Sausage Cobbler: or, Delicious meat and bread

We in Texas are entering our annual second spring. Every year, as the summer heatwaves finally give up and the first rains come in, all of the plants wake up. All of the crispy and dead lawns start to look lovingly manicured and lavishly watered. We've even had wild sunflowers pop up in the yard. (They forgot that their seeds theoretically don't sprout until they've been frozen for a whole winter.) And now that the night temperature has dipped below 60° (or below 15° if you prefer Celsius), we can turn on the oven.

Sausage Cobbler Heat oven to 425° (gas mark 7, or 220°C). Grease a 9" round cake pan. If desired, press a circle of parchment paper into the bottom. Mix together: 1 cup (or 4 oz by weight) self-raising flour (to substitute all-purpose flour, see below) ¼ tsp salt Dash of pepper Rub in: 1 tbsp butter, shortening, or any other fat Gradually mix in until you have a soft dough that leaves the bowl clean: About ¼ cup milk (You may not use all of it. Or, you may need a bit more. Just gradually add enough milk to make a dough that is soft and easy to work in your hands.) Knead 12 times, or until mostly smooth. Roll into a circle slightly larger than the pan. Set aside. Next, mix together: 1 pound sausage meat 1 tbsp chopped parsley (I used dried parsley) 2 tbsp ketchup* 2 tsp minced onion† Press the meat into the prepared pan. Lay the dough on top. Bake 10-15 minutes, or until lightly golden on top. If you want to be very sure the meat is cooked, insert a meat thermometer and check that it has reached 165° (74°C). Let rest about 5 minutes. Then invert onto a plate. Cut into wedges and serve hot. ______________ To substitute plain all-purpose flour: Using a measuring cup: Put 1½ teaspoons of baking powder and ½ teaspoon salt in a measuring cup, then spoon in flour until it comes up to one cup. Using a scale: Tare it out, add 1½ teaspoons baking powder and ½ teaspoon salt, then add flour until it all adds up to 4 ounces. *Or tomato sauce, as I gather they call it in Australia. †Just cut the tip off an onion and mince it. Then put the rest of the onion in the refrigerator for another recipe. Mrs. C. Barsley, 5 Keith-street, Maryborough, Queensland; "Kitchencraft: Readers' Recipes;" The Australian Woman's Mirror; 28 August 1946; page 38

I don't trust ground beef ever since the dodgy imports. Even the more tactfully restrained news sites have admitted "We don't know where the tariff-free meat, which the White House has said will be sold at a 25% discount from the going import price, is coming from."

Ground pork has remained relatively cheap, even if we have to hang a lot on the word "relatively." Nevertheless, a porky meatball-mushroom pie isn't the same. Really, any time you swap ground pork (or turkey, or anything else) into a recipe that started with beef, it comes out a little "less-than."

This brings us to today's recipe. The magazine framed it in its own box on the page to mark it as extra special, and also gave it the biggest cash prize of the week.

"Kitchencraft: Readers' Recipes," The Australian Woman's Mirror, 28 August 1946

I didn't like the idea of making a cobbler with greasy sausage meat. Also, the last time I bought bulk sausage, it tasted like bland saltiness. But as I was looking up cookie recipes, I happened to glance just a little bit further down the page from the Neapolitan fritters (French toast by another name) and see this: 

"The Table;" supplement to the Gympie Times; Queensland, Australia; 3 December 1898; page 4

I realize that adding seasonings to pork meat does not a sausage make, but I thought this recipe wouldn't mind.

Because this culinary jaunt to Australia now involves spices that I tell myself I'll use more often and never do, I waited until I was at my parents' and therefore within an errand's distance of the upscale grocery store with the self-service spice section. That way, I only paid about seven cents for each tiny bag and avoided future spice cabinet shelf-sitters. Unfortunately, I walked past the clearance Halloween candy corn on my way to the spices. Then, I had to buy salted peanuts to go with it. I told myself that I would get nothing else, a resolve that lasted until I saw the figs and thought of revisiting the easy fig pudding. This also necessitated lemons. 

