Baconized Corn

A few weeks ago I was thumbing through some cookbooks looking for recipes for fresh corn when I stumbled upon this gem:

Baconized?  I didn't realize it was a thing to baconize foods, but I have to think almost anything could be made better by the baconizing process!

The recipe was found in the Mennonite Community Cookbook by Mary Emma Showalter (1950). 

I didn't have any bacon that particular day, but I did make a note to try some baconized corn in the near future. The future is here.

I followed the recipe exactly as written (crazy, right?).  I cut the corn off the cobs and mixed it with sugar, salt and pepper.  Placed it in a buttered casserole dish and topped it with diced bacon.  Easy peasy.  I did have to bake it slightly longer than the recipe called for, but my bacon was probably not "finely" diced.

Before baking

After baking.  The bacon is crispier than it looks, I promise!

For such a simple process, this was really good.  I think the key is the fresh corn, which came out very tender and corn-y.  I think the skin on frozen corn would be a touch on the leathery side.  Canned might work, but it's not something I usually have on hand.  We had a little bit leftover, which I mixed into some cornmeal pancakes the next day.  Which sounds odd, but it worked. 

Baconized Corn (Printable recipe)

from the Mennonite Community Cookbook by Mary Emma Showalter (1950)

Ingredients

• 4 cups fresh corn
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 cup finely diced bacon

Directions

Place corn in a greased baking dish.  Season with salt, sugar and pepper.  Cover entire top of dish with finely diced bacon.  Bake at 350F for 35 minutes or until bacon is crisp.  Serves 6.

Scalloped Eggplant

I'm baaa-aack! My garden luck this year has been pretty spotty, some issues due to weather, some to the local varmint population (I curse you, pocket gophers and squirrels!), but the thing that is doing awesomely is a single Japanese eggplant. It is huge and loaded with long, skinny fruits. I can only justify frying them so often and I've already got enough roasted and frozen to make baba ganoush all winter long. Time to find something else to do with eggplant... enter the Mennonite Community Cookbook by Mary Emma Showalter.

I picked this little gem up a few years ago and while I haven't explored a lot of it, I do appreciate all the great vegetable dishes it contains.  There is one for "Baconized Corn" that I haven't tried yet, but it's on my to-try list.  I need more baconized foods in my life.

The eggplant: not just a vegetable, also a good book flattener!

As usual, I took a few liberties with the recipe so I could use what I had on hand, starting with about 8 long skinny eggplants instead of one large.  I'm guessing that my skinny eggplants did not add up to a large one, but I liked the end result. For my second variance, I replaced the tablespoon of green pepper with some fresh minced basil and then added some cubed marinated mozzarella that needed to be used up.  And in one final act of rebellion, I diced the bacon instead of just laying the strips across the top. 

Baconized eggplant!

Farm Boy and I really liked this.  The whole eggplant/tomato/basil combo really works and is complimented by the mild cheese and the bacon. The original recipe claims 5 servings, but we got 4 side-sized servings out of this.


Scalloped Eggplant (Printable recipe)
based on a recipe from The Mennonite Community Cookbook by Mary Emma Showalter, 1950

Ingredients

• 1 large eggplant
• 1 cup diced tomatoes
• 1 Tablespoon minced fresh basil
• 4 ounces Italian-marinated fresh mozzarella, cubed
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1 cup soft breadcrumbs
• 2 Tablespoons butter, melted
• 3 strips bacon, diced

Directions

Preheat oven to 400F.

Peel eggplant and cut into 3/4" cubes.  Cook in salted water until tender and almost dry.  Add tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, salt and pepper and stir well.  Pour into a greased baking dish.  Combine the bread crumbs and melted butter and spread over top of eggplant mixture.  Top with diced bacon.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until bacon is cripsy and breadcrumbs are golden.

Baked Onions

This cookbook is a recent addition to the hoard.  After a few weeks of finding nothing on my treasure hunting outings, I was ecstatic to see a vintage cookbook at a reasonable price.  When I opened the book and saw a recipe for sweet potato pone - which I had recently read is supposed to be pronounced as, "poon"-  I knew it was going home with me.

While thumbing through it, the recipe for baked onions caught my eye.  Farm Boy's mother used to make baked onions that were delicious (although I admit to being skeptical the first time she served me a whole onion...).  I hadn't thought about them in years, so when I came across this recipe, I decided it was time to bake onions again.

Alas, I didn't pay attention to the bit about cooking the onions first and then filling them.  I put the filling in and baked them with foil over the pan, then removed the foil for browning.  This resulted in a pan coated with really, really hard cooked cheese.  The onions were still delicious, but it required several soaks to get the pan clean.  The second time I made them, I buttered the dish first and added the cheese and bread crumbs only for the last 15 minutes of baking.  Much less mess!

It's nice to have baked onions back in our food rotation, especially when the locally grown sweet Noonday onions are available. Now I just have to not let them fall off my mental list again...

What's that on the bottom of the pan?  Oh, it's burned-on cheese.  Glad I'm not on the clean-up crew! 

Baked Onions (Printable recipe)

loosely interpreted from Crestview Culinary Collections Crestview Christian Church, Greenville, Texas (1962)

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion per serving
• Salt and pepper or seasoning mix of your choice (I have used both Greek and Cajun)
• grated cheese
• Panko bread crumbs tossed with melted butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Peel the onions.  Cut a small slice off the root ends, so that the onions will sit flat.  Cut the tops off and remove a cone-shaped piece from the inside of each onion.  Sprinkle the inside with the seasonings, then place the onion in a buttered oven-proof dish.  Place a top on the dish or cover with foil.  Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the cover and fill each onion with grated cheese.  Top with buttered bread crumbs.  Bake, uncovered, for another 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the bread crumbs are browned.

