In Memorium

For those of you who noticed the gap in posts here a couple weeks ago (and perhaps none of you did, since I'm not what anyone would consider "regular" with my posting), the reason for that is a sad one.  I should have mentioned in my opening post that I use "Yankee" somewhat ironically, seeing my father's entire heritage is English (and he himself is one of those straight-off-the-boat type immigrants) and I am rather an Anglophile (you've noticed the -our and -ise?), despite living in the good ol' US of A.  Regretfully, I never got to visit the Motherland, nor, more importantly, the family living there, as often as I would have liked, so I can't say I'm at all close with my relations there, but distance certainly doesn't affect the love you inherently feel for those with whom you share some DNA.  On July 20th, I received the sad news of the death of my dad's mother.  The idea for this particular post developed almost instantly, but I was waiting for the details of her funeral, as I wanted to post it that day.  So here we are, then.

She wasn't an easy woman, my Nan, but she could knit like a fiend and gave the very best squeezy bear hugs.  Today her ashes will be scattered at her lawn bowls club, to mingle with those of the husband she lost several years ago.  I love you, Nan, and we all miss you.

Since I can't be in England today to see her off, I wanted to do a tribute post to celebrate her life.  First, we need her drink.  She had two, actually, sherry neat and a shandy.  I like sherry, and I would happily have toasted her with said liquor, except I'm poor.  I do, however, have plenty of beer on hand and lemonade is cheap, so we are experimenting with shandies today, for my Nan.  Beer and lemonade.  Hm.

Well hey!  There's a pleasant little surprise.  Beer plus lemonade doesn't suck!  In fact, it's actually quite tasty and refreshing!  Good taste, Nan, and cheers!

Next we have the main course, a British standard that Nan made us when we visited back in '97, a dish so delicious that I've made it one of my specialties: Shepherd's Pie.  This is a recipe I first got from a book called Traditional British Recipes, it's the recipe my dad the Englishman calls shepherd's pie, and yet a friend of mine recently asked the question, "Is it real shepherd's pie or is it cottage pie?"

A shepherd.  Tending a sheep.

Turns out, there's a recent distinction in some circles between shepherd's pie, which they claim should be made with lamb, since that's what shepherd's deal in, and cottage pie, which should be made with beef, since that's what...hang on a tick.  There seems to be a kink in the logic here.  I was taught it was called shepherd's pie because it was an easy dish for shepherds to take with them into the field.  And I've even used ground turkey in this recipe, when I suddenly realised I was down to half a pound of beef and was attempting to feed several men.  Wikipedia, the all-knowing and never wrong, seems to favour my theory that there is, in fact, no real difference between a shepherd's pie and a cottage pie, except to these few individuals that think shepherds would like to eat their own little lambs and cottages have an affinity for cows.  The point of this tirade is that it's a shepherd's pie, regardless of what meat you feel like using, and it's certainly shepherd's pie for the purposes of this post because it's my blog.  So there.  Hmph.

A cottage.  Doesn't tend much.

So how does one go about making a shepherd's pie?  I'm happy to say that it's a relatively easy thing to throw together, something even those of you with dangly bits could handle (yes, Southern Blogger, I'm talking to you), though it's not something you want to do when you're massively hungry.  I'd stick to the drive-thru then, as shepherd's pie is a bit of a time taker.

The key to shepherd's pie is the mashed potatoes.  They seem like such an easy thing to make, but I have seen some abominations in my day, so I'm actually going to go step by step and teach you the proper way to make them--if you make them any other way, you are likely a Communist and should start making them my way immediately.

Start with real potatoes.  Potatoes from a box or a packet are not potatoes.  Real potatoes.  Peel them.  Wash them.  Cut them, and cut them small. 

