Murphy's Menu
Regina Murphy
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Carolyn Boor Hall has written a cookbook and — thanks to her — I just happened to get a copy of it.
It’s a wonderful collection of Kansas recipes, folklore and family stories.
Hall grew up in Olmitz, which is just northeast of Great Bend. The granddaughter of German immigrants, her grandfather Schreiber started the homestead in a sod house and later built a permanent home of hand-quarried limestone.
Everyone in this large family worked the farm and learned a self-sufficiency and work ethic in the grand manner of traditional American family farming. This cookbook includes great recipes such as Sunflower Oatmeal Bread, Maple Glazed Carrots, Beet Wine, Chokecherry Jelly and — of course — Bierocks.
“It’s a tribute to the small farms and the people who worked them in the 50s and 60s.” Hall said. “I’ve written 35 stories full of anecdotes and love, mostly about my experiences growing up on the farm and rural life, and a few about the effect it had on my life after that. The book also contains over 100 recipes that follow the stories. It’s a fun, nostalgic look back at simpler times on the now vanishing family farm.”
Hall’s book lives up to its subtitle: “Living the Golden Rural.” Alongside the recipes are stories of making sausage from hoof to cook, chasing down escaped cows in the middle of the night, flour sack sewing, experiencing the state line in Kansas City (including a close encounter with stars Tab Hunter and Gretchen Wilder) and a maiden trip to far away Boston.
As an example, Hall explains the term roughneck: “Roughneck is slang for an oil field worker. They worked on a derrick, a tall tower used to support the drilling apparatus. A lot of farmers in Kansas and Oklahoma took jobs as roughnecks when the farm economy didn’t pay enough to cover the bills. Their commute took almost two hours each way. They’d work the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift to leave their mornings free to do their fieldwork.”
Hall’s family kept a root cellar lined with limestone and covered with sod. She said that in summer it was still cool enough in there to chill a watermelon. She discusses other facets of farm life, such as placing extra silage in a trench to ferment and provide winter fodder for cattle or the unfortunate results of foregoing Grandma’s sun bonnet in favor of a tan.
The recipes are a lot of fun, and practical.
Hall writes “Try this upgrade on old fashioned dill pickles, sweet with a kick. They’re barbecued ribs’ new best friends!”
SWEET & SASSY DILL SPEARS
1 gallon whole dill pickles
8 cups sugar (4 pounds)
6 ounces Louisiana Hot Sauce
Drain juice from pickles and reserve, Slice pickles into spears. Repack spears into a gallon jar. Add sugar and hot sauce. Top off the jar with the reserved brine. Screw lid on tightly. Store in refrigerator. Turn jar upside down every other day for 4 days. (Hall stands it in a pan when it’s upside down to guard against drips).
Once you’ve eaten all the pickles, Hall says don’t throw out the brine! Add a dozen hard boiled eggs and let them marinate for at least 4 days. The liquid needs to cover the eggs by one inch or more. She also has a recipe from her brother Johnny, who saves the juice from a jar of store-bought hot sausages for that same purpose. Johnny calls these marinated boiled eggs his “Hot Mamas”!
Hall relates a wonderful story of how the family made sauerkraut. If you didn’t make sauerkraut for the year, then you didn’t HAVE sauerkraut and that was all there was to it. The process involved shredding the heads of cabbage on an oversized, razor sharp wooden mandolin.
The kraut crocks were in a concrete block basement, which could only be reached by ladder. After forming a family bucket brigade to get the cabbage down to the crocks, Hall’s dad would layer kraut with handfuls of pickling salt.
“My brother and I, the youngest and smallest shoe size in the family, sat on the side of the crocks while a big sister rolled up our jeans and scoured our feet. We swung our feet into the cool cabbage and stomped the salt into the shredding until our toes squished in brine.”
Hall’s mom would weight down the final product with a plate and a gallon jug of water topped by a clean white tea towel. She monitored it daily, and once the kraut was ready she canned it. Hall’s grandmother would make the following dish with bacon grease, but Hall has modified it for margarine. Either way, it’s delicious with some fat sausages on the side.
FRIED SAUERKRAUT
1/2 cup onion, chopped fine
2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
2 Tbsp. flour
1 can sauerkraut, drained, reserve liquid
1 tsp. caraway seed
In skillet, sauté onion in butter over medium heat. Stir in flour until well blended and slightly browned. Add reserved liquid from sauerkraut. continue stirring until thickened and bubbly. (If necessary, add small amount of water). Cook and stir 1 to 2 minutes more. Blend in sauerkraut and caraway seed. Cook and stir until heated through. Serve hot.
There’s a lovely recipe for Jager schnitzel, which I had never heard of. In fact Hall describes three schnitzels: Weiner, which is the best known and served with fresh lemon slices; Jager or Hunter, which comes with a sauce of mushrooms and onions; and Schnitzel a la Holstein in which a fried egg is served on top.
Hall writes about all the multiple sources of food available to a family of the prairie. Fish — especially crappie — brought variety to the beef/pork/chicken milieu. She shares a hilarious story about noodling for catfish in Blood Creek.
This is a German baked fish dish, quite different from any southern crappie I’ve partaken of. Hall says to serve this with her potato pancakes and stewed red cabbage.
BAYRISCHER STYLE CRAPPIE
3 lbs. crappie filets
1/3 cup butter or margarine
3/4 cup onions chopped
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp. thyme
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line greased baking pan with onions, sprinkle with garlic and thyme. Add bay leaf.
Season crappie with salt and pepper. Dot with butter. Place on top onion mixture and cover. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Baste twice. Reserve sauce from baking pan to serve with fish. Garnish with parsley and lemon wedges.
Lest I reveal all of Hall’s delightful recipes, I had better stop with this one. As she says: “A surprising chocolate toffee confection made with saltine crackers. Fast, easy and so delicious you may want to give it as gifts. Makes 3 dozen pieces.”
IMPOSSIBLE TOFFEE CRACKER CANDY
40 saltine crackers (1 sleeve)
1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (12-ounce bag)
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a greased jelly roll pan (10 1/2 x 15 1/2) with saltines. Combine sugar and butter. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil for 4 minutes. Pour mixture over saltines. Spread to cover.
Bake 5 minutes. Remove from oven and scatter chocolate chips on top. Return to oven for 1-2 minutes or until or until chocolate begins to melt. Remove from oven. Spread chocolate evenly over pan. Sprinkle with nuts. Refrigerate until hardened. Break into pieces to serve.
There you go! A delightful book from Carolyn Hall, useful and entertaining. Go get one at Town Crier.
Next week we’ll talk about Valentine’s Dates, and then it will be time for Mardi Gras! Do you have a great Louisiana recipe to share? Send one to me at 517 Merchant St., or murphysmenu@yahoo.com. Let’s get cooking!