesomeness of pork that is not relegated simply to the South, nor to America, but to the world, where pork is a staple in many languages. 

Don't worry, Granny's Ham and Navy Bean Soup is in there along side Brunswick Stew, and Deep Fried Baby-Back Ribs.  You will also find Pork Pho, Sichuan-Style Twice-Cooked Pork Belly, Lemon-Ricotta Tortellini in Ham Broth, Zigeunerschnitzel, even tacos.

Tacos al Pastor

1 pineapple, peeled, cored, cut into 1-inch cubes, about 2 cups, or 1 (20-oz.) can unsweetened pineapple chunks, drained 

1 medium Vidalia onion, cut into rough chunks  

10 cloves garlic, peeled 

2 tablespoons ancho chili powder  

1 tablespoons cumin seeds 

1 tablespoons dried oregano  

1 tablespoons kosher salt 

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes  

1 pound lean pork shoulder, cut into 3/4-inch chunks (see Worth Knowing)

3 teaspoon grapeseed oil or canola oil  

8 fresh corn tortillas 

1/2 cup sour cream  

1 lime 

1 bunch cilantro  

Reserve 1/2 cup pineapple chunks and onion and refrigerate for later use. Combine the remaining pineapple, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt, and red pepper flakes in a blender and blend to a paste. Place the meat and marinade in a gallon-size zip-top bag, squeeze out excess air, and zip closed. Refrigerate overnight.

Strain the pork and discard the marinade.

Heat a sauté pan over high heat. Add just enough of the oil to the pan for a thin coating and heat until the oil just starts to smoke. Working in batches, add the tortillas in a single layer and heat just until starting to char, about 1 minute per side, then flip and cook for another minute. Wrap in aluminum foil to keep warm.

Add just enough of the oil to cover the pan, swirl to coat, and heat until smoking. Add the pork and reserved pineapple and cook for 1 minute, or until browned. Shake the pan to flip the meat and cook until the pork is cooked through and the pan juices have cooked dry, about 7 minutes, shaking the pan frequently.

In a small bowl, combine the sour cream with the juice of 1/2 lime and whisk until smooth. Cut the remaining 1/2 lime into 4 wedges.

 Coarsely chop 1/2 cup cilantro leaves. Reserve 4 sprigs.

Serve the tortillas topped with the meat and pineapple mixture, reserved onion, chopped cilantro, a drizzle of the lime sour cream, a lime wedge, and whole sprig of cilantro.

Worth Knowing
 
Look for a lean shoulder roast for this recipe. It will be a piece of a boneless Boston butt. Get the smallest and leanest roast you can find, which will probably be 2 to 3 pounds. If you get a piece with excess fat, just trim it away before cutting the meat into chunks. 

Not only do we love this cookbook, but we were huge fans of his first book, Fire In My Belly.  If Kevin Gillespie were our father, we would give him a copy of both books for Father's Day.  Of course, that would be really stupid as he wrote them, but we would give him a big, ol' pork butt and hope that he invited us over! Really, nothing says "I Love You" more than a pork butt and Father's Day is approaching.

The Hostess Cooks

We just love us a hostess who can cook.  This is a charmer from the early 1950's.  It seems that after World War II, there was a bit of shift in homelife, especially in England.  The war provided more opportunity for jobs for returning soldiers and for many women.  Women who were once thought to automatically enter the employ of large land owners are servants in both the house and kitchen now saw other opportunities.  A professional class was emerging and the wives of these men faced an empty house that was theirs to tend. 

While it was once considered a necessity to have a cook, it was now more likely that wives would not only be the hostess in the house but the cook in the kitchen. The market was ripe for books explaining how to cook while also serving as a gracious hostess.  The Hostess Cooks by Viola Johnstone is one of those books.

The introduction by Lady Barnett extols Johnstone in a bit of round about way.  "I wish this book had been available when I was a new and inexperienced housewife."  Viola Johnstone was an actress for a time until she met her husband and, naturally, abandoned her career, but not before gathering recipe ideas on her travels.  As Lady Barnett tells us, "The is a vast difference between the information acquired by someone living and working in a country and someone who is there as a tourist."  She is sure, "...this book will do a lot toward solving your problems."

