Part 23

SUMMER SACCATASH.--String a quarter of a peck of young green beans, and cut each bean into three pieces, (not more,) and do not split them. Have by you a pan of cold water, and throw the beans into it as you cut them. Have ready over the fire a pot or sauce-pan of boiling water; put in the beans, and boil them hard near twenty minutes. Afterwards take them up, and drain them well through a cullender. Take half a dozen ears of young but full-grown indian corn, (or eight or nine if they are not all large) and cut the grains down from the cob. Mix together the corn and the beans, adding a very small tea-spoonful of salt, and boil them about twenty minutes. Then take up the saccatash, drain it well through a sieve, put it into a deep dish, and while hot mix in a large piece of butter, (at least the size of an egg,) add some pepper, and send it to table. It is generally eaten with salted or smoked meat.

Fresh Lima beans are excellent cooked in this manner, with green corn. They must be boiled for half an hour or more, before they are cooked with the corn.

Dried beans and dried corn will do very well for saccatash, but they must be soaked all night before boiling. The water poured on them for soaking should be hot.

WINTER SACCATASH.--This is made of dried shelled beans and hard corn, soaked over night in separate pans, and boiling water poured over them in the morning, after pouring off the first water. Then boil both together till they are _quite soft_. Drain them dry in a sieve, put them into a deep dish, and mix in a large piece of butter, seasoned with pepper. This is a good accompaniment to corned pork or beef. The meat must be boiled in a separate pot.

CAROLINA WAY OF BOILING RICE.--Pick the rice carefully, and wash it through two or three cold waters till it is quite clean. Then (having drained off all the water through a cullender,) put the rice into a pot of boiling water, with a very little salt, allowing as much as a quart of water to half a pint of rice. Boil it twenty minutes or more. Then pour off the water, draining the rice as dry as possible. Lastly, set it on hot coals with the lid off, that the steam may not condense upon it and render the rice watery. Keep it drying thus for a quarter of an hour. Put it into a deep dish, and loosen and toss it up from the bottom with two forks, one in each hand, so that the grains may appear to stand alone.

TOMATOS.--Tomatos require long cooking; otherwise they will have a raw taste, and be quite too acid. Take fine tomatos that are quite ripe, put them into a pan, and scald them in very hot water. Let them remain for ten minutes, or till you can peel them without scalding your hands. Drain them through a sieve. You may either press out all the seeds, (retaining only the pulp or liquid,) or leave the seeds in, squeezing the tomatos slightly. Put them into a stew-pan, which must on no account be of copper, as the acid of the tomatos will render it poisonous. We knew a lady who died in agonies from eating tomatos cooked in a copper vessel that had the tinning partly worn off. If the tin inside is indispensable, (which it is) why have any copper about it? A vessel of _double_ block tin only, will last as long, and stand the fire as well as if there was copper inside. For all stews, an iron pan, lined with delft (or what is called porcelain or enamel) is excellent. Best of all for stewing tomatos, and many other things, is a _bain marie_, or double kettle, with the water outside, in the outer kettle.

Having nearly filled the stew-pan with the tomatos, (cut up, if they are large) add a little salt and pepper, a piece of fresh butter dredged with flour, and (if approved) a very little chopped onion. If you have ready-boiled onions at hand, take one or two of them and mince it fine. Add to the tomatos some powdered white sugar to lessen the excessive acid. Put but very few bread-crumbs--if too many, they will weaken the taste. Tomatos are an improvement to every kind of plain soups, and may be added, with advantage, after the soup is in the tureen. The cooking of tomatos should be commenced at least three hours before dinner. Put no water with them--their own juice is sufficient.

Many persons like tomatos raw, sliced like cucumbers, and seasoned with vinegar and pepper.

TO KEEP TOMATO PULP.--Having boiled them till entirely dissolved, (adding a little salt and pepper) press and strain them through a sieve, pour the liquor into pint or half-pint bottles, (which must be perfectly clean) and stand the bottles up in a large iron pot or oven, with a layer of straw in the bottom. Fill up the pot with cold water, cork them tightly, and let the water boil round the bottles for five hours. As it boils away, fill up with more hot water. When you take them out, put a spoonful of salad oil at the top of each bottle; seal the bottles with rosin cement. This pulp will be good for tomato purposes till next summer, if kept in a cool dry place. When you open a bottle use it fast, or cork it again immediately.

