Potato Salad: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #6

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: Seasonal Fruits/Vegetables August 10 - August 23
Concoct a dish based on the fruits and/or vegetables that would have been in season and available to the particular time you wish to interpret. It needn’t be the place you are in at this moment, but it should coincide with the season!

The Recipe: Potato Salad (recipe 1154), The Book of Household Management, Mrs. Isabella Mary Beeton, [1861].

Mrs. Beeton's Potato Salad (in a manner of speaking)

Ahh...I started back to work part-time for my employer and that means a new schedule for all of us.  I actually started this a week before the end of the challenge (with making tarragon vinegar) but didn't finish until the bitter end and the write up was even more delayed.  But I did make the challenge recipe!  I pulled from my free download on my Kindle (I do have the print copy back home in Minnesota, too....but that didn't make the packing cut when we had 2 checked bags each at 50 pounds to get us through almost 2 years).

Recipe:
Ingredients- 10 or 12 cold boiled potatoes, 4 tablespoonfuls of tarragon or plain vinegar, 6 tablespoonfuls of salad-oil, pepper and salt to taste, 1 teaspoonful of minced parsley.

Mode- Cut the potatoes into slices about 1/2 inch in thickness; put these into a salad-bowl with oil and vinegar in the above proportion; season with pepper, salt, and a teaspoonful of minced parsley; stir the salad well, that all the ingredients may be thoroughly incorporated, and it is ready to serve.  This should be made two or three hours before it is wanted for table.  Anchovied, olives, or pickles may be added to this salad, as also slices of cold beef, fowl, or turkey.

Seasonable at any time.  [There you have it.  Mrs. Beeton said it's seasonable whenever I want to make it.]

How Did You Make It:  Peru is the potato capital of the world, there are tons of potato varieties grown here.  They have purple potatoes (purple all the way through), large baking potatoes, red skinned potatoes, and these white potatoes with red dots that I chose just because they looked fun and there is no way I can get exactly the kind of North American potatoes I'm used to using.  So, my fusion cooking of American frontier and Peruvian cooking continues.  I boiled the potatoes on the stove (after googling how to do it, I admit....learning that I'm supposed to put the potatoes in the water when cold and allow them to warm and NOT cover them up lest it make them mushy....I ended up cooking them for about 45 minutes but I'm sure that is because of our altitude.  We're way higher than Denver.  Then I sliced the potatoes a couple of days later, poured the tarragon vinegar over the top (I used up some of my dried tarragon in regular white vinegar), added salt and pepper just by dumping, and used pulverized parsley (I thought we had dried parsley but nope) and soy oil (thought we had olive oil but when I went to put this together late at night I found my husband had used the last of it).  Olive oil costs over $10 a liter here, so we don't buy it all the time.

Time to Complete:  About 1 hour, including 45 minutes to cook the potatoes.

Total Cost: Approximately $1.25 USD.  Potatoes: about one pound for 2.5 soles (about 90 cents USD), oil, vinegar, and spices negligible and from pantry.

How Successful Was It?:  My 2 year old spit it out, but I'm sure that was the bitter vinegar taste.  I think I would have preferred the salad with olive oil instead of soybean oil.  I think this iteration was just ok but I would be willing to try again with fresh parsley and olive oil.

How Accurate Is It?:  Not as accurate as some of my other offerings.  We had a marvelous discussion on the Historical Food Fortnightly Facebook page about salad oil and what that means...and in the end all I had available to me in the house was soybean oil.  The potatoes are clearly what you can buy here in Peru, the parsley I thought we had turned out to be pulverized dust instead of parsley leaves and I'm trying not to purchase more spices as we count down our time here.

Interpretation: One thing I found really interesting with this is the sites I found when searching for "mrs beetons potato salad" online.  Here's a sampling and you can see that different modern people interpreted the recipe slightly differently.  I think this is why our challengers want us to go directly to the source and put our own spin on the recipes.

1988 Newspaper article referencing her salad (changed her directions of salad oil to say extra light olive oil)

Modern blog with her own twist

Time to Research: about one hour of paging through cookbooks to pick a recipe and including the time to figure out what in the world salad oil was.

Prepping the tarragon vinegar.  I dumped dried tarragon in a glass jar with some white vinegar and left it for a week.

My potatoes.  Don't they look fun?

When slicing them, the spotted effect was unnoticeable but they did have some that had red coloring inside.

All my ingredients ready.  Once the potatoes are cooked and cooled, this recipe goes together really fast.

The finished product.

One year in....

So, we've been here a year now.  We have gone from two completely exhausted adults on a 30 hour itinerary with two small children to two not so exhausted adults (still with two small children, they may be the source of a lot of current tiredness).

Me and the girls, on the ground in Arequipa, I think I had about 3 hours sleep in 48 hours here.  I felt like I look.

