Few foods are more characteristic of the Virginia / Maryland area than crab. The difficulty in catching them made them a special treat for colonists, but by the early 19th century crabs were often available for purchase at markets.

This recipe for Crab Soup is often credited to the first First Lady, Martha Washington, though it does not appear in any of her cookbooks. Her Booke of Cookery includes a recipe for stewing, but nothing quite like this soup recipe. We do know that Washington had a first edition copy of Hannah Glasse’s popular The Art of Cookery (1747) – which is still in the collection at Mount Vernon. Glasse offers a recipe to “To dress a Crab” which involves stewing the crab meat with white wine, nutmeg, pepper and an egg yolk, but again, the result would not have been much like a soup.

The first references to a “Washington Crab Soup” first appear in the late 19th century. All of them are notably different from one another. But by the 1930s, the crab soup recipe was mostly standardized. I found at least four recipes from the period that are similar in ingredients and preparation. It was around this time that the recipe was added to the White House repertoire. The soup is said to have been a favorite of Franklin Roosevelt and was also served during the Eisenhower administration.

It was common to make crab soup with hard boiled eggs. Fertile female crabs with their roe were highly sought for their flavor and color, but were very expensive. The flecks of yolk in the soup mimicked the presence of roe – a little bit of 19th century cookery deception.

Worcestershire sauce is a latter day addition – Lea and Perrin did not begin selling the sauce until 1838, over thirty years after the Washingtons had died. However, anchovies were often added to crab dishes – particularly in the south during the Antebellum years when the Washington Crab Soup recipes began appearing (anchovy being one of the main ingredients in Worcestershire sauce).

While this soup may not be traceable back to the First President, Washington – who was a fan of simply prepared meals and seafood – would have likely enjoyed it.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Because this is such a simple dish with so few ingredients, it helps to use the best quality available. Use the freshest milk and cream you can get your hands on. If at all possible, also try to get fresh crab. Being a lowly, underpaid graduate student living in the midwest and far from the ocean, I went with canned crab meat. While it wasn’t bad – it would have been markedly better with fresher crab. If you must use canned crab meat, get the lump meat, rather than the flaked white.

This recipe doesn’t take long to make – just a few minutes more than it takes to boil milk. Like any good chef, be sure to have all of your ingredients prepared before hand, including the hard boiled eggs.

Never rapidly boil milk. Heat it on medium to medium low, stirring frequently to prevent a skin from forming.

Don’t let the grated lemon rind or eggs put you off. The lemon flavor is subtle and gives this simple soup a bit more complexity. The eggs become part of the roux and are hardly noticeable with the crab meat – and, as mentioned above, it gives the soup a bit of color.

THE TAKE-AWAY

This is a remarkably simple and tasty soup, perfect for summers when you don’t want to spend the day over a hot stove but still want something a bit substantial. It is rare to have such a dish anymore – today, it would probably be served with creme fraiche and chives. And indeed that would be delicious. But it is also worth making as-is. Indeed, this soup would be ideal as a palate cleanser between courses.

If you wanted to add a bit more body to the soup and still be entirely appropriate to the time period, you could add fried bacon lardons, fresh sweet corn, and/or diced cooked potatoes at the point in the recipe where the crab meat is added to the milk mixture.

This recipe makes about 6 servings of soup as a meal, and probably twice as much if served as part of a multi-course meal. Serve this soup with thick sliced corn bread or oyster crackers.

1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and mashed
grated rind of 1 lemon
salt and pepper
4 cups fresh milk
1/2 pound cooked fresh crab meat or 1 cup canned or frozen lump crab meat
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sherry
Worcestershire sauce

Combine butter and flour in a soup pot. Stir in mashed hard-boiled eggs, grated lemon and salt and pepper to taste. Bring milk almost to a boil in a saucepan. Pour it slowly into the egg mixture, stirring to combine. Add crab meat and heat through gently, for about ten minutes. Stir in cream, and bring soup back to a near boil. Remove from heat and stir in sherry and two dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Serve hot.

Winter has definitely arrived where I live in Minnesota. When I leave work today, the temperature is expected to be -6 with a windchill of -32.

When it is possible, it is best to stay home on days like this – bundled up against the elements with a warm soup or stew.