After repeatedly telling us that the author is not a trained cook, that she could barley boil and egg, and that she has traveled and worked abroad, we are then told that cooking or eating Chinese or Indian would be a waste when we could find perfectly good food in England presented by and actress who traveled but came home.

the basic idea behind this book is not particularly revolutionary -- know what you are going to cook.  Plan ahead.  Be gracious.  Rules to live by.

Johnstone is rather fond of chops,  both lamb and pork, but she seems to be a whiz with pork chops.  Her pork chops are cooked with a variety of ingredient that might make you look like the most Continental of cooks or at very least, get you booted off Top Chef.

There are pork chops with gherkins, with peaches, with cherries, with spaghetti, and my personal favorite, fired bananas.

Pork Chops and Fried Bananas

The pork chops can be fired in lard or pork fat.  This is an excellent and unusual accompaniment to pork. The bananas are peeled and sliced lengthwise down the centre, fried lightly in pork fat,sprinkled in very little sugar and served with pork chops.  Cider  may be used instead of white wine. And do not be afraid  to try this recipe with the bananas, it is most highly recommended.  Fried pineapple rings are also very good with pork chops.

All I can say is "be afraid, be very afraid."   As with many of this type of early cookbook, the recipes all fall in upon themselves.  The "Cider may be used..." hearkens back to her earlier recipe for these similar dishes.  In order to cook the recipe before you, one must read the recipes before it to get an idea of how one goes about it. 

That being said, I don't care how gracious a hostess you are, I am not eating pork and bananas!  This may be the rare occasion when one might offer this advice: "Stick to being an actress."

Pig Curing & Cooking

We are big fans of Ambrose Heath and pigs.  The End. 

No, there is more.  We love cookbooks and food because, like so many things, everything old is new again.  Really, who hasn't dislocated a shoulder patting themselves on the back for serving pig ears?  Don't get me wrong, we love Fergus Henderson but he did not "invent" nose-to-tail eating.  Poor folks did.  If H.G. Wells traveled back in time and asked those poor folks whether they would rather be eating pig ears or steak, they would probably chosen the latter.  If you told them that you paid $12 for a pig ear sandwich, they would laugh at you.   Truthfully, they would probably rob you.  And feed you to the pigs.

In 1952, a full decade before Fergus Henderson was even conceived, Ambrose Heath wrote a quintessential nose-to-tail book on the pig: Pig Cooking & Curing.  There are recipes for Deviled Pig's Liver, Pig Ear Soup(and you thought they were only for sandwiches), Baked Pig Cheek, Pig Tail in Lentils, and so much more.  Heath includes all the meaty middle of the pig as well, loins, legs, chops, hams, and sausage. 

By now you know that cookbooks of this era have only vague directions for recipes.  But here is a favorite.  It has the date 1806 in parentheses, so my guess is Heath found this recipe and passed it on.  I love it for the title: Loin of Pork to Goosify.  I can honestly say we have have never seen the word "goosify" before.  At first I thought it was a way to make one's pork more like goose.  But that doesn't seem to be the case.   In modern parlance, "goosify" means to have an old lady grab your ass.  By "old" one would need to be over 30, 25 in some video arcades.  But we can find no reference as to why this leg of pork is being "goosified" or whether "goosified" is the past tense for "goosify" as we are sure it has nothing to do with grabassing pork (or whether "grabassing" is a word).   We are in uncharted territory.  Here is the recipe so you too, can gossify your leg o'pork.

Leg of Pork, to Goosify (1806)

Score your pork; stuff it with sage, onions, pepper and salt, a few crumbs and a little butter; stuff it at the shank end.  It will take two hours roasting as a good fire.  Serve it with apple sauce.

Calling all Lexicographers out there -- what did "goosify" mean in 1806?

In the meantime, we saw this on Facebook and while we rarely  never share puppy pix, quotes, blessings from any Deity, or school day photos, we did find this amusing and a bit apropos.

Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs.  

Now we have no Cash, no Hope, and no Jobs

PLEASE

Don't let Kevin Bacon die

Dinner With Tennessee Williams

Let's just get this right of the way -- I am not fond of cookbooks that take a famous person of event and then just throws together recipes claiming to be a cookbook. So I was quite skeptical about Dinner With Tennessee Williams. Drinks with Tennessee Williams might have been another story...

