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Enjoy a stay at the York River Inn overlooking the York River in historic Yorktown, Virginia |
Favorite Recipes from the Innkeeper |
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Crab-a-Dab-a-Doos 2 tsp Old Bay Seasoning Mix everything in the order of the ingredients (11 items). Save crab meat until last and crumbs for topping. Then gently fold in crab meat, being careful not to break it up–if you stir too hard, you’ll break up the backfin pieces. Spray 6-ounce custard cups with Pam. Fill each one 3/4 full. Sprinkle with toasted bread crumbs. This recipe will make about 8 or 10. Bake 30 minutes at 350 in the middle of the oven. You can use this same recipe for crab cakes, although, even when it’s cold, the uncooked mixture is soft and runny. I usually take some in my hand, shape it into a ball, place it in a plate with buttered bread crumbs, cover the ball with the crumbs, and then put it in a glass casserole dish sprayed with Pam. I mash the ball down to a cake size–maybe 3/4 inches thick? And as wide as I want? When I fill up the casserole dish, I put them in the fridge overnight. I usually use a 9 by 13 inch dish for this. In the morning, I’ll put them in the oven preheated to 350 on the lowest rack. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, and turn over–I mean–turn over the crab cakes, don’t turn over yourself or you’ll never get these things right. And you’ll never finish breakfast either–trust me–I’ve tried it! It never works to turn over before breakfast. Sorry–I wander..... Bake for another 10 minutes, and they’ll be perfect–they’ll look like you sauteed them, without the mess, the grease, the smell, or the cleaning. Also, this freezes very well. Freeze them in the glass dishes and cover each one with plastic wrap and put them in an air-tight plastic bag. Thaw and cook as above. Or you can make the crab cakes, put them on a tray covered in parchment paper, and freeze solid. As soon as they’re frozen, remove, and put in an air-tight plastic bag–that way you can pull out however many you want at a time. Let them thaw out and follow the cooking directions above. Don’t try to cook them frozen. Let me tell you about the crab meat—I get it fresh during the season (this is Chesapeake Bay blue crab)–and I usually have my own crab pots and I get the crab meat myself directly from the river–or I get it from a local waterman. In a pinch, For me? And how I grew up? We always used the claw and other (special) meat for our crab cakes–that’s the sweetest meat by far. We’d save the backfin for other things, when we wanted the meat to show up–but it was bland in taste compared to the "special" meat. Now? If people don’t see those big huge pieces of white backfin meat in their crab cakes or crab dishes, they think they’re being cheated! So—like everyone else now–I make my crabcakes out of backfin meat—but that means I get to save the yummy claw and other sweet meat for myself!
Poached Pears with Cranberries 3 pears, halved & cored Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray. Put pears fairly close together in the dish, cut side down. Combine marmalade, sugar, salt, butter, cranberries, orange juice concentrate and water; pour over pears. Bake pears, uncovered for about 30 minutes, or until pears are tender enough to cut with a fork, but not mushy. Put pears round-side down in individual serving bowls. Put 1-2 tablespoons of sour cream into the hole of each pear. Pour a little sauce mixture over each pear and serve.
Bill’s Brown Sugar Glazed Bacon One of the secrets to this bacon is to bake it–which makes sense. If you were supposed to fry it, don’t you think they would have named it "fryon"? 1 pound of thick-cut bacon Spray large glass casserole dishes or baking pans with Pam. Arrange bacon in one layer in dishes–very close togehter is ok. Bake at 350 degrees until the bacon is about half done–you have to judge that. Turn the bacon over and sprinkle bacon evenly with granulated brown sugar–don’t be stingy. Cook for a couple of minutes or until the sugar has begun to cook. Turn the bacon over and cook until the bacon is done to desired crispness. Remove the bacon to sheets of brown paper or kraft paper to drain. Do NOT drain on paper towels unless you want bacon with fuzzy white edges. Trust me, bacon with fuzzy white edges is not good. Don’t put the sugar on too early in the process since it will burn much quicker than the bacon will. If you like spicy bacon, you can sprinkle ground black pepper on the bacon when you do the brown sugar–it’s not for everybody, but you might like it.
