You probably have been wondering why you haven’t heard from us recently. We’ve just moved from two one-bedroom apartments to a three-bedroom ranch house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just around the corner from where we lived — Sheila for 40 years, and Marilynn for 31 years. It was time for a change.

When you live with 6500 cookbooks and 3000 culinary antiques, it’s time to downsize and move to a home where you can actually see everything you have. As usual, the Brass Sisters have done just the opposite of what most people our age are doing. We’ve moved from apartments to a house, rather than from a house to an apartment. We’re renting, and we are good tenants who take good care of the house.

Now, we have a large yard so that we can have a garden. We’ve hoping to plant some heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, as well as some seasonal flowers. There are two roses bushes in the yard, and some tulips and daffodils. Our friend Dennis planted 70 jonquil bulbs in honor of Marilynn’s 70th birthday last November, and they are coming up in little yellow clusters. We’ve found that some red tulips are dotting the perimeter of the yard like exclamation points and have started to come up, too. The rose bushes need a little pruning which we will do as soon as we can find the right tool and the right technique. We’ll consult the gardening section in our library.

It took us five days to move, and we appreciate all the help we received from our friends in smoothing the rough edges. We really enjoyed sharing all of those egg salad sandwiches from Formaggio Kitchen. We hired a professional moving company, and they did a great job, although they couldn’t understand why two ladies of a certain age needed all that kitchenware, and why does anyone need three red blouses, all the same. We guess they don’t understand what it’s like to get a grease stain in the middle of shooting a TV show.

We’ve been collecting French, English, and American garden furniture and planters for several years, but we really weren’t able to use them to full advantage in our apartments. There is a small weathered wooden shed in the yard, and we’re hoping to get into it and see what’s there.

All of the activity – the packing, the lifting, the unpacking – has had its benefits. Marilynn has lost 17 pounds, and Sheila has lost 13 pounds. We are being careful about what we eat, and we are trying to exercise. After donating our waistlines to Heirloom Baking and donating our hips to Heirloom Cooking, we have learned how to taste, rather than to eat what we test. New neighbors, the local Library, and our friends on Huron Avenue have benefited greatly from our baking, and we have benefited from their feedback.

There have been some plumbing emergencies, and we’ve become good friends with the plumbers, Steve and Kevin. Our wonderful mailperson, David, still delivers our mail; the only difference is that we receive our mail at 10:30 in the morning rather than 4:00 in the afternoon. We can still visit our friends at the Library, and still buy our ground beef at The Fresh Pond Market. The crew at Home Depot knows us by sight, and we’re learning about all kinds of things like socks for the washing machine drainpipe and how to turn the lights back on.

Marilynn continues to contemplate inviting only short guests who are over 40 years of age so they won’t be able to see the dust we’ve missed on top of high surfaces, but we both think that this really isn’t feasible. It would limit our social life too much.

There is much to be said for the opportunity to downsize, to learn, and to try new things. “It never gets stale,” as our friend Bruce is so fond of saying.

We’re hoping to update our blog on a more regular basis and keep you informed about our adventures, both culinary and daily. Sheila tested a yeasted banana bread, more like a densely grained white bread, last week, and it’s wonderful. As soon as we finalize the recipe, we will post it.

Hope you will continue to visit us at our blog, Comfort Food & Joy. We love hearing from you, too.

Have fun baking and cooking!!!
Marilynn and Sheila

“It’s not often a baking book becomes a cultural icon, but this one

is guaranteed to do so.” – Cooking Digest

Now in paperback, the James Beard-nominated cookbook, Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters, is the collection of a century’s worth of the finest recipes for America’s favorite desserts and baked goods, all lovingly updated for the modern kitchen. As the Boston Globe described it, Marilynn and Sheila’s “Heirloom Baking is like your mother’s recipe box, except better organized.”

The two inimitable sisters and self-proclaimed “roundish women of a certain age” have spent decades collecting and curating heirloom recipes, passed down with care (and a few chocolate smudges on the recipe cards), from one generation to the next. They have meticulously recorded recipes for the best dishes of friends and family, and even visited yard sales and antique shops to discover the best recipes of strangers.

With heart and soul and authenticity, they embrace the familiar and the nostalgic, taking the time to recount evocative family stories and personal anecdotes tied to each recipe, and warmly recalling the character of the original baker. Rather than reinvent the wheel, the Brass sisters grease it (with plenty of real melted butter and sometimes even cream); the recipes in Heirloom Baking are all easy-to-follow and only require basic pantry items. After all, the kitchens of previous generations did not have a lot of fancy ingredients.

Included here are 150 recipes for all of our old-fashioned and childhood favorites, from Marshmallow Fudge Brownies and Lacy Oatmeal Cookies to Lemon Poppy Seed Cake and Holiday Apple Custard Pie. The book is beautifully designed with 150 beautiful full-color photographs.