I only meant to get that 7¢ bag in the front.

Had I remembered to bring the recipe with me (or at least write out the ingredients), this could have been the end of my poor financial choices. But we were missing a few things. 

The next day, I strengthened myself against impulsive money leaks before I started the car. Upon arrival, I chanted "I Don't Need That!" while passing all that beguiled. Here's how that went:

Note the presence of lavender flowers, which are not involved in this or any forthcoming recipes. But they're lovely in tea.

I can't decide if I saved money or not. On one hand, seven or eight spice shakers would probably have cost the same. On the other hand, I made that money buy a lot of other things instead of slowly mummifying on the back of the shelf. On the other other hand, I needed none of it.

Before we leave the fancy store for good, I have to note that they sold those little paper booties that used to be so popular for ribs and other cuts of meat that have those unsightly protruding bones.

Should I get the rest of the makings of this mostly-meat craft project?

Moving on from shopping, the recipe calls for self-raising flour. I don't use it enough to justify buying it, but my mother apparently does. Naturally, I had to check that it still worked, so I made an Irish cream cake. (The recipe is simple: take any cake recipe and use Irish cream instead of whatever liquid is on the ingredient list.)

It turns out that self-raising flour kicks up a lot more dust than does all-purpose. And it is much finer, almost like a fairy-cloud that leaves you wiping everything within three feet including the floor. Well, I didn't know I needed something to clean while the baking time elapsed, but I got it anyway.

Based on this cake, I'm going to guess that our flour can still raise itself. Also, life is uncertain, so make dessert first.

After two shopping trips and a flour-testing cake, we still were not prepared for what should be a quick home recipe. The directions call for a "sandwich tin," and I had no idea what that meant. Was I supposed to cook this in a little metal box meant for carrying sandwiches? (I know nothing about the history of lunchboxes or the packing of. For all I know, people used little metal sandwich tins before we had plastic bags.)

I nearly sent out more trans-hemispheric emails to various public libraries in Australia, but then I remembered the helpful suggestion I got last time: try looking it up for myself. In the same magazine that gave us the cobbler, I found multiple recipes that called for "a shallow pie-dish or sandwich-tin." And that is how I learned that people in other parts of the English-speaking world call them "sandwich cakes."

At last, having bought unnecessary candy, made a cake, and learned a bit of international semantics, we were ready for sausage cobbler. The recipe begins with what I think is a scone dough. It came out very nicely, don't you think?

I was going to say that we're testing the sausage seasoning as well as the cobbler, but the recipe has us mix our sausage with a lot of other goodies. You'll note that the sausage seasoning (that brown heap) looks small next to everything else. So I can't say how well our sausage seasoning tastes on its own, but it did smell like sausage.

Incidentally, we have already learned that "tomato sauce" is merely trans-equatorial ketchup. I nearly omitted it, but then I figured that Mrs. C. Barsley got a cash prize for this recipe as written-- even if I felt like a child squirting ketchup onto tater tots. I don't know whether my imagination was caught in ketchup regret, but I thought the kitchen smelled horribly of hot tomato sauce as this baked and feared having turned a pound of pork into sweetened mystery meat.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. As I pressed the sausage into the pan, I was surprised at how well it resembled the "meat with mysterious green flecks you hope are herbs" that you can get from the questionable-yet-cheap part of the frozen aisle. If I didn't make proper sausage, it looked like it anyway. 

For those of you trying this at home, I found it easiest to drop meatball-sized pieces of meat all over the pan and then pat them together.

The scone dough (again, I'm not quite sure if it's actually scone dough but I need to call it something) draped onto the meat with beautiful ease. I would have given Mrs. C. Barsley the prize just for how satisfying it was. We may have uneven coverage, but that's because I am not my great-grandmother who could roll tortillas into perfect circles.

We are directed to bake this for 10 to 15 minutes, which seemed inadequate for a cake pan of raw meat. However, the frozen fish sticks currently waiting for another night also tell us to bake for 10-15 minutes. So I trusted Mrs. C. Barsley enough to set a short timer, but I also got out a meat thermometer. The cobbler was done right on schedule.

