Leftover Thursday - King's Cauliflower

This is actually an old Leftover Thursday from last Thursday that I'm just now getting around to finishing - it's been a busy week!  Newer posts coming soon!  Anyway, after a beautiful couple of days where Matt and I tested out our new grill (I mean, Matt tested it out and I watched), it started to rain.  While I've certainly grilled in the rain before (in the sense that other people are grilling and I am watching, often from inside), we returned to strictly indoor cooking.

Boil, boil, toil, and trouble.

Leftover Thursday - Biscuits

I've been thinking about making biscuits for a while, particularly since reading Amelia Simmons' recipes for biscuits.  As I think I mentioned earlier, one of Amelia's biggest contributions to the world of cookbooks is her use of chemical leaveners, particularly pearl ash and emptins.  Pearlash - potassium carbonate, for the chemists out there - is a more refined version of potash, which is made from the ashes of hardwood trees and is commonly used in soap-making.  Pearlash was discovered in the 1740s, although potash has been around for much longer.  By the 1760s, potash had become a major export from Canada, with most of it being sent to Great Britain.  Potash continued to be a major export from both Canada and the United States as pioneers moved westward, culling forests as they went.

First U.S. Patent, issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for his new process of refining potash and pearlash.

Leftover Thursday - Lemon Roasted Vegetables

Around about Thursday is when my dinner planning stops.  There are usually some leftover ingredients in the fridge that need to be used, and caution is thrown to the wind.  And that's where I found myself this afternoon, facing a half-full (or half-empty, depending how you look at it) container of mushrooms, a lemon that was nearing the end of its prime, half a bunch of collard greens, part of a head of broccoli, and two chicken breasts.  There are probably about a million combinations of those ingredients that would result in a delicious dinner (or, you know, at least ten), but this is the one I came up with.  

And don't worry, y'all - my new found love of early American cooking is still going strong.  Early Americans had a variety of poultry and fowl available to them, and Amelia Simmons has this general advice for the homecook choosing a bird: "Having before ftated that the female in almost every inftance, is preferable to the male, and pecularily fo in the the Peacock, which, tho' beautifully plumaged, is tough, hard, ftringy and untafted, and even indelicious - while the Pea Hen is exactly otherwife, and the queen of all birds."  I'm not even going to touch that "ladies are better than gents" statement, or make a broader analogy about peacocks or anything.  Though it would certainly be easy to do...

American Cookery, the first cookbook published in America by an American.