Just as pretty now as when we arrived.  I got over feeling like it's a movie set, though, and now it seems kind of normal.

Dave told me yesterday that he wanted me to go on a 24 hour retreat for myself since I haven't had serious time alone since we came and that kind of thing recharges me.  He had scoped out four nice hotel options and today we went out for Wednesday lunch as is our norm (we tried Ceviche here for the first time at a recommended restaurant...interesting taste but not one I will be making a favorite anytime soon) and then he dropped me and my stuff off at the hotel.  And I've had a few blissful hours to myself.  The things that I count as worth doing now are perhaps a bit different than they would have been in the past.  But I put a henna conditioning treatment on my hair, took a long HOT shower (with water that seemed like it was genuinely heated by a hot water tank, not just from a solar tank or an electric shower head....until you've lived without this you have no real idea what a luxury you have, US dwellers), finished up my work hours for the week, caught up on Facebook, Pinterest, and email, and ate a gourmet dinner of PBJ sandwiches, an orange, and a little custard cup.  Yum.  I have some books to read and will probably go to bed early.  Because I am a mom and that's the way I roll now that I'm sort-of old.

When we were trying to figure out the right amount of time for our sabbatical, we quickly dismissed anything less than a year.  Some people that we read about when doing research talked about taking 6 months off and that just seemed way too short.  It would have been, too.  We took 3 months just to figure out the basics of life, and then it would have been time to plan our reentry.  We thought a year might be ok, but that it might seem a little short in the long run.  Really, think over the last year. Any single year seems to blip by and we wanted to have a long enough time to really make an impact.  So, we settled on about 21 months.  No magic to this except that it was just under two years and allowed us to leave at the end of a summer and come back at the beginning of a summer (because, really- missing the summer in Minnesota or coming back to winter-as-it-happens?  No thanks.)   It also lets us work within the confines of the US school year without being pressured and rushed to get ready for school right after we return. And I continue to think that the overall timeframe has been a good one.  We're in a groove, we both took a year off of work (and that probably won't happen again until we're retired), and Miss M is going to get some great language acquisition.

Our first visitors!

Sometimes I feel like we are living in Europe.

That isn't to say it's all been simple.  There have been a lot of highs and great things.  But I've had my low points, too, and I'm realizing I am perhaps not quite as adaptable as I thought myself to be.  I am feeling much more positive and like my regular self now, but I'm realizing looking back how draining and hard it's been for me to be around people all of the time, away from my normal support networks, and away from "regular" life.  We like our Minnesota life and coming here had nothing to do with getting away from anything.  We wanted an adventure and in some ways I have been up to the challenge but in other ways it has been difficult for me.  Dave has really picked up the slack and he does so much around our house to help keep the day-to-day things running and also trying to make sure he's looking out for what each of us need that I owe him a debt of gratitude. (Thanks, DP!)

My rescuing, problem-solving husband, recreating us locking ourselves out of the house on our second day in and breaking into the gate with the assistance of our neighbors.

I feel like I'm making progress in little things, like organization.  Did you know that even when you own just a portion of the stuff you owned before that you can still have a cluttered house?  I've never had a dirty house, but I have lived with clutter for most of my life.  Maybe all of my life.  Dave is not a cluttered person.  He is more along the German lines of "a place for everything and everything in its place."  I thought when we came here it would be so easy to keep everything cleaned up because we would have so much less stuff.  Which is true to a point, but it's still plenty easy to be cluttered when you drop your things on the floor and don't put them away or don't truly finish a project.  So, for the last little bit, I've been working hard to first create a place that everything belongs (e.g. little storage bins and containers- and many of them are just free cardboard boxes from the grocery store) and then being thoughtful about where things go and then actually putting them there.  I have read in many organization books over the years that this is a good strategy and also that if you start a project you need to stop the project in time to clean up after it instead of rushing to the next thing.  Another tip is that when something is in your hand, take the time to put it away instead of throwing it on the ground and that approach will actually save you time over the long run. That seems like logical advice but I have never really followed it before.  I always felt like there would be more time later or that I wanted to work on whatever I had until the very last second before going to something else.  Well, what do you know.  When you have a place for things to go and you actually put them away in that place, the house stays cleaner.  Woo-hoo.  I'm hoping when we come back to our house in the States that I will do a better job of having a place for all my personal things (we really did have a place for most family things before, like the kitchen stuff and that was always pretty good) and maybe that part of life will get a little easier.

A year of mixing old traditions with new situations (still had a Thanksgiving pie spread!)

A year of exploring new foods!  (This one is maracuya aka passion fruit.  You usually see it as juice or flavor because the fruit consistency is like snot.  Sweet, tart snot.)