I had put a paper circle in the bottom of the pan as anti-stick insurance. It shrivelled as it got wet from cooking, leaving the top of our cobbler with a perfect tally of every wrinkle.

 

Our prize-winning masterpiece splashed juice all over the countertop as I flipped it over, so you might want to do that before you bring it to the table.

Mrs. C. Barsley's recipe gave us a big sausage patty with a lot of bread on top (or underneath since you flip it over). You can lift the bread away and the meat won't try to come with it. But I didn't mind that very much. After all, you can also lift the top crust right off of a meatball-mushroom pie. Also and more importantly, our sausage cobbler tasted too good to care.

This was far better than it should have been. It's like one of those sausage biscuits, but it doesn't taste like mass production. Even the ketchup worked in this. And the bread layer was pillowy-soft. I know that's a cliched description, but the word "pillowy" popped into my mind as soon as I tasted it. Mrs. C Barsley earned all ten of the shillings that the magazine awarded for the recipe.

Because of this recipe's home country and continent, we're going to close with cute Australian animals:

Second-Stab Saturday: Candy corn and peanuts with chocolate chips!

Happy Saturday, everyone!

Candy Corn, Chocolate Chips, and Salted Peanuts You don't need me to write out the recipe for this one. Use semisweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate-- the candy corn is plenty sweet enough.

As I was praising the magic of candy corn and salted peanuts, Lace Maker suggested in the comments that we add chocolate chips. As it happens, I have a secret stash of them for cookie emergencies.

Obviously, the flavors all go together really well. Imagine a Reese's cup made with chunky peanut butter and with frosting on top. Except it also has all the exquisitely mixed textures of a candy bar. Happy post-Halloween, everyone!

Lemon Squares with Expressive Food Coloring!

Now that the weather has (barely) chilled enough to bake, we have been!

Lemon Squares      Crust: 2 cups flour ⅔ cup powdered sugar 1 cup butter, softened Heat oven to 350°. Grease a 9"x13" pan.* (We recommend lining the pan with parchment paper or foil first.) Mix butter, flour, and sugar together until crumbly. Press into the pan and bake until light brown, about 18-20 minutes. Make the filling while the crust bakes.      Filling: 4 eggs 2 cups sugar ¼ cup flour ½ tsp baking powder ⅓ cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice Grated rind of the lemons you juiced 2 tbsp powdered sugar Mix all dry ingredients except powdered sugar. Whisk in the eggs and beat well. Then stir in the lemon juice and rind. Pour over the hot crust and bake until set, about 20 minutes. When cooled, sprinkle with powdered sugar. You can make the powdered sugar look much nicer if you sprinkle it through a sifter. *The original recipe claims you can do this in an ungreased pan, but I have always had rotten luck with that. Note: If halving this recipe, use an 8" square pan or a 9" round. Source: Harris-Teeter powdered sugar label

Summer is finally coming to an end, even in Texas. Temperatures are dropping, and people's yard decorations are changing. We are seeing the first warning signs of Christmas on some houses, while other people still have their light-up inflatable zombies and artificial spiderwebs out. 

With the recent chills, the house has been warmer than the outdoors on a few recent nights (with the heater still off of course). But even though it's still a bit stuffy indoors, I could wait no longer. It's time to take the oven out of rest.

The chilly weather means we can now enjoy the flavors of summer. Isn't the idea of summer better without the sweltering reality? So, a lot of people have been getting lemon squares. Because I wanted everyone to know they came from me, I couldn't resist dyeing them. If I wanted to excuse myself for turquoise dye, the lemon squares were a rather insipid shade of yellow on their own.

I should not have made a pink crust underneath my 1990s-colored lemon filling. Pink and turquoise go together well, but not when the colors bleed together in the middle. You can see what they should have been, and also what they were not. So, these only went to good friends who know me well enough.

If you didn't know this was lemon, what flavor do you think it should be?

Everyone else got the pink squares. Those were still festively tinted, but they look normal enough for people who only know my public face.

