The Only Bread Recipe You'll Ever Need

Back in the old days, home cooks didn't trouble themselves trying to make artisan breads.  Sure you can spend a fortune on pans, rising baskets, flours, enhancers, etc trying to bake loaves like the professional bakeries put out but I have to ask why?  Most artisan breads are entirely unsuited to the one thing we will most be doing with them, making sandwiches.  I have many vintage cookbooks in my collection now and while here and there you encounter a recipe for French bread, noticeably absent are the ciabatta breads, sourdoughs, challah  breads and other loaves that are outside of the purvue of most home bakers.  Instead is a more practical approach meant to be frugal not topple you off the fiscal cliff in a unforgiving quest for the proper crumb size.

A Christmas Story Meatloaf Dinner: Braised Sweet & Sour Cabbage

     I was in the mood for meatloaf after receiving my vintage Universal Chopper and my mind was immediately drawn to the movie "A Christmas Story" where the family is seen eating the same dinner every night, namely meatloaf, mashed potatoes and braised red cabbage.  So what better way to break in my new kitchen gadget than by recreating that dinner.

Hashed Leftovers

     Many times after the holidays we're left with mounds of leftovers from an overindulgent feast of Brobdingnagian proportions and we're completely flummoxed as to what to do with them.  I didn't even cook this much for Christmas but I did have a rather large turkey and now I'm left to decide what to do with the leftovers.  Part of it is getting mixed up into turkey salad using the Chicken Salad Recipe but with the rest I'm left to get creative.

Chesapeake Bay Seasoning For Seafood

     For Marylanders there is nothing like seafood, especially crabs, that much we can all agree on.  What we can't agree on is what seafood seasoning is the best to use with those steamed crabs... or crab cakes, fish, tuna salad, french fries, potato chips, ice cream... you get my drift, we put seafood seasoning on everything. Ask anyone what their favorite seasoning is and I hope you've got time on your hands for the answer.  Of course Old Bay is the overwhelming favorite but you'll also hear J.O. and Wye River mentioned along with a few like me who make their own.

Happy New Year 2017!

I want to wish each and every one of you the greatest of joy and happiness in the coming year!

A Chicken Salad Recipe to Rule Them All

     When I set out to create a chicken salad recipe it was for an idea I've been tossing around for some time, a sandwich/sub shop modeled after the ones that used to be in every neighborhood of Baltimore when I grew up.  This is not high end food, this is not hipster food, this is not $100 hamburgers.  What this is is just good old fashioned working man's food eaten for lunch or after a good time at the local bar.

Oven Roasted Pork Shoulder

     Roasted pork has been around ever since we started killing wild boars in the forest in the dim beginnings of humanity so in that sense this is a "vintage" recipe but for our purposes here this recipe is all my own.  It is based on a Filipino recipe called Lechon sa Hurno which translates into "roasted in the oven".  It's a home based version of the popular party centerpiece Lechon Baboy or roasted pig where a whole pig is gutted and roasted for hours on a spit over an open fire.

Black Forest Cake Recipe

From the start, this has to be the most intensive recipe I have ever made.  I followed the original recipe and made mistakes so what I am giving you here is my modified version for ease of preparation.  You're going to need some must have items in order to make this recipe, 3 cake pans and parchment paper.  Don't skip on the parchment paper or you'll regret it like I did.

Great Western Champagne

I've run across these ads for Great Western Champagne from time to time and I always wanted to see who this vintner was.  I used one of their 1935 ads yesterday and this is another from the same year.  All of their ads are great pieces of the deco art form. 

The Veg-All News

Here's a recipe that needs to stay forgotten in history, they only thing that would make it more regrettable is if it was encased in Jello and molded into something ridiculous.   Let's open a can of veg all which looks like a concoction of kitchen scraps from the local restaurant and we'll serve it on a lettuce leaf with some mayonnaise topped with pimento... Yummy, or not. 