But the oft-forgotten chowder is also a great winter dish to warm the kitchen and the body. Very popular particularly in New England and the Atlantic coastal states, we tend to think of chowders as a hearty, cream or tomato based soup with chunks of potatoes, meat and vegetables. The main distinguishing factor between a stew and a chowder being gravy versus broth, respectively.

At least, that’s what I thought.

When I decided to dig up an old recipe for chowder, I had very little knowledge of the form. What I discovered is that traditionally, chowders are more like soupy casseroles, and that ‘chowdering’ referred to the process of layering ingredients. One of the first recipes for a chowder, for example, was published as a poem in the Boston Evening Post on September 23, 1751:

First lay some Onions to keep the Pork from burning
Because in Chouder there can be not turning;
Then lay some Pork in slices very thing,
Thus you in Chouder always must begin.
Next lay some Fish cut crossways very nice
Then season well with Pepper, Salt, and Spice;
Parsley, Sweet-Marjoram, Savory, and Thyme,
Then Biscuit next which must be soak’d some Time.
Thus your Foundation laid, you will be able
To raise a Chouder, high as Tower of Babel;
For by repeating o’er the Same again,
You may make a Chouder for a thousand men.
Last a Bottle of Claret, with Water eno; to smother ’em,
You’ll have a Mess which some call Omnium gather ’em.

This kind of layered chowder is rarely seen today, which is a shame. It is immensely satisfying, full of flavor, and relatively inexpensive. Much like the creole jambalaya, fish chowder is one of those one-pot wonders that have the flexibility of being made with whatever fish or shellfish you have on hand.

Chowders are thought to originate in the coastal fishing communities of France, who used to cook the day’s catch in a “chauderie,” a large cast-iron cauldron. Clam and oyster chowders were likely consumed in the 16th and 17th centuries in Colonial America, though the clam chowder we know today is more of a late 19th century innovation.

I ultimately chose Lydia Maria Francis Child’s recipe from her very popular 1830 cookbook The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy for several reasons. The Mark Bittman of her generation, her recipes are flexible in terms of ingredients and variations, and they teach skills as much as they teach a specific recipe. The cookbook went through over 35 printings, before it was eventually allowed to go out of print in 1850 due to Child’s abolitionist work and the growing number of more contemporary cookbooks being published at the time.

One of the many intriguing aspects of Child’s recipe is the absence of milk, and yet, when cooked, the broth is creamy. How is this possible? My guests were certainly unnerved by the idea. The flour from the crackers and the starch in the potatoes break down and thicken the broth. I was skeptical at first, but it works. For those with lactose issues, this could be a real gem.

Any fish will work for this recipe, but Child notes that Cod is particularly effective. Four or five pounds is an awful lot too. Depending on the amount you’re wanting to make, 2 pounds is probably plenty. You’ll find that this method of cooking produces the most moist, flaky fish.

Try to use an interesting bacon for the base, or alternatively, some salt pork and a little oil could be used. This first step helps to grease the pan and prevent burning later, in addition to adding flavor. I really wouldn’t recommend adding salt at any point in the assembling of the chowder – or if so, leave it to just a bit during one layer. Go to town with the pepper and any other seasonings, and know you can always add salt after. I also had a bit of fresh thyme in my fridge and added that to the seasonings.

Child ends the recipe noting that “a sliced lemon adds to flavor. A cup of tomato catsup is very excellent. Some people put in a cup of beer.” Guests and friends of mine have also turned their noses at such suggestions. But think about it – one normally squeezes some fresh lemon over fish. Adding a tomato sauce will be not unlike Manhattan Clam Chowder. And beer and fish go as well together as pork and apples. Be adventurous! And don’t forget there is a great old recipe for a tomato catsup here at the American Table.

Below, I give Child’s recipe and my adaptation of it.

“Fish Chowder.” Lydia Maria Child, The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy. Boston: Carter and Hendee, 1830. p. 61.