Also, you should definitely juice your own lemons into this recipe and also grate in the rind. It makes them so much better. 

Happy Halloween from A Book of Cookrye!

Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope we all stocked up on raisin boxes and toothpaste samples! 

This is a lovely time of the year to eat seasonally. And since this is America, our seasonal foods come from a factory and are 90% corn syrup.

I know that not everyone believes me on candy corn and salted peanuts, and I won't attempt to convert any doubters. But would you reconsider if we add some garnish?

Candy corn seems to be very popular in my little corner of America. All of the supermarkets in town sold out only a few days after it appeared, making me curse myself for waiting for it to go on sale. But I found one last bag of it on the back of a shelf, hiding in the shadows from all but the desperate.  

I don't know why candy corn and salted peanuts go together so well, but they do. Candy corn on its own is rather bland, and salted peanuts are.... well, they're there. But when you put them together, it's like that magical moment when someone combined peanut butter and jelly.

We're going to close with a special Halloween recipe!  

Directions for Cookery in its Various Branches, Miss Leslie, 1837

For someone who lived her entire life in fine city houses and hotels, Miss Leslie had some seriously bucolic bluntness.

Aniseed Pizzelles: or, Anticlimactic authenticity

Today, we're going really Italian with our pizzelles! (I think.)

Fante's Special Pizzelle Recipe 3 eggs 6 oz (¾ cups) sugar 5 oz (1 cup plus 2 tbsp) melted shortening 1½ tsp anise seeds* 1½ tsp vanilla Juice and grated rind of ¼ orange or lemon 11 oz (2 cups) flour Beat eggs and sugar until they become light and foamy. Add the melted shortening, a little at a time. Add the anise seeds, vanilla, grated rinds and juices. Gradually add the flour until a light dough is formed; light enough to drop onto the iron with a spoon. You may have a little bit of flour left over. Drop spoonfuls onto the center of a hot pizzelle iron. Use a knife to push the dough off of the spoon. Cook until golden, following to the manufacturer's directions. *Use ground anise seeds, anise extract, or anise oil if desired. Note: This may be totally inauthentic, but our favorite way to flavor these is to add a near-excessive amount of cinnamon. Source: Fante's Kitchen

We make Fante's pizzelle recipe a lot, but today we are adding these!

You're looking at whole anise seeds, which have been soaking all night in the egg to draw out their flavor. They look like tiny bugs, don't they?

Fante's original recipe calls a generous spill of them, which has made me want to try this for a while. They write on their website: "Not everyone can deal with the anise seed getting between their teeth. For you, we recommend pulverizing the seeds in your food processor, electric mincer or mortar and pestle. Or you can use the oil or extract for the traditional licorice flavoring of this cookie."

I would have made these far earlier, but I didn't want a barely-used shaker of anise seeds slowly mummifying for years after a single batch of pizzelles. I've said this often, but I don't like investing in canisters of spices that will slowly turn to dust. So, when I was in the store with the self-service spice section, I got a tiny bag of them for 82 cents.

The seeds and the bits of orange rind made our batter look unexpectedly like it should become a pound cake.

You can see the little toasted seeds in the pizzelles. I thought they looked really cute. 

I tried one and was glad I only spent 82 cents on anise seeds. This wasn't bad but pointless. All of the anise flavor got toasted out. I may as well have used poppyseeds instead (which, come to think of it...). At first I thought the anise flavor might come back after letting the pizzelles wait overnight, like gingerbread. But a day in an airtight plastic bag did nothing. So unless you like little crunchy bits in your pizzelles, I wouldn't bother buying anise seeds.

They were still really good pizzelles, though.

 

Chicken 'n Stuffing: or, Canned soup with food interspersions

I think this might be what Midwesterners call a "hotdish"?

