Cheese and Ham Pie: or, Carbohydrate bliss interspersed with meat

Today, we are continuing our Australian salute to cheese!

Cheese and Ham Pie 4 oz ham, cut into into bite-size pieces 6 oz egg noodles, cooked in salted water 4 oz (1 cup) grated cheese 1 oz (2 tbsp) butter, cut into small pieces 1 cup milk 1 egg Pastry for one crust Salt and pepper to taste Heat oven to 350° (gas mark 4, 180°C). Coat a pie pan with cooking spray. Sprinkle the ham in the pan. Place the noodles on top. Then sprinkle the cheese over the noodles. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Then dot with the butter. Whisk together the egg and the milk, then pour over all. Cover with a top crust and cut holes to vent. Bake about 30 minutes or until golden. Note: If you're buying ready-made pastry instead of doing it yourself, puff-paste would be really good on top of this. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935; page 3

"In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935

This is the season for leftover ham. I deliberately took home a lot of leftover ham from Easter and froze it until the time felt right, which I decided is now. 

As it turned out,  ham is the first word in the recipe title but we don't use much of it. This is what happens to cooking when the Depression was on.

Not pictured: 1 ounce butter.

What the recipe lacks in ham, it makes up with carbs and cheese. Six ounces of macaroni is a lot more than you may think. After mounding the cheese on top, our pie overtopped the pan.

Lastly, we laid on the pie crust. I folded the extra dough back over the pie-- partially to make a should-have-been cute border but mostly because I was too lazy to trim it.

This pie is what leftovers should be: smothered in carbs and buried in cheese. I probably could have baked it a little longer, but I didn't. It was plain, simple, and just what I hoped for.

In full disclosure, some free-swimming liquid did seep into the freshly-vacated parts of the pie pan when we served it. But although weepimg pies usually bother me, this is one of those recipes where I don't think there's any point in caring about drips. Of course, you can serve this with more bread to soak them up. After all, carbs go great with carbs.

Rice Cheese: It needs more cheese

I couldn't argue with cheese and rice.

Rice Cheese 3 cups cooked rice ½ cup shredded cheese 1 cup tomato puree (fresh or canned)* 1 teaspoon melted butter Salt, black Pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste Heat oven to 325°. Grease a medium-sized casserole dish. Mix all ingredients. Place in casserole dish. If the rice is dry (or if it's right on the edge of being too dry), pour a little water over it. Cover with a lid (or with foil if your baking dish doesn't have a lid) and bake for around 20 minutes. Note: This didn't mind baking at 350°, so you can put it in the oven next to other things baking at that temperature. *In a pinch, you can put canned tomatoes in a blender. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935; page 3

This recipe uses a lot more rice than I expected. I had initially thought it is supposed to creatively refresh leftover rice (because cheese solves everything). But as far as I know, few people cook enough rice to have nearly a quart of it left over. Obviously, we cut the recipe down a lot. 

"In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935

It seems that people used to boil and drain rice like spaghetti, sometimes adding an extra step where you return the rice to the fire to separate the grains a bit. But today, we are embracing modernity-- even if it means we have to temporarily return our souffle pan (which also steams the occasional pudding) to its original home.

Moving down the recipe, we're supposed to mix the rice with cheese and "tomato sauce." I had a particularly unwelcome suspicion that tomato sauce is Australian for ketchup, so I picked an Australian supermarket chain to see what turned up on their website.

Thinking that perhaps food definitions have changed a bit since 1935, I decided to see if The Southern Districts Advocate ever had anything to say about "tomato sauce" around the same time they printed today's rice. Sure enough, one edition of "In the Kitchen" was devoted to preserving that year's apparently bountiful tomato harvest. They had a recipe for "A Good Tomato Sauce," which looks like ketchup as we know it today.

