Crying Blood - An Alafair Tucker Mystery
Page 22
Bear Soup
When butchering time comes, it behooves the family cook to have a repertoire of quick and easy recipes for feeding an exhausted crew in a hurry and with a minimum of effort. Bear soup certainly falls into that category. It is the easiest dish imaginable to make and surprisingly satisfying and delicious.
How it came to be called “bear soup” is a mystery lost in time, for it has nothing whatsoever to do with bears. Maybe this is what Goldilocks found sitting on the table when she perpetrated her B&E at the home of the three bears.
For each individual serving, finely chop a slice of onion and add it to a cup and a half of milk. Cook the milk and onion together in a saucepan over low heat until the milk is simmering and the onion becomes transparent.
Crumble a large piece of leftover cornbread into a bowl and pour the hot milk and onion mixture over it. Salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy.
Pork
Hog butchering is hard, messy, unpleasant work, so Shaw and Alafair wanted to make sure that the animal’s sacrifice was appreciated and its meat properly utilized. When you raise and slaughter an animal in order to feed your family, the order of the day is “waste not, want not.” Every scrap of the carcass was used. Even the ears were smoked and given to the dogs.
Alafair and Shaw would have used the entire hog carcass in ways that would never occur to someone who could simply go to the supermarket and buy whatever she needed.
Shaw was in charge of preserving most of the muscle meat by smoking and salting. This would include the back, loins, shoulders, hams, ribs, and bacon. Alafair’s purview was mostly the innards and extremities, which she would transform from something disgusting into delicious edibles that would keep for a long time.
Lard
One of the most useful products to come from a hog carcass was lard, which is nothing more than the purified fat of the hog. The pure white fat was used for more than just cooking. It was used as a lubricant, to make lotions and medicines, and to make soap. Though the very word lard conjures up visions of fat-clogged arteries and multiple-bypass heart surgeries, lard in and of itself is not unhealthy. It becomes dangerous when it is hydrogenated, which is what food companies do in order to keep lard from spoiling on the shelf. Home-rendered lard actually has its benefits and is in fact healthier than hydrogenated vegetable shortening. It has less saturated fat than butter, a high smoking point, foods fried in it tend to absorb less fat, and it has and a neutral effect on blood cholesterol. And a pie crust made with homemade lard cannot be beaten, tastewise.
The best fat to use is the “leaf lard”, which is found over the kidneys and in the hog’s back. The intestinal fat is yellower and of a lower quality and makes a lard that is of a lower grade, but still useful, especially for noncooking purposes. Rendering lard is not a complicated task, but it isn’t fragrant. Alafair rendered lard in a large iron cauldron over an open wood fire in the back yard.
Cube the fat and add it to a small amount of water in a large pot. Heat on fairly low heat, stirring occasionally, until the fat melts. This will take a while, about an hour for a pound or so of fat. Stir often with a wooden utensil. The fat will pop and crackle as it melts and the air pockets burst.
Eventually, little pieces of crispy pork will begin floating to the surface. These are the cracklins. Their proper name is ‘cracklings,’ but Alafair would never have called them that. When the cracklins begin to sink, the lard is done. After it cools, pour the liquid fat through cheesecloth into sterile jars. The cracklins will be caught in the cheesecloth. Save them and eat them as a snack, salted, if you wish. Alafair would then chill the jars of lard outside on the porch in the crisp fall air, or in the cool root cellar. It will solidify like butter and turn snowy white.
Sausage
One of the great staples of American farm cooking, sausage is the perfect dish for utilizing every edible piece of meat in such a way that it keeps for weeks and months. If the cook knows what she’s doing, she can get twenty pounds of sausage out of 250 pounds of live hog. Sausages can be preserved as patties or links.
Leftover trimmings from the hams, loins, and shoulders were used to make sausage. At the discretion of the maker, the “sweetbreads” (heart, brains, liver) were also used. The different meats were minced together finely with fat and mixed with salt, herbs, and spices. Southern American sausages are always highly spiced. Sage and onion are commonly used, as well as garlic, clove, thyme, and both red and black pepper. The sausage meat was usually mixed in a large bowl, and at intervals a pinch would be fried and tasted to check the seasoning. When the mixture suited all the tasters present, the meat was either stuffed into sausage casings or preserved as patties. The patties were fried up, a stack of them placed into a sterile jar, and hot fat poured over them to cover. This keeps out the air and preserves the meat. The jars were then sealed and stored upside down on their lids.
