Cooking a la Bettina: A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband Revisited: Chapter 43 (Sunday Dinner at the Dixons’)

Introduction

Turnabout is fair play—for once Bob and Bettina have gathered around the Dixons’ table, and my! what an interesting meal has been set before them.

Taking a leaf from Bettina’s book Mrs. Dixon has ensured husband Frank’s cooperation by letting him plan the meal: fried chicken “with all the accessories”—and “so simple” to throw together!

Part 1

The Menu

Fried Chicken

New Boiled Potatoes

Dixie Sweet Potatoes

Corn on the Cob

Bread

Butter

Sliced Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad

Oil Dressing

Vanilla Ice Cream with Peaches

White Cake

Iced Tea

This menu contains a puzzler: both new boiled potatoes and Dixie sweet potatoes are listed. The first appeared in the first version of the book; both in the 1932 edition. As much as I’ve become accustomed to following Bettina’s menus without question (well, most of the time) I’m going to assume this was a typo and two different kinds of potato aren’t required for the meal.

Probably I should stick with the plain boiled potatoes in the interests of simplicity, but I think I’ll go with the latter…sweet potatoes are loaded (as we now know) with beta-carotene, and I haven’t yet found an enjoyable way to prepare them…today may be my luck day!

Preparing the Meal

Fried Chicken

Well, locating a whole chicken is simple enough—breaking it into usable parts much more of a challenge.

Fortunately I have Bettina’s chicken-snapping process (Chapter 32 Bettina Attends a Morning Wedding) to serve as a guide. It’s so very graphic it makes me a tad uncomfortable, but hey! whatever works.

Legs quarters broken off the carcass.

Separated into legs and thighs.

Mister (or I guess Mrs.) Chicken has lost her wings…

…and breast.

The breast broken/cut into two—plus an unidentifiable bit of white meat that seemed to appear from nowhere.

The back. Yes, supposedly it’s a usable piece (certainly considered so by Depression cooks) but no way I’m frying this up and slapping it on the table. I’ll freeze it for a soup or stew.

The pieces sprinkled with salt and paprika.

Then dredged in flour.

After melting butter and lard in my Dutch over I put in the chicken pieces.

Thoroughly browned. Now I add ½ cup water, lower the temperature, and clap on the lid. According to the recipe it should take about forty-five minutes to fry.

Uh-oh. Somehow the browned part of the chicken stuck to the bottom of the pan and dissolved. Now I have a collection of sad chicken parts boiling in what appears to be wallpaper paste.

(This doesn’t look good. Now what? Wonder if KFC delivers…)

Dixie Sweet Potatoes

Six whole potatoes—quite a lot (hope this is good as we’re going to be eating it for at least the next two meals).

The recipe says they must be peeled (obvious).

Unfortunately the peeled potatoes started discoloring immediately and I had to put them cold water while I prepared the pineapple.

This pineapple was absolutely green when I purchased it, so I wrapped it in paper in hopes it would ripen some…now, three days later, it’s the moment of truth.

Perfect!

Looking good. The paper bag trick really works.

The pineapple is to be chopped into bits and then spooned over the potatoes before they go into the oven. Sounds kind of odd to me, but maybe it will cut some of the potatoes’ sweetness.

½ cup of brown sugar sprinkled over the potatoes (as if they weren’t sweet enough!)

Umm…this looks a little strange.

And lastly strips of bacon are laid over the top. Yow.

And finally add some water to the baking dish and cook it in a “moderate” oven for approximately forty-five minutes. This all seems pretty unusual, but we’ll see.

Corn on the Cob

Happily fresh corn has just come on the market. I used that Jolly Green Giant pre-fab corn last time, and the result wasn’t too satisfactory.

Three ears should be enough.

Ugh, the one drawback with loose ears of corn is the husks and the silk. No matter how carefully I shuck it the stuff gets everywhere.

And that’s that…just need to put the ears in boiling water about five minutes before the meal. Nice.

Bread and Butter

This Sunday meal is so fussy I decided to play it safe and choose the most uncomplicated bread possible. No, not Wonder Bread but the next best thing: wrapped, pre-sliced French bread.

Sliced Cucumber, Tomato and Onion Salad

“This was an acquired taste with me,” says Mr. Dixon—but not for my family. We eat this type of salad quite often, and it always goes well with heavy meat dishes. Even the fact that here it’s to be served in ladylike scoops over lettuce leaves can’t diminish my enthusiasm.

X marks the spot (these tomatoes unfortunately have to be peeled).

Sixty seconds in boiling water is generally enough, and then the tomatoes are dunked in cold water…

…and the skins slide right off.

Now the peeled cucumber and tomatoes have to be cut into “one-third inch cubes” and then mixed with chopped onion. Frankly I prefer thin slices, but OK.

Oil Dressing

This dressing is too easy—no surprise that Mr. Dixon was able to handle the job.

Way to go, Frank! (any idiot could prepare this).

Vanilla Ice Cream with Peaches

I confess I’m a little leery about making ice cream…last time I misplaced the top to my electric ice cream, and without it the darn motor refused to work. I had to stir the ice cream by a hand for an hour and, believe me, it wasn't worth the effort.

Really amazing how few ingredients go into homemade ice cream…compare these few, simple ingredients (sugar, salt, cream, vanilla) to the list of ingredients on a carton of Dreyer’s!

Pouring the cream into the tub.

Adding sugar…

…and vanilla.

A pinch of salt.

This is going to be a messy business, so I believe I’ll place the ice cream maker in the sink.

Or maybe not (cord won’t reach the electric socket).

OK, up on the countertop.

Before adding ice and salt I have to churn the ingredients in the machine for a couple of minutes.

Mixed. Now for the ice and the salt.

The ice in my freezer had frozen into a lump, so I had to break it up with my meat tenderizer.

The metal tub holding the ingredients is to be surrounded by layers of ice and salt.

It took six pounds of ice and a box and a half of rock salt to reach the top. But, mission accomplished.

Ignition!

This freezing process took about forty minutes…despite the layers of salt the ice did in fact melt some, and I had to use ice cubes from the freezer to refill a couple of times.

Houston, we have ice cream!

Now I’ll put the ice cream in the freezer to firm up…won’t need it until tomorrow, anyway.

Following day

The ice cream is to be served surrounded by peach slices, but fresh peaches are simply unavailable in April. I had to substitute frozen.

Draining the de-frosted peaches.

Mixing them with 2/3 cup sugar (ouch). Now they’re to sit for some ten minutes (in reality about two hours…it took me that long to get the meal on the table).

White Cake

Weirdly enough this recipe was difficult to track down—I had to go back to the 1918 edition for it.

Ugh. A total of seven egg whites are needed for this recipe (four for the cake and three for the icing). What in the world am I going to do with all the leftover yolks?

At least the ingredients are simple enough…certainly nothing fancy or exotic.

Sifting the flour.

Adding the rest of the dry ingredients.

Creaming the butter and sugar.

Adding the dry ingredients alternately with a cup of milk.

This is so thick it’s difficult to beat, but of course I haven’t added the eggs yet.

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

I had disposable pans in my pantry and decided to use those—and happily they were pre-lined with parchment paper!

Despite the pans’ small size there doesn’t seem to be quite enough batter to fill them. I’m really hoping the five (yes, five) teaspoons of baking powder in the batter give it enough oomph to rise well.