"In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; March 4, 1935; page 5

Note the addition of apples, which I think would be really nice if I ever decide to make my own tomato sauce instead of buying it. But getting back to the recipe we're actually making, I didn't want to make a big pan of rice and ketchup-- period-correct or not. (I would be willing to put something like Miss Leslie's ketchup in our rice, but her recipe was in the wrong hemisphere and already a century out of date.) Instead, I pulled some half-pruned tomatoes out of the back of the fridge and put them in our new toy mini-chopper.

The rest of the recipe was easy enough: stir it together and bake.

This tasted like a rough draft of Spanish rice. (Which doesn't surprise me-- both are mostly rice and tomatoes.) I think it could have used more a lot more cheese. I was hoping for something like macaroni and cheese but with rice. Instead we got rice with a gallingly tasteful seasoning of cheese. I wasn't thrilled, but I did keep the leftovers. 

 

If I revisit this, I'll probably triple the cheese. There's a time and a place for using cheese lightly (or so I've heard), and rice absolutely isn't it.

Savory Baked Rice: or, I swear someone's aunt makes this

I've never tasted this before, but I would swear I have.

Savory Baked Rice ¾ cup raw rice 1½ cups water About ½ tsp salt 1 chopped onion (or about 4 oz frozen chopped onion*-- no need to defrost) 1 well-beaten egg 1½ cups milk Salt and pepper to taste Cook the rice, water, onion, and salt until done-- whether you use a rice cooker or a saucepan. If desired, add some extra seasonings before cooking-- I really liked it with a generous shake of dried parsley. While you're waiting on the rice, beat the egg until uniform. When the rice is done, heat oven to 350° (gas mark 4, 180°C). Grease a pie pan. Mix the milk with the rice-- this cools it off enough to prevent curdling the egg. Then add the egg and mix well. Add salt and pepper, and any other seasonings to taste. Bake 20 minutes. Serve warm. *There's no need to precisely weigh out the frozen onion. I just eyeballed about a third of a 12-oz package. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; August 21, 1933; page 1

The recipe ends with "Serve with mashed potatoes and tomato sauce." I don't know anything about the town of Katanning, but I did note that more than half the newspaper was concerned with livestock and crops. Carbs with a side of carbs makes more sense out in farm country. 

"In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; August 21, 1933

Today, we're starting with rice and a special other ingredient: an onion! I don't know why I never thought to add a chopped raw onion to the rice cooker before, but I'm definitely doing it again whether I revisit this recipe or not.

I also put generous shake of dried parsley in the rice water. I think dried parsley is very underrated in modern food. It makes things taste properly seasoned and adds such an interesting flavor. Parsley deserves to be more than decorative sprigs on the side of fancy plates.

Aside from waiting for the rice to cook, this recipe was surprisingly quick to put together. You just put it all in a bowl and stir. Though since I didn't want any stubborn clumps of egg that refused to beat out, I made a short detour and beat our egg electrically. I imagine that anyone doing this in the 1930s could have used a handcranked eggbeater and done it nearly as fast. 

The recipe says "more eggs can be added," but the price of eggs still hasn't quite recovered from the last time Trump was president. 

 After mixing, it looked (as all unbaked rice puddings seem to do) like soggy porridge.

Things were a lot better after baking. The rice came out of the oven ever-so-slightly golden on top and smelling amazing.

This was a lot better than it should have been. Seriously, this tastes like something that somebody's aunt always brings. I don't think anyone in my family has ever made anything like this, but I would swear it spontaneously generated on the Thanksgiving table at least once. And like all good recipes that someone's aunt makes, there were a lot of leftovers and we were glad to have them. 

 

Potato-Egg Pie: It's so good you'd never believe we started with fresh ingredients

I think the pie pan makes this a pie.