Since the hardcover publication of Heirloom Baking, Marilynn and Sheila’s warm and quirky personalities, strong Boston accents, and sinfully delicious desserts have endeared them to home cooks all over the country. They have hosted their own television specials on the Cooking Channel and PBS, trumped Bobby Flay with their Pineapple Upside-Down Cake (pg 84-85) on Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and have appeared as special guests with Ming Tsai on Simply Ming.

About the Authors:

Marilynn Brass and Sheila Brass are home cooks with 119 years of baking experience between them. They have appeared in their own televised cooking specials including The Brass Sisters Holiday on the Cooking Channel and The Brass Sisters: Queens of the Comfort Food on WGBH, the PBS affiliate in Boston. They have also been guests on the Food Network’s Throwdown with Bobby Flay and on PBS’s Simply Ming, hosted by Tsai Ming. They have also made appearances on Antiques Roadshow FYI. They are the authors of Heirloom Cooking with the Brass Sisters (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers) Heirloom Baking With The Brass Sisters was a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award in the category of Baking and Desserts. Select recipes from the book were also included in Food & Wine Magazine’s annual Best of the Best Cookbook. Marilynn and Sheila live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Cambridge, Massachusetts was an exciting place to be in the 1960s and the 1970s because of the political and social climate. The times they were a changing, and the place to be was where Marilynn was, living at the Cambridge YWCA, on Temple Street, in 1967.

There were exciting things to do, such as walking down Massachusetts Avenue at twilight on Halloween to the Brattle Theatre to see Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant and Josephine Hull. There was always a visit to the Harvard Square Theatre to see a double feature of Woody Allen Films or In the Heat of the Night with Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier, fortified with a ¼ pound of dark chocolate almond bark from Brigham’s or a Granny Smith Apple from Nini’s Corner.

But it was the food that really pulled us in. You could travel around the world if you lived in Cambridge, just by taking a bus from Inman Square to Porter Square to Harvard Square by eating in all of the little restaurants that featured Indian, French, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Jewish food.

Many of these restaurants no longer exist. Some locations have been taken over by other restaurants, others have simply closed, and many still remain only as reassuring culinary memories.

In Cambridge you could eat Coquille St. Jacques at the sophisticated Ferdinand’s, followed by an exquisite little salad of greens dressed with a light lemon vinaigrette, in the European fashion, or you could go to the S & S Deli for potato pancakes or a lusty corned beef sandwich.

One of our all-time favorites was the Midget Restaurant, located near Porter Square. We don’t know how it got its name, but we revered that place. It was a combination old-time delicatessen with a menu of home-style “hot meals.” One could revel in an old-fashioned turkey dinner, complete with real mashed potatoes, or order pot roast, or barbecued ribs with all the fixings.

The huge glass-fronted refrigerated showcase to the left of the entrance offered a wealth of containers of Jewish-style food. Particularly intriguing to us was the artfully arranged container of glistening sliced lox and the mound of Bismarck herring and pickled onions in paprika-speckled sour cream. We fell in love with that herring and shamelessly copied it for a first course at our fledgling dinner parties in our first apartments.

We loved the booths, with their shiny upholstery, that stayed comfortable even if we were wearing mini-skirts. We loved the section of the menu which featured “Inflation Fighters,” those oddly filling, economic combinations that satisfied body and soul for 99 cents.

Marilynn had her own choice of inflation fighters – a baked potato and sour cream with a dish of coleslaw dressed with oil and vinegar. On certain days, we enjoyed an oval of chopped meat pot-roasted with the same coleslaw. We never ordered dessert because we were always on a diet.

We were never on a first-name basis with the owners, an older couple — she attractive and conscientious; he business-like and efficient. The one time we witnessed his sense of humor was when one of the help dropped a tray of dishes. When his wife yelled, “Sam, did you hear that?” He replied, “So, we’ll raise the prices.”

The waitresses were professionals — old-school, been doing it for years. They had pride in their jobs and did well by the patrons.  We remember them in their wash and wear white uniforms, their hair in a bun, a pencil behind their ear, managing heavy trays of food and dishes.

It didn’t matter what coups or revolutions were occurring elsewhere in the world, we always knew that things stayed the same at the Midget.

We confess that there were times when we made our way to the Midget, bowed down with “job worries” or “boyfriends worries.”

One Christmas Eve or was it New Year’s Eve, we two nice Jewish girls went to the Midget. We remember that we didn’t have a lot of money, and the booths were all taken.

We were seated in the adjoining room, which was an adventure in itself. In all the years that we had been to the Midget, we never even knew that the restaurant had another room, and that it had a piano bar!

It seemed that all the old familiar faces we’d seen in the restaurant were seated at the piano bar. Money being what it was, we ordered hamburgers and split an order of French fries. The dill pickle slice that came with dinner made it worthwhile, as did the schmaltzy music coming from the pianist. Some of the patrons decided to sing along, and one even took over the piano, playing and singing and then taking a bow.

We were so restored by the whole experience; we decided to splurge by splitting a piece of Marilynn’s favorite, Lemon Meringue Pie.