Traditional link sausage casings are made from the hog’s small intestine, a long, continuous tube which has been washed and scraped, then turned inside out and soaked, washed, and scraped with a dull knife again and again, until it is practically transparent. The casing is left soaking in a tub of brine until it is ready to use, in order to keep it clean and supple enough to stuff. When the time comes, the casing is removed from the water and one end placed over the spout of the cast-iron stuffer. The prepared sausage meat is fed into the top of the stuffer and depressed with a plunger, which forces the meat out the spout and into the casing. Sausage stuffing is a two-woman enterprise; one to feed the meat into the stuffer and one to guide the casings with her hands as they fill so that they will fill evenly and not tear. The ‘guider’ determines the size of the links by twisting or pinching the casing at regular intervals. Sometimes the ends of the links are tied with string. Link sausages could be canned. A sterile jar was simply filled with links and hot lard poured over them to remove the air. Then, like the canned sausage patties, the jars were sealed and stored on their tops in the pantry or root cellar.
The best thing about link sausage is that it could be smoked. Great loops of sausage links would be hung from a pole in the smokehouse and slowly cured by the smoke from the hickory or applewood fire in the middle of the floor.
Head Cheese
Bear soup has nothing to do with bears and head cheese has nothing to do with cheese. Head cheese is more like a kind of pan sausage and is quite tasty. However, it is one of the ickier hog products to contemplate.
Take one hog’s head and remove the eyes, brain, ears, and jaw. Saw the head in half, place it in a large pot and cover it with water. Add an onion and spices as desired, such as sage, bay leaf, clove, garlic, and pepper, and boil until the meat falls off the bone. Remove the bones, grind the meat and onion together, then put the ground meat back into the water and boil again until it thickens. It will thicken on its own because of its natural fats and gelatin, but one can add cornmeal to the water to help the process along and also because it’s tasty. Pour the mixture into a shallow pan and cool until it sets. Slice into pieces for frying or for making sandwiches. A pan of head cheese will last several days if chilled.
Blood Pudding
Like head cheese, blood pudding is a sausage-like mixture made with hog’s blood. The blood is caught in a pan during slaughter and must be stirred constantly until it cools to prevent clotting. Once it has cooled, mix one quart of blood with about one cup of lard or other fat, salt and pepper to taste, two cups of dry oatmeal, cornmeal, fine bread crumbs, or cooked rice or barley. Mix all the ingredients together and boil until thick. Put in a cool place to set, then slice and fry.
Pickled Pigs Feet
The author spent many happy hours of her childhood sitting on her father’s lap eating pickled pig’s feet out of a jar and thus retains fond feelings for the dish, howsoever much she may be put off by it now.
Wash the pig’s trotters carefully, trim, and scald them in hot water. Split the feet in half lengthwise. Bring them to a boil in fresh water and simmer for an hour and a half or un
til tender. Stir often. Remove the feet from the water and rinse again.
In a large pot, simmer together enough vinegar to cover the feet, a chopped onion, a bay leaf, mustard seeds, peppercorns, and cloves for about thirty minutes. Then add the pig’s feet, bring the mixture back to the boil and remove from heat.
Remove as many bones as you can, then place the feet in sterile jars and pour the vinegar mixture over and seal. Let the mixture pickle for a month or so before eating.
Historical Notes
The Indian Territory
In the 1830s and 1840s, the federal government confiscated the lands of many of the great Native American nations in the South. The tribal members were removed from their traditional lands in a series of forced marches along a route that later became known as the Trail of Tears and settled into the Indian Territory, which was outside the then-borders of the United States in what is now the State of Oklahoma.
The Indian Territory (I.T.) was divided among the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, which included the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), Chickasaw, and Seminole Nations. For many years, the nations were left to govern themselves. And govern themselves they did, with their own tribal courts, laws, and legislatures, businesses, trade, newspapers, towns and farms, schools and colleges. In the traditional way, tribal land was held in common, with families and clans living in townships or on farms, the wealth of which was communally shared. Many of the native peoples were even slave holders.
