Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines

FROM MAMA’S KITCHEN WITH LOVE

by 
                            Louise Dubrule

My family tells me that I am obsessed with food. I dream about food, and in my dreams I’m always faced with feeding a large group unexpectedly and I spend my time trying to combine what I have so I can prepare a decent meal. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why this is so, for I can’t remember ever going hungry. Our meals might not have been epicurean while I was growing up, but Mama outdid herself in the kitchen even when money was tight. She set a good table…and a good example.

If bread is the staff (and stuff) of life, I learned at the elbow of the master. Mama didn’t measure except by eye and feel, and the ingredients became dough that she pummeled and kneaded until it was smooth. The loaves rose, covered with kitchen towels, until they were ready for the oven. They were baked to perfection when they sounded like a hollow door when rapped with knuckles, and when the loaves were tipped out of the pans, the tops were greased with butter to ensure a tender crust. Once in a while, the dough was used for dinner rolls, but that was just for company. Today I make rolls for everyday and the loaves are for when the children and grandchildren come home so they can have French toast with real Vermont maple syrup, or big slices from the toaster to slather with jam. Food for the Gods!

A great many of Mama’s meals depended on the garden that Papa tended carefully after his days at the furniture factory. The cellar shelves were full of jars that gleamed like jewels in the light that came into the little window. Even in the dead of winter, we enjoyed wax beans, green beans, carrots (alone and mixed with peas), corn, beets, and tomatoes. Other jars held pears, peaches, apples, and berries that had been picked or bought cheaply during the season, as well as jam and jelly. Mama made pickles, too. The root cellar was behind a door, away from the heat of the furnace, and it held the potatoes that would last all winter, God willing. There were also the big squash that required a hacksaw to open, as well as turnips, onions, and parsnips.

Potatoes were as important to us as to the Irish. The big wood-burning stove was hot all the time anyway, so baked potatoes were an easy choice. No electric oven or microwave produces the same crispy skins that were a joy unto themselves after the fluffy white innards were gone. Boiled potatoes were cooked in excess so we could have some leftover to fry up with onions another time. Sometimes the potatoes were cooked with the roast, and they picked up the golden color and flavor of the meat. Papa’s favorites were creamed potatoes, the way his mother had made, with yellow “eyes” of butter and bits of onions floating in the thickened milk. Mashed potatoes were reserved for the big Sunday dinner or for company, and scalloped potatoes were the casserole of choice for the Church potluck suppers or to take to a home where there was a death in the family. French fries? We had these only from Vic Bassett’s stand outside the theater, served in a paper cone, sprinkled with white vinegar.

Vegetables were the mainstay of our noon meal for days on end when the garden began to produce in the early summer. In the cool of the morning, Mama went out and picked little carrots, wax beans, beets, onions, and baby potatoes. These were cleaned carefully and set to simmer with a bit of salt pork or ham so that by the time Papa came home at noon, we had a heaping plateful to eat with bread and butter. There was a good-hearted contest among the neighbors as to whose garden would yield the first ear of corn. Papa often won, and his ‘sugar and gold’ variety was the best and sweetest. He didn’t pick any until you had the water boiling and waiting.

Besides the vegetables, Papa’s contribution to the summer menu was fish. He knew the best places, hidden from view and often posted “no trespassing,” but he came home with his creel full of rainbow-hued trout, nestled in a bed of ferns. They were cleaned, rolled in flour and fried with real butter until the skins were crispy and pulling away from the pink flesh. Once in a while Daddy brought home a variety of catfish commonly called bullpout and he’d warn me about whiskers which he said could inflict a sting, but actually it was the dorsal fin that caused the sting. These fish had to be skinned before cooking. Other times the catch was perch which he scaled with a knife, sending the sparkling scales flying like so many sequins. Mama made him do this on the back porch.