BROILED TOMATOS.--Take the very largest and ripest tomatos. Wash, but do not scald or peel them. Cut the tomatos _half_ apart on four sides, extract the seeds, and fill each tomato with a nice forcemeat of stuffing, made of bread-crumbs, butter, minced veal or pork, mace, nutmeg, and sweet marjoram. Having stewed this stuffing in a sauce-pan, (moistening it with tomato juice, or gravy) fill all the tomatos with it, opening them out a little like the leaves of a tulip. Butter slightly a heated gridiron, and broil them on it. Or, they may be baked in an oven.

This is a dish for company, either at dinner or breakfast.

BUTTON TOMATOS.--These are the very smallest tomatos, and are excellent for pickling and preserving. If quite ripe, and free from blemishes, they will keep very well in cold vinegar, and are the easiest done of all pickles. There are two sorts of button tomatos, the red and the yellow, both equally good. Wipe every tomato clean and dry, and put them into small glass jars that have a cover. Fill the jars two-thirds with the tomatos, and then fill up to the top with the best cider vinegar. On the top put a table-spoonful of salad oil, and cover them closely. They require nothing to secure their keeping well. But the taste will be improved, by putting in with them, three very small thin muslin bags, each containing mace, nutmeg, and ginger, broken small, but not powdered. Lay one bag of spice at the bottom of the jar; one about the middle, and one near the top. If done without spice, they are the cheapest of all pickles. Do not put them into soups or stews; but eat them cold with meat, like other pickles.

If kegs of these tomatos were carried to sea, and liberally served out to the crew, the scurvy would be less frequent, even on long voyages.

Large whole tomatos would do for this purpose. We wish it were the universal custom in ships to take out with them plenty of tomatos kept in this way in vinegar. Tomato catchup is now much used for the army--so it should be for the navy; not only for the sick, but for the well; to keep them well.

BREAD, PLAIN CAKES, etc.

HINTS ON HEATING OVENS AND BAKING.--Brick ovens are generally heated with dry fagots or small branches, or with light split wood. For baking bread, the oven-wood must be heavier than for pies. A heap of wood should be placed in the centre of the oven on the brick floor, and then set on fire. While the wood is burning, the door of the oven must be left open. When the wood is all burnt down, and reduced to a mass of small red coals, the oven will be very hot. Then shovel out all the coals and sweep the oven floor with a broom, till it is perfectly clean, and entirely free from ashes. Try the heat within. For baking bread, the floor of the oven should look red, and a little flour thrown in should burn brown immediately. If you can hold your hand within the mouth of the oven as long as you can distinctly count twenty, the heat is about right. Pies, puddings, &c., require less heat. When a brick oven is used, a peel, or large broad-bladed long-handled wooden shovel is necessary for putting in the bread, pies, &c., placing them on the broad or shovel-end of the peel, and slipping them off on the oven floor. Then close up the door of the oven, and leave the things to bake. When done, slip the peel beneath them, and hand them out on it.

To bake in an Iron Dutch oven, (a large deep, cast-iron pan, with a handle, a close-fitting lid, and standing on three or four feet,) you must first stand the lid upright before a clear fire to heat the inside; and it will be best if the oven itself is also stood up before the fire for the same purpose. This should be done while the article to be baked is preparing, that it may be put in as soon as it is ready. The oven may be suspended to the crane, and hung over the fire, or it may be set on a bed of hot wood coals in the corner of the hearth. As soon as the loaf or pie is in, put on the lid of the oven, and cover it all over with hot coals, replenishing it with more live coals as the baking proceeds. If you find it too hot on the top, deaden it with ashes. If the oven stands on the hearth, keep up the heat at the bottom, by additional live coals placed beneath it. Whether the oven is hung over the fire, or stood on the hearth, there must always be hot coals all over the lid, the hottest near the edge.