Here the girls are enjoying another January afternoon.  In years to come, we'll probably have to ask ourselves if we were in Minnesota or Peru.  ;)

I'm curious to see what other kind of long lasting impacts occur from our time here, I think there will probably be many.  Some will be easy to see and some might be a little more buried.  Feel free to psycho-analyze us from afar and when we get back.  :)

We still have both girls.

They seem to be thriving.

And even when we leave Arequipa, I think a part of us will always be here.

Custard Pie (and Gluten Free Crust test): Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #5

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: Pies! July 27 - August 9
Make a pie! Meat, fruit, sweet, savory - but make sure it’s documented!

Custard Pie from American Frugal Housewife

To start, you should probably know that pies are my home turf.  I have been asking for a birthday pie as long as I can remember (cakes just don't do it for me).  My family has had an annual pie-extravaganza for almost 30 years, ever since the one Thanksgiving where my mom asked what pie we should have for our family celebration (always a pumpkin and pecan and one more in a regular year)....everyone asked for a different pie and she threw caution to the wind and made everyone's pie request.  We had 8 pies for our 6 family members that year, and going forward we insisted on one pie per person; after all, "it's a tradition!"  Our high water mark was something like 26, because we like to invite people over and they get to order a pie, too.  I took over making all the crusts when I was in college and so I've made hundreds and hundreds of pies over the course of my life.  So pie itself is easy for me.  

But, my husband and girls eat gluten free because of family celiac disease on his side and I've been cooking and baking gluten free for about 11 years.  (If you want to check out some gluten free recipes, I have some great boards on Pinterest, here's just one of them.)  In the States, it is easier to find gluten free food.  Here in Peru, there isn't the same general population problem with eating gluten (though they do have tons of naturally gluten free grains here, like maca and quinoa).  Hence, it's also a little trickier to find things.  So I thought for this challenge, I would make it more of a challenge for myself and see if I could come up with a new GF pie crust recipe.  I made four edible attempts but none of them are so fantastic I would make them again without attempting to improve them.  See the pictures below for more details on where I started and if you make a great GF crust from scratch leave the recipe in the comments!

The Recipe: Custard Pie, The Frugal Housewife, Lydia Child, 1841, (p. 68 in this edition.) 

How Did You Make It: I generally followed the instructions, such as they were.  I used a liter of milk because that's what we had (it was slightly sour, but a quick google search showed that custard is one of the suggested ways to use sour milk!)  I used 6 eggs; if it's good enough for Mrs. Child, it's good enough for me.  I heated my milk with stick cinnamon and some zested lemon peel (I didn't have any lemon on hand and it's been a rough two weeks.  I didn't have time to go to market to get some.)  I used 3/4 cup of white sugar based on a modern recipe amount, a pinch of salt, and 1 tablespoon of nutmeg (again, no time to buy a whole nutmeg and I'm trying to use the spices we have here rather than buy more).  Cooking time is impossible to ascertain because I cooked the tester pies on a baking stone which increases time.  My full pie was baked by itself but when the gas died, that added to baking time.  I did bake the large pie crust for about 10 minutes when the little pies were baking.  (Remember to poke holes in the crust so it doesn't puff up while baking.)  I also chose to whisk the eggs before adding them to the milk, and I strained the milk of the cinnamon sticks and lemon zest.  She didn't say to do that but it seemed like a good idea to me.

The big departure from the script was trying to make a gluten free crust that was relatively easy, from ingredients that are easy enough to find (here in Peru and in the States), and tasted decent.  I made four mini-crusts, plus one large crust from my old standby, Cooqi Flour, the All Purpose Flour Blend.  (I get nothing from them, but I've been using their products for several years and have found this blend to be usable in a 1:1 ratio in regular recipes for cookies and pie crusts and cakes.  I like the all purpose blend better than the cake/pastry blend.)  My family is gluten free due to a family history of celiac disease (I'm not).  So I have about 11 years of experience in cooking gluten free.  I have a lifetime of experience in pie baking.  So, it seemed fitting to make the two go together.  When I'm back home, I have been able to successfully use the Cooqi flour for everything I want to make but the only way I can get it in Peru is to have a visitor bring it down.  So I have been hoarding it.  I did break out a cup for the pie in this challenge since I have about 3.5 pounds and we have about 9 months until we go home.  And I found a great sugar cookie recipe that uses gluten free flours I can find here, which means my need for the GF flour has decreased.

Time to Complete: Oh, I didn't really time this one.  I suppose I spent a few hours putting everything together, mixing 5 different crusts, and doing two baking times.

 
Total Cost: Approximately $4.50-$5  Butter: about 4 soles ($1.43 USD), Milk: 2 soles (71 cents USD), 6 eggs: 3 soles ($1.07 USD), sugar, stick cinnamon, nutmeg and salt, in pantry and negligible cost.  Flours were probably the most money, but I'm really not sure how much, maybe $1-2 USD total for the pantry items.

