Each year I watch indigenous Baltimore foods recede into the shadows of unpopularity and, at worst, rejection. I admit that I will not touch some of these dishes, but there are some I devour.
John Shields held his annual Krautfest last month. The chef and co-founderof Gertrude’s Restaurant reports the night dedicated to Baltimore’s mania for sauerkraut was a sellout — with a waiting list of 50 persons.
The Krautfest is something of a cousin to the Baltimore Bull and Oyster Roast, where diners indulge in an eating bender while meeting up with old friends. Somehow, raw oysters are considered healthy eating while we never brag about the dubious health value of fried oysters and pit beef, hot dogs, lunch meats, and the Maryland delicacy, the “fresh” ham, which is cooked, uncured ham.
A Baltimore food variety that gets little respect is ham spread or ham salad — ham sent through a grinder with mayonnaise added. It definitely smacks of an old-fashioned taste. Its fancier variant is Smithfield ham spread, often served on little biscuits. If you want to be super old Baltimore, you make your own mayonnaise or dream of the local variety supplied by the old Jordan Stabler fancy foods firm.
Stewed, canned tomatoes get no respect. Add a little brown sugar and they’ll take the edge off a February day. Yet, today we are offered broccoli or worse yet, a kale salad.
Baltimore taste traditions are not fancy. Fast disappearing is a taste for large pickled onions. This local version is not a cocktail onion. This is the cocktail onion’s large, linebacker cousin, pickled in a glass jar with vinegar and a dollop of sugar. About 70 years ago they cost a nickel and sat in jars on the counter of many corner stores. Known as “pickle onions,” they satisfied a craving for sweet and sour and good. Note: They are often downed with a bag of Utz potato chips.
If you yearn for sour beef and dumplings, you understand the pickled onion thing.
The powerhouse of pickle onions was the Panzer pickle factory in Fells Point. Panzer’s used vinegar the way Gunther’s beer used malt and hops. Friends still reminisce about the chow chow, a type of vegetable-based relish, made here. Panzer’s version, yellowish with flecks of green relish, had absolutely nothing similar to the version of chow chow sold in Pennsylvania roadside markets.
Speaking of counter food fare, my father, Joe Kelly, who attended the last food service of the once-celebrated Hotel Rennert, often spoke of how crab cakes were once made in advance and sold on bar counters under a fly screen tent. These crab cakes were not full of jumbo lump, but had claw and backfin meat and sold for ten cents. You ate them with a soda cracker, mustard and beer — when they were seasonally available.
The chief candidate in the fast-disappearing food group is boned shadfish and its roe. Shad season (early, early spring) will be here soon, and I’ll wish “bon appetite” to those who devour this dish. A Bolton Hill hostess once served it to me, and I thought I’d give it a try. I’m still in recovery. I’ll leave this dish to others. (Full confession: I’ll pass on rockfish too.)
Sweetbreads may not be a Baltimore staple, but we certainly did them to perfection. Try and find them on a local menu today. Let me count the ways these were served at the old Marconi’s restaurant (gone 20 years) — Sarah Bernhardt (with ham and chicken added), or bordelaise, or creamed or broiled. To accompany? The Saratoga Street restaurant offered four potato varieties: au gratin, julienne, hash brown and Lyonnaise.
Marconi’s chocolate sauce had no competition, but the chocolate in Berger’s cookies remains a Baltimore staple. I’ve tried to taste a difference in these powerful pucks of vanilla cookies roofed in thick chocolate. They are unchanged.
Years ago I visited the old Berger’s bakery on Aiken Street in Northeast Baltimore. The cookie bases (the vanilla dough base) were truly hand-thrown into vats of chocolate as thick as asphalt. I left the bakery that afternoon believing the clock had no hands at this labor-intensive bakery.
Another dish that has not been corrupted is a slice of smearcase. This one is poor man’s cheesecake, a favorite of those who like dairy-based baked goods. I’ve heard it called a “slab cake” too, a less flattering way of describing what looks like a small basketball court of light, creamy, cottage-style cheese, perhaps with a faint lemon hint, and dusted with or without cinnamon. It’s sold cut into smaller squares. While not invented in Baltimore, we keep the smearcase bakers in business.
Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jacques.kelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.