To bake on a griddle, you may either hang it over the fire, or set it over hot coals on the hearth. Most griddles have feet. The fire must be quite clear and bright, and free from smoke, or the cakes will be blackened, and have a disagreeable taste. The griddle must be perfectly clean; and while you are baking, it will require frequent scraping, with a broad knife. If it is well scraped after every cake is taken off, it will not want greasing, as there will be no stickiness. Otherwise, some butter tied up in a clean rag and laid on a saucer, must be kept at hand all the time, to rub over the griddle between the baking of each cake; for butter, lard, or nice beef or veal dripping may be substituted, but it will not be so fine. Never grease with mutton fat, as it will communicate the taste of tallow. A bit of the fat of _fresh_ pork may do, (stuck on a fork,) but salt pork will give the outside of the cakes a disagreeable saltness, and therefore should not be used.

A griddle may be placed in the oven of a hot stove. Some close stoves have a hole in the top with a flat lid or cover, which lid can be used as a griddle.

The tin-reflecting ovens (with shelves for the pies and cakes) that are used for baking in the summer, and that, having a furnace beneath, and a chimney-pipe, can be set out of doors, so that the kitchen may not be kept hot, are very good for things that will bake soon, and that do not require what is called a strong, solid heat. But they are not effective unless the inside is kept _very bright_; otherwise it will not reflect the heat. The tin ovens should (as well as tin roasters) be cleaned thoroughly and scoured bright with sand every time they are used.

The art of baking with anthracite, (or any other mineral coal,) can only be acquired by practice. The above hints on baking, refer exclusively to wood fires.

When a charcoal furnace is used for baking, stewing, or any sort of cooking, it should either be set out in the open air, or the door of the kitchen must be kept open all the time. The vapor of charcoal in a close room is so deleterious as to cause death.

DRIED CORN MEAL YEAST CAKES.--Half a pound of fresh hops, four quarts of water, a pint of wheat or rye flour, half a pint of strong fresh yeast from the brewer or baker, three pints or more of indian meal. Boil half a pound of fresh hops in four quarts of water, till the liquid is reduced to two quarts. Strain it into a pan, and mix in sufficient wheat flour to make a thin batter, adding half a pint of the best yeast you can procure. Leave it to ferment; and when the fermentation is over, stir in sufficient indian meal to make a moderately stiff dough. Cover it, and set in a warm place to rise. When it has become very light, roll it out into a square sheet an inch thick, and cut it into flat cakes, about four inches square. Spread them out separately, on a large dish, and let them dry slowly in a cool place where there is no sun. While drying, turn them five or six times a day. When they are quite dry and hard, put them, separately, into brown paper bags, and keep them in a box closely covered, and in a place not the least damp.

When you want them to use for yeast, dissolve in a little warm water one or more of the cakes, in proportion to the quantity of bread you intend making. When it is quite dissolved, stir it hard, thicken it with a little wheat flour, cover it, and place it near the fire to rise, before you use it. Then mix it with the flour, according to the usual manner of making bread. One yeast cake is enough for two quarts of meal or flour.

This way of preserving yeast is very convenient for keeping through the summer, or for conveying to a distance.

EXCELLENT HOME-MADE YEAST.--Yeast should always be kept in a glass bottle or a stone jug, and never in earthen or metal. Before you make fresh yeast, empty entirely the vessel that has contained the last; and if of stone, scald it twice with boiling water, in which it will be well to mix a little clear lye. Then rince it with cold water, till perfectly clean. If you have not used lye in scalding it, dissolve some potash or pearlash in the rinsing water, to remove any acidity that may linger about the vessel, and may therefore spoil the new yeast. If you keep your yeast in glass bottles, the water must be warm, but not hot; as scalding water may crack them: also, melt some potash or pearlash in this water. The vessel for keeping it being purified, proceed to make your yeast. Have ready, in a kettle over the fire, two quarts of boiling water; put into it a very large handful of hops, (as fine and fresh as possible,) and let the water boil again with the hops in it for twenty minutes more. Sift into a pan three pints of wheat flour. Strain the liquor from the hops into a large bowl, and pour half of it hot over the flour. Stir it well, and press out all the lumps till it is quite smooth. Let the other half of the liquid stand till it is cool, and then pour it gradually to the rest; mixing it well, by stirring as you proceed. Then take half a pint of good strong yeast--brewer's or baker's yeast, if you can get it fresh; if not, you must use some that has been left from your last making, provided it is not the least sour; stir this yeast into the mixture of hop water and flour, put it immediately into your jug or bottles, and cork it loosely till the fermentation is over, (which should be in an hour,) and it will then be fit for use. Afterwards cork it tightly. It will keep better if you put a raisin or two into the bottom of each bottle, before you pour in the fresh yeast. Into a stone jug put half a dozen raisins.