How Successful Was It?: It tasted good and all the sample crusts were edible and even passable, but I don't think I have achieved a good enough GF crust to end my quest.  I also think it would have tasted better with some cinnamon baked in the custard (rather than just the boiled cinnamon sticks).  I sprinkled a little on the top on later pieces and liked it better that way.  I may have eaten pie for dinner.  It's a tough life but someone has to do it.

How Accurate Is It?: Very accurate.  The gas tank even ran out on the oven, so I got to experience what life might have been like if my fire went out in my wood fired stove or hearth.  It stopped in the middle of baking my large pie, which suffered temperatures ranging from 150 (when I noticed that something was wrong) to 400.  Poor pie.  It did seem to come through everything ok, though.  I did use ground nutmeg instead of a freshly ground whole nutmeg and lemon zest I had in the freezer instead of lemon peels, but even those are pretty close.

Time to Research:  Given that I start with Lydia Child on all of the challenges and she had something that would work, the recipe was maybe 15 minutes as I decided what pie to make.  I spent about an hour trying to figure out my gluten free tester recipes.

What I used for my GF mini-pies.  (If any of these worked great, I would just scale up.  Because this was just a general test, I used measurements instead of weight.  You may know that weight is the most accurate way to replicate results and that different flours have different weights for the same volume.)  I started with my great grandmother's basic pie crust recipe (1 cup flour, 1/2 cup fat, 1/4 cup water) and just used those ratios.

**All of the GF crusts had 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum in addition to the flour ratios below, then I cut in 2 T butter and 1 T or a little less of water.

GF Crust #1:  2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 2 Tablespoons white rice flour

GF Crust #2: 1 1/2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 1 1/2 Tablespoons white rice flour, 1 Tablespoon tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour)

GF Crust #3: 2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 1 Tablespoon tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour), 1 Tablespoon arrowroot powder (aka arrowroot flour or arrowroot starch)

GF Crust #4: 2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 2 Tablespoons white rice flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour), 1 1/2 teaspoons corn flour (aka masa)

My opinion on results:  All of the flours worked in terms of being able to be cooked, hold the pie filling, and were edible.  But my standards for GF are great taste, not just edible (I still think any of these were better than the sawdust style GF foods).  GF flours #2-4 worked better when patted into a patty in my hand and pushed into place in the pan.  Not uncommon for GF flour mixes.  There isn't any gluten to give elasticity.

GF Crust #1:  Rolled the best, almost stuck together the whole process of rolling and flipping into the pie pan.  But tasted the worst of the four options (not horrible, but a clear notch down from the others.)

GF Crust #2: Rolled out ok but failed at being able to transfer from rolling mat to the pan.  Good texture, tasted a little sweet and I'm not sure why but it was pleasant.  (I'm guessing the tapioca flour because the first crust didn't taste sweet at all.)  

GF Crust #3: Same rolling comments as #2 but had a smoother texture than #2.  One of the top two of this batch.

GF Crust #4: Same rolling comments as #2 but had a smoother texture than #2 and flakiest texture of all of them.  I wouldn't think the corn flour would help that much, but it really seemed to work.  This may have been the best, certainly one of the top two.  

Heating the milk with lemon zest and stick cinnamon.

Mixing bowls for gluten free flours 1-4

Here's what they looked like with the different flours dumped in the bowls.

Here's how they looked after whisking the flours together.  They were all pretty much the same, except for #4 on the far right had a little yellow cast because of the corn flour.  I think that if you found a GF flour that worked well, you could totally bring it along to a reenactment and no one would be the wiser.

I used room temperature butter as my fat and flour #1 was so smushy the knives didn't work to cut it in.  I ended up finishing with a fork.

Flours #2-4 worked just fine with cutting in the flour.

After adding the water.  Flour #3 needed less water than the others.

Flour #1 rolled and transferred well but ended up with my least favorite taste.

Flours #2 and on were like this- too goopy and just stuck to the mat even with floured surface.

See?  Goopy.  I ended up scraping from the mat, rolling into a ball, patting out like a hamburger patty and finger patting into the cupcake container.

The finished products.  Two each of flour testers 1-4 (from left to right).

I used the rest of the filling to fill this pie plate (this is my Cooqi crust pie).  When Lydia Child said to use a deep dish, she wasn't kidding.  Even after my 8 testers (about 1/3 cup filling in each so almost 3 cups down) this went right to the tippy top.  It's also my only pie plate here.

You can see that the flours look like "regular" flour.  I think they would pass the looks test.

My poor large pie after it suffered temps ranging from 150 F to 400 F.  (The gas tank ran out while it was in the oven.)