On Friday evening, I had the opportunity to work with a great group of volunteers and staff members of the Museum of Old York in Maine. It was the once- a-month Tavern Night at the Jefferds’ Tavern.

Chris, Nancy, Larrissa, Nola, Eileen, Sandie, Jack

We had two cooking fireplaces going, one beehive oven, plus the two fireplaces in the tavern rooms for the guests. Jack helped me lug wood and I kept the fires going while peeling vegetables and other chores. There were many things to do in preparation for our guests, and everyone helped where they could.  

Thirty-two guests who came to dine on, cod cakes with sweet pepper relish , fresh baked oatmeal bread with honey butter ,corn chowder, top round roast sizzled on the hearth, pommes Anna with butternut squash, rosemary, winter greens with caramelized onions, bacon and, if that was not enough, it was finished off with Indian pudding and homemade ice cream.

 As tavern mistress, I greeted one of our returning soldiers who was on his way home from Boston and the battle against the British. We fed him as much as he could eat. It was a small thing to do for the patriotism he showed our cause. He stayed a while and chatted with the guests and told stories of Indians and the war. Nola was busy tending the onions and winter vegetables over the fire.

The guests relaxed by the fire while they were serenaded by Katie on the violin while Larissa, our junior volunteer, stood ready to help serve the food. Chris cooked the beef and carved it for our guests. It was served with a wonderful wine reduction sauce.

It was a busy evening and Eileen, our director of Adult Education, sat to enjoy the fire, Indian pudding and homemade ice cream.  Doesn’t she look like a Vermeer painting?

Winter Lecture Series

HISTORIC DEERFIELD

“Slow Food/Sustainable Gardens”

John Forti

Curator of Historic Gardens and Landscaping at Strawbery Banke

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Deerfield Community Center at 2 pm

For more information call 413-775-7217

CARBONADOES OF BEEF, RAW, ROASTED, OR TOASTED

& PLYMOUTH CHEESECAKE

 Happy Valentine’s Day 

What better meal can you make for Valentine’s Day than steak, salad, toasted bread and cheesecake?  Looking through Robert May cookery booke, I found Carbonadoes of Beef, raw, roasted, or toasted; reading through the receipt, it looked very similar to marinated beef that we might throw on the grill. The marinade has wine, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Interesting, so we gave it a try.

Back in 1440 a Dominican recluse, Galfridus Grammaticus wrote the first English-Latin Dictionary called the Parvulorum, and the word Chesekake shows up, it is defined as a cake or tart. Not having any cookery receipts from the 1400s I went, back to Robert May to a  1685 original receipt for my cheesecake. Now, not wanting to spend several days making cheese I remembered that in the Plymouth Plantation Cook Book there was a receipt I have used before that was adapted from an original. I have posted both receipts in the file. The ricotta in the receipt is very much like what would have been used in the 18^th Century, just homemade instead.

First thing to do was to start the cheesecake. The dough was made and refrigerated for an hour. The ingredients brought to room temperature. Once again, I have my granddaughter here to help. You can see her hands creaming the butter and sugar together.

I had pre baked the pie shell. It is interesting to note that this was a common practice in the 1600s, and was called in Robert May’s cookery booke as Dry the coffin. He also makes several tarts in a heart shaped pan. I searched all over for mine, then realized that I gave them to my daughter. So we are using a fluted cake tin instead.

Now, here is where we deviate a bit from the original receipt. This is a Valentine’s Day dinner, so you just have to have RED! My granddaughter mixes all the ingredients together per the receipt and took a bit of the batter out and poured in the red food coloring. We cover the bottom of the pie shell with red, saving some for the top, then in went the rest in white.

Everyone wants a red heart on Valentine’s Day, so we take the leftover red and decorate the top. Now, this is still an original way to make cheesecake, just the decoration is updated. So into the bake kettle it goes. Now all the cheesecakes I have made were done in a bake oven in a water bath so I was a bit worried about not having some water in the bake kettle.

