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Remembering Alberta’s ‘Country Kitchen’
Spending time with sisters Jane Chastain and Jemima Tucker last week and hearing about the Tuckasegee Christmases of their childhood reminded me of a story I wrote 20 years ago for our first holiday special section.
At that time the late Alberta Zachary, who passed away in June at the age of 92, was still writing her wonderful column “The County Kitchen” for the Cashiers newspaper. Alberta started her career as a columnist with the original Cashiers weekly, The Cashiers Chronicle, which was started in 1981 by the late Dan Moore. Because that’s also where my journalism career started, I knew Alberta and thought she’d be a great person to interview about long-ago mountain holidays.
As it turned out, I was right. Alberta remembered the Christmases of her girlhood in great detail.
“Sometimes I feel like an historical artifact,” she told me in 1985. “Things have changed so much since I was small.”
Alberta, who grew up in Brevard, said that Christmas seemed more special back before 1920.
“There were five of us little girls like stair steps,” she said. “Money was scarce, but we always had a wonderful Christmas. Looking back I don’t see how my parents managed it.”
Like Jane and Jemima’s family, Alberta said her house always had a fresh Christmas tree. But while theirs was always a cedar, Alberta remembered various types of evergreens.
“My father would go out and get the tree. One year it was a holly, which was hard to decorate. We used real candles to light the tree, and a tree decorated with real candles is the most beautiful sight,” she said. “Of course the grown-ups never left the room when the tree was lit, and the candles were only lighted on Christmas morning.”
Before they went to bed, Alberta and her sisters hung their black cotton stockings from their bedposts.
“The next morning there was always an orange, which was a real treat, and chocolate drops and dried raisins – the kind that came in bunches with the seeds still in them. Those were the best raisins.”
When they woke up on Christmas morning, the house would be warm.
“Dad built fires in all the fireplaces,” she said. Usually we just had a fire in the wood stove. We’d sing Christmas carols around the piano before breakfast.”
Other of Alberta’s Christmas memories centered around food, which is not surprising for one who included a recipe in every column she wrote.
“My mother and my unmarried aunt who lived with us cooked for days before Christmas,” she said. “I don’t remember any fruitcake, but we had mince pies and little chess pies in tart shells.
“There was fresh coconut cake – we children stood on a box and grated coconut (and our knuckles). The main course was baked ham, not turkey.”
One special food Alberta described from her childhood Christmas dinners was pigs-foot jelly.
“That was a real delicacy,” she said. “We only had it on very special occasions. It was made by boiling the pigs’ feet. The broth was strained and clarified until it was pure gelatin. It was sweetened and flavored with port wine, which made it a beautiful color, and it was served with real whipped cream.”
And, just like she did in every “Country Kitchen” she wrote, Alberta shared a recipe with me when I interviewed her two decades ago. It’s a bread recipe she called “Christmas Bread,” which can be adapted to make cinnamon rolls and/or orange sweet rolls.
Here it is, just the way she told it to me, with all her tips and special instructions.
Christmas Bread
Mix together:
3 pkgs. (3 Tbsp.) yeast
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. salt
1 cup dried milk
6 cups plain flour
Make well in middle, and then add:
3 cups hot tap water
(not boiling or lukewarm – too hot to put your hand in)
1-1/2 stick melted butter or margarine
Beat thoroughly by hand.
Then mix in 4 egg yolks until thoroughly mixed. Add enough flour to make a fairly stiff dough. Knead until smooth and bouncy, but not one bit sticky. (You can oil your hands slightly.) Put a small amount of oil in a very large mixing bowl and turn dough in and set it to rise.
Alberta told me that she always put a roasting pan full of very hot water on the lowest oven rack and then placed the bowl of dough on an upper rack to rise with the oven door closed, but she warned me not to turn the oven on at all.
“Even low heat can kill the yeast,” she said.
Let the dough rise until it’s more than doubled, then punch it down and shape into loaves. This recipe makes two big or three medium-sized loaves.
Divided the dough, then roll each part out with a rolling pin until the air bubbles are out. Roll it up in a roll and pinch the ends together. Take a sharp knife and slash the top three or four times on an angle. (This is optional, but it makes a good place for decorations, Alberta said.)
Grease the pan or spray with non-stick cooking spray. Put the dough in pans and let rise until doubled.
Take the dough from the oven, remove the pan of water and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake for 10 minutes at 400, and the reduce the heat to 350 degrees. Bake about 15 more minutes or until the bread is golden brown and sounds hollow.
Take from the oven and cool loaves on a rack.
To make the icing, mix about 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar with about 1/2 cup of warm water until it flows off a fork – be careful not to get it too runny.
Dribble the icing over the bread to make a pretty design. Decorate with green and red candied cherries or small red cnadied cherries or small red candies and holly leaves. (You can use this same recipe at Easter and decorate with jelly bean flowers.)
Alberta told me that leftover dough (or all the dough) can be made into cinnamon rolls for a special holiday breakfast.
Cinnamon Rolls
Roll portion of dough into rectangle 1/4- to 1/2-inch thick.
Mix together:
1/2 stick butter or margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
(Add a few drops of hot water if paste is too thick to spread.)
Spread evently over dough all the way to the edges. Roll up firmly.
(If it’s too big around, pull gently from both ends to make the roll thinner.)
Butter a baking pan with sides about 1 inch high (a jelly roll pan works well for this; don’t use a flat cookie sheet).
Using a sharp knife, cut slices 1/2- to 1-inch thick. Cut through the dought quickly or it will fall apart. Place in pan with edges barely touching.
Let rise and then bake at 350 degrees. Cool in pan and ice with same icing as for the Christmas bread.
Orange Sweet Rolls
Prepare dough as for cinnamon rolls. For filling, substitute:
1/2 stick soft butter or margarine
1/2 cup sugar
grated rind of one fresh orange
Follow remainder of Cinnamon Roll recipe.
Merry Christmas.
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