Chicken-and-Stuffing 2 chicken breasts, cooked and cubed or 2½ cups cubed leftover chicken 1 can cream of mushroom soup (or cream of celery, or whatever cream-of-something you like) ¼ cup milk ¼ cup chicken broth       Topping: 1½ cups seasoned stuffing mix or croutons ½ cup chicken broth 4 tablespoons butter, melted Heat oven to 350°. Grease a 1½ quart casserole dish. Mix all ingredients, place in casserole. Then mix together the topping ingredients and sprinkle on top. Cover casserole with foil and bake 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake 20 minutes more. Use and Care Book for Deluxe Toaster Oven/Broil, Proctor-Silex, 1970s-ish

I accidentally cooked more chicken than I needed for dinner. Ordinarily I would have frozen the surplus for twenty years, but the summer heat has mostly gone away and it's oven season again! Today we're trying this random recipe from a toaster oven manual.

Use and Care Book for Deluxe Toaster Oven/Broil, Proctor-Silex, 1970s-ish

One of my friends found an old instruction manual and asked me to scan it that it may be uploaded to the internet. This is what happens when other people think color-correcting is a mysterious art. But I can't complain because these are the people who do a lot of freebie repairs for me. 

At any rate, this manual is an accidental 1970s time capsule. The illustrators even took the time to draw the vinyl simulated woodgrain on the sides. 

At any rate, I thought this casserole looked pretty good when I saw it. I thought it'd be a one-dish meal until I looked closely at the ingredients. This is basically canned chicken soup if you were to add your own chicken.  But sometimes a gloppy casserole is exactly what you need, even if you have to come up with a vegetable to serve next to it.

The recipe starts with a little bit of stuffing mix. Unfortunately, you can't buy small packages of that. After a bit of consideration, I decided that stuffing mix is usually a feedsack full of croutons. The substitution was obvious, and also meant I could eat the rest of the box of croutons.

 

Next, we get to the canned soup! The recipe calls for cream of mushroom, but I argue that cream of celery is a superior casserole glue. Ours kind of held the shape of the can as it glorped into the bowl, like a half-pecked-at gelatin mold that is drooping at the end of a luncheon.

In less time than I thought, we were ready to bake our big beige mess.

 

This wasn't so much a casserole as I understand it but a very thick soup with bread on top. Think onion soup gratinee if it came out of a factory. I wouldn't have minded the goopiness if this had been any good, but...

This tastes like a recipe from when everyone smoked. But mostly, it wasn't very good. I like canned soup as a casserole binder, but it tastes bland and slightly metallic on its own. Whether you use cream of mushroom or cream of celery, you have to really like the taste of barely-altered canned soup if you make this. 

But I'll give credit where it'd due: our chicken was neither bland or dry. If you're trying to figure out what to do with that dry chicken that you feel guilty about, this recipe could be what you're looking for.

For the record, I think the Canadian version of this idea was better. But this one barely involved any more work than just throwing things into a pan.

Bubble Bread: or, Crispy dipping crackers

This recipe is for all you rolling pin lovers.

Bubble Bread 2 cups flour 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp melted butter Boiling water Heat oven to 375°. Have greased or parchment-lined baking sheets ready. Mix the flour and salt. Add the butter and a spoonful or two of boiling water. Mix in more boiling water until you have a stiff dough that you can easily shape in your hands but doesn't stick. Knead for about 30 seconds or until smooth ish. Roll out fairly thin, then cut into small squares. Then roll each one as thinly as possible. Bake until a light golden brown (about 15-20 minutes), rotating the pan about halfway through. (A lot of recipes don't care if your oven is a little uneven, but you definitely want to rotate the pan for this one.) "In the Kitchen;" The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; 21 August 1933; page 1

Now that the temperatures have dropped, we can turn on the oven. I've cheated and used it a few times over the summer, but it still smelled like burning dust when I heated it up.

This is the first time I've seen "bake until bubbly" at the end of a non-casserole recipe.

For those outside of America, we have our own "bubble bread" which bears no resemblance to what they printed in Katanning. The American bubble bread involves slathering small pieces of bread dough (homemade or canned, depending on one's mood) in butter, cinnamon, and sugar. You then pile them into a tube pan and bake. When you serve it, everyone can break off pieces.  (I've also seen a savory variant with garlic and Parmesan.)