Thomas Lanier Williams by Alfred Eisenstaedt

Still, if you were going to do a Tennessee Williams cookbook, this one was done in the right way. First, there was rhyme to their reason. Every year New Orleans has a Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. This cookbook grew out of a love of Tennessee William's New Orleans. Chef Greg Picolo had cooked for the Literary Festival on occasion. Troy Gilbert had written a cookbook or two. Throw in Dr. Kenneth Holditch, a noted Williams scholar, and you have a fine cookbook, one even Tennessee Williams would have been proud of.

I lived in New Orleans for a year. I gained forty pounds! Seriously, I GAINED forty pounds. Even the crappiest food in New Orleans is about ten times better than the BEST food in most places. Southerners love to sit around an talk and eat. And talk and eat and tell you about what they ate and how their grandma cooked it and how that differed from the way Mama cooked it and how they cook it and what restaurant has a good approximation. New Orleans is one of those cities where people can talk poetically and passionately about food and spend their entire life having never set foot in a kitchen!

Gilbert and Picolo do a great job of translating Dr. Holditch's scholarship about the food in the plays of Tennessee Williams into actual food on a plate. Here is a pork chop fit to serve the overbearing and "big" Big Daddy from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Note they are not just pork chops but double-cut pork chops cooked in Coca-cola, bourbon and molasses the real "holy trinity" of Southern cooking.

Big Daddy's Braised Double-Cut Pork Chops With Coca-Cola, Bourbon, Molasses, and Granny Smith Apples

6 double-cut pork chops
Salt and pepper
2 cups flour, seasoned
1/2 cup olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 cups bourbon
4 cups Coca-Cola
2 cups apple juice
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons lite soy sauce
2 tablespoons Steen's Molasses
2 teaspoons Tabasco or Crystal Hot Sauce
2 cups demi-glace
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 cup beef stock, if needed
5 Granny Smith apples, cored, quartered

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Season chops with salt and pepper and then dust in seasoned flour. Sear chops in hot oil in an ovenproof pan until light brown, about 2 minutes on each side and remove to a plate. Carefully pour off excess oil, then add onion and saute 2 minutes. Return chops to pan and deglaze with the bourbon, allowing the pot liquor to reduce by two-thirds.

Add Coca-Cola, apple juice, garlic, soy sauce, molasses, Tabasco, demi-glace, thyme, rosemary, and salt and pepper. While cooking, take a brush and baste the chops every 5 minutes or so. Braise in an oven, uncovered, at 450 degrees F for 8 minutes. If needed, add stock or water if the pot-liquor reduces too quickly. Reduce heat and cook at 350 - 400 degrees F for 20 minutes; turn the chops. Cook for an additional 20 minutes then turn again. Add apples and cook an additional 20--40 minutes, until the meat is almost falling off the bone. Serve .

Another reason to feature this cookbook is to take a look back at some of the fine actresses that have given life to the complex women of Tennessee Williams' imagination.

Judith Ivey
The Glass Menagerie


Calista Flockhart and Julie Harris
The Glass Menagerie


Cate Blanchett
A Streetcar Named Desire


Olympia Dukakis
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore


Cherry Jones
Night Of The Iguana


Elizabeth Ashley
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof


Natasha Richardson and Amy Ryan
A Streetcar Named Desire

Frankly, this is the "short list" ...we could go on and on... Check out more actresses at Lucindaville.

Pig

For more than thirty years, James Villas has devote his life to food. It's a tough job but someone has to do it. Twenty-seven years of his career were as Food and Wine Editor of Town & Country. He has also written about his food endeavors for a slew of other publications including Esquire, Saveur, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Life, The New York Times, and don't forget the cookbooks, two of my favorites with his mother, Martha Pearl Villas, who died several years ago. Miss Martha Pearl always traveled with her White Lily Flour, a custom I understand, but I digress...