Potato-Egg Pie 3 small potatoes, cooked and sliced (peel if desired) 3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced 2 tablespoons flour 1½ cups milk 1 tablespoon butter 3 ounces cheese (¾ cups shredded) Salt and pepper to taste About 3 tbsp breadcrumbs Heat oven to 350°. Grease a pie pan. Shake a little bit of salt and pepper in the bottom of the pan, then lay the potato slices on top of it. Lay the sliced boiled eggs on top of the potatoes. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Thoroughly whisk the flour into the milk. Then add it to the butter and cook, stirring constantly, until it boils. Remove from heat and add the cheese, stirring until it melts, Then add the breadcrumbs. Pour/spread this over the potatoes and eggs. Bake until lightly browned on top, about 20 minutes. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935; page 3

As we noted a few recipes ago, The Southern Districts Advocate devoted an entire edition of "In the Kitchen" to cheese and pudding. Naturally, we couldn't resist trying the other cheesy recipes, starting with the pie. (The steamed puddings will have to wait until we dig our jackets back out of the closet.)

The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935

When I saw the title "Cheese Pie" in all capitals, I imagined a whole pie shell filled with glorious cheese and barely enough other things to hold it together. I thought we would melt an entire party cheese tray into a single pie pan and euphemistically call it a casserole. It sounded so delicious that I barely managed to wait long enough for one of the last chilly nights of late spring.

Instead of starting with a cheese grater, the cheese pie starts off with potatoes. This is when I learned that no matter what you do, potatoes will always take longer than you think. I thought the pressure cooker might be faster than boiling, but we still had to wait half an hour. In a fortunate accident, the potato was perfectly cooked when the pressure cooker boiled itself dry and the top stopped jiggling. It had also unwrapped itself.

I had to kind of smush the potato slices into the pan, but they already looked like a mess anyway. Because I always like potatoes better with the skins left on, I kind of pressed the last little fallen-off bits into the gaps between potato pieces.

Next, we added the boiled eggs. I would like to once again say how much I love Delia Smith's egg-boiling tutorial. These came out perfect. No runniness in the center, and none of those unbearable gray rings that cause so much stove-side fretting.

Moving over to the melted butter, I wasn't sure why we're supposed to add the milk "gradually." Though it was kind of interesting to see the first splash of it turn into a yolk-free fried egg.

 

We are next directed to stir in the flour. I suspected this would end in a lumpy mess, but nevertheless gave The Southern Districts Advocate the benefit of the doubt. After all, every printed recipe theoretically worked for someone. 

Of course, I couldn't stir hard enough without sloshing the entire pan all over the stove. I had to pour everything back out so I could whisk it in something more suitable. (Isn't it nice to have a dishwasher so I don't have to worry about the pileup?)

I knew this lumpy mess would happen would do it anyway.

Ahh, doesn't that look better?

Next, it was finally time to put the cheese in the cheese pie! I know we're cutting this recipe to a third, but I expected a lot more cheese from a recipe that title-drops it. Perhaps I am a bit picky about my cheese pies, but I think the cheese should be a beautiful orange mountain over the sauce we're about to stir it into. I guess with a depression on, we had to economize on cheese even when featuring it.

Lastly, we are supposed to add "breadcrumbs to taste." Unfortunately, I am not Australian enough to have any taste in breadcrumbs. Then I remembered that Delia Smith made something called "bread sauce" in one of her Christmas specials. (I know Delia is British, but there's a lot of culinary overlap between the two countries so we'll just go with it.) I copied the amounts from her recipe because Delia has never done us wrong.

When we stirred this together, it tasted like a grilled cheese. (Or is it a cheese toastie in Australian?) Our sauce had also turned into a paste. The recipe says to "pour over potatoes, etc" but we ended up ineptly spreading it instead.

To my light surprise, our pie's top layer actually browned a little bit in the oven. It didn't look like a sauce, though. Instead, it was more like I had poured some sort of bread batter on top which had then baked in place.

When I tasted this, I couldn't believe the recipe didn't start with getting last night's dinner back out of the fridge. In the most carb-stupored way possible, this is what leftovers should taste like. It was the same kind of satisfying as Mrs. Mary Martensen's fish pie (which also uses potatoes and cheese). Very little of today's cheese pie remained to put away after the pan got cold. 

