Relearning the Old Ways

My family and I have been studying primitive/colonial skills for quite some time. What's great about these skills is that they are easily transferrable to our lives today. In fact, it's my belief that some perfect marrying of colonial life with modern conveniences could be exactly what we need to do to survive hard times.

A few weeks ago, my girls and I went on a field trip to the Old York Museum. Let's just say it was a pretty awesome experience. I had a blast and learned a lot.

Among other things we learned/witnessed on that day was an explanation of Colonial, open-hearth cooking. I have a woodstove, and so it's unlikely that I'll need to cook over an fireplace, but it was really neat to see the process.

What most intrigued me, though, was the chat about a typical Colonial breakfast.

The presenter held up this board-hard piece of fish and explained how, during colonial times, they would salt-dry the fish, and then, it would hang in the kitchen to be used a little at a time. Without refrigeration, their options for preserving food were somewhat more limited than ours.

I was hooked.

But then, she went on to describe how they'd make their fish chowder breakfast. A piece of the dried fish would be broken off, and it would be soaked in water to take out some of the saltiness. Then, it would be combined with some boiled potatoes and added to milk and warmed up. If the potatoes were left over from the previous nights' meal, it could be considered the original fast food :).

For the next three weeks, all I could think about was dried fish chowder. I had to have some dried fish.

As I theorized with Deus Ex Machina after the class, we could put a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes (foil is optional) in the woodstove, they'd be cooked by morning, and then, we could put a pan of milk on the woodstove, add the cooked potatoes and fish, and have a meal in ten minutes ... or however long it took the milk to heat up.

A couple of days ago, we went to the library. The librarian asked, "So, what did you guys do today?"

I said, "I dried fish."

She asked, "Why?"

I said, "To preserve it."

She said, "For what?"

I said, "To eat."

Today, I made my first, ever, New England Fish Chowder using my salt-dried fish and loosely based on this recipe.

Oh, it's yummy!

Combined with some fresh baked French bread, it will be tonight's dinner, and because we have refrigeration, and I made a lot, it might be tomorrow's breakfast ... or ....

... if we eat it all, because it's very good, maybe we'll throw a couple of potatoes in the woodstove to cook overnight, while we sleep, and then, tomorrow morning, Deus Ex Machina can break off a chunk of the dried fish I didn't use for this chowder, add it to some milk and the cooked potato, and have a hearty, Colonial breakfast.



How I Dried My Fish

1 lb of wild-caught-in-the-Gulf-of-Maine haddock** (or whatever fish you have :)
2 lbs of salt
3 tbs cracked pepper

1. Layer salt, pepper and fish in a shallow container. Salt should completely cover the fish. Leave overnight (you could probably leave it a lot longer. The salt actually leaches the water out of the fish, and next time, I will let it stay in the salt longer, as it was starting to get pretty dry when I pulled it out, but still had a lot of moisture in it). I put mine in the refrigerator, but I don' think it's necessary.

2. Remove fish from salt and brush off excess.

3. Place fish on a cookie sheet in the oven set at the lowest temperature. Mine was set on 170°. After an hour, I flipped the fish, and I noted that it was really moist. I tipped the pan so that the water would collect at the bottom of the pan and the fish would get drier. I flipped the fish every hour, for about three hours, and then, when it was stiff, I took it out of the oven, and put it in the dehydrator. I left it in the dehydrator overnight. I didn't put it in the dehydrator right away, because I anticipated that there would be some moisture, and I didn't want fish juice dripping all over the dehydrator. The fish was mostly dried when I put it in the dehydrator, and it was pretty brittle the next morning when I took it out. Based on the fish at the museum, I think that's the consistency we want it to be.

4. I stored mine in a cheese cloth hanging in the kitchen.

**Make sure the fish is super fresh, or it will have that fishy odor - not pleasant :).

I'll do this again, because, as I said, the chowder is awesome. It might be a bit salty for some people, but soaking the fish before adding it to the chowder, adding more milk, or not using salted butter would decrease the saltiness. Personally, I like it salty.

Let me know if you try to dry fish, too. It seems like a pretty cool way to store fish without having to resort to refrigeration or freezing, and as fish is one of those things we don't get nearly enough of in our diet here at my house, this way of preserving it seems a pretty quick and easy way to get more of it into our bodies :).