Usually, when writing books one moves from the general to the specific. James Villas, who wrote the ever popular book, Bacon, moved from this particular cut of pork to whole hog in his book Pig. Leave it to a good old Southern boy to call his book simply Pig. Really, does one need further info? There are, of course, a few bacon recipes and standards like ham steak and red eye gravy. There is a traditional spiced stuffed hams seen on every buffet South of the Mason-Dixon, and some fancier fare. Still, no one can give a better explanation of how to make a great fried pig's ear.

Recently I made some great double-fried french fries for a cookout. A guest went on and on about how good they were. He never got his fries to taste like that. I told him to double fry them and he looked a bit stunned. "You made these?" he said. "you cut them and everything?" Well duh! Why do think they were so good!

For the next few days, I got e-mails from "friends" outlining how bad potatoes were for one's diet. I got potato chip, french fries and just plain old baked potato warnings. Let me just say that if I have the choice of living to be a hundred without fries or living to eighty with a big bowl of cheese fries covered in bacon and ranch dressing... no contest...but I digress.

Back to Pig.


So I decided to share a recipe featuring pork AND potatoes. And not just pork but Virginia Ham, with a salt content that blows the USDA standards right out of the water. Here is Villas' take on such a dish.

"Scalloped potatoes with lots of butter and cheese have been a staple in Southern homes for centuries, but only in Virginia have I encountered the dish made with the state's incomparable country-cured ham -- simply called "Virginia ham" in the Old Dominion. Do remember that you need to use dry russet potatoes for any gratin, and if the potatoes seem to be drying out after 35 or 40 minutes, just add a little whole milk, basting them slightly to produce a golden crust."

Old Dominion Scalloped Potatoes with Country Ham

4 medium russet potatoes (about 2 pounds), peeled and sliced 1/8 inch thick
1 cup finely diced cooked country ham
1/2 cup chopped fresh chives
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
1 cup half-and-half

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Butter a 1 1/2 to 2-quart gratin or baking dish and arrange alternate layers of overlapping potato slices and ham, sprinkling a few chives over each layer and seasoning with salt and pepper. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the cheese over the top, dot with the butter, pour the half-and-half over the top, and bake till the potatoes are tender, about 45 minutes, basting from time to time with the liquid. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and bake till golden brown, about 10 minutes longer.

3. Serve piping hot directly from the dish.

Ham and potatoes. I'm ready to meet my maker or my Maker's Mark, which ever comes first.

A Man's Cookbook

One of the big stars of French culinary television was Raymond Oliver. He owned the three star restaurant, LeGrand Vefour, a truly legendary establishment. Kind of like James Beard, he has fallen a bit out of style in modern day culinary adventures. He is probably best known in America for his participation as one of the eleven judges at the Judgement of Paris, made famous in the movie, Bottle Shock.

In the late 1950's he wrote a book on cooking for men -- or a cookbook aimed at men -- to get them to cook -- for themselves. OK it sounds a bit more complicated than it should be. It was a guy's cookbook by snotty French chef. It made it to America in 1961 as A Man's Cookbook.

The book is a wonderful period piece complete with small black and white drawings of food items. He gives basic info on how to cook on a gas stove, an electric stove and the ever-present wood and coal range, which should give you some idea of how old this book is!

Above all, Oliver is a French Chef in the heyday of French cuisine. That means that he is not adverse to include a recipe for oeuf en gelée, which I always think of a a dish for a man's man. So how about pig's feet?

Pig's Feet
Les pieds de porc

Split in half, these are excellent pan-fried in bread crumbs or broiled. They may be truffled, that is, served with slices of truffles. Cook them in a well seasoned bouillon, drain them, and let them cool pressed between two planks. Once they are cold, cut them lengthwise, cover with bread crumbs, and broil. Serve very hot.

Or you could just have an oeuf en gelée.

The Yul Brynner Cookbook

He sings, he dances, he cooks, he's famous... wait, this looks like another Famous Food Friday cribbed from Lucindaville. Yes, it is, The Yul Brynner Cookbook. Everyone knows Brynner as an actor, but did you know he was a polyglot (speaking 11 languages including Russian, Chinese and Romany), a nightclub entertainer, a musician, a trapeze artist, a member of a traveling gypsy troupe, a pro jai alai player, and a director, as well as the King of Siam?




So let the guy cook!