 

Italian Honey Tarts: They contain no honey and may not be Italian

I have no idea what makes this "Italian."

Italian Tarts with Italian Honey        Pastry: 8 oz (2 cups) flour 1 tsp salt (if butter is unsalted) 5 oz (10 tbsp) butter 1 tsp sugar ⅛ tsp lemon extract (or juice of 1 lemon) 1 egg yolk 2 tbsp ice-cold water (have at least half a cup on hand)        Italian Honey: 3 eggs 4 oz (½ cup) sugar 1 pinch (⅛ tsp) cream of tartar 2 oz (4 tbsp) butter 1 tsp salt (if butter is unsalted) 1 to 3 tsp lemon extract (depending on your taste) Have a 12-cup muffin pan ready. (Or use tartlet pans if you have them.) You probably don't need to coat it with cooking spray, but I did so I could be very sure nothing would get stuck.        To make the pastry: Sift flour and salt (if using) into a large bowl. Rub in the butter. Beat together the sugar, lemon extract (or lemon juice), egg yolk, and 2 tablespoons of water. Work this into the flour mixture. Mix until it forms a stiff dough, adding more water if it's too crumbly. Place in a sealed container (a ziploc bag will do) and let rest for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Divide the dough into two portions. Roll half of it out. Cut it into small circles, then line the muffin cups with them. When rerolling the dough scraps, stack them on each other rather than smushing them into a ball-- this keeps the dough from getting tough. When you use up the first half of the dough, repeat with the rest of it. (If you have a large space to work with, you can roll all the dough out instead of dividing it in two. But you will have a very large and perhaps unwieldy sheet of it.) Refrigerate the tart shells for at least 30 minutes. (If you wrap the pan well, you can leave them in the fridge overnight or for a couple of days if desired).        When ready to bake, make the Italian Honey: In the top of a double boiler (or a mixing bowl that can handle sitting over a pot of boiling water), whisk the eggs, sugar, and cream of tartar until thoroughly mixed. Add the butter and place over simmering water (simmering, not boiling hard), stirring constantly until the butter is melted and the mixture is about as thick as cake batter. Remove from heat and allow to cool.        To bake: Heat oven to 350° (gas mark 4, 180°C). Bake the pastry shells until they are slightly golden. Then spoon in the filling almost to the top of each tart shell, being careful none of it spills down the sides. If you want to be very sure your tarts won't stick, let the empty pastry shells cool until they won't fall apart when you handle them. (You don't need to wait for them to get all the way to room temperature.) Then lift each one out, put it into a paper cupcake liner, and return it to the muffin pan. Then add the filling. Bake until the tarts puff up and are firm when you shake the pan. Note: You can just buy frozen tartlet shells for this. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; 8 July 1935; page 3

I saw the recipe for "Italian Tarts" and it looked like an empty pie crust. Then I noticed the recipe below is "Italian Honey." Apparently the staff at The Southern Districts Advocate assumed that readers would know that the Italian honey goes in the Italian tarts.

The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; 8 July 1935

I would love to know what makes this "Italian honey." Is this derived from an Italian honey substitute? I looked up "Italian honey" to see if people still make anything resembling this recipe (in Australia or anywhere else). But I only found people selling honey from Italy. I didn't even see anyone describing it as an "old, forgotten dish" like bloater paste.

Whatever "Italian honey" is, it starts off with eggs and a lot of butter. I almost thought it was a custard, but it seems closer to our chess pie.

I was going to put this directly on the stove burner because I rarely bother with double boilers these days. But then I realized this would turn into scrambled eggs given the slightest mistake. So I perched our bowl over a pot of water (simmering, not boiling!) as the recipe says.