We kept turning the kettle a half turn every ten minutes or so. Having a small working area, I wanted to be careful that we did not burn the cheesecake. Things cook faster and make for a very hot hand and face. I did lift the lid a few times to check that it was OK. The cheesecake only took 30 minutes to bake and was taken out to cool. Not having any water did not seem to affect its baking and the top did not crack.

While all this was happening, my husband made the marinade and let the sirloin tips soak it up for a few hours. Then we took it out and brought it to room temperature for an hour. I decided I’d make a side dish of a salad, having endives and spinach along with some other ingredients. It looked like a painlessly way to get some veggies into my husband.

In section V of Robert Mays cookery booke, you can find a receipt called, “To make a grand Sallet of divers Compounds, “ this includes the white endives. The next receipt is called, “Another way for a grand Sallet.” This receipt calls for putting all the greens into a clean napkin and swinging them to get them dry. I’m sure we have all done this; nothing new under the sun.

With the grill now hot the carbonadoes of beef are placed over the heat.

 In the toaster I placed several slices of bread to warm and left my granddaughter and husband to watch the fire. I went off to compose the salad. First I roasted the endives, and then put in the apples and shallots together, and when done, I added this to the spinach, along with goat cheese and hazelnuts. I topped it all off with a pomegranate dressing.

So we made our plates and sat down for dinner. The meat had a nice char on it, and even though marinated sirloin tips can be tough, we had plenty of tender pieces. The nutmeg taste was interesting, and again, an acquired taste. I think if I do it again, I would not be so heavy handed with the fresh nutmeg, and marinate the meat longer. I would rate the carbonadoes of beef as a good 18^th Century receipt. However, it was the cheesecake that became the star.    

The crust was crisp and delicious, the cream cheese mixture firm and smooth to the taste. The combination of the ground almonds and mace mixed with the cream cheese and ricotta almost gave it a coconut taste. The rosewater was not strong and gave off just a hint of summer roses. However, it was all in the presentation. Decorated with red hearts and browned to perfection, it was a fitting end to a Valentine’s Day Feast.

Side note,

I have been invited to Connecticut to make a full 18^th Century meal in an beautiful 1740 home home with a big fireplace and bake oven. So, next week, no red dye or bread from the store. I’m excited and will share this journey with you next time. ‘Til then.

 We wish you all a very happy Valentine’s Day.

 Sandie

TO FRY OYSTERS

Robert May

In Martha Washington’s, Book on Cookery, Karen Hess writes that, “American oysters are different in flavor from those of European waters, being fatter and blander.” I have never tasted European oysters, so have no reference for them.  I do eat a lot of oysters, however, and from many regions up and down the Eastern coast, and I do have my preferences.  The oysters from the Damariscotta River in Maine are my favorites. However, I’ll eat whatever the local fish market or restaurant has.

In Portsmouth at Jumping Jays restaurant they have “Shuck a Buck Tuesdays” oysters for a dollar apiece.  Each week they have three choices. The new oyster on the block is the Little Bay from the waters up the river from Portsmouth; I did try them and found them mild in salinity, however, extremely small.  Personally, I think they should close the oyster beds and let them grow. This brings me to a great book on oysters by Mark Kurlanskt called “the Big Oyster. “’ In his bestseller, Mark explains about the Indians of the New York region and of the oyster piles that were like small mountains. Also, if you go to Damariscotta River, they discovered a pile of oyster shells more than thirty feet deep.

One of the reasons the piles were so big is that back then oysters grew to be around 8 to 10 inches in size. That is one big gulp of an oyster.  British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray complained that eating an American oyster was “like eating a baby,” evidently not his thing. Yet, this was not to last, as the oysters began to be over- harvested and therefore smaller, and many areas were putting limits on what could be harvested, and started passing conservation measures. In 1715 the colonial government banned oystering in the months without an R, when the oysters were laying their eggs. Today in New Hampshire you can harvest oysters any month with the exception of July and August.