Brynner was born on Sakhalin Island, a slim strip of land off the southeastern coast of Russia and north of Japan. The island is sub-arctic and during the 1940’s both Japan and Russia claimed the island. His family took him to China when he was 6 months old. The cookbook features cuisines from his multi-ethnicity. There is a Russian section and a Japanese section. There are sections from his many travels featuring French and Thai cuisine. By far the most interesting section features his Romany or Gypsy heritage.

In his introduction to this section, Brynner tells us:

“My mother was a gypsy, and I spent several of my teenage years traveling through France with a gypsy troupe.

…there are inherent difficulties in constantly moving from one place to another. Just think of the everyday chore of preparing meals.

Gypsies have always favored soups and stews. These dishes are easy to make, and just about anything you put in either of them winds up tasting good. These marvelous concoctions also can be quite exotic.”

One of the more exotic soups is dandelion, while on of the more traditional stews is pork.

Pork and Sauerkraut Ragout

1 1/2 –2 pounds pork shoulder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon slat
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 cup water
1 cup beer
1 1/2 pounds sauerkraut, drained
1 cup sour cream

Trim excess fat off pork, and cut the meat into small pieces. It’s all right to cook this dish with pork bones included; they should be discarded before serving, but they add flavor to sauce. Set the pork aside, and heat the vegetable oil in a Dutch oven. While the oil heats, peel and chop the onion. Sauté the onion and garlic clove in the vegetable oil until the onions are transparent. Remove the garlic, add the pork, and brown well on all sides. Add paprika, salt, caraway seeds, water and beer to the Dutch oven. Cover, cook for one hour, periodically skimming fat from the top of the sauce. After one hour of cooking, add drained sauerkraut, cover, and cook another 45 minutes. Garnish with sour cream.

Whip up a cauldron of this Pork and Sauerkraut stew and pop The King and I in the DVD and make a night of it. To whet your appetite:

A Puzzlement -mp3

Pepys At Table

From 1660 to 1669 Samuel Pepys kept a detailed diary. It is one of the most influential documents of the seventeenth century. Among the many issues, ideas, indulgences discussed in the diaries, Pepys wrote about what he ate.

Christopher Driver and Michelle Berriedale-Johnson combed the diaries to find out what Pepys might have eaten. Pepys At Table gives us not only recipes, but a look into the diet of the seventeenth century. Exotic fruit was the culinary darling of the time. A bill for orchard trees lists 12 varieties of peaches, eight varieties of both plums and pears, three of cherries and apples, two of apricots and nectarines and a quince. Access to such fruits would be the envy of any greengrocer today. Pepys also prided himself on the rather Italian “fork” or more rightly, the pronged knife that was becoming all the rage in Europe.


With no recipes in Pepys diary, they turned to several cookery books published during the period, then the original, period, recipe was adapted for the modern cook

1667 September 4th

“… the business broke off without any end to it, and so I home and thence with my wife and W. Hewer to Bartholomew fayre and there saw Polichinelli (where we saw Mrs. Clerke and all her crew); and so to a private house [a quiet tavern] and sent off for a side of pig and ate it at an acquaintance of W. Hewer’s where, there was some learned Physique and Chymical Bookes; and among others, a natural Herball, very fine.

Here is Hannah Wolley’s recipe from The Accomplisht Lady’s Delight 1675.

To Broyl A Leg of Pork

Cut your pork into slices very thin,
having first taken off the skinny part
of the fillet, then hack it with the
back of your knife, then mince some
Thyme and Sage, exceeding small,
and mingle it with pepper and salt,
and therewith season your collops
and then lay them on the Gridiron;
when they are enough, make sauce
for them with butter, vinegar,
Mustard and Sugar and so serve
them.

And a contemporary recipe.

2 lbs/1 kg pork – either half leg, sliced in thick “collops” as Hannah Wolley suggests, or a filet, sliced thickly, or 4 meaty pork chops.
4 teaspoons each fresh thyme and sage, finely chopped. If fresh herbs are not available, us dried but reduce the quantity, especially the sage.
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
2 ozs / 50g butter
1 oz / 25 g dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons wine or cider vinegar
2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard

Chop and mix well together the herbs, salt and pepper. Coat the meat thoroughly in the mixture on both sides.
On a griddle or a large frying pan, or even under a hot grill, broil the meat rapidly on both sides till it is cooked through and crispy brown on the outside. It will take about three minutes on each side.
Meanwhile in a small pan melt the butter and the sugar, then add the vinegar and mustard and allow all to cook together for a few minutes. Serve the pork immediately, with the sauce in a separate dish.