My Adaptation:

2 pounds of non-oily fish, sliced
1/2 pound of good bacon, sliced into lardons
2 medium onions, sliced
4 medium potatoes, sliced
saltine crackers
salt and pepper
1 cup of flour
1 sliced lemon, 1 cup of beer, or 1 cup of tomato catsup (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Fry bacon in a large, heavy-bottomed cast-iron or enameled cast-iron pot. When bacon is crisp, remove bacon leaving grease in the pot, and remove the pot from heat. Arrange slices of fish on top of bacon layer. Add a layer each of crackers, onions, and potatoes, and then season with a small amount of salt, and a generous amount of black pepper. Repeat layers – bacon, fish, crackers, onions, potatoes, seasoning – until ingredients are used. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup of flour and enough water that will cover the ingredients in the pot. Pour flour/water mixture into pot. Cover the pot with a heavy lid and place in oven. To prevent moisture from escaping do not remove lid during cooking. If the pot was filled near the top, place a pan underneath to catch any drippings. The chowder is done when the potatoes are tender, around 2 hours.

To cook with lemon, slice thin and remove seeds. Add the lemon in the layer between the fish and the bacon. The lemon flesh will cook through, and those eating the chowder will likely want to avoid eating the remaining rind – which should be easily visible on serving.

To cook with beer or tomato catsup, combine either with the flour/water mixture and pour over ingredients.

]]> http://www.americantable.org/2013/01/recipe-fish-chowder-1830/feed/ 4 1058 http://www.americantable.org/2012/08/recipe-jambalaya-of-fowls-and-rice-1885/ Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:55:46 +0000 http://www.americantable.org/?p=787

Every region and every culture has some variation on the one-pot stew. Born of necessity, what goes into the pot is whatever is readily available on-hand. A few scraps of meat and some vegetables, simmered slowly for several hours and you can feed a crowd relatively inexpensively and make foods stretch.

New England has the chowder. The midwest and upper south have burgoo. The west has a multitude of variations on stews.

The deep south has jambalaya, with it’s unmistakable flavor of Creole culture.

Don’t be fooled by that stuff you get in a box at the grocery store, or that dish on a restaurant menu that costs an absurd $20+ a bowl. Jambalaya is classic Creole family food, and it couldn’t be easier to make.

Today when you come across jambalaya, it’s usually a spicy mixture of rice, celery, peppers, onions, tomatoes, chicken, shrimp or crayfish, and Andouille sausage.

Traditionally though, jambalaya was made with whatever you had available, with the common elements of rice, tomatoes, meat, and seafood.

This recipe comes from the 1885 La Cuisine Creole: A Collection of Culinary Recipes, from Leading Chefs and Noted Creole Housewives, Who Have Made New Orleans Famous for its Cuisine, by Lafcadio Hearn. Hearn came to Louisiana via Greece, Ireland and Cincinnati, Ohio and would become a noted scholar of Japanese and Creole culture. After moving to New Orleans in 1877 as a reporter for the Cincinnati Commercial, he wrote on ghost stories, folklore, languages, Louisiana voodoo, French Opera, and of course, Creole cuisine.

The cookbook is notable because of Hearn’s gathering of source material. This is not the typical recipe book of the time – produced by famous restaurant chefs or the servant cooks of the wealthy classes. Hearn’s offering surveys a variety of methods and styles at a time when Creole culture was continuing to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of modern New Orleans.

This jambalaya is not as spicy as what you’d likely find in a restaurant today, and the absence of seafood and sausage, though it could certainly be added, suggests this recipe comes from a lower or middle-class household where it was essential to make do with what you had. Rice in jambalaya is not only a local crop – the wetlands of Louisiana providing the perfect growing conditions – it helps to inexpensively extend the meal. This jambalaya is immensely satisfying, particularly when served with a sweet corn bread.

Hearn notes that the recipe is likely Indian in origin. It is very likely the local Atakapa tribes had a one-pot dish similar to this. However, the Spanish, French and African influences can’t be mistaken – think of jambalaya as a relative of paella.

My notes are in brackets. I used a ham shank instead of ham slices, and cooked it along with the chicken.

Cut up and stew a fowl [a smaller bird is preferable – 2 or 3 pounds. Water added to the pot to stew the chicken should just cover the meat. After stewing the chicken, remove from pot and pull meat off the bones, returning the meat to the broth. There should be at least two cups of broth in the pot before proceeding. If not, add pre-made stock or water.];… add a cup of raw rice, a slice of ham minced, and pepper and salt; let all cook together until the rice swells and absorbs all the gravy of the stewed chicken, but it must not be allowed to get hard or dry. [Stir regularly to prevent rice from burning at the bottom of the pot.] Serve in a deep dish. Southern children are very fond of this; it is said to be an Indian dish, and very wholesome as well as palatable; it can be made of many things.

