food, glorious food

This is week three of the "I Remember Laura" blog-a-thon hosted by Miss Sandy at Quill Cottage. The topic is family recipes handed down from generation to generation.

I never knew any of my father's family, and according to my mother (whose family had a cook when she was growing up), she wasn't allowed in the kitchen except on rare occasions. She was allowed to cut up some ingredients for potato salad as an adult, that's all! And maybe because of this, my mother never liked to cook and never liked for us to "make messes" in the kitchen, either.

The two family recipes I have from my grandmother were passed along when I was a child; they're for Brunswick stew (only a list of ingredients) and sour cream pound cake; click on the link to see the recipe in my grandmother's handwriting (she died in 1966). I know my mother and uncle longed to know how to make Ham Pie, but they never could figure it out, and they never saw it made or asked how it was made. All they remembered was that it contained ground country ham, fresh corn, and fresh tomatoes. At age 86, my mother says she can still remember the exact taste!

I do remember my grandmother's Brunswick Stew, a southern staple. When we visited, we would wake up to the smells of pork and chicken and onions. Everything was ground up using an old-fashioned hand-crank grinder and it simmered on the stove all morning. My mother would ask if it was "try-able" yet, and I remember tasting it from little blue bowls, the onions not quite done yet. I do make Brunswick Stew at least a couple of times a year.

One of my favorite "Little House" foods has always been Vanity Cakes (see On the Banks of Plum Creek, Chapter 23, "Country Party"). Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a letter to her Aunt Martha Quiner Carpenter (Ma's sister) around 1925, asking her for the recipe, if she knew it. A portion of Aunt Martha's reply to LIW is below:

I don't fry, and I've only had vanity cakes once when a friend made them one year at Rocky Ridge Day in Mansfield. I do make popovers.

My father loved to cook (he died in 1988), and one of the things he often made for breakfast after he retired reminds me a bit of vanity cakes in taste. It's called Golden Lamb's Pancake, which I suspect was a recipe he copied out of an Early American Life magazine, which he was always trying recipes from. The Golden Lamb is Ohio's oldest inn, and the recipe may be one of theirs, although I don't know for sure.

Unlike fried vanity cakes, this pancake contains a little milk in addition to the eggs and flour. Poured into a piping hot iron skillet and placed in a hot oven, it rises in air-filled puffs that will remain crispy if you don't add the lime juice at the end (I almost never do, and I rarely add the brandy). It's a pretty breakfast or dessert pancake, and a really easy batter to prepare. Serve with fruit or maple syrup; you can pull pieces off or slice into wedges. I made the pancake in the photo while I was writing this blog entry!

[Note: I've had several comments that my pancake is exactly like a Dutch Baby - or German pancake, which I'd never heard of. It is! Thanks!]
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:50 PM