The Food of a Younger Land (33 page)
Read The Food of a Younger Land Online
Authors: Mark Kurlansky
With the advent of steam pressure cookers, the cooking of rabbit is even more simplified and the results more delightful. There is nothing more delectable and satisfying than Nebraska corn-fed rabbit of the present day, captured in the prime during the months of November, December and January, and prepared for the table as per the above process.
Minnesota Booya Picnic
T
he roof of the place where the booya is held is the blue Minnesota sky. Of course, the dish is obtainable in certain restaurants at certain times. It is a frequently advertised treat at taverns. But real booya lovers wait for summer and the special pleasure of a picnic booya.
he roof of the place where the booya is held is the blue Minnesota sky. Of course, the dish is obtainable in certain restaurants at certain times. It is a frequently advertised treat at taverns. But real booya lovers wait for summer and the special pleasure of a picnic booya.
These outdoor feasts begin in late June, and are particularly popular in communities where the population is largely German. Sometimes the American Legion acts as sponsor, sometimes the town fire department. But always it is a strictly male affair. Each community—whether it be village or city neighborhood—has its favorite booya cook, who takes great pride in his skill and is much in demand. To have a woman so much as peel a potato would be unthinkable. However, the women folks are not excluded from a share in the cook’s savory creation after the cooking is finished. They and the children join the men at the site chosen for the outdoor festival, usually a grassy lakeside spot with plenty of shade trees.
The menu is simple: booya and crackers, with beer for the men and pop for the women and children. Some of the women drink beer, too, especially the older German women.
At the first hint of dawn, the preparations are under way. Oxtails, a meaty soup bone, veal and chicken are simmering in a huge vat, almost as high as the cook is tall, and as big around as three men. Several helpers are busy paring bushels of fresh vegetables, opening cans, putting allspice in a cheesecloth bag. The beans have been soaking since the previous afternoon. As soon as the meat is tender, it is removed from the bones, cut in small pieces and returned to the broth. The vegetables, cut very small, are added.
When the booya is ready to be eaten, the separate ingredients have lost their identity. It is neither soup nor stew, but something of both.
Around seven o’clock, a beer truck arrives, and a couple of husky drivers set up kegs, leaving a few in reserve. Bartenders tie on big white aprons and line up rows of steins. They pile bottles of pop in pails of cracked ice. Delectable odors are rising already.
About the time the beer is well chilled, the first customers start arriving. They stay a respectful distance from the chef who is seasoning, tasting, and seasoning some more, with critical intentness. The booya won’t be ready to serve until about eleven.
Nobody minds waiting. They like having their appetites edged by good outdoor smells and cold amber beer. Little girls sit around primly, conscious of their ruffles, while their brothers wade in the lake or skip stones on the beach. The women cluster in chattering groups. Children quarrel over the comic sections of the Sunday papers.
The teasing odors grow stronger. Not until about a half hour before the first helping is dished out will the servers set out bowls, spoons, and plates of crackers.
As soon as the shout “Come and get it!” goes up, an eager crowd swarms around the table in front of the steaming kettle. There is much good-natured jostling. Some buy their tickets in advance, others pay a dime a bowl as they are served. The first bowl is considered merely an appetizer. Occasional cars pull up all afternoon. Their occupants carry away two-quart jars and pails of booya.
Many people remain all day. They eat, rest and visit a while, drink beer, then eat again. By evening the last dipper of booya is gone. Tired bartenders polish glasses, wash off tables, and count the profits. The cook and his helpers untie their stained and wrinkled aprons. In a short while the dishes have been packed away, the refuse collected and burned and everything set in order. The grove is left deserted in the darkness.
BOOYA(Bouilli recipe for 60 gallons)
30 lbs. oxtails, or 20 lbs. oxtails and 15 lbs. veal
10 lb. beef soup bone
4 fat hens
½ bu. tomatoes, or 2 gal. puree
1 peck onions
1 peck carrots
1 peck potatoes
1 peck kohlrabi
1 peck rutabagas
6 heads cabbage
12 stalks celery
6 cans corn
6 cans peas
2 quarts navy beans, soaked 12 hours
2 quarts string beans
1 peck barley
10 cans allspice (put in bag)
1½ oz. paprika
3 lbs. salt, or more if needed
Black pepper to taste
10 lb. beef soup bone
4 fat hens
½ bu. tomatoes, or 2 gal. puree
1 peck onions
1 peck carrots
1 peck potatoes
1 peck kohlrabi
1 peck rutabagas
6 heads cabbage
12 stalks celery
6 cans corn
6 cans peas
2 quarts navy beans, soaked 12 hours
2 quarts string beans
1 peck barley
10 cans allspice (put in bag)
1½ oz. paprika
3 lbs. salt, or more if needed
Black pepper to taste
Boil meat and remove from bones; cut in small pieces; add vegetables cut in small pieces, and seasoning; have sufficient water to cover; add more if necessary. Cook until done.