These days, getting everybody's bare hands all over the food seems like a quaint holdover from the pre-pandemic era. But if you can put microbes out of your mind, it's a fun edible centerpiece-- especially for kids. All of this is to say that the competing versions of bubble bread had me emailing more librarians in Australia before we were done with this recipe.

Getting to what is apparently the Australian version of bubble bread, the dough was almost suspiciously easy to mix together-- especially since we have an electric kettle to pour the boiling water from. Naturally, I couldn't plug it in without also making tea.

This dough rolled out more easily than I was prepared for. It was just elastic enough not to crumble or crack, but just firm enough to keep itself together instead of tearing apart. I got the feeling I could have gotten it as thin as tissue paper without borrowing language from hockey fans.

We're next supposed to cut it into pieces and roll each one again, which I took to mean that we should all of them as thin as possible, one at a time. And since I wasn't working with a massive dough sheet, it was easy (astonishingly easy!) to get this almost as thin as paper.

 

I had thought our dough would inflate into a sort of cut-budget copy of cream puffs (the recipe does say "when cooked it's all bubbly"), but it turned into something like crackers.

I guess it kind of looks bubbly...?

I didn't know if my bubble bread was correct. So, before deciding whether this was any good, I decided to once again send trans-hemispheric emails to whatever librarians in Australia might be willing to answer. I first wrote to the Katanning public library since I found this recipe in their newspaper and got no answer. After accepting that they would never reply, I sent a message to the city library in Adelaide because I hadn't emailed them over the beef dripping Depression cake. (I don't want to be a semiregular presence in the same library inboxes every time I get stuck in a recipe, even if this means I will eventually run out of cities.) Whoever replied suggested I contact the National Library of Australia before adding "From a personal point of view, as it doesn’t use yeast, it seems more like a flat bread, that has some bubbles in it when cooked. Probably good for things like yiros or dips."

Since emails don't require international postage, I went where I had been redirected. The librarian who answered started off with "Unfortunately, the National Library cannot comment on the accuracy of recipes published in items in our collection as this is beyond the service we offer. Since we are not a baking service, we cannot offer any instructions as to how these goods were supposed to come out, nor can we offer you any recipe improvements."

After that very final-sounding paragraph, the librarian had mercy on me. She went on to say "I can, however, show you a few ways you can research this recipe for yourself from overseas. You could compare your recipe and results with some of the other versions of this recipe published in digitised newspapers on Trove." [Note: Trove is the Australian newspaper archive that I've been getting all these Katanning newspapers from. Imagine newspapers.com without a paywall.]

I can't believe I didn't think to just look up the recipe myself and see what other people had to say! The librarian put in a series of links to various bubble bread recipes that she had found for me, including one with pictures and someone making bubble bread recently enough to post it on Facebook! Each of the recipes she sent differed from each other (as recipes for the same thing all tend to do), but they all produced little savory crackers like what we had made. Also, all of them had us rolling our dough "very very thin," or "to wafer thickness,"  or to "to paper thickness (this is important)."

One recipe got into more detail at the end, helpfully noting that "Bubble-bread is usually served in square pieces about four or five inches square. It should be allowed to bake until crisp and it should he a delicate pale brown in colour." Another recipe concluded with "If preferred, the squares can be left flat and the ends will then curl up slightly with the cooking," which is what happened with mine. It's nice to have my results corroborated. I can't guarantee that I made these right, but I think I got close.

So, I made these again, getting them very thin and raising the oven temperature a little bit. They came out a lot better. Imagine a wispier version of pita chips (or do Australians call them pita crisps?). Which, given the wince-inducing price of pita chips these days, I am more than happy to be able to do these myself. They felt a bit fragile, but proved sturdy enough for most dips. 

They were also nice with our recent fig pudding on them.

I also thought these would be very good if you added some other things to the dough. And indeed, some of the later-decade variants sent to me had things like Parmesan cheese or herbs mixed in, which was probably a lot more financially feasible after the Depression ended. 

In short, these are very good. But you do end up rolling each one out individually before baking. So if you make these, I hope you really love your rolling pin.