1931 Shredded Wheat Ad

I've been following the recommendations of this ad recently on the cold mornings here in North Florida.  If you don't think Florida can get cold then you've never been here in the winter.  I find that if you heat the biscuits in an oven set at 350° (I use my toaster oven) for about 8-10 mins they stay crisper in the hot milk.  It's an easy dish, just set the biscuits in the oven and get your milk warming in a pot on the stove.  The biscuits are done at the same time as the milk starts to steam and you're good to go.  I can't recall ever having tasted the large "original size" biscuits as we more often bought the mini-wheats but I took an immediate liking to the taste.  I like cereal in the morning and I like to stick with the old style cereals, Corn Flakes, Grape Nuts and of course Shredded Wheat.

Living On $900 a Year

Royal Baking Powder Ad 1934

Ok, I know you're reading the title of this post and thinking "Has he lost his mind?"  Well to be honest, I think I lost it years ago but I digress, the title has everything to do with the Ad above from 1934.  In that year, America was still in the grip of a devastating Depression and Americans were looking for more ways to save money.  Manufacturers took advantage of this trend to stress the quality of their products over the competition. 

1930's Meatloaf Recipe

 

I've been holding on to this recipe for quite some time now and for a really odd reason.  I just kept misplacing the handwritten recipe paper.  Yeah I feel like I'm addlebrained at times but you have to understand that I've moved, twice, in the past 2 years (and we're moving again soon) and stuff always gets misplaced when that happens.  In the meantime I cooked this recipe every time I found the recipe card for it and then promptly misplaced it again.  Well I finally found it again and decided to cook it last night for dinner.  Usually I have a side of mashed potatoes and some sort of vegetable with it and my wife loves it.  Try it with some Southern Cucumber Relish and the vinegary sweetness balances out the rich taste of the meatloaf.

The French Sandwich or Monte Cristo

Whilst looking for new ways to use up leftover Thanksgiving turkey I happened upon an old favorite of mine, the Monte Cristo.  This was a sandwich that I used to love ordering in Pargos a restaurant that we frequented when I was younger growing up in Baltimore.  Its been years since I had a Monte Cristo and I was interested to see that it is a not a modern invention as I had previously thought.

This sandwich combination originated in the 1930's and was probably used for the same thing I am using it for, ie to get rid of leftover meats from last nights dinner.  It is usually referred to as the "French Sandwich" and is erroneously attributed to being an American version of the Croque Monsieur a glorified French grilled cheese sandwich.  In actuality it's called the French Sandwich because it essentially a French Toast Sandwich.  This is a great sandwich for lunch or a late breakfast, but will work well any time of the day.

The French Sandwich (Monte Cristo)

For each sandwich you will need:
2 Slices Brioche or Egg Bread
1 Slice Ham
a few pieces of turkey battered flat with a knife
A few slices of cheese (Swiss, Gouda or Gruyere)
1 egg
3T Half and Half
Powdered Sugar
Jam, Cranberry Relish, etc

Build your sandwich with a slice of bread, then cheese, the ham, some cheese, then turkey, finish with cheese and top with the other slice of bread.  Mix Half and Half and egg in bowl well.  Melt some butter in a frying pan on med heat.  Dip sandwich in egg mix then flip and dip other side and fry in pan slowly, turning every so often.  When cheese melts and bread is browned serve on plate.  Dust sandwich with powdered sugar and serve jam on side.  I used some lingonberry jam with mine and it was amazing.

Ad: Hires Root Beer

1931 Hires Root Beer

Does anyone else like Root Beer?  I know I do, along with it's distinguished brother Birch Beer and it's back of the woods cousin Sarsaparilla.  I suppose you could argue that Moxie is a part of the family, although Moxie's main taste is Gentian, the same herb they put into Peychauld's Bitters, used in the Sazerac Cocktail.  But all that is for another time as I'm going to concentrate on the Hires ad above.