Unfortunately, many, though not all, Indians in the I.T. supported the losing side during the American Civil War. This was excuse enough for the U.S. government to extend federal jurisdiction over the territory, and the nations were forced to sell off or cede their lands west of the 98th Meridian to the United States. This effectively divided the territory into two relatively equal parts, the I.T. in the east for the Five Nations, and the Oklahoma Territory in the west. The U.S. then exiled several Plains Indian tribes, including Comanche, Apache, and Arapaho, from their homelands onto reservations in the newly formed Oklahoma Territory.
In the early part of the twentieth century, there was some discussion in Congress of admitting the territories into the Union as two separate states, Oklahoma in the west and Sequoia in the east. But at the last minute the two territories were combined and became the State of Oklahoma.
Allotment
In the 1880s, a U.S. senator by the name of Henry Dawes decided that it would be best for the Indian peoples if they were “Americanized” in order to make it easier for them to assimilate into White society. He proposed that the best way to do this was to do away with communal lands and allot a parcel of land to each tribal member, thus introducing them to the joys of capitalism and individual ownership.
The Dawes Act was passed in 1887, following which Congress set out to conclude a treaty with each of the Five Tribes. Since the tribal governments weren’t in the least interested in participating, it took several years of pressure before they gave in to the inevitable and sat down with the U.S. Government to negotiate the details and particulars of the allotment program, including who was to be considered a tribal member and thus entitled to receive a piece of land. The treaty with the Creek Nation was signed in September of 1887, but not passed into law until 1901.
Each enrolled member of the Creek Nation, male and female, adult and child, was given 160 acres of his own choosing. Every member who accepted allotment was automatically given U.S. citizenship, but many restrictions were placed on the individual’s ability to dispose of the land as she or he saw fit. The government deemed the Indians, especially full-bloods, not quite competent to handle their own affairs. So, to keep greedy speculators from taking advantage of the new landowners, the law stipulated that from his 160 acres each citizen had to designate 40 acres as his “homestead.” This homestead could not be sold at all, to anyone, for twenty-five years. A minor’s allotment was chosen for him by his parents or guardian and could not be sold during his minority. After the owner’s death, title to the homestead passed to her children or to her heirs, according to the laws of descent of the Creek Nation.
Therefore, in 1906 Roane Hawkins would have been able to control his wife’s land, but he could not have owned it. Oklahoma became the 46th state in September, 1907, so had Hawkins been patient for one more year, the laws of the United States of America would have superseded the treaty when the sovereignty of the Creek Nation and all the Native nations of Oklahoma, was dissolved.
“I would not mind so much playing the White man’s game if only the White man would not make all the rules.”—Chitto Harjo (Crazy Snake), leader of the Creek traditionalist band known as the Snakes.
Oklahoma Creek Place Name Pronunciations
Bacone (bay-CONE)—established in 1888. Named for Almon C. Bacone, Baptist missionary. Bacone Indian University, now Bacone College, is located in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Checotah (shuh-KO-tuh)—established in 1886. Named for Great Chief Samuel Checote, Muscogee Creek minister and politician.
Eufaula (you-FALL-uh)—Near the banks of the North Canadian River, Eufaula came into its own in 1872 when it became a stop for the Missouri Kansas and Texas (KATY) Railway. The James-Younger gang had a hideout just north of the town. Belle Starr is buried in Eufaula.
Hitchita (HIT-chuh-tah, rhymes with Wichita)—A market town from about 1900, located in northern McIntosh County some 18 miles SSW of Boynton. It was named for a band of the Muscogee tribe.
Muskogee (mus-KO-ghee)—Founded in 1872 when the KATY railroad first crossed the Indian Territory. Named for the Creek tribe.
Nuyaka (noo-YAHK-uh)—A mission site for the Creek tribe, established in the 1880s. Located near Okmulgee.
Okmulgee (ok-MUL-ghee)—Became the headquarters of the Muskogee Nation in 1866, and is the location of the Creek Council House. Okmulgee means “bubbling water”.
Oktaha (ok-TAH-ha)—named for Muscogee chief Oktarharsars Harjo. Originated in 1872 as a stop on the KATY railroad.
Note: Muscogee is the peoples’ own name for their confederation. Creek is the name given by the English to a band of the people living along a creek by the Ocmulgee River in Georgia, and the term later expanded to include all the Muscogee-speaking bands which were originally located all across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.
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