All yeast is better and more powerful for being fresh. It is better to make it frequently, (the trouble being little,) than to risk its becoming sour by endeavoring to keep it too long. When sour it becomes weak and watery, and tastes and smells disagreeably, and will never make light bread; besides, being very unwholesome. The acidity may be somewhat corrected by stirring in some dissolved pearlash, saleratus, or soda, immediately before the yeast is used; but it is better to have it good and fresh, without the necessity of any corrective. Yeast should always be kept in a cool place.

Those who live in towns where there are breweries have no occasion to make their own yeast during the brewing season, and in summer they can every day supply themselves with fresh yeast from the baker's. It is only in country places where there are neither brewers or bakers that it is expedient to make it at home. For home-made yeast, we know the above receipt to be excellent.

Sweet cakes, buns, rusks, &c., require stronger and fresher yeast than bread; the sugar will otherwise retard their rising.

INDIAN BREAD OR PONE.--Four quarts of indian meal sifted, a large half pint of wheat flour, a table-spoonful of salt, half a pint of strong fresh yeast, a quart of warm water. Sift into a large deep pan the indian meal and the wheat flour, mixing them well. Make a hole in the centre. The water must be warm, but not hot. Mix it with the yeast, and pour them into the hole in the midst of the meal. Take a spoon, and with it mix into the liquid enough of the surrounding meal to make a thin batter, which you must stir till it is quite smooth, and free from lumps. Then strew a handful of wheat flour over the surface, scattering it thinly, so as to cover the whole. Warm a clean cloth, and lay it folded over the top of the pan. Then set it in a warm place to rise, nearer the fire in winter than in summer. When it is quite light, and has risen so that the flour on the surface is cracked, strew on the salt, and begin to form the whole mass into a dough; commencing round the hole that contains the batter, and adding, gradually, sufficient lukewarm water (which you must have ready for the purpose,) to mix it of the proper consistence. When the whole is completely mixed, and the batter in the centre is thoroughly incorporated with the dough, knead it hard for at least half an hour. Then, having formed the dough into a round lump in the middle of the pan, strew a little more flour thinly over it. Cover it, and set it again in a warm place for half an hour. Then flour your pasteboard, divide the dough equally, and make it into two loaves. Have the oven ready. Put in the loaves directly, and bake them about two hours or more. Indian meal requires always more baking than wheat. When you take them out, it is well to wrap each loaf in a clean, coarse towel, well sprinkled with cold water, and rolled up damp till the bread is baked. Having thus wrapped up the loaves, stand them on end to cool slowly. The damp cloths will prevent the crust from hardening too much while the loaves are cooling.

All indian bread, and every sort of indian cake, is best when quite fresh.

Excellent bread may be made of equal proportions of wheat, rye flour, and indian corn; or of three parts wheat and one part indian. All bread should be kept closely secluded from the air, wrapped in cloths, and put away in boxes or baskets with tightly-fitting lids.

Should you find the dough sour, (either from the heat of the weather, or from standing too long,) you may recover it, by dissolving in a little lukewarm water a tea-spoonful of pearlash, saleratus, or soda. Sprinkle this water all over the dough. Then knead it in, so that it may be dispersed throughout. Then put it into the oven as soon as possible; first tasting the dough, to discover if the sourness is entirely removed. If not, mix in a little more pearlash, and then taste it again. Take care not to put in too much of any of these alkaline substances, lest they communicate a disagreeable, soapy taste to the bread.