Indiana Persimmon Pudding
Southern Indiana is a little far north to be persimmon country but their persimmons,
Diospyros virginiana,
are indigenous. In 1863 an Indiana farmer named Logan Martin, destined to be nicknamed Persimmon Martin, took a gallon of local persimmons to market in nearby Louisville, Kentucky, and sold them for such a handsome profit that he decided to be a persimmon producer. In his southern Indiana town of Borden he produced more than two thousand gallons of persimmons every year for the next forty years.
Diospyros virginiana,
are indigenous. In 1863 an Indiana farmer named Logan Martin, destined to be nicknamed Persimmon Martin, took a gallon of local persimmons to market in nearby Louisville, Kentucky, and sold them for such a handsome profit that he decided to be a persimmon producer. In his southern Indiana town of Borden he produced more than two thousand gallons of persimmons every year for the next forty years.
Borden, originally New Providence, was named after the city in Rhode Island, but always called Borden after the founder of the local college. The town—whose name was officially changed to Borden only in 1994—according to the last census has 818 inhabitants. A somewhat larger town with a few thousand residents in the next county, Mitchell, also a persimmon-producing town, has hosted an annual persimmon festival since 1947. The festival features a persimmon pudding contest. But this recipe, in which the author forgot to measure the milk, was collected earlier for
America Eats.
America Eats.
1 cup of sugar
¼ cup of shortening
2 eggs
2 cups of flour
4 teaspoons of baking powder
½ teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of vanilla
½ teaspoon of cloves
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
2 teaspoons of butter
2 cups of seeded persimmons
¼ cup of shortening
2 eggs
2 cups of flour
4 teaspoons of baking powder
½ teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of vanilla
½ teaspoon of cloves
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
2 teaspoons of butter
2 cups of seeded persimmons
Cream shortening, add sugar and beaten eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt; add persimmons after rubbing through a fine sieve, beat thoroughly and then add vanilla, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. Beat well, then pour in greased pudding mould, cover tightly and steam for two hours in an oven 300 degrees F., and serve with foamy sauce or whipped cream.
From Richard McCurry, 903 E. Hillside Drive, Bloomington, Indiana.
A Short History of the American Diet
NELSON ALGREN
Nelson Algren, from the Chicago office of the Illinois Writers’ Project, was held up by the FWP as one of their best success stories. But it was not mutual. He seldom mentioned anything he had written for them and when he did it was usually disparagingly as just something he “did for the money.” It was not much money. He was originally hired at a salary of $84 a month. Yet he was one of the few writers who stayed in the project through to the last years. He periodically quit or was fired but came back in search of the meager paycheck. He liked to say that he learned “goldbricking” in the FWP and liked to imply that he sneaked off to a bar whenever possible, but evidence points to the likelihood that his periodic absences were because he was pursuing his own writing. And toward the end of his life he said of the FWP, “Had it not been for it, the suicide rate would have been much higher. It gave new life to people who thought their life was over.”
Born Nelson Algren Abraham in Detroit in 1909, he moved to Chicago with his family at the age of three and settled in the blue-collar immigrant South Side. His father, an auto mechanic, was the son of a Swedish convert to Judaism and his mother was a German Jew who ran a candy store. After five years they moved up to the North Side.
Nelson graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Illinois in 1931 in a full-blown Depression that offered few jobs to a young graduate. In search of a job, he wandered to Texas, where in 1933 he wrote his first story, “So Help Me.” He was also caught stealing a typewriter and served at least a month—he said four or five—in jail. The fateful month is sometimes credited with his lifelong fascination with the marginal and down and out. But perhaps that is just who he was, or else why did he steal the typewriter? In any event, pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, and petty criminals were the inhabitants of Algren’s books.
In 1935 his first novel,
Somebody in Boots,
was the basis of his standing as one of the seasoned professionals of the stellar Chicago office of the Illinois Writers’ Project. He was looked up to by young upstarts such as Saul Bellow. But he did live up to his promise, writing
Never Come Morning
while on the project and publishing it in 1942, the year the project shut down. In 1950 his novel
The Man with the Golden Arm
won the first National Book Award. Simone de Beauvoir, with whom he had a much-publicized affair, once described him as “that classic American species: self-made leftist writer.”
Somebody in Boots,
was the basis of his standing as one of the seasoned professionals of the stellar Chicago office of the Illinois Writers’ Project. He was looked up to by young upstarts such as Saul Bellow. But he did live up to his promise, writing
Never Come Morning
while on the project and publishing it in 1942, the year the project shut down. In 1950 his novel
The Man with the Golden Arm
won the first National Book Award. Simone de Beauvoir, with whom he had a much-publicized affair, once described him as “that classic American species: self-made leftist writer.”