Mama made pies for the snack bar, the hotel, and a few private customers. I woke every morning to the aroma, and by the time I came down for breakfast there were a half dozen cooling and more in the oven. Every kind of fruit was good, and she invented combinations that tickled the palate. There were custard pies, and cream pies flavored with rum, almond, vanilla, or peanut butter, and her meringues were a work of art on lemon pies. Mama learned to make pie crust with lard, but when Crisco came on the market, she decreed that it was better than anything else. The recipe was easy: however much flour you used, you needed half that amount of Crisco, and half of that amount was cold water. Add salt enough to make a little pile in the middle of your cupped palm, and a little splash of vinegar. The secret was to handle the dough as little as possible. A side benefit of her pie-making industry was something called “crôutes de soeur.” The edge trimmings were gathered at the end of the days’ baking, rolled into a rectangle and spread with whatever jam was open. This was rolled up like jelly roll, cut into slices and baked as a treat. They didn’t last long.

Mama made a velvety cream gravy that was the start of many meals. When times were tough, it was easy to feed a growing family with creamed chicken over boiled potatoes or toast. Sometimes the fold-in ingredient was a can of salmon, well-flaked and combined with sliced boiled eggs. Other times it was dried chipped beef or the cod that came in wooden boxes, both of which required soaking to remove much of the salt. When there wasn’t meat of any other kind, Mama took the salt pork from its brine in the big crock in the cellar, cut slices and rolled them in flour before frying crisp to go with the plentiful potatoes and white gravy. Didn’t we call those grillades?

It’s been said that man uses every part of the pig except the oink. Mama certainly made use of every bit. Râgout de pattes de cochon (pig’s feet) was one of Papa’s favorites. This was flavored with a hint of cloves and given its color with flour that had been browned in a skillet. She cleaned and boiled a whole pig head to make tęte au fromage (head cheese). The meat was pulled from the skull, trimmed and chopped, seasoned with onion, salt, pepper and garlic, and pressed into loaf pans. When this had congealed, it could be spread on toast like a pâté or sliced to fry with eggs.

Economical meals sometimes centered around a kettle of soup. Dried yellow peas with a ham bone made a thick soup that sold in cans as “Habitant Pea Soup,” but Mama’s was better. A beef bone and long simmering became onion soup or a pot of vegetable soup. The secret to thickening a soup was a modest handful of oatmeal. Her potato soup had onions and corn, and she sprinkled the milk with parsley for color and flavor. This was so good and hearty that you forgot that it was Lent and you couldn’t have meat.

Friday nights often meant macaroni and cheese made with the sharp white Vermont cheddar. The casserole, topped with bread or cracker crumbs, went into the oven until it was golden and we could wait no longer. Mama set pea beans to soak on Friday night so that Saturday morning she could put the brown bean pot in the oven where it stayed all day while she cleaned house and got ready for Sunday. Some families cooked the beans with just onion and salt pork, but Mama preferred the rusty-brown style so she used ground mustard, catsup, and either molasses or maple syrup in addition to the onion and salt pork. Since this was a “measure by eye” kind of effort, no two pots of beans were exactly alike and Mama always second-guessed herself as to what she might have done differently. (It was the same with meat loaf.) The beans were served with Boston brown bread that she steamed in clean cans, or with Johnny cake. This was a corn bread with a custard base and a pinch of sugar, and it was really named ‘journey cake’ because it stayed moist longer.

When the garden season was waning and frost threatened, she brought in the green tomatoes and made jars of green tomato relish. We ate fried green tomatoes with just a touch of sugar in the flour to dredge the slices. No corn meal for Mama. She also made a green tomato pie that made you believe you were eating apples, but it didn’t keep so we ate it quickly. Some of the beets were put through the grinder with raw cabbage and some fresh horseradish. Add black pepper and white vinegar and you’ve got a relish to give sparkle to many meals.

Mama learned to cook from her own mother who had fed lumberjacks, and from my paternal grandmother who raised ten children. The unwritten recipes were tried and true, from the cake doughnuts that could have won prizes anywhere, to the roasts that had to catch just a little to ensure a pretty gravy. Her fruit cakes were not the stuff of jokes, but rather, they were the moistest. My sister Simone still makes those every Thanksgiving and soaks them with spirits until Christmas. Mama’s tourtičres make an appearance in my house every holiday season and they’re flavored with allspice. Her advice still whispers in my ear when I make her braised beef and carrots, a favorite when our children come home. Her big bowl sits in my cupboard, waiting to be filled with this bit of history, and memories are made around a table with good food, smiling faces, and laughter.

 

Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines
Copyright © 2003 & 2004 & 2005 & 2006 Norm Léveillée
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Created 1 Feb 2003