When you buy corn meal, it will keep better if the whole is sifted as soon as you get it. Avoid buying much at a time, unless you can keep it in a very cool place. When sour, it is unfit to eat. Common indian meal is much the best for use.

INDIAN RYE BREAD.--Two quarts of indian meal, two quarts of rye meal, three pints of milk or water, two tea-spoonfuls of salt, half a pint of strong fresh yeast. Having sifted the rye and indian meal in a large pan, mix them well together, adding the salt. Boil the milk or water in a sauce-pan, and when scalding hot pour it on the meal, and stir the whole very hard. If too stiff, add a little more warm water. Let it stand till it becomes only of a lukewarm heat, and then stir in the yeast. Knead the mixture into a stiff dough, and knead it long and hard for at least half an hour. Then cover the pan with a thick cloth that has been previously warmed, and set it near the fire to rise. When the dough is quite light, and cracked all over the top, take it out of the pan; divide the mass in half, make it into two loaves, knead each loaf well for ten minutes or more, and then cover and set them again near the fire for about half an hour. By this time have the oven ready, put in the loaves directly, and bake them at least an hour and a half. This bread is considered very wholesome.

Should you find the dough sour, you may rectify it by kneading in a tea-spoonful of soda or pearlash, dissolved in a little warm water.

INDIAN WHEAT BREAD.--This is made in the above manner, substituting wheat for rye flour.

In any sort of home-made bread, (either white or brown) a handful or more of indian meal will be found an improvement, rendering it moist and sweet.

BOSTON RYE AND INDIAN BREAD.--Two quarts of indian meal, two quarts of rye meal, half a pint of strong fresh yeast, half a pint of West India molasses, a small table-spoonful of salt. Sift the rye and indian meal into a large pan or wooden bowl; and mix them well together, adding a little salt. Have ready half a pint of water, warm but not hot. Mix with it the molasses, and then stir into it the yeast. Make a hole in the middle of the pan of meal, pour in the liquid, and then with a spoon work into it a portion of the flour that surrounds the hole, till the liquid in the centre becomes a thick batter. Sprinkle the top with rye meal, lay a thick cloth over the pan, and set it in a warm place to rise. In three or four hours it should be light enough to appear cracked all over the surface. Then pour into the middle (by degrees) about a pint of warm water, (it must not be hot,) and as you pour mix it well all through the dough, till the whole becomes a round mass. Sprinkle some rye flour on the dough, and having floured your hands, knead it long and hard, (at least half an hour, and after it ceases to stick to your hands,) turning it over as you proceed. Then sprinkle the dough again with flour, cover it, and again set it in a warm place to rise. Have the oven ready, and of the proper heat, so that the bread may be put in as soon as it has completely risen the second time. When perfectly light, the dough will stand high, and the surface will be cracked all over. This quantity will be sufficient for a common-sized loaf. Set it directly into the oven, and bake it about two hours. When bread has done rising, it will fall again if not put into the oven. As soon as it is done, wrap it immediately in a clean coarse towel wet with cold water, and stand it up on end till it is cool.

This is a palatable, cheap, and wholesome bread. It may be baked in a deep tin or iron pan.

If the dough should have stood so long as to become sour, (which it will, if mixed over night,) restore it by kneading in a small tea-spoonful of pearlash or saleratus melted in a little warm water.

EGG PONE.--Three eggs, a quart of indian meal, a large table-spoonful of fresh butter, a small tea-spoonful of salt, a half pint (or more) of milk. Beat the eggs very light, and mix them with the milk. Then stir in, gradually, the indian meal, adding the salt and butter. It must not be a batter, but a soft dough, just thick enough to be stirred well with a spoon. If too thin, add more indian meal; if too stiff, thin it with a little more milk. Beat or stir it _long and hard_. Butter a tin or iron pan. Put the mixture into it, and set the pan immediately into an oven, which must be moderately hot at first, and the heat increased afterward. A Dutch oven is best for this purpose. It should bake an hour and a half or two hours, in proportion to its thickness. Send it to table hot, and cut into slices. Eat it with butter, or molasses.