Algren, in addition to supervising, wrote for a number of FWP projects, some published, such as the Galena Guide, considered one of the best small-town guides in the series, and some never published, such as a series of folkloric industrial legends called
A Tall Chance of Work.
In one of them a character modeled after Henry Ford rises after his death and turns to his six pallbearers and says, “You call this efficiency!”
A Tall Chance of Work.
In one of them a character modeled after Henry Ford rises after his death and turns to his six pallbearers and says, “You call this efficiency!”
The following piece was to be the regional essay for the Middle West in
America Eats.
A summing-up of the many submitted manuscripts, it is one of the few samples of how a finished
America Eats
might have been written. It was not without its failings, most notably attributing Dobos Torte, the pride of Budapest cooking, to Romania. But Algren was only the writer, not the researcher, working from the papers gathered from projects in the twelve-state region. Since the piece, like many in the
America Eats
collection, especially from the Midwest, is not signed, some have suggested that he was not even the writer, but, interviewed in 2006 for this book, Studs Terkel, who worked with Algren in the Chicago office, said he remembered him working on a food piece. The ninety-eight-page typed manuscript, collected and marked in pencil on a folder labeled “Nelson Algren” in the Library of Congress
America Eats
file, is also in the University of Iowa files and the Illinois FWP files as Nelson Algren’s. Iowa got it from a personal friend of Algren’s, Louis Szathmáry, who said he bought it in an auction of Algren’s papers, and Algren himself identified it but characteristically dismissed it as something he just wrote for money when he was broke. The library at the University of Iowa identified the handwritten corrections in red pencil and blue ink as Algren’s and said that it was typed on the same typewriter as the other manuscripts from the Illinois Writers’ Project that are known to be Algren’s.
America Eats.
A summing-up of the many submitted manuscripts, it is one of the few samples of how a finished
America Eats
might have been written. It was not without its failings, most notably attributing Dobos Torte, the pride of Budapest cooking, to Romania. But Algren was only the writer, not the researcher, working from the papers gathered from projects in the twelve-state region. Since the piece, like many in the
America Eats
collection, especially from the Midwest, is not signed, some have suggested that he was not even the writer, but, interviewed in 2006 for this book, Studs Terkel, who worked with Algren in the Chicago office, said he remembered him working on a food piece. The ninety-eight-page typed manuscript, collected and marked in pencil on a folder labeled “Nelson Algren” in the Library of Congress
America Eats
file, is also in the University of Iowa files and the Illinois FWP files as Nelson Algren’s. Iowa got it from a personal friend of Algren’s, Louis Szathmáry, who said he bought it in an auction of Algren’s papers, and Algren himself identified it but characteristically dismissed it as something he just wrote for money when he was broke. The library at the University of Iowa identified the handwritten corrections in red pencil and blue ink as Algren’s and said that it was typed on the same typewriter as the other manuscripts from the Illinois Writers’ Project that are known to be Algren’s.
The copy in the Library of Congress contains a handwritten note from the Washington office expressing displeasure with the essay and comparing it unfavorably to the Montana Writers’ Project’s summary essay for the Far West.
The following is an excerpt.
The Flowering Savannahs
If each, of all of the races of man which have subsisted in the vast Middlewest, could contribute one dish to one great Mid-western cauldron, it is certain that we’d have therein a most foreign, and most gigantic, stew:
The grains that the French took over from the Indian, and the breads which the English brought later; hotly spiced Italian dishes and subtly seasoned Spanish ones; the sweet Swedish soups and the sour Polish ones; and all the old-world arts brought to the preparing of American beefsteak and hot mince pie.
Such a cauldron would contain more than many foods: it would be, at once, a symbol of many lands and a melting pot for many peoples.
Many peoples, yet one people; many lands, one land.
In the old French time the great inland plains were carpeted by a spiraling wild grass called bluestem. Between the bluestem grew the prairie wild flowers. It was a land of wild prairie flowers. In the fall the inland Indians set fire to the bluestem to provide pasturage for the buffalo in spring; the ranging shagskin herds that returned, with each returning spring, to the unstaked savannahs. To the spiraling bluestem of the flowering savannahs. By the time that the French came such fires had stripped three-fourths of the plains of trees.
In October, by the rivers of the wilderness and among the rushes of the swamps, the French adventurers watched Illiniwek braves harvesting knotted stalks of wild oats. The Indians passed, in canoes, among the overhanging stalks, to shake the wild grain down into the boats as they passed. The French saw that the Indians, as though taking on the autumn color of the bluestem country, wore blue-beaded moccasins and bright-blue head-feathers; and had the trick of turning autumn ears of yellow-brown corn into blue ears. With the wild oats they played no such tricks. They brought it back in the canoes, as brown as it grew, to their copper-brown women.
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