Chapter 38 After The Circus

Introduction

A circus may be exciting, but clapping seals and red-nosed clowns can’t compare with a Bettina supper!

Such an exhausting day calls for a “cool and appetizing” meal, and Bettina has matters well in hand. In the blink an eye the tired circus-goers find a feast spread before them: cold sliced ham: brown bread, blackberries, and enormous tumblers of iced tea!

Part 1

The Menu

Cold Sliced Ham

Boston Brown Bread

Butter

Blackberries

Cream

Spiced Cake

Iced Tea

Sliced Lemon

Reading over the chapter’s recipes one can’t help notices a major domestic upheaval in the period between the two world wars. Although the menu itself never changes, in the original edition of the book the miracle device is a fireless cooker…but by 1942 the pressure cooker is the wonder gadget: “cooler and more economical” Bettina gushes.

Of course I own a thermal cooker (the modern equivalent of Bettina’s “fireless”) but have never had the courage to purchase (much less use) the pressurized variety. In fact, I can’t even imagine cooking bread under pressure—is that even possible?

Seems like a true Bettina devotee would see that as a challenge, but loading a lump of heavy dough into a pressure cooker seems like a feat best left to the aforementioned circus—as big a draw, no doubt, as firing daredevils out of cannons.

Cold Sliced Ham

As usual the main ingredient of this allegedly easy dish was anything but simple to locate. After much searching for a decent (and affordable) chunk of uncooked ham I gave up.

Precooked smoked ham shanks—not exactly what the recipe calls for, but the best I could do (short of sawing parts off a live pig :) )

This “ham” actually looks pretty nice, but there’s far more bone and fat than I expected.

How much meat will be left after I finish trimming this?

Not a whole lot, as it turns out. Still, this ham looks plump and juicy and, as it’s already been smoked, it should be pretty tasty.

Boston Brown Bread

As mentioned above I plan to cook this in my thermal cooker, which relies on trapped heat.

The first step is to sour some milk by adding a tablespoon of vinegar to it.

The baking tin (really an aluminum can that once held baked beans).

Somehow I doubt the colonists who developed this bread had time to sift the dry ingredients, but Bettina’s wish is my command!

As one can see, sifting the flours turned out to be a good idea. These leftover grains and husks might be useful for polishing our tooth fillings, but I imagine they wouldn’t taste very good.

The sour milk and molasses added to the dry ingredients.

Mixing the batter up. Not surprisingly the combination of rye, cornmeal, and wheat made for a resilient dough that gave my mixing arm a real workout.

Looking good!

Adding the raisins.

Of course the baking can no longer has a top, but some parchment paper tied down with butcher’s twine should do the trick.

The filled can can’t rest directly on the bottom of the thermal pot, so I improvised a trivet of sorts. This is a mini-sized cast iron skillet I picked up at a yard sale.

In this step the thermal cooker’s inner pot is placed on the burner of the stove, filled with water, and boiled for thirty minutes.

Well, the dough is more 'lively' than anticipated. After just ten minutes of boiling it rose over the top of the can! I had no choice at this point but to remove it from the boiling water, cut off the paper and the twine, trim the top of the loaf, re-wrap it, and place it back in the pot.

The bread can’s ultimate resting place. After thirty minutes of boiling on the stove it’ll continue cooking for another five to six hours in the thermal cooker.

Later

Unfortunately I left the bread in the thermal cooker too long. Consequently the top of the loaf was over steamed—wet to the touch, in fact. I can only hope the inside of the loaf stayed dry.

Trying to pry the bread out of the can with a knife.

Didn’t work. I'll to take the bottom of the can off with an opener and push the bread out.

Ugh. No doubt this would make the colonists blanch--then sentence me to a day or two in the stocks!

Unfortunately the inside of the loaf was almost as soggy as the outside. I’m going to put these slices on a baking sheet and then into the oven in hopes of drying them out.

Blackberries

What could be sweeter than fresh raspberries?

Lots of things…if the berries have been purchased in November! The pucker power of these small sphere is astounding—I’m going to have to sugar them.

Spiced Cake

It seems a bit odd to see spiced cake and Boston brown bread (heavy with raisins and molasses) on the same menu, but perhaps it will turn out to be some unbeatable combo and/or taste sensation. We’ll see.

More sour milk required. OK, get the bottle of vinegar back out.

Creaming the butter and sugar.

Sifting the dry ingredients and then adding them (alternately with the sour milk) to the butter/sugar mixture.

Whipping the egg whites…

…and then folding them into the batter.

Bettina has an aversion to greasing and flouring baking pans and insists that parchment paper be used instead to line the pans. I sometimes ignore this (trying to fit paper into a Bundt pan is a one-way ticket to Crazyville) but decided this time to give it a try.

The cake is to be cooked in a “moderate” (325 degrees Fahrenheit) oven for approximately 25 minutes.

Well, aside from that fissure running across the top the cake looks fine.

Now for the brown sugar icing…

Cooking the brown sugar with water and 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. Thanks heavens for that last ingredient…any kind of stabilizer is welcome in a cooked frosting.

Whipping the eggs whites while the sugar syrup boils. When it reaches the soft ball stage I’m to pour it “gently” over the stiffened whites.

Not sure the beaters on my electric mixer are capable of “gentle” motion, but I need to hurry and get this meal on the table…the troops are starting to grumble!

I’m impressed. This is by far the best cooked icing I’ve ever made—the brown sugar prevents it from being overpoweringly sweet, and the texture seems perfect.

Iced Tea

I thought I’d grown forever tired of Bettina’s iced tea, but tonight it sounds like the perfect beverage...easy to make, too.

My 5-5 rule: steep five teabags for five minutes in a pot of boiling water. Simple…and caffeine in any form should help power me through the post-meal cleanup!

How It Looked