Pickled Fish

Know you all had a great trip to Virginia. How many cookbooks did you buy, and how many slips and seeds did you “liberate”?

While you were checking out the colonial kitchens, did you keep up with the news? Nicole Ritchie is off to jail on DUI, Britney Spears had a brawl with her mother, and Lindsay Lohan got picked up on DUI and possession of cocaine two days after leaving rehab. Says something about their rehabilitation program to have her back on alcohol and drugs two days after leaving the place. And Paris Hilton said now that she is 26, she is “getting her life back together” and launching a line of designer clothes. I hadn’t noticed that she ever wore many clothes.

Perhaps we should send your Cornmeal Mush recipe to the L.A. Jail that houses these delinquent females. I am sure none of them ever ate anything like it.

Better yet, sentence the spoiled darlings to a few weeks learning how to cook like the early settlers did. Can’t you just see Paris, Nicole, Lindsay, and Britney all dressed up in the quaint Colonial Williamsburg costumes, demonstrating hearth cooking for the visitors? I would pay just to see them trying to catch a chicken and wring its neck, and then plucking out the feathers and cleaning it before starting to cook it. It would be a lot like Paris and Nicole’s TV show, only not rehearsed and staged.

You were mentioning the fish diet at Jamestown yesterday, and I was looking through some of my colonial Virginia cookbooks when I came across this recipe for Pickled Fish. I have never tried it, but probably the early colonists used something like it. I will bet the earliest recipes were only vinegar, water, and salt. Those other spices would not have been available to many families.

Pickled Fish:

1 pint vinegar
1 pint water
Salt to taste
20 peppercorns
20 allspice
5 bay leaves
5 sliced onions
4 slices lemons

Put the vinegar, water, salt, peppercorns, allspice, bay leaves and 4 slices of onion in a large stockpot. Boil for 30 minutes. Add the lemon slices and remove them after 5 minutes. Simmer the fish in this liquid until you can pull out a fin. Cook only a few small fish or fillets of fish at a time.

Pack the fish in a stone crock with one or more slices of raw onions between the layers. Pour over the hot liquid when all fish are cooked.

Cover and keep in a cool place. After a few days the liquid will form a jelly around the fish. Will keep for several weeks.

This is enough liquid for a half gallon of fish.

A Paris Hilton Cake for Her Jail House Tea

Max, you have missed your calling in life: Shrink to the Stars. First, you diagnose Paris without even talking to her, and then you come up with a “cure” like Paris “rehabilitating her fellow criminals” by teaching them the proper way to conduct a High Tea.

Flaw with your plan, dear. It assumes that Paris herself knows how to lay out a proper Tea. If she did not graduate high school, and she goes around wearing little in the way of clothes, it is unlikely that she bothered to learn how to Preside at Tea. Can’t you imagine Paris, Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, all in dresses and white gloves, sitting around Paris’ jail cell sipping tea that Paris is pouring from her silver tea service? The conversation? Certainly not of attending the Flower Show next week!

Perfect for that crew is Wild Turkey Bourbon Chocolate Cake.

True, the alcohol disappears when it is cooked, but there is nothing to keep one from sprinkling a little extra over the cake after it cools. If you are a Paris Hilton type, you know that you can’t trust even a well-known brand like Wild Turkey, so you will need to test the bottle before using it. It often takes several drinks to determine if the proof is what the distillery says it is.

For a High Tea, presentation is everything. This cake should be sitting on a tall cut glass cake plate and cut with a silver cake knife. The pieces are supposed to be quite small, although jailhouse gals probably would demand huge pieces, and topped with fresh raspberries.

Erma’s Egg Tip: While cookbooks sometimes remind the cook to have eggs at room temperature before beating, most of us forget to take the eggs out of the fridge long before we begin to bake. So, when you forget, simply place the eggs in a large bowl and run hot water straight out of the tap over them for a few minutes. By the time you have the rest of the ingredients ready to mix, the eggs should be at room temperature.

Not only do room temp eggs whip up much higher, they separate much easier. You don’t believe me? Try separating and beating a cold egg, and then compare it with a room temp egg. You won’t believe the difference.

Wild Turkey Bourbon Chocolate Cake:

2 tablespoons butter
6 ounces chocolate
pinch of salt
8 eggs, separated
3/4 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 cups pecans ground in a nut grater
2 tablespoons Wild Turkey Bourbon
pinch of cream of tartar

Butter and flour a 10-inch cake pan, and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a double broiler, place the butter, chocolate and salt in the bowl and stir until the chocolate melts.