The recipe says to cook "till thick," but I didn't know what that meant. Should our Italian honey be runny enough to pour? Should it be firm enough to hold a shape? I cooked it until you could swipe a finger across a coated spoon and leave a line, which brings us about into cake batter territory. Our honey would have made a very nice sauce, but I didn't see how this could ever be used in tarts. It would spill as soon as you lifted one off the plate.

I was going to dye it purple, but I added a few tasteful drops of yellow instead.

Upon tasting, our Italian honey reminded me again of chess pie (which as we said, is very similar in ingredients). I did not regret setting up a double boiler.

I was going to use our Italian honey as a sort of custard sauce in the trifle we saw recently. But then I realized I would never forgive myself for half-finishing a recipe. We therefore would complete our Italian tarts.

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough butter for the pastry, so I had to substitute half shortening. I've seen a lot of people swear that shortening makes the best pie crusts, that it handles ever-so-well, and that it is by far superior to every other option (as long as you don't care how the pie crust tastes). But every time I've tried to use shortening, my crusts have come out crumbly and hard to work with. They always crack no matter how gently I "ease" them into place.

By contrast, I can drape a butter crust into place almost as easily as laying out a dishrag. And butter is supposed to be harder to work with. As a visual reminder:

This is all butter, no shortening.

Let's compare that to just about every shortening crust I've ever made:

Getting back to the recipe, I'm not sure what the egg yolk is supposed to do in the pastry. I looked it up online and only found a lot of AI slop. A few actual humans made vague claims that the pie will be "richer." 

These were very irksome to get into place because of the shortening. They kept wanting to crack and crumble. But on the bright side, we learned that our largest pastry cutter (viz. an extra-large peach can with both ends cut off) from when we made freestanding lemon tarts is the perfect size for making pie shells in a muffin pan. I used to have to make lots of little pastry balls and roll them out one by one.

I filled two tarts before I realized that I was only inviting failure. I had forgotten to pop the little shells out of the pan and into into paper liners. That meant that if even the tiniest drop of Italian honey dripped out of place, it would glue our tarts to the pan. And once tarts get stuck, you can only get them out in pieces.

I had no idea how long to bake our Italian tarts, so I took them out of the oven after they stopped wobbling when I shook the pan. I didn't know what to think when they puffed up, though. Had I made some unholy sugar-laden bastardization of that "cloud bread" that made the rounds when keto was the big diet trend? (In case you missed it, "cloud bread" was basically an aerated version of those weird scrambled-egg sheets they use on Egg McMuffins.)

Our tarts deflated back into normal as they cooled. Nevertheless, I wasn't reassured until I cut one open and found that we did not have tart-sized pucks of scrambled egg.Instead, we had dessert.

The special Italian pie crust tasted very ordinary. If you're making your own pie dough, a few drops of lemon extract won't go amiss. But if you want to simply buy frozen tart shells, you won't miss it.

These have the same texture as Harris Teeter's lemon squares without the heavy payload of sugar. They're perfect for when you want something sweet but not too sweet. I'm still not sure why they're called Italian honey, but I did like them enough to make them again.

Orange Pound Cake: or, Unexpectedly doing it the very old way

Today, we're letting Australia show us how to make a cake!

Orange Cake Weigh on a kitchen scale: 3 eggs Then take the same weight of: Butter Sugar Flour You will also need: Juice of 1 orange (Grate the rind off the orange if desired-- it does add a nice flavor.) 1 tsp salt (if butter is unsalted) Heat oven to 350°. Grease an 8-inch round cake pan. If you want extra insurance, cut a circle of parchment paper to fit the bottom of the pan before spraying it. Then, after spraying the pan, press the paper into place. This cake would be even better in mini-loaf pans if you have three or four of them. Beat the butter and sugar (and salt if using) until very light and fluffy. Then beat the eggs on high speed until they are whipped to a creamy-colored foam. You can use the same beaters for the butter and then the eggs-- you don't even need to rinse them. Gradually stir the eggs into the butter. Then stir in the orange juice. Lastly, mix in the flour as gently as possible. Pour and spread it into the pan, and bake until the center springs back when you lightly press it with your fingertip, about 20-30 minutes.  Note: To make a chocolate cake, omit the orange juice and stir in two tablespoons of cocoa powder. Or, to get more chocolate flavor out of the cocoa, melt the butter and get it very hot. Stir in the cocoa and let it stand until the butter cools to room temperature and re-solidifies. Note 2: If you're worried that the cake won't rise, you can either use self-raising flour or mix one teaspoon of baking powder into all-purpose flour. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935; page 3

