Massachusetts muffin in miniature

Massachusetts claims the corn muffin as its official state muffin. Native Americans cultivated corn here long before the Pilgrims arrived. One of the Pilgrims’ first missteps lay in helping themselves to a stash of corn which the Nauset Indians had buried in the sands of outer Cape Cod, where the English Separatists first landed. This did nothing to foster positive relations between the two parties. In Plymouth, where the Pilgrims found more hospitable habitation, the native Wampanoags showed the English settlers how to plant corn. This staple has been appearing on New England tables in one form or another ever since. For the first course of Thanksgiving dinner, I’ll be serving lobster chowder with mini corn muffins.

Mini corn muffins

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1-1/2 cups yellow corn meal

½ cup sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups milk

2 eggs, lightly beaten

½ cup butter (one stick), melted and cooled

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. Make a well in the center. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, milk and melted butter. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Do not beat or over-mix.

Place paper liners in mini-muffin tins. Fill cups with batter. Bake for about 10 minutes in a 400-degree oven. Remove from oven as soon as a toothpick inserted in a muffin’s center comes out clean. Muffins will be dry if baked too long. Makes about 56 mini muffins.

A seedy snack: roasted pumpkin seeds

After you’ve scooped the seeds out of a pumpkin, rinse and roast them. They’re a great accompaniment to ale, a beverage favored by the Pilgrims.

Roasted pumpkin seeds

Pumpkin seeds

Olive oil

Salt

Rinse seeds so they are free of pumpkin pulp; drain. Spread seeds on baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and toss. Redistribute evenly on baking sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake in 350-degree oven for about 15 minutes.

Jonny cakes versus corn cakes

Confession: Growing up in Massachusetts, I never ate jonnycakes. That was a Rhode Island thing, like the coffee cabinet (coffee-flavored milkshake). We did eat corn cakes, or Indian slapjacks, for breakfast, however: pancakes made with cornmeal. Served with maple syrup, they were our favorite weekend breakfast treat. A recipe for Indian slapjacks can be found in the first American cookbook, American Cookery, published in 1796. It calls for one quart of milk, one pint of Indian meal, four eggs, four spoons of flour and a little salt, all beaten together and baked on a griddle.

Here is my recipe for slapjacks:

Corn cakes

1-1/4 cup all-purpose flour

¾ cup yellow cornmeal

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 cup milk

¼ cup cooking oil

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine the egg, milk and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not over-mix or the pancakes will be rubbery instead of fluffy. Allow batter to stand for about five minutes to allow the cornmeal to absorb some liquid. If too thick, thin batter with more milk.

Drop batter by the half-cup onto a hot, buttered griddle. Flip when the edges begin to dry and bubbles form. Makes approximately a dozen pancakes.

Pompion and circumstance

Stewed pompion, or pumpkin, as we call it, was a Pilgrim staple. John Josselyn reports in New-England Rarities Discovered (1672) that several kinds of pumpkin grew in New England. “They are dryer than our English Pompions, and better tasted,” he writes. Women diced them and stewed them in a pot on a gentle fire all day, he notes. Then they added butter, vinegar and a spice, such as ginger. “It provokes Urin extreamly and is very windy,” he warns.

Rather than peel and dice pumpkin or other winter squash and cook it atop the stove, I slice the vegetable in half, scoop out the seeds (which, in the case of pumpkin, can be saved for later roasting) and place flesh side down in a baking pan filled with about a half-inch of water. I cover the pan with foil and bake in a 375-degree oven for about an hour. This steams the squash nicely. Drain the water from the pan and allow the squash or pumpkin to cool enough to handle. Then scoop out the flesh and season as you like.

This year’s crop of squash is very sweet. I haven’t found the need to “doctor” it. When the squash is bitter, however, I add butter and brown sugar or maple syrup. If you like spice, add nutmeg or ginger.

Here is a recipe for stewed pompion developed by food historians at Plimoth Plantation museum. Any winter squash may be substituted.

Stewed Pompion

4 cups cooked pumpkin or winter squash, such as butternut

3 tablespoons butter

2 to 3 tablespoons cider vinegar

1-2 teaspoons ground ginger

½ teaspoon salt

Cook pumpkin or squash in the manner of your choosing. Mix in remaining ingredients.

When life gives you bruised apples . . .

Soft, bruised or otherwise blemished apples become applesauce in this house. When my daughter was a baby, she wouldn’t eat applesauce from a jar. My great Aunt Mary suggested I make my own. It worked! Making applesauce is not quite as easy as opening a jar--but almost. And it tastes so much better. To this day, my daughter, now a teen-ager, will eat only homemade applesauce.

When visiting Cornwall in England last year, we stayed at a cottage a short walk from the village. We’d walk past a home where the invisible resident placed bags of home-grown green apples in the window box, asking one pound per bag. We purchased a bag one day, slipping the money through the front-door mail slot, as the sign requested, and ate this applesauce with our bangers (sausages) that night.

Applesauce

1-1/2 pounds apples

1/3 cup sugar

½ cup water

1 small cinnamon stick or ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Peel and core apples. Cut into quarters. In a large saucepan, dump apples, sugar, water and cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil. Simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes, or until apples are soft. Allow to cool a bit. Remove cinnamon stick. With an immersion blender, puree mixture. Makes about 2 cups.

Thanksgiving countdown begins

The American Thanksgiving holiday is associated with those religious dissidents we call Pilgrims. We envision Jennie Brownscombe’s 1914 painting, The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, with Separatists and Native Wampanoags gathered around an outdoor table, an elder raising his hands to the heavens in prayer. The painting depicts the harvest celebration in the early fall of 1621. This was not what the Separatists would have called a “thanksgiving.” For them, a thanksgiving was strictly a religious observance. The harvest celebration of 1621 was a time for the remaining 53 Pilgrims to mark their survival of the first winter in the New World.

America observed no annual Thanksgiving holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, declared a national day of thanksgiving for the fourth Thursday of November. So began the tradition of gathering for a feast with family and friends. When I was a child, the men spent Thanksgiving morning hunting in the woods, while the women spent those hours cooking in the kitchen. Teen-agers attended the hotly contested high school football game between rival teams. All gathered in the afternoon for the big meal.

This year, it’s my turn to host the family feast. I’ve devised the menu. We always begin with soup. This quells appetites and gives the cook leeway in the preparation of the main meal. Traditionally, New Englanders serve a seafood chowder, followed by roasted turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, potatoes and winter squash. My family also includes baked ham because some family members don’t like turkey. The host leaves desserts to the guests. Apple and pumpkin pies are usually among the offerings.

Thanksgiving Menu

Lobster chowder with mini-corn muffins

Roasted turkey with apple-sage stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy

Baked maple-glazed ham

Mashed potatoes, baked winter squash, roasted Brussels sprouts

Assorted desserts

Apple cider, ale and coffee