Recipe from history!

[FrmlyZ]

Folks:

I am starting to make baked beans, the way my family has always made them. I am soaking the navy beans [overnight]. Actually, cranberry or sulfur beans are better but hard to get [didn't grow any this year]. The recipe goes back to the early 1600's when the family first came here. Like most early Americans they were religous fanatics. No work on Sunday. This was started on Saturday night and slow-cooked for use on Sunday; after church, of course. [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

It uses a cup of beans soaked overnight and then cooked until the skin splits. You then add some mustard powder, sorghum, maple sugar, salt and chopped, uncooked, country ham. You cover it with boiling water and cook for 8 hr at 250 degrees. Remove the lid for the last hour. They used to do this in a warming oven on the side of the fireplace. Don't have one of those myself. Very different from the tomato-soaked stuff that passes for baked beans now-a-days. My great grandmother, who was somewhat of a black sheep, added rum in the last hour. [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

Best Wishes,,,,,

Z

[big kumara]

Mmmmmmm [img]smile.gif[/img]

To store-bought pork-n-beans I add: a little mustard, a bit of BBQ sauce, chili powder, lots of fried bacon, some chopped onion, lots of brown sugar and maple syrup.

I usually end up eating the sauce and leaving the beans on the plate, lol.

[Aunt Bee]

I think perhaps we may be related Z! My grandmother's family had been here since the 1700's (on my mother's side), grew up in upstate NY, and she too added rum to her beans-LOL! And on her birthday, (New Year's Day) she always smoked a cigarette or two and had a coupla martini's! Being as how she was born in 1890, that was a MAJOR statement!

[the mule]

Z

You got a zillion dangerous germs shipped into your university, then you're gone for a week or more. Scared the poop right out of the mule. Even the avatar split.

[Aunt Bee]

LOL Helen!

Speaking of recipes, anybody out there have any experience with a product called Taylor Pork Roll (I'm thinking you might Unk, based on what I read and your place of origin!). I am told this is also known as cottage ham in places like Ohio. I bought a one pound roll of this pricey stuff, took it home, fried it up and found it to be pretty mediocre, blah really! It's some kind New Jersey fetish I guess. Supposed to be pretty special stuff, according the NJ-ites. There's just no way you could doctor this stuff up! Unless anybody has any ideas... [img]graemlins/idea.gif[/img]

[FrmlyZ]

Bee:

Could well be. I am not into geneology, but as near as I can tell, the first members of the family moved to New York when it was a Dutch colony and had a different name. I remember being a kid in the late 50's. My father took me on a 2 week "discover your roots" trip to New York. We started at Olean and moved north. In some of the small towns every business had the family name. I remember meeting some relatives in the Palmyra area. They had some interesting Joseph Smith stories [of course, like all old family stories, it is unlikely that they contain a lot of truth; still interesting.] In the end we went as far north as Burlington. Family members everywhere.

What is funny now [nearly a half century later] is all of my immediate family lives in Azzie, Cali, Oregon and Washington. I live west of the Mississippi and I am considered the eastern contingent. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Best Wishes,,,,,

Z

[larsguy]

The "Taylor Pork Roll" is Philadelphia. In NJ we have the "Pimp Roll".

http://www.philly-food.com/i0000015.html

[Aunt Bee]

Yeah Lars, I've been to that site-LOL!

However the roll of stuff I got, labelled "Taylor Pork Roll" is in fact, manufactured in "Trenton, NJ". I'd be interested to see what it costs in other parts of the US. Here it cost me $7.69 for a one pound chub. My friend in the PNW paid $9.99 for the identical item. (Much cheaper than buying those 12#!).

Still, I think it is some of the most mundane stuff I have ever et! I just can't imagine what folks think is so special about it! But then again, I used to think Jones Farm Scrapple was special! It had memories of Daddy and his home in Iowa attached though! And oh yes, some very special breakfasts, where he extoled it's glories, both when he was frying it up, and eating it!

[FrmlyZ]

Bee:

I have had it, but never tried to cook it myself. It was lunch at a resturant in Trenton, itself. I assume that they know what they were doing. It was sliced thin and fried to within an inch of its life. It was piled on a large hard roll and topped with pickled jalapenos, slices of a very strong onion, hot mustard, something green and something else red. What did it taste like: pickled jalapenos, onion mustard and something green and something red. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Best Wishes,,,,,

Z