With a stand mixer beat the egg yolks and 3/4 cup of sugar until the mixture is a pale gold color. Stir in the slightly cooled chocolate mixture, the pecans, and the bourbon.

In your large mixer bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Add the 2 tablespoons of sugar and continue beating until the whites are stiff, but not dry.

Fold in with a spatula about a third of the egg whites to lighten the batter. Then fold in the remaining whites until the batter is smooth. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 55 minutes. Test the center with a skewer until the skewer comes out clean. Set cake pan on a cooling rack.

After the cake has cooled, unmold the cake and store in a covered cake storage container.

Serve this cake plain with fresh fruit such as peaches, raspberries, or strawberries, or dust with confectioner’s sugar. Or pour over some white chocolate or raspberry syrup. And don’t forget to sprinkle on a bit of extra bourbon.

Paris Can Have Her Beer and Make Bread Too

In the old days, prisoners were put on diets of bread and water, something that I think is too good for Miss Moneybags. Then I remembered a bread that is perfect for Paris Hilton. We used to fix it decades ago back in California because it is nearly foolproof, and heaven knows I needed foolproof recipes back then. With only four ingredients, no kneading, and no yeast to proof and rise, how much easier can a loaf of bread be?

The first time I had this bread, it was made by a Santa Barbara Junior League member who was as lacking in culinary skills as I was. She was creating a reputation as a great cook because she “bakes her own bread.”

Why, even Paris and her friends, who do not strike me as the kind to spend too much time in a kitchen baking goodies, could make this bread. Only in their case, the recipe should be altered to begin as, “Take a six pack of beer out of the refrigerator. Drink 5 of the beers while you hunt down the loaf pan and find the ingredients for the bread. Be sure and save ONE of the beers for the bread. If you forget and drink all six in the pack, you have to start over with a new six pack. By this time, you won’t want to try and turn on an oven anyway.”

No-Knead-To-Rise Beer Bread:

2 cups self-rising flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 can beer (12-14 oz)
1 stick of butter, melted

Place the flour, sugar and beer in a mixing bowl and stir with a spoon for about 2 minutes. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove loaf from the oven and pour the melted butter over the bread. Return the bread to the oven and bake for about 30 minutes longer. If the top is browning too fast, place an aluminum foil tent over the bread the final 15 minutes of baking.

This bread is best eaten warm with some cheese and a tall German Pilsner. You are SUPPOSED to save the remaining 5 beers in the six-pack to serve to your friends with the bread. Of course, if you are Paris, or Nicole Ritchie, or Lindsay Lohan, or even Mel Gibson, you will probably use the alternative recipe. The alternative recipe is called “No Need To Rise Off The Floor” as that is what happens if you follow it. Like the pun?

Strawberry Delight

Erma, do you have ANY recipes that are not alcohol laden? I remember you telling me about your teetottling grandmothers and great aunts who believed that No lady would ever be caught drinking, yet nearly all their recipes seem to start with, “Go to the liquor cabinet and pick up several bottles of ___.”

Let’s face it, Erma, if your family’s recipes are any indication of the alcohol consumption of the female population of the Old South, they didn’t have to “drink.” The desserts alone would have brought pink to their cheeks.

Erma, if Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie and the other Hollywood spoiled brats are going to serve time for multiple DUI’s, not even the Celebrity Jail is going to put your Strawberries Romanoff on the menu, but I’ll bet they all would love it. On the other hand, this “Hot weather refresher” is elegant enough for the picky celebs, AND is not packed with alcohol.

Strawberry Delight:

1 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup pecans
1/2 cup butter
2 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3 cups fresh strawberries
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup heave cream

Melt the butter in a small saute pan. Then mix in the flour, brown sugar, and pecans. Spread mixture in a shallow baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Cool and then with a heavy rolling pin, roll out into crumbs.

Sprinkle about 2/3’s of the crumbs into a pretty 13 x 9 inch dish with a top.

In a heavy duty mixer, such as the KitchenAid Artisan Mixer, beat the egg whites, sugar, strawberries and lemon juice on high speed until stiff peaks form. Change or clean the beaters, and whip the heavy cream in another chilled bowl.

Fold the whipped cream into the strawberry mixture, and then spread dover the crumbs. Sprinkle the remaining crumbs over the top. Place the lid on the dish and freeze for at least 6 hours. This makes about 12 servings when cut into small squares.

In a crunch, you can make this with with thawed, frozen strawberries (unsweetened), or 3 cups of fresh peaches, or thawed, frozen peach slices (unsweetened).