 So while reading some of the receipts in the early cookery books, I now understand that when they say to clap a piece of bacon on one side of a piece of meat and an oyster on the other, it’s just one oyster.  Or when  Robert May’s receipts calls for you to dry the oysters and lard them with eight or ten lardon’s though each oyster and then put it on the spit, he is not talking about the little oysters we have today (see receipt file).

So off to the fish seller I went. I picked up some oysters and shrimp to make Robert Mays “To Fry Oysters.” The market only had Martha Vineyard’s oysters, however, they were nice and fresh looking and big.

This was a great receipt to pick as my husband did most of the work. He loves to cook and so I really just sat there and instructed him as to the next step in the receipt. He did read it over beforehand.

First order of the day was to clean the shrimp and boil the shells for the sauce. Roberts May’s receipt calls for just butter and cream yet there are many other receipts that call for the addition of fish broth. Then the oysters were scrubbed clean.

Here is where my husband really shines, opening oysters.  We had three dozen of them.  That’s a lot of work.  Now you can tell that these were of a good size and filled with oyster liquor, however, they were not 10 inches long. Into the bowl they went.

When they were all shucked, they were strained out and dried off. The liquor was saved to put with the shrimp broth, and the oysters were ready to cover with the flour. I went off to check on the shrimp shells; these I handed off to my husband to concoct a sauce. I thought I’d do something light, a salad came to mind.

Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn were contemporaries and friends. However, with the exception of new peas and sparrow grass found in the market of London, we have little knowledge if Pepys ever ate many salads or other vegetables. So I took a look in The English Huse-Wife, by Gervase Markham, 1683. There is a whole section on herbs and a lady’s skills in her garden, from her choice of seeds, gathering them, and “Of Cookery and the part thereof. “‘

He starts with” Of Sallets simple and plain,” as follows.

“First then to speak of sallets, there be some simple, and some compounded, some only to furnish out the table, and some both for use and adornation: your simple sallets are chibols peeled, washed clean, and half of the green tops cut clean away, so served on a fruit dish; or chives, scallions, radish roots, boiled carrots, skirrets, and turnips, with such like served up simply; also, all young lettuce, purslane, and divers other herbs which may be served simply without anything but a little vinegar, sallet oil, and sugar; onions boiled, and stripped from their rind and served up with vinegar, oil and peppar is a good simple sallet, so is samphire, beancods, asparagus, and cucumbers, served in likewise with oil, vinegar, and peppar, with a world of others, too tedious to nominate”

I started our salad. It may not be spring but I do love a good Sallet. Doubt I can find some skirrets or purslane, however, spinach, a good fried red beet and a dakon radish, which dates back to Europe 1548, and was a common garden variety in England, will do fine. I had boiled the beets earlier and fried them in olive oil.  

The flouring of the oysters was almost done and we sat and ate our warm beet salad. Like Pepys, my husband would have liked to skip this part altogether, however, for good health he grins and bears eating vegetables and fruit.

After our salad, the shrimp broth and oyster liquor was mixed with the butter and cream and warmed on the fire. The shrimp were put into the broth to cook, and the skillet was hot and ready for the oysters.

Golden brown the oysters were plated, the shrimp done in its cream and broth, and two hungry people sat down to eat.

The best part of this meal was the broth; the shrimp were a tad overcooked, and the oysters a bit insipid for our more gourmet palates. Give me salt, pepper, panko and corn meal and I’d have been happier. I’m not saying they were awful, just not what I’m use to in a fried oyster. However, what did I expect of a 1685 receipt, likely very tasty in that day? There was no Food Channel or Food TV, or Iron Chef. May did what he knew best for the times and I never expected to have all the early receipts be my cup of tea.  I’ll keep trying them anyhow. After all this is the journey I have chosen.