Katherine Page - Body in the Bog

beans or pea beans,

3/ cup dark brown sugar

4

dried

11/ teaspoons salt

2

Pinch of salt

11/ teaspoons fresh ground

2

3/ pound wellstreaked salt

4

pepper

pork

1 cup boiling water

3 tablespoons Dijon mus1 large yellow onion tard

Soak the beans overnight and drain. Add a pinch of salt and enough water to reach two inches above the beans. Bring to a boil and simmer for an hour. Drain and reserve the liquid. The beans should be barely tender.

Preheat the oven to 400° F.

Scald the salt pork by letting it sit in boiling water for ten minutes. Cut two thin slices and place one in the bottom of your bean pot or casserole. Cut the other into small pieces and set aside. Score the rind of the remaining piece with a sharp knife and set aside also.

Mix the mustard, molasses, brown sugar, salt, and pepper with the boiling water. It’s easiest to do this in a large glass measuring pitcher.

Layer the beans in the pot with the pieces of salt pork and the mustard/molasses/sugar mixture, burying the onion in the middle. Place the large piece of salt pork on the top, rind up, and pour the remaining liquid mixture over it. If there is not enough liquid to cover the beans, use some of the water you reserved when you drained the beans. Be careful not to use too much liquid. You can always add more as the beans bake.

Put the lid on the pot, or cover on the casserole, and bake the beans at 400° F. for thirty minutes. Turn the temperature down to 200° F. and bake for six to eight hours, checking to see that the beans do not become too dry. Uncover the container during the last hour of cooking.

Baked beans were the Puritans’ answer to the Crock

Pot and provided them with a tasty meal during the Sabbath. The pot would be placed in the fireplace on Saturday morning, or handed over to the baker, who would call for it and place it in the community oven, usually in a nearby tavern. After cooking all day, the beans were ready for Saturday supper and Sunday breakfast. Traditionally, Bostonians eat their beans with brown bread, but Faith has served them straight from the pot with everything from focaccia to corn bread. Beantown’s pot is earthenware with a narrow throat, but this recipe tastes fine cooked in any deep casserole with a cover, such as a Dutch oven.

This makes a great many beans. For the next meal, add barbecue sauce, drop a poached egg on top, or give some to your neighbors.

CARDAMOM RAISIN BREAD

1 quart milk

1 package golden or mus

11/ cups sugar

cat raisins (approx. 15

2

1/ cup butter

ounces)

2

1 teaspoon ground car2 eggs, beaten damom seeds (or 1

12 cups flour (approxi

tablespoon of preground

mately)

cardamom)

1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon

2 cakes compressed yeast

vanilla, 1 tablespoon

or two packages of yeast

sugar, mixed together

granules

for the glaze

1 teaspoon salt

1 package seedless raisins

(approx. 15 ounces)

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Heat the milk and sugar, then add the butter and cardamom. When the butter has melted, cool the mixture to lukewarm in a large mixing bowl. Add and dissolve the yeast. Add the salt, raisins, and beaten eggs. Mix together well and then add enough flour to make a firm but elastic dough. Cover the dough and let it stand in a warm place until doubled in bulk. Then knead it well and form into two round loaves—or four standardsized bread loaves. Place these in greased pie tins or loaf pans and let rise until doubled again.

Bake for one hour. Brush loaves with the mixture of egg yolk, vanilla, and sugar when they come out of the oven.

Once you’ve made it, you’ll get the knack. It needs to rise for a long time and you also have to watch that the top doesn’t get too brown or burn in the oven. You may have to cover it with foil near the end. You can also make the dough in a braid.

This cardamom raisin bread is a Norwegian recipe from the real author’s grandmother. We’ve always made it for Christmas. In Norwegian, it’s called Julekake , “Christmas cake.” I now make it yearround.

PATRIOTS’ DAY PANCAKES

1/ cup milk

4 tablespoons sugar

2

2 tablespoons melted butter

1/ teaspoon salt

2

1 egg

1/ teaspoon vanilla

4

1/ cup sour cream

1/ cup raspberries

2

2

1 cup flour

1/ cup blueberries

2

2 teaspoons baking powder

Mix the milk, melted butter, egg, and sour cream in a bowl until smooth.

Sift the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and then add all at once to the liquid ingredients. Stir until mixed. The batter will be a bit lumpy. Add the vanilla and stir again. Fold in the berries.

The pancakes cook more evenly if you can find blueberries and raspberries of approximately the same size.

Cook on a hot griddle over medium heat. Serve immediately with a dusting of powdered sugar. (Some people also like butter.) Makes eighteen to twentyfour pancakes, depending on size. You may also wish to add more fruit, but not too much or the pancakes get mushy.

In the book, the children pour syrup on them, but they taste far better without it.

CHOCOLATE CRUNCH COOKIES

1/ pound unsalted butter

11/ cups dark or semisweet

2

2

1 cup brown sugar

chocolate bits combined

1 egg yolk

with 1/ cup toffee bits

2

2 cups sifted flour

1/ cup toffee bits for top2

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

ping

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolk and beat until smooth. Add the flour, mix, then add the vanilla. At this stage, Faith uses her hands, as the dough tends to be crumbly. Knead until smooth.

Spread the dough in a greased ninebytwelveinch baking pan and place in the middle of the oven.

Again, Faith finds that it is easier to pat the dough evenly into the pan using her hands.

Bake for twentyfive minutes and take the pan out of the oven.

Distribute the combined chocolate and toffee bits evenly over the cookie layer and bake for four minutes more.

Remove the pan from the oven and immediately spread the melted chocolate and toffee bits. Sprinkle what is now the frosting with the remaining toffee bits.

It is important to let the cookies cool completely in the pan before cutting into squares.

This is a decadently rich cookie and makes either twentyfour or thirtysix cookies. It’s up to you.

NOTE ON RECIPES:

As with Faith’s other recipes in The Body in the Cast and The Body in the Basement , all these will taste just fine with healthwise modifications such as Egg Beaters, lowfat sour cream, 1 percent milk, butter substitutes, and the like. Unfortunately, the cookies definitely need the real thing—the best chocolate bits you can find and real toffee bits. Think of them as a reward for all those rice crackers you eat.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge George Gabriel, “Captain John Parker,” of the Lexington Company of Minute Men, and David Hackett Fischer, author of Paul Revere’s Ride, for their help with the historical portions of the book. Thanks also to Robert Hilton for the title and sundry bog information. My special thanks to the best agent in the books, Faith Hamlin.