Today, Julia Child would have been 100 years old.

Few recipes exemplify the Child’s talents as a teacher, chef, and lover of French cuisine than this recipe for Bouef Bourguignon – the classic French peasant beef stew in red wine with bacon, onions and mushrooms. There are good reasons Child debuted her television program The French Chef with this recipe.

Instructionally, it offers the basic techniques that can also be used for other dishes like Coq au Vin (use chicken instead of beef) and Boeuf Catalan (rice is added to the sauce while cooking).

The sauce created in this recipe is magic, and demonstrates the value of cooking with wine if done correctly. Boeuf Bourguignon also captures what Julia Child was attempting to do with her television program and first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) – at a time when frozen foods had become all the rage and French cuisine was the domain of the wealthy who had servants and ate out at expensive restaurants, this rich stew can easily be made at home with a bit of patience and technique.

The first time I cooked this, it took me quite a bit of time. There’s a lot of chopping involved, and I found myself frequently having to refer back to the recipe not wanting to muck it up. Now a regular dish in my repertoire, it takes very little time at all, and it’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Don’t be put off by the length of the recipe. Remember, she’s teaching skills here, and this isn’t about fast food.

Before launching into the recipe, a few tips that set Child’s Bouef Bourguignon apart from all the other recipes out there for this dish.

• To brown food (meat, mushrooms, onions, etc.), dry the ingredients with a towel and don’t overcrowd the pan. Child was one of the first to offer this incredibly important bit of kitchen wisdom.
• Finding slab or chunk bacon can be a challenge. I actually went to several good markets and asked at the meat counter if they had slab bacon. They inevitably looked at me quizzically. This is what happens when most of the meat comes to us prepackaged… but I digress. That’s the subject for another article. I finally found some at a Polish meat market just north of town and buy large quantities to freeze for various recipes. The slab make better lardons and matches the heartiness of the dish. If you can’t find it, use any interesting unflavored thick-cut bacon (no maple-honeys or black pepper crusted bacons). If you’re keeping kosher, it’s fine to omit the bacon, and indeed, Child left it out of the recipe when she presented it on The French Chef. However, if you’re simply looking to make it healthier, then you might as well find something else. I understand quinoa is nice this season.
• Use an inexpensive young red wine for this. A good house/table red will do nicely.
• Child’s recipe calls for one chopped carrot. I find I like having more carrots than this to add variety to the stew.
• The recipes for the braised onions and mushrooms can stand alone as very tasty side dishes.
• This is the epitome of French comfort food. Make it a day ahead. This is one of those dishes that tastes even better reheated.
• Bon appetit!

6 oz chunk of bacon
3 lbs. stewing beef
1 sliced carrot
1 sliced onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tbsp flour
3 cups of a young, full-bodied red wine (beaujolais or Chianti for example)
2-3 cups beef stock or canned beef bouillon
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 cloves mashed garlic
1/2 tsp thyme
1 bay leaf, crushed
parsley for garnish

For braised onions:
18-24 peeled white pearl onions
1 1/2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tbsp oil
1/2 cup of brown stock
salt and pepper to taste
a medium herb bouquet (4 parsley sprigs, 1/2 bay leaf, 1/4 tsp thyme tied in a cheesecloth)

For braised mushrooms:
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
1/2 lb fresh mushrooms, washed, dried, left whole if small, sliced or quartered if large

Remove rind, and cut bacon into lardons (sticks, 1/4 inch thick and 1 1/2 inches long). Simmer rind and bacon for 10 minutes in 1 1/2 quarts of water. Drain and dry.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Saute the bacon in oil over moderate heat for 2 to 3 minutes to brown lightly. Remove to a side dish with a slotted spoon. Set casserole aside. Reheat until fat is almost smoking before you saute the beef.

Dry the beef in paper towels; it will not brown if it is damp. Saute it, a few pieces at a time, in the hot oil and bacon fat until nicely browned on all sides. Add it to the bacon.

In the same fat, brown the sliced vegetables. Pour out remaining fat.