Yankee Baker's mum gets mad when I insist on cutting them small, but I'm always asked to make the mashed potatoes when I'm home, so I think that says something.  Don't mince them, they don't need to be THAT small, but say, quarter inchish or so--they will cook faster and mash nicer.  Toss your small potatoes into a pot (use a pot large enough to give you room to mash), just cover them with water, add some salt, cover the pot, throw it on the stove to boil.  When the tatties get boiling, turn the heat down to simmer and allow to cook.  Test tenderness with a knife; once you can slide through them easily, your spuds are done.  Drain potatoes.  Add a chunk of butter and a few splashes of milk.  Again, I recommend something with a little fat, and also real cow milk--I have been forced to make mashed potatoes with almond milk in desperate times, and they turn out all right, but not quite as creamy and a little grey looking.  Real cow milk, say of the 2% fat variety, will give you really lovely mashies.  Add just a couple splashes of milk to start with; better to have too little than too much, you don't want soup.  Use a proper potato masher (though in dire circumstances I have Macguyvered a pastry cutter to suit the purpose) and smash those puppies. 

Baking, arguably my forte.  Drawing potato mashers

with perspective, decidedly NOT.

I suppose the technique I use could be considered "whipping," as i use sort of a circular motion in the wrist.  Just make sure you get all the potatoes mashed in, no chunks, adding little bits of milk if needed.  And voila!  Proper mashed potatoes.

Okay, so for your shepherd's pie, get your potatoes started first.  While they're working up to a boil, get your meat going.  Ground whatever. 

Mutton, Beef, Turkey, Wild Game (not pictured),

Soylent Green (also not pictured.  Also not recommended.)

Toss it in a skillet, break it into bits, get it going.  Slice up some carrots--thin, so they don't take forever to cook--and, if you're so inclined to eat it, some onion.  I can't stand the texture of real onions in my mouth, so I just use onion powder or dehydrated minced onion.  Add your veg once the meat is no longer pink and let everything cook for a while.  By this point your tatties will be close to done.  When they are, drain about a cup of the water over a beef bullion cube (waste not, want not!) to create a stock.  This is where I do listen to Yankee Momma, who likes a nice moist shepherd's pie.  If you're making a large casserole to feed many mouths (a solid pound of meat, 5-6 potatoes), you want a full cup plus.  If you're doing a smaller casserole (half a pound meat, 3-4 potatoes), do about 3/4 cup.  Mash your mashies and set aside.  When the meat and veg are done cooking up (you want the meat to be brown and the carrots to not be overcooked), dump the lot into a casserole dish.  Add your stock, salt, pepper, parsley, thyme, Worcestershire (say it with me now: WOO-ste-shur) sauce and mix it around.  Top with mashed potatoes, like icing a cake!  Pop that puppy in a 350 degree oven for about 45-50 minutes.  Add shredded cheddar cheese and some more parsley and bake an additional 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted.  And now you have made shepherd's pie!

Our next and final recipe is, seeing as this is a memorial post, a Funeral Pie.  And the recipe will be preceded by a tremendous historical diatribe.  Gird your loins :)

I have a morbid obsession with all things, well, morbid.  I love ostheology/forensic anthropology (and am in deep thought about how to pursue this as a career without going back to school), I happily stroll through old graveyards, and I even developed a programme for a museum called "Death and Dying in the 18th Century" (not the cleverest of titles, but the programme itself was pretty bleeping epic).  There is a giant wall sized exhibit on the 7th floor of the Winterthur Museum showcasing early American mourning jewelry that makes me drool.  I have delivered a (drunken) chronology of headstone iconography.  Yes, I'm weird. 