York River Inn Baked Tomatoes 4 plum tomatoes Cut each tomato in half beginning at the stem end. Cut out the stem if you like, but it’s not necessary.Place cut side up in an 8 X 8 glass casserole dish sprayed with Pam. The 8 halves should fit just fine.Drizzle each cut side with olive oil covering the whole cut side–or put some oil in a small dish and paint the oil on with a brush.Sprinkle each half with Italian seasoning to taste.Pinch of salt on each piece. Put about 2 teaspoons of granulated brown sugar on each half– or piling it up as much as you can get on each half–or that’s the way I like it. It takes a lot of sugar. I usually bake them at 300 degrees for about an hour or an hour and 15 minutes. You need to cook them slow so the tomato will keep its flavor and the sugar will cook down. If you need the oven for something else at a higher tempertature (which I always do!), I pull them out–keep them warm and then run them under the broiler before serving. This can easily be multiplied for however many people you’re having–I usually just figure two tomato halves for each person.
Yeast Waffles ( Lighter than air Waffles) ½ c water 105 degrees Put water yeast and sugar together until foamy–10 minutes or so. Pour yeast into milk. Add flour, salt, and butter. Beat until smooth. Put in a container over twice as big as the amount. Lightly cover with saran wrap and refrigerate. The mixture will more than double. Before cooking, add eggs, vanilla, and baking soda, and mix well. Get the waffle iron really hot for these, and don’t fill the space up with the batter or it will spill all over. Experience will help you to know how much to put on the iron for best results. Be prepared to make more waffles per guest of these than usual—for one reason, they are so light that you hardly feel you are eating a whole waffle, and they are so good, everyone will want seconds!
Candied Orange Peel (mostly Bill’s with Martha’s suggestions) 8 navel oranges Slice oranges in half and place in large stockpot (I mean LARGE like at least a 6 or 8 quart) Note: "Martha" says put the whole orange in—and I found that juicing the oranges first doesn’t diminish the orange taste at all–and you get fresh orange juice along with the peel–so juice them first, enjoy the juice, and just put the remains in the pot. Fill pot with water to cover oranges generously. Cover surface of water with a piece of parchment paper cut to same size diameter as the pot. Note: I have no idea what this does–"Martha" says to do it.. I Did it. It did fine. Don’t do it? It works just fine–so forget that part) Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours uncovered. Remove oranges and let cool. Scoop out the flesh with a spoon or a melon baller and discard (discard the orange flesh not the melon baller). Use the melon baller to remove the stem area and the "naval" area on the peels. Cut peels into creative shapes. Note: "Martha" cuts into shapes---like the Eiffel tower, the rose window at the National Cathedral, and the Grand Canyon. I cut into strips. Strips work just fine. Put 5 cups sugar, corn syrup, grenadine (this is just for some added color and is not necessary), and 2 2/3 cups water in the same pot. Bring to a boil. Add orange strips. Cover with parchment (?? Don’t bother) Bring to a boil and then simmer for another 2 hours. And stir now and then. After two hours, turn off heat and let the whole gloppy mass sit for an hour.Remove strips from syrup. Drain on a rack for 6 hours or overnight (I usually spray a rack with Pam–put the rack over a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan that y ou’ve sprayed with Pam–then spread the strips over the rack to drain the excess syrup–it’s a lot easier to clean up this way.) Roll around in a pile of sugar (sorry---roll the orange strips around---don’t roll yourself around---the sugar is really sticky and hard to get off your clothing and body). Let the strips sit in open air---they’ll harden up a bit---if you put them in a closed container, they’ll stay soft. They’re really tough if you let them dry out too much. You have to be careful about the time you cook and the oranges you use—I guess experience is the only way you can tell though. Some oranges have really thin tough skins, and some have very fresh soft skins with thick rind inside—you just have to do it several times to see what works best as far as time is concerned , you can overcook them to mush or undercook them pretty easily–experience will show you–but I like to check them ahead of time to keep from overcooking. The thick rinds that usually come with naval oranges really work the best. I’ve also done these with grapefruit rinds and lemon rinds—the grapefruit is great, the lemon was not so good. But–most people enjoy the orange ones, so that’s usually what I do. They make nice gifts to put them in an air-tight container and give them as little gifts. And if you cut the pieces in the shapes of the person’s head, or his children’s faces, or his dog’s face, then the recipient of the gift really likes them better.
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Brown Sugar Pecan Bites
William Cole, Innkeeper |
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