Yorkshire Christmas Pie

 This illustration was provided courtesy of Emma Cowley.  Emma is a London-based illustrator, and this piece is currently on display in the Association of Illustrators' Images 34 show.  Visit her website: http://www.emmacowley.co.uk/ or blog: www.emmacowley.blogspot.com to see more of her terrific work.


The following recipe for Yorkshire Christmas Pie comes from Mrs. Hannah Glasse's "Art of Cookery" 1774.

Make a crust with sides and bottom thick and large enough to hold a turkey, goose, fowl, partridge, and pigeon, all boned.  Season well and place the meat as close together as possible in the crust.  Fill the spaces with woodcock, moor game, and any other wild fowl at hand.  Add four pounds of butter, lay on a top layer of crust, and bake for at least four hours.

Mrs. Glasse added that the crust should be "well built," requiring at least a bushel of flour.

Yorkshire Christmas Pie was popular in England in the 18th century, although only the wealthy could afford it.

Cross-section of a Turduckhen including a hen in the center with cornbread stuffing. 

The Turducken is the American version of Yorkshire pie, although it doesn't contain as many different types of birds.  It has been a popular dish in our Southern states for many, many years.

John Madden brought this dish back into fashion when he mentioned it during a football broadcast.

It became so popular that you can now find Turducken, ready to be roasted, in local grocery stores.

Pioneer Recipes by Bobbie Kalman & Lynda Hale

Pioneer Recipes is a wonderfully illustrated cookbook intended to introduce children to a pioneer kitchen.

This description short-changes this terrific book, because it is a great learning tool for adults as well.

It not only contains easy to make, authentic pioneer dishes, but also describes how our ancestors prepared their meals and their methods of cooking.

With it being Autumn, fresh apple cider is easy to find, so for my first recipe, I decided to make "Native Pudding."  My husband and I share our home with three dogs and a cat, but since they don't eat pudding (although they'd probably like to), I cut the recipe in half.

It was interesting tasting, although the texture was not as smooth as you would expect pudding to be.  This was understandable, as the recipe called for cornmeal rather than flour.  This recipe also used molasses rather than sugar, so it wasn't as sweet as our modern puddings are.  Ingredients such as flour and sugar were very expensive during "pioneer" times and were only used on special occasions.

When trying out these pioneer recipes, it is best you keep in mind that something sweet was a nice change from an everyday fare of meat (if Dad was a good shot) and vegetables.

Most of the ingredients for "Native Pudding" are still produced locally.  Milk, cornmeal, apple cider, butter, eggs and raisins are fairly easy to find.  You could make your own molasses from sorghum cane, which can be grown in Southern Oregon.   You could also make salt the old-fashioned way by taking a trip over to the coast, filling a pot with sea water and boiling it down to salt and other minerals.  The only other ingredient is cinnamon, most of which comes from Sri Lanka and South India.

Pioneer Recipes can be purchased at the Josephine Historical Society's Bookshop located in the Research Library at 512 K Street, Grants Pass; or at their Online Bookshop.

Shuckin' The Corn

If you need to prepare corn-on-the-cob for a crowd, here's a nifty way to do it, it's called "cooler corn!"

Photo courtesy of Scott DeSimon

 

Haul your cooler out; hey it's not too late for corn-on-the-cob!  

Clean the cooler out and, add a bunch of shucked ears.

Pour two kettles full of boiling water of the corn, and close the cooler.

30 minutes later, you've got a cooler full of perfectly cooked corn!  Keep the lid closed and it should keep to the right level of doneness for a couple of hours.

Great idea for camping or a barbeque!

Now, for those who prefer to stay indoors this time of the year, I found this neat demonstration of how to easily shuck an ear of corn.

Below is the musical version of Shuckin' The Corn.

Just some food and music for thought.

Tea to be Grown in Southern Oregon!

This newspaper story was published April 26, 1902.

"Officials of the Southern Pacific company have become convinced that tea can be raised profitably in southern Oregon and today General Freight and Passenger Agent Miller sent a number of tea plants to Grant's Pass, Medford, Ashland and Jacksonville, where the industry will be given a thorough test."

This test of growing tea in Southern Oregon does not seem to have been very fruitful.  Today, small quantities of tea are grown commercially in Oregon, and there are many backyard gardeners that grow their own tea.

Trying to find the results of the exploration of growing tea in Southern Oregon led me to a type of tea made from pine trees, and we have plenty of those!  This particular tea is called "tallstrunt" in Sweden, and is made by steeping young, green pine needles in boiling water.  It is said to be high in vitamins A and C.


If you're interested in making "tallstrunt" tea, click on "Hesson Haus..." below for detailed instructions. 

Hesson Haus: Tallstrunt Tea: "I was in the kitchen makin' some pigs in a blanket for Brandon's 'poker night' [what a wife, eh?] when Lucas asked me if I'd ever had pine s..."