I've had a good time flipping through the recipes from The Southern Districts Advocate. They're very ordinary-looking instead of aspirational, so it's interesting peep into the kitchens over there and back then. A lot of recipes in other newspapers come off like people telling you how you should cook instead of printing the sort of things people would actually make. Also, Australia's newspapers are free to browse. Even my local library can't afford a Newspapers.com subscription.

The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935

So, this is basically a pound cake made the really old-fashioned way. This was already old-fashioned when it went to print in 1935.

First, you take one pound each of eggs, sugar, butter, and flour. Just like in the pre-industrial days, you use the eggs you had on hand instead of standard-size scale weights. Then before mixing everything, you thoroughly whip the eggs to leaven the cake. At the very end of the recipe, you add the flour and try not to deflate the air you've beaten into everything else.

I thought that perhaps the writers meant for us to add baking powder to the flour. Perhaps it would have been obvious to anyone clipping this recipe out of the newspaper in 1935. But from what I can tell, the people in charge of "In the Kitchen" were very careful to specify self-raising flour whenever the need arose. So I think this cake is raised the same way we measure it: the old old old way. That is to say, we beat a lot of air into it and appreciate that we now have electric mixers. Remember Miss Leslie's jelly cake? 

 

I've made a lot of recipes that involved two mixers, but this is the first time I've ever used two mixers simultaneously. In one power socket, our handmixer was beating the butter and sugar "to a cream." Meanwhile in the stand mixer, the eggs were revolving in the bowl until they had become a tawny whipped cream.  

The instructions simply tell us to "add eggs well beaten." I soon suspected that I missed some implied steps because our batter turned into a curdled mess. 

Rarely does anything good come from batter that looks like this.

As I saw my cake heading toward failure, I considered adding some baking powder as insurance. Then, I thought I might divide the batter in half and make one cake with baking powder and the other as The Southern Districts Advocate apparently intended. This would let me try the recipe as written and also have a backup cake. But as I was weighing out my ingredients, I decided the heck with it! I will bet an entire batch of cake batter on this recipe! 

Our batter looked promisingly whipped and fluffed after getting the flour in there. I began to think that we would actually have a genuine cake on our hands. Perhaps I got some cosmic insurance by waiting to take out the trash. The spirits may have decided not to ruin the cake since I was already prepared to throw out the evidence.

This cake smelled amazing as it baked. I know it contains the same ingredients as practically every other cake in existence, but somehow the kitchen smelled so much better. And afterward, it actually looked bubbly on top, as if it had risen into something better than a pan of stodge.

As we found upon slicing, this rose into a very nice (if somewhat dense) pound cake. Really, I should have made this in mini-loaf pans instead of a round one. You can add a teaspoon or two of baking powder if you're worried, but the cake didn't seem to need it.

Full disclosure: the cake is such a rich yellow because I added food coloring.

The flavor did need a little extra pep, though. I should have grated the orange rind into it (and maybe added a few spices). I was thrilled with my success but not excited about eating it. Since I hate waste, I stacked most of it into a trifle. This cake has that perfect firm texture to support lots of whipped cream and custard.

I don't mean that the whipped cream and everything hid an underwhelming cake. I mean that everything complemented each other perfectly. I really liked what we had at the end of stacking it. If you really like a good trifle (or refrigerator cake, as I've seen them called), this is the perfect recipe for it.