I will have to leave it to my sister, the degree holding anthropologist, to speak to funerary customs of various aboriginal cultures, but in the Western world, funerals and food are very closely linked.  In modern day America, the bereaved are often plied with gifts of casseroles and other dishes that are easy to keep and easy to reheat, the logic being that those in grief are not going to be in any sort of shape to be cooking.  But this tradition of feasting around a funeral has even more pragmatic roots: quite frankly, nothing sticks it in the face of Death than a whole gang of folks stuffing their faces with life sustaining food.  In the 18th century, the bereaved family would organise a massive spread for those in attendance of the funeral, including, in certain cultures, special funeral treats.  The Dutch and English would bake small cakes in honour of the deceased, the Dutch often using caraway seeds to form the initials of the dead on the top of the cake.  The English would wrap their dead cakes in paper printed with initials and/or images of death: skull and crossbones, coffins, skeletons, death's heads and the like.  The transition begins toward the end of the 18th and into the 19th century, but prior to this time, we were all very accepting of death as a fact of life.  Everyone dies.  No avoiding it.  Young children, particularly in the Puritan northeast, were brought up to the coffin to look at the face of the deceased: see that, kids?  You'll get there some day.  A very popular epitaph on headstones prior to the 19th century went, in a jaunty little quatrain, "As I am now/You one day will be/So prepare for death/And follow me."  We see a slight softening of these harsh constructs as we get into the 1800s, and then Victoria takes the throne and, as with weddings and Christmas, everything changes.  Post-Victoria, we've turned death into rather a taboo--don't talk about it around the kids, and how many euphemisms do we have for it?  It's not all Vicky's fault, though; we can blame the advent of modern science and growth of hospitals as well for our present-day detachment from death.  Today we don't have to suffer the deaths of the young in such high numbers as we did in the past, infant and childhood mortality rates being much higher due to illnesses for which there were no cures, accidents and simple infections.  With medical advancements, people are surviving things they didn't use to and living much longer lives--and as a result, are typically dying in places like hospitals and nursing homes, removing the omnipresence of death seen in the early days of our history from our everyday lives.  The Germans-turned-Pennsylvania-Dutch retain to this day a funerary food custom that is the focus of this portion of today's post: funeral pie aka raisin pie (I guess for when you're making it on non-funeral days?  Or just to make it sound less morbid).  The traditional recipe for this pie uses only ingredients every kitchen would have in stock on a permanent basis: flour, sugar, butter and dried fruit (raisins, in this case), as you just never know when someone is going to die.  It's hard to make a traditional funerary pastry using anything fresh, as historically that particular ingredient wouldn't be available most times of the year.  So shrivelled up grapes win the show here, and I should make the note that I hate raisins.  I do however, enjoy sultanas, which is the classy Britishism for "golden raisins." 

Don't ask me why, but I like the green grape version better than the red grape version--and it honestly might have at least a little something to do with the word "sultana."  I should also note that for today's pie, I will be cheating and using the pre-made stuff.  Don't judge, I've already proven to you I can make a pie crust, and besides, I'm grieving.  So here we go, funeral pie.

1. Put 2 cups sultanas (or raisins) and 2 cups water into a saucepan.  Bring to a boil and allow to do so for 5 minutes.
2. While that's boiling up, combine 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon salt into a bowl.  Mix together.  Add this mixture to the sultanas after 5 minutes.  Knock the heat down a bit to avoid jam caliber mess and injury (I promise these is a story here and I promise it will be told in a future post) and stir the mixture till it's not cloudy (a few minutes), then remove from heat.
3. Add 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon lemon juice.  Stir together till butter is melted and let cool slightly.
4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line the bottom and sides of a 9" pie tin with one crust (or half of the dough you made if you decided to show me up and go from scratch), fill with cooled sultana mixture.
5. Top pie with second crust.  Pinch edges to seal, trim excess, slit top to vent.  Brush top with a bit of milk and sprinkle with a pinch of white sugar in a process I like to call "prettifying your pastry."
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, or till golden brown.  Allow to cool completely before nomming.

So there we are, kids.  In honour of my Nan, may she rest in peace, make yourself a shandy tonight while you whip up a nice shepherd's pie.  I won't encourage the funeral pie, because of context, but keep it on the back burner as a just-in-case.  Bless you, Nan, I miss you and love you, forever and always. xx