"Cooking for Two" cookbook.

The Power of Simplicity: Janet Hill, Fannie Farmer, and Perfect Recipes a Century Later

In her late thirties, high school teacher Janet McKenzie Hill ventured to Boston, where she enrolled at the Boston Cooking School. After studying under American culinary pioneer Fannie Farmer, then director of the BCS, Hill graduated in 1892. She went on to found the Boston Cooking School Journal, which she edited for many years, and author numerous cookbooks, including Salads, Sandwiches, and Chafing Dish Dainties (1899), Practical Cooking and Serving (1902), and Whys of Cooking (1916) (Feeding America). This recipe for ginger cakes—flavorful spice cookies boasting a crispy exterior and a dense, chewy center akin to soft gingerbread—comes from her 1909 volume Cooking for Two: A Handbook for Young Housekeepers.

Version 2Plain Ginger Cakes

½ cup of molasses

1 teaspoonful of soda

¼ cup of butter

¼ cup of boiling water

2 cups of flour

½ teaspoonful of salt

½ tablespoonful of ginger

½ teaspoonful of cinnamon

Stir the soda into the molasses; melt the butter in the boiling water; turn all into a bowl and stir in the flour, sifted with the salt and spices; add more flour if needed, but keep the dough as soft as can be handled. Roll a little of the dough at a time to a sheet about three-eighths of an inch thick and cut into rounds. Press two pecan nut meats into the top of each, and dredge with granulated sugar. Bake in a moderate oven. The recipe will make about twenty cakes.

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Gazpacho, My Dear Watson: Innovation in Cooking

 “For years, a down-home sensibility with an obsession for quality and seasonality was the backbone of Hastings’ concept. But amid the hoopla, Hot and Hot has in some ways become Haute and Haute.”

–Eric Velasco, “Success Has Not Spoiled Hot and Hot Fish Club”12784523_10206977711696015_1913390934_n

Chris Hastings is, by all accounts, one of the most prolific chefs on the Birmingham food scene.  He’s won awards, been featured on television, and bested Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America (my personal favorite of the overly dramatic Food Network cooking competitions). Although he owns two other restaurants in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, the Hot and Hot Fish Club is his longest-running—it opened in 1995—and most popular establishment. Eric Velasco, when reviewing the restaurant, was pleased to find that Hastings’s growing fame “has brought new maturity to the menu while the food continues to be inspirational.” Continue reading