The Food of a Younger Land

Read The Food of a Younger Land for Free Online Page B

Book: Read The Food of a Younger Land for Free Online
Authors: Mark Kurlansky
boiling vinegar along with a spice bag and six pounds of brown sugar. In the spice bag should be a tablespoonful of whole cloves and a quarter-pound of stick cinnamon broken up. (Cora Moore)

Vermont Foods
    CORA A. MOORE
    1. Spiced Beef: Eaten cold for breakfast or supper. A round of beef is salted down for a week, then washed well and black pepper and mace rubbed in, then put into a stone stewpan along with 3 or 4 onions, sliced and fried, a few cloves; covered with water and baked for 5 hours. When cold, sliced and eaten as wanted.
    2. Pickled Butternuts: So far as can be learned this idea originated and has been exclusively used in Vermont. Recipe—Butternuts should be gathered last week of June. Pour over them a very strong salt and water brine and let the nuts lie in it for 12 days. Drain them and pour over them cold cider vinegar which has been boiled with some mustard seed, horseradish, cloves, allspice and peppercorns. Cover tightly and keep for a year before using.
    3. Baked Indian Pudding: Heat 4 cups of milk, add ¾ cup of dark molasses, ¼ cup of granulated sugar, teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg, 4 tablespoons butter, and ½ cup corn meal. Cook until the mixture thickens, pour into a baking dish, and add a cup of cold milk. Do not stir. Bake in a slow oven 3 hours without stirring. Serve while warm with butter, a hard sauce or cream.
    4. Greens: Wash and boil until tender; drain and serve with hot vinegar and butter. Or wash and parboil for 10 minutes, then douse in cold water, drain thoroughly and chop fine. Put into a frying pan with 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, stirring constantly, add ¼ cup of broth in which a tablespoonful of flour has been smoothed with some bits of butter, and serve. Hard-boiled eggs, sliced, are used as a garnish. Vermonters are much more given to their “greens” cooked one way or another, than they are to salads. Even lettuce is perhaps oftener than not cooked as above. The greens, too, are oftentimes cooked with salt pork, a bit of bacon or a ham bone.
    5. Cider Plum Pudding: A favorite Christmas dish but, unfortunately, will not keep very long, as it is moist and light. Two eggs are blended with ½ cup of cider; ½ cup flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon each of soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg are sifted together, then turned into a large bowl; ¼ cup each of chopped raisins, dates, figs, butternut meats, citron are mixed in; and finally, ¼ cup each of bread crumbs, brown sugar, chopped suet and chopped apple are kneaded in with the fingers. Covered in a well-greased ring-mold or other dish, the pudding is ready for the steaming process.
    6. Boiled Dinner: Controversy over the matter of cooking the vegetables separately, or with the meat, leaves Vermont housewives just as certain as ever that they should be cooked together, and they go right on doing so, just as their grandmothers and great grandmothers did before them. The meat is beef and the vegetables are beets, carrots, turnip, potatoes, onions and then a bag pudding are all cooked together. The bag pudding is made of Indian meal, a little flour, spiced to taste and seasoned, with a cup of milk. The mixture is turned into a cloth bag and dropped into the pot to cook. Done, it is slipped out of its bag to a serving plate, to be sliced and served with sweetened cream or maple syrup.
    7. Strawberry Shortcake: A Vermont tradition that has been adopted by the other states. The strawberry shortcakes, first of all, are made of biscuit dough, two layers buttered and laid one atop the other to bake. When done they are separated, placed buttered sides up, but first more butter spread on the lower one, spread thickly with berries which have been slightly crushed in sugar. Then, the other layer placed above it is given the same treatment, put into the oven and eaten as soon as the cake is hot again. And, with cream. No heaping whipped cream on the cake, but cream served from a pitcher, plain cream with a

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