Return the beef and bacon to the casserole and toss with the salt and peper. Then sprinkle on the flour and toss again to coat the beef lightly with the flour. Set casserole uncovered in middle position of heated oven for 4 minutes. Toss the meat and return to oven for 4 minutes more. (This browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust.) Remove casserole and turn oven down to 325 degrees.

Stir in the wine, and enough stock or bouillon so that the meat is barely covered. Add the tomato paste, garlic, herbs and bacon rind. Bring to simmer on top of the stove. Then cover the casserole and set in lower third of preheated oven. Regulate heat so liquid simmers very slowly for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. The meat is done when a fork pierces it easily.

While the beef is cooking, prepare the onions and mushrooms. Set them aside until needed.

BRAISED ONIONS:

When the butter and oil are bubbling in the skillet, add the onions and saute over moderate heat for about 10 minutes, rolling the onions about so they will brown as evenly as possible. Be careful not to break their skins. You cannot expect to brown them uniformly.

Pour in the liquid, season to taste, and add the herb bouquet. Cover and simmer slowly for 40-50 minutes until the onions are perfectly tender but retain their shape, and the liquid has evaporated. Remove herb bouquet and set aside.

BRAISED MUSHROOMS:

Place the skillet over high heat with the butter and oil. As soon as you see that the butter foam has begun to subside, indicating it is hot enough, add the mushrooms. Toss and shake the pan for 4 to 5 minutes. During their saute the mushrooms will at first absorb the fat. In 2 to 3 minutes the fat will reappear on their surface, and the mushrooms will begin to brown. As soon as they have browned lightly, remove from heat and set aside.

When the meat is tender pour the contents of the casserole into a sieve set over a saucepan. Wash out the casserole and return the beef and bacon to it. Distribute the cooked onions and mushrooms over the meat.

Skim fat off the sauce. Simmer sauce for a minute or two, skimming off additional fat as it rises. You should have about 2 1/2 cups of sauce thick enough to coat a spoon lightly. If too thin, boil it down rapidly. If too thick, mix in a few tablespoons of stock or canned bouillon. Taste carefully for seasoning. Pour the sauce over the meat and vegetables.
(*) Recipe may be completed in advance to this point.

Cover the casserole and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, basting the meat and vegetables with the sauce several times. Serve in its casserole, or arrange the stew on a platter surrounded with potatoes, noodles, or rice, and decorated with parsley.

Senate Bean Soup is one of the many great traditions of the American Congress. Bean soups have likely always appeared on Capitol Hill menus for as long as there has been a Capitol – owing to the simplicity of the recipe matched with the ready availability of ingredients. However, it has been consistently on the menu for over a century.

One story suggests it was Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota who first requested the soup in 1903. Others believe it was Senator Fred Dubois of Idaho around that same time, who requested his bean soup with potatoes. Either or both are possible. The soup served in the Senate today is potato-less, and generally follows the recipe below – which is published by the U.S. Senate.

When I worked as a Congressional Page some years ago, I remember Senate Bean Soup being served in all the cafeterias in the Capitol Hill complex – Senate and House alike. It is basically a simple bean soup recipe, using ham hocks which are inexpensive and readily available in the Virginia/Maryland area. Not living in that area, I was fortunate to find ham shanks – which is the upper part of the shoulder legs, as opposed to hocks which are part of the rear/ham legs.

This is an immensely satisfying soup that even Senators can agree is good for all seasons. I was concerned at first that the soup may be bland – with only a bit of ham supplying any flavor and a bit of braised onion added at the end. But this is one of those moments of magic in the kitchen, where a small handful of simple ingredients combined and cooked properly can transform into something rich and complex.

2 pounds dried navy beans

four quarts hot water

1 1/2 pounds smoked ham hocks

1 onion, chopped

2 tablespoons butter

salt and pepper to taste

Wash the navy beans and run hot water through them until they are slightly whitened [Preferring a very tender bean, I soaked mine in cold water overnight]. Place beans into pot with hot water. Add ham hocks and simmer approximately three hours in a covered pot, stirring occasionally. Remove ham hocks and set aside to cool. Dice meat and return to soup. Lightly brown the onion in butter. Add to soup. Before serving, bring to a boil and season with salt and pepper. Serves 8.