On Books & Cooking
I’ve been cooking candy (one good thing about this drought – the good atmospheric conditions for candy and bread making). And that leads to thinking about recommendations for cooking and reading. The cooking recommendation is grounded in my reading of PROVENCE, 1970 a delightful book; essentially a tribute to the food writer M.F.K. Fisher by her grand-nephew Luke Barr. The book was a gift from my god-daughter Catherine Keefe, a frequent visitor here in her youth, and had also been recommended by my friend Scott Harvey.
The passage which prompts me submitting a recipe: Barr has written of the group of friends: Mary Frances Fisher, Julia and Paul Child, Richard Olney, James Beard, Simone Beck, Judith and Evan Jones, and others. The friends purchase or rent homes in Provence and through happenstance a large number of these authors and food critics convene in Provence in the fall of 1970. Barr credits the convocation as leading to a freewheeling, modern style of cooking which influences our foodways in America to this day. Barr interviews Judith Jones, a survivor of the group who emphasized “the sheer joy of home cooking.”
“It is not about showing off, and never was. There is love and care that is expressed in cooking for someone else. ” Barr goes back to Provence in 2010 and rents the home formerly owned by Paul and Julia Child. He reports: “As I cooked in the kitchen, I could sense their presence, all of them – Julia at the stove; Paul opening wine; Beard, M.F., Beck, Jones and Olney gathered around, offering advice and opinions and judgments.
They spoke to me through their books and recipes, in the same way that my mother’s voice accompanies me in the kitchen. It was my mother, who died a few years ago, who taught me how to cook. And when I make something she made for me, or with me, I feel her presence, - not in any literal or even ghostly way, but in the form of an atmospheric shift, an emotional warmth. It is striking how cooking binds us to the past, and to the people we love, even when they’re gone. ”
I offer one of our heritage recipes. Betty Lawler (wife of L.D. and mother of my friend Harry) made a tin of pink peanut patties for me every Christmas for at least 30 years. I’m prompted to write this because just last night I chanced on her obituary and noted that I was a pall bearer in 2006 and so I’ve not had her patties since Christmas 2005. But I made them for Harry on his birthday this year, less than two months before he would join her in death.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I haven’t had to wait until Christmas over the years to eat this candy.
Aunt Virgie made them often and for no particular occasion (we members of the Hughes family like sweets, period). And Jean Barker Cannaday made them frequently. I had Virgie’s and Betty’s recipes (both essentially the same) and then the identical recipe credited to Jean Barker Cannaday appears in Bettie Clyde Mattinson’s Mt. Vernon cookbook and thus I report of a legacy even though all these cooks are now gone. Let’s preserve the tradition by making, sharing and enjoying this regional candy: Creamy Pink Peanut Patties 3 C sugar 1 C karo ½ C Pet (evaporated) milk Bring to a boil. Cook at hard rolling boil for 5-6 minutes. Remove from heat; add 4 C roasted peanuts, 1 stick butter, and 5 drops of red food color. Cool for 5 to 10 minutes; then beat until candy loses its gloss. Drop spoonsful onto wax paper for patties (working quickly). Or pour into a buttered 9X9 inch pan, cool and cut in pieces.
Aunt Virgie used Planter’s lightly salted roasted peanuts (and I recommend the same). Other recipes call for raw peanuts and many of you are familiar with a variation which uses raw peanuts and water instead of the milk for a candy more like a praline. After several tries, I can report that it’s surely easier to pour the hot candy into a buttered pan and then cut into squares.
How To Make Plum Pudding
Take the foot of a kine
And chop very fine
And when 'tis well ground
Add of currants a pound;
Eight ounces of bread
Through a cullinder shred,
Six ounces of suet -
A nutmeg add to it;
Eight eggs beaten thin
To have you put in
To this add some salt
Twill be without fault;
With sugar one handfull
'Twill all make a panfull.
Three hours you must boil it One more wouldn't spoil it When dished on the table You may add if you're able Some butter and wine And you'll say 'twill outshine All the puddings in England Whenever you dine. Christmas 1847
From the "receipt" Book of Jane Freestone, 1843-57, and printed in the Cambridge Chronicle.