Warm Bacon Salad Dressing

While trying to figure out what was considered a French dressing in the 1940s for another recipe (it's a vinaigrette with a little paprika added for color, in case anyone is wondering), I came across a blurb about making a warm bacon dressing for salad in Cooking on a Ration (1943). I have had wilted spinach salads before, but it never occurred to me that the bacon dressing might be good on something besides spinach.  Which for the purpose of this post really doesn't matter because spinach was what I had on hand.  But still, it made an impression.  Clearly I am easily impressed!

Cooking on a Ration

It's even autographed!

The introduction to this book really intrigues me because the author bemoans the fact that everyone will have to learn to cook now that they won't be able to find or afford convenience foods.  I had no idea that processed foods were so prevalent prior to 1943.

The spinach salads I've made before involved hard-boiled eggs, but I was low on eggs and decided to just go with simply spinach and some red onions cooked lightly in the bacon fat.   I really did follow the directions to just "add a dash of sharp vinegar, a little brown sugar, a shake of salt and pepper" instead of measuring, then I poured the dressing over the spinach in a mixing bowl and tossed it until it was slightly wilted, and topped it with the bacon.

This was delicious!  And a nice, simple side to make while the rest of supper was baking.  I will definitely make this dressing again and I might even branch out to using it on warm potatoes or Romaine lettuce.  If, that is, I can conquer my fear of non-crispy lettuce.  Flaccid lettuce just seems so wrong, but maybe bacon can save it.

Warm Bacon Salad Dressing (Printable Recipe)
from Cooking on a Ration, 1943



Ingredients:
2 slices bacon
1/4 of a red onion, sliced (optional)
dash of sharp vinegar (I used about 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar)
a little brown sugar (about 1 tablespoon)
salt and pepper to taste


Directions:
Fry the bacon until crispy.  Remove and chop coarsely.  If using the onion, fry it in the bacon fat in the pan until soft.  Remove the pan from the heat and add the remaining ingredients, stirring well.  Toss with the salad ingredients of your choice and top with the chopped bacon.

Almond Crunch Green Beans

I had some green beans that needed  to be used and after perusing a few cookbooks for ideas, I came across Almond Crunch Wax Beans in my 1969 edition of Betty Crocker's Cookbook.

Being the rebellious sort, I decided to substitute my green beans for the wax beans.  Yeah, that's right.  I run with scissors, too.  Well, I would if I ever ran.  But I do walk fairly fast with scissors now and then.  Fine, I saunter with scissors.  (Please don't tell my mother!)

I did make a few changes to the recipe.  I left the beans whole, because they were the small, thin French beans.  I only had sliced almonds and I chose to toast them in the butter because, well, anything toasted in butter is better than anything that is dry toasted.  I then used the lovely browned and almondy butter when I cooked the beans.  Mmmm, almondy browned butter!

I like to use this old baking pan because Farm Boy is convinced that all old enamelware pans are bed pans.

We really liked these.  The almonds were nice and crunchy and were a nice contrast with the beans.  They even tasted good as leftovers, but the almonds lost their crunch after being refrigerated and reheated.

Almond Crunch Wax (or Green) Beans (Printable Recipe)
from the 1969 edition of Betty Crocker's Cookbook

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons slivered almonds
1 pound fresh wax or green beans
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons butter
3/4 teaspoon salt
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Cut beans into 1" pieces or leave whole, if the beans are small.

In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.  Add the almonds and cook until fragrant and beginning to brown.  Remove almonds with a slotted spoon and set aside, leaving the browned butter in the pan.

To the saucepan, add beans, water and salt and stir well.  Cover; cook 20 to 25 minutes* or until beans are tender.  When tender, drain the beans, season with a little salt and pepper, if needed, and top with the toasted almonds.

*My beans were really thin, so they cooked much faster, about 15 minutes total.

Spinach a la Béchamel (or creamed spinach, in my language)

To prove that it's not all cookies and cakes around here, today we are serving spinach.  Spinach a la Béchamel, according to the 1951 copy of The New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.

I became a fan of spinach when I planted my first vegetable garden at the age of twelve.  My mom bought me a few packs of seeds and I, having no idea what I was doing, planted every single seed.  The spinach was my greatest gardening success that year and we ate spinach every day for weeks. Prior to that, the only spinach I had tasted was canned and while I could choke it down, it wasn't exactly exciting.  Then I met creamed spinach.  We've been good friends ever since.

I took a few liberties with the recipe.  I minced a clove of garlic and sautéed that in the butter before adding the spinach, then I noticed that the next recipe in the book (Puree of Spinach, French Style) called for the spinach to be topped with almonds (which I forgot to sauté in butter first).  Since I was also baking something else, I put it all in a baking dish and baked it rather than cooking it on the stove for 5 minutes.

Spinach a la Béchamel (Printable Recipe)
slightly modified from The New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1951)

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups chopped, cooked spinach
1 tablespoon flour
pinch nutmeg
1/2 cup cream
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons sliced almonds (preferably sautéed in butter first)

Directions
Melt the butter in a skillet and sauté the garlic until it is fragrant.  Add the spinach and cook for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.  Sprinkle with the flour and then stir in cream.  Pour into buttered baking dish and top with almonds.  Bake at 350F for 15 to 20 minutes, or until hot and bubbling.

Wouldn't those almonds look nice if they had been browned in butter first?