Chapter 14 (A Sunday Evening Tea)

Introduction

Time for tea and, as guests are on hand, it’s a splendid opportunity for Bettina to pass along some of her exemplary domestic skills. After taking Ruth and Fiancé Fred step-by-step through the tea making process she promises them a silver tea ball as a wedding present and—best of all—wheels out a tea cart of delicacies!

Part 1

The Menu

Salmon Salad with Jellied Vegetables

Boston Brown Bread-Butter

Sliced Fresh Peaches

One Egg Cake

Chocolate Frosting

Iced Tea

Preparing the Meal

Salmon Salad with Jellied Vegetables

Not a completely unfamiliar dish to me as I believe I prepared this before—was is for Bettina’s 4^th of July picnic?

Yes (just checked)—although that was in fact salmon and lobster salad. No lobster called for this time, which will make the dish easier…and cheaper (no $7.99 tails required, thank heavens).

According to the recipe any kind of cooked vegetables can be jellied, so I’m relying on the lazy cook’s mainstay: canned (specifically peas and carrots).

The recipe also gives me the option of using either water or beef broth to mix with the unflavored gelatin. Think I’ll plump for the broth in hopes of giving the salad a little extra zing.

The real challenge with this dish is my choice of mold. The book’s editors recommend a donut-shaped one so the “center may be filled with flaked salmon over which salad dressing has been poured”. Having no ring mold at my disposal I have no choice but to improvise:

A large cereal bowl with a water-filled jar in the center

I was pleasantly surprised at how simple this salad turned out to be: simply mix the vegetables, pimento, lemon juice, and salt into the gelatin, plop it in the mold and chill (I’ll prepare the salmon filling just before serving).

Boston Brown Bread

Well, my thermal cooker should be ecstatic-- it’s been some time since I’ve had need for it services.

It can’t wait!

I’m no New Englander and so this dish seems an odd choice to accompany the main course. Wouldn’t a bread heavy with molasses and raisins be more appropriate as a dessert?

Still, I won’t quibble as the ingredients are so basic: whole wheat, cornmeal, and rye mixed with sour milk, molasses, and raisins. Mixing this stuff together took just a few minutes (although the fact that the grains of rye did gum up my sifter!) and, having no conventional steaming vessel on hand, I simply dumped the batter into a 29 ounce can that once held fruit cocktail.

No lid, so I covered the top with a length of parchment paper and tied it in place with butcher’s twine.

The can of batter has to be placed in the inner pot of the thermal cooker, filled with water, and boiled on the stove for half an hour before being sealed in the cooker.

After the thirty minutes were up I shut the still-boiling pot in the cooker and voila it’ll be ready in five or six hours.

Sliced Fresh Peaches

I served sliced peaches just a few days ago (“Bob Helps With the Dinner”) and had a devil of a time getting the skins off--even a boiling water bath didn’t loosen them. In the end I had to use a vegetable peeler, which resulted in three bruised and battered globes of fruit.

But not again. This time I’m determined to cook those skins off, and I’ll boil the fruit however long it takes.

I boiled these for two minutes, plunged them in cold water, and WADDYA KNOW…

…it worked!

Either this lot of peaches was riper than the last, the pinch of salt I added to the water somehow helped, or the planets obligingly lined up. Who knows? Who cares? I’m thrilled!

One Egg Cake

I can’t predict how this cake will taste but the single egg it requires is a guarantee that it will at least be economical. The small size of the finish product also appeals to me—I sometimes make full-sized cakes and it’s always struggle for me, DH, and Son to finish them before they grow stale.

The ingredients for this cake are atypical: flour, sugar, baking soda, and of course the single egg.

Unfortunately the recipe doesn’t specify how to treat the bottom and sides of the pan to keep the batter from sticking.

Having read ahead a few chapters I know Bettina abhors the practice of buttering and flouring cake pans, so I’ll get out my trusty parchment paper and line the pan with that.

The cake smelled wonderful in the oven but unfortunately developed a large fault line down the middle (this is California, after all).

Grrr…

Well, with luck the chocolate frosting (see below) will cover it up....

Chocolate Frosting

This is a quick frosting to prepare as it’s essentially butter and powdered sugar (no cooking required) but, as so often happens, I’m stumped by the recipe’s wording.

The recipes calls for “1 square” of chocolate but doesn’t translate that vague measurement into grams or ounces. “1 square” snapped off my modern bar of baking chocolate is exactly ½ ounce—not nearly enough, I’d think, to flavor even a small amount of frosting. I suppose I’ll simply have to play it by ear, begin with the half-ounce and then add some more if necessary.

As I suspected the frosting looked pretty wan with just the ½ ounce of chocolate—really more like mocha or caramel. So I added another square to get the proper color and flavor.

Happily I was able to hide that huge crack in the cake with frosting. In fact I’m quite impressed with the end result—this dessert really does look appetizing and fit for one of Bettina’s do’s.

Iced Tea

This recipe too I just made just a short time ago, alongside the battered peach slices. As DH isn’t particularly impressed by ordinary iced tea I’ll heed Bettina’s advice and toss in a handful of fresh mint.

Chow time...

How It Looked