Larousse Treasury of Country Cooking

I love this book just for the cover photo. I want all that stuff sitting on a shelf and looking exactly like that. This book is a kind of oversized companion to Great Peasant Dishes of the World. There are hundreds of recipes that are the backbone of the cuisines of countries around the world. When I came across this recipe, I immediately went out and bought some pork.

Pork Stewed in Cumin

Marinade:

1/2 cup white wine
juice of one lemon
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper


2 pounds lean boneless pork, cubed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
Lemon wedges for garnish
Olives for garnish

1. In a shallow non-metallic bowl, combine the marinade ingredients.
2. Add the pork cubes and stir to coat thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours, turning meat occasionally.
3. Remove marinated pork from a bowl with a slotted spoon. Pat dry. Reserve marinade.
4. Heat the oil in a heavy casserole, add the meat and sauté over moderately high heat until golden brown. Add the marinade. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until the meat is tender, about 45 minutes. Lower the heat, stir in the cilantro. Mix well and transfer to heated serving platter.
5. Garnish with lemon wedges and olives. Serve with fried potatoes.

I Can’t Boil Water

Well, here's a back-to-back Corinne Griffith post. After we posted Eggs I Have Known, we found another Corinne Griffith cookbook, I Can’t Boil Water. Where Eggs I Have Know name dropped individual people, I Can’t Boil Water name drops restaurants. There’s La Pavillion, La Côte Basque, The Rive Gauche, Trader Vic’s and Perino’s.

Of course, her favorite recipe comes from her own personal cook, Ben Crow.

Candied Pork Chops

6 pork chops
3/4 cup honey
3 cups cranberries
1/2 teaspoon powdered cloves
Salt

Brown the chops in their own fat in a frying pan. Pour the honey into the cranberries, and add the powdered cloves and stir till you have a smooth paste. Place three of the pork chops in a casserole. Slat to taste. Cover with half the cranberry mixture. Lay the remaining pork chops on top of mixture and spread remaining cranberry mixture over all. Bake in a 350 F oven 1 1/4 hours.

I love the idea of Candied Pork Chops. The cranberries gives the dish a wonderful tang. Serve it over a plain rice.

Common Sense In the Household

“It is a mistake of Christian civilization to educate girls into a love of science
and literature and then condemn them to the routine of domestic drudge.”

Marion Harland

Marion Harland was the pen name of Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune one of the most successful cookbook authors of the late 1800’s. Long before the crass notion of “branding” Harland was just that – a brand. Her success was due in no small part to her father who instructed his daughter’s tutor to: “Educate them as if they were boys and preparing for college,” Samuel Hawes encouraged his daughter to write and at 23 she published her first novel that sold over 100,000 copies.



Two years later she married, and found she was ill-equipped to accomplish the work of housewife. Cookbooks of the late nineteenth century offered instruction on cooking but also instruction on proper morality with some domesticity and first aid thrown in. They were more sermon in tone than instruction. Harland relied on the vocation she knew, writing, vowing to produce a document that would offer a detailed yet colloquial approach to running a household. She succeeded. Common Sense In the Household sold over a million copies.

In one of the few “medical” recipes in the book, Mrs. Harland suggests for bleeding,

“Bind the cut with cobwebs and brown sugar, pressed on like lint. Or, if you cannot procure these, with the fine dust of tea. When the blood ceases to flow, apply laudanum.”

Her voice remained a constant for almost 70 years as both a writer and editor. During her lifetime, she produced 24 books from novels to books on cookery, etiquette, domesticity and travel as well as endorsing products. She continued to work as a writer and editor until her death in 1922 at age 91.

In the mid 1980’s, Oxmoor House, publisher of Southern Living, reprinted a series of classic cookery books and Common Sense In the Household was one of them.


Here’s are a couple of Southern family favorite!