To Boil or Not To Boil

Back in the vintage era when they referred to ham it was what we call "Country Ham" or "Virginia Ham" today.  These hams are heavily salted before smoking and are not injected with any flavorants or water to make them juicy.  Sometime in the 30's though Swifts brought about the ham revolution with the more modern process of injecting their hams with flavors and pre-baking them.  It was a great time saver over the older method of cooking a ham which involved soaking and par boiling the ham to remove some of the salt before baking in the oven.  Swifts hams also were juicier than the old country hams because they were not smoked and dry cured.

All this convenience has a price though as the flavorings injected are quite artificial and over the years Americans have developed something of a sweet tooth when it comes to ham so increasingly large amounts of sugar have been added to hams with the sugar eventually being replaced by High Fructose Corn Syrup by some companies.  I remember when I was a kid and ham tasted like ham, a bit salty, maybe a slight bit sweet but not cloyingly so.  Today though everyone seems to want to copy Heavenly Hams and their overpriced sticky sweet monstrosities.

If you hunt around you can still find country ham, usually in slices but if you're lucky you may stumble upon a whole one.  These hams need to be parboiled 5 minutes a pound then let to sit several hours before removing and rinsing.  Score the fat and then cook in a moderate oven for about half an hour before serving.

Penn Maryland Whiskey

It's kind of a whiskey night tonight well... just because.  I suppose it's because I want to celebrate my promotion at work to Asst. Department Manager but not an over the top celebration.  One whiskey I won't be drinking is the one in the ad above.  Penn Maryland whiskey was one of over 20 different rye whiskeys distilled in Baltimore, Maryland before prohibition.  After prohibition the brand returned but was snatched up by National Brands and disappeared altogether sometime in the 1960's when the taste for rye whiskey was being replaced with bourbon and the vodka crowd.

1930's Hard Times Green Beans

The other day I talked about what people ate from day to day during the Great Depression and this is one of the recipes that I have been able to uncover.  I love green beans and they're really a cheap side dish whether you cook them frozen or canned and they are easily grown fresh in a garden (they're quite prolific actually).  Right now we're in the midst of green bean season in Florida so we're getting some great beans out of Boynton Beach so I decided to give this recipe a try during Easter.  I don't think my wife was too fond of them but I made a huge batch and ate them as lunch a number of days until they were gone.  During the Depression this dish would have been a main meal using only a little bacon for the meat but yet turning out quite filling and not too bad nutritionally either.  They benefit from sitting in the fridge for a day to mellow out the flavor a bit but are still good they day they are cooked.

Eggplant Creole

Note: This recipe has been edited 12/18/14 from the original as I finally got it to come together the way the original was supposed to look like when finished.

This recipe is from a Crisco sponsored cookbook printed in the early 1920's.  When I first saw it I expected something spicy, after all it's Creole and Louisiana is known for it's fiery foods but in this case Creole seems to be mean cooked with tomatoes.  I made this recipe the way the original was laid out but immediately saw the need for some changes as the cooking directions are rather vague as vintage recipes are wont to be and it also calls for the boiling of the eggplant which was something of a disaster (We now boil the eggplant, see below).  Keep this in mind when you make it that this is the modified, kitchen tested recipe which is what sets this blog apart from other vintage recipe sites.  This recipe was a side dish in it's original form but by the 1930's the Great Depression had turned it into a main dish.  I ate it with a poached egg on top and it is both a nutritious and filling meal that doesn't cost that much.  This recipe lived on into the 1960's where it appears again in another of my cookbooks returning to it's roots as a side dish.

Mushroom Gravy

It may seem silly to post something as trivial as a mushroom gravy on here given all the more complicated recipes that I have talked about over the years, but you would be surprised how many cooks cannot make a simple sauce without resorting to something in a jar or worse, an envelope.  It's really not that hard and this makes the perfect accompaniment to the Bacon Meat Roll With Olive Stuffing I wrote about the other day.