Fried Ham

If raw, soak as for boiling. Cook it in a hot frying pan turning often till done. Serve with or without gravy, as you please.

Add some potatoes and you have dinner.

Pea Fritters

Cook a pint or three cups more than you need for dinner. Mash while hot with a wooden spoon, seasoning with pepper, salt, and butter. Put by until morning. Make a batter of two whipped eggs, a cupful of milk, quarter teaspoonful soda, a half teaspoonful cream tarter, and a half cup flour. Stir the pea-mixture into this, beating very hard, and cook as you would ordinary griddle-cakes.
I can testify, from experience, that they make a delightful morning dish, and hereby return thanks to the unknown friend to whom I am indebted for the receipt.

I haven't tried this for breakfast, but as an appetizer it's wonderful. Remember, the peas in this recipe are Southern peas not English peas. My preference is black-eyed, but crowder will work. Try adding some chopped onion and a bit of spice!

Creole

Creole food mixes European and African influences, throws in a lot of seafood and spice and forms a longstanding culinary fusion.

Babette de Rozières book, Creole, is a feast for the eyes and the taste buds. A Guadeloupean chef, de Rozières, bringing the highly spicy flavors of Creole mixed with the indigenous fruits, vegetables and seafood of the West Indies into an explosive mix. The recipes are long but not terribly involved. In order to get a great Creole mélange of flavor, you need to add a lot of herbs and spices.

I find a lot of the recipes call for the addition of bouillon granules but if you examine bouillon cubes they seem to be largely salt and coloring, so I leave them out.

Creole features a lot of ingredients that are a bit difficult to find in most places, however there are some simple substitutions.

Babette’s West Indian-style Pork Ragout

4 1/2 pounds pork loin with rind
1 quantity Meat and Poultry Marinade*
2 tablespoon sunflower oil
1 tablespoon superfine sugar
2 bay leaves
2 scallions
1 sprig thyme, leaver removed and slightly chopped
1 chive
1 onion, coarsely chopped
clove garlic, coarsely chopped
pinch ground cumin
pinch quatre-épices
salt and black pepper
2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules
2 tablespoons cornstarch

Cut the pork loin into large pieces and marinate in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours.

Hear the oil with the sugar in a deep-sided skillet of frying pan to caramelize it. When the caramel is very brown, almost black, add the drained pieces of meat and mix immediately. Brown the meat well for about 10 minutes, occasionally adding a few drops of water.

When the meat is well caramelized, add enough water to cover. Add the bay leaves, scallions, thyme, chives, onion and garlic, to taste, then the cumin and quatre-epices. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and boil vigorously over medium heat for about 40 minutes.

When the meat is cooked, remove from the liquid and keep warm. Strain the cooking liquid into a saucepan and return to the stove. Mix the cornstarch and bouillon into one cup water and pour into the cooking liquid. Reduce and thicken for about three minutes then pour over the meat.

I like to use this recipe with country style pork ribs. They are cheap, already cut up, and quite flavorful.

*Meat and Poultry Marinade

1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
pinch ground cumin
salt and black pepper
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar

Chop the meat or poultry into pieces and place in a large container. Add the onions and garlic, then the cumin. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in the oil and vinegar. Mix well, cover and chill for 2 to 3 hours before cooking.

Asian Noodles

I love to cook cheap, old fashioned country pork ribs in a crock pot for about 8 hours. I found this wonderful Asian pepper sauce that makes the ribs hot and spicy, but lately I have been unable to find it. I began to look for a recipe to recreate the slightly sweet, blazing hot sauce for my pork.

I found a recipe I thought would be pretty close in Nina Simond's Asian Noodles. She uses it for a dressing, so I dressed my crock/pork. Here is her sauce:

Red Hot Chili Oil Dressings

1/4 cup safflower or corn oil
2 1/2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
7 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons Chinese black vinegar or Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

Combine both the oils in a heavy sauce pan and heat over high heat until almost smoking hot. Add the red pepper, cover, and remove from the heat. Let sit until cool, about 10 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to dissolve the sugar. Refrigerate, in a covered container, the dressing will keep for a week.

Later that evening, I had my spicy pork. Not exactly like the sauce I was used to, but about as close I could get on short notice.