We can’t believe that we were ever that young, and that the things we worried about then either took care of themselves or weren’t worth worrying about.

The Midget closed about 30 years ago, but we still remember pulling into the parking lot across the street from the restaurant. To exit the parking lot, we were given a metal token with the words, “Midget Restaurant,” stamped on it, when we paid our bill. As we exited the parking lot, the machine kept the token for the next time.

A few years after the Midget closed, we saw Sam in Brookline, looking the same, walking straight, a no-nonsense gentleman with a purposeful stride. We wonder if he ever knew what a comfort the Midget was to us with its doughty waitresses, its “Inflation Fighters,” and its Bismarck herring.

We were proud to take part in a special Masterpiece Tea to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the outstanding program that originated at WGBH, the flagship Public Television station in Boston.

Guests were honored with an English Tea, and The Brass Sisters presented a brief Tea-Torial on taking tea.

We brought some of our tea antiques — a traveling tea set in a wicker basket from the early 20^th century, our mother’s English Edwardian tea caddy, and a silver tea strainer from the early 1800s. Sheila made tiny teacups and saucers from some of our chocolate molds, and we presented them on a three-tiered English tea tray.

As promised, we are posting some of our notes on the history of tea in England and a concise bibliography of books on tea.

We love taking tea. We believe it is one of the ways to renew ourselves. We love the ceremony of the teacup and the tea table. Whether taken with friends and family or in solitude, taking a cup of tea comforts us in times of stress and helps us celebrate in times of joy. We suggest that you take the time to drink a cup of tea with someone you care about.

After researching the taking of tea by reading again several of the books on tea in our cookbook library, we decided to title our presentation: A Touch of Class or Tea and Controversy because taking tea crossed all class lines in England and because so many controversies about taking tea exist – everything from whether one should let the tea water come to a rolling boil to whether to pour milk into the tea cup before adding the tea.

It always surprises us how many mild-mannered tea drinkers are willing to launch a campaign over whether or not they like black tea, green tea, or fruited teas; whether to take sugar or any other additives with their tea, and whether to use a tea ball for their tea leaves.

We can’t pretend to answer all of these questions, nor can we take sides. We leave it up to you and your personal taste.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TAKING ENGLISH TEA

• The first shipment of tea arrived in England in 1658.

• In 1662 Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess, who carried the custom of drinking tea from the Portuguese court to the English Court.

• Tea was originally served in coffee houses in England.

• Critics of tea feared that “Chambermaids have lost their bloom because of drinking tea” and “gin and tea were a problem for the English people.”

• Until the 1830s, tea came to England from China. Shortly after, England began to explore areas for raising tea in Ceylon and East Pakistan.

• Fast clipper ships brought tea to America with the opening of the Orient.

• Locked Tea Canisters or Tea Caddies were used for storing tea. Caddy comes from the Malay word kati, which means one pound. A tea caddy usually held one pound, two ounces of tea (see Michael Smith, The Afternoon Tea Book.)

TERMS FOR MAKING TEA

One could do a brew-up, a mash, or draw a pot of tea depending on where in England one made one’s tea. One could also steep his/her tea or refer to a pot of tea as a “wet.” We still talk of infusing a pot of tea and decanting a pot of tea.

English men and women became intrigued with tea.

Around 1840, Anna, the Seventh Duchess of Bedford, began to ask that a pot of tea and a tray of cakes and sandwiches be brought to her boudoir around 4:00, in the afternoon. She was experiencing a sinking feeling because custom now dictated that English men and women partake of a hearty breakfast at 8:00 AM and refrain from eating until 8:00 PM or later when dinner would be served.

Eventually, screens in the boudoir were pushed aside. Friends gathered openly to take tea. However, tea drinking for men was mainly done in teashops, while women initiated the custom of “At Homes” when they received their lady friends and family members and served the English tea as we know it.

Afternoon tea became a ritual with servings of bread and butter, Seed Cake, Chocolate Cake with Walnuts, Dundee cake, delicate pastries, and tiny sandwiches.

Taking tea led to all manner of new terms:

• Tea Caddy
• Caddy Spoon
• Teaspoon
• Mote Spoon
• Tea Ball
• Tea Strainer
• Tea Tray
• Tea Table
• Tea Gown
• Tea Dance (Thé Dansant)
• Tea Sandwich

In 1862, Dr. Dauglish invented the recipe for aerated bread which was leavened with carbon dioxide. He opened teashops under the name The Aerated Bread Company or the ABC Shops.

1n 1894, J. Lyons and Co. opened their line of tea shops offering a cup of afternoon tea and something to go with it for low prices so that every one could enjoy the ritual of taking tea. The young ladies who served the tea were known as “nippies” because they nipped around serving tea to customers.

In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, ladies served their friends China or Indian tea. Their tea caddies contained two compartments, one for each type of tea

Early tea caddies had three compartments. The middle one contained a glass that was used for blending the teas. Because the glass was often broken, the middle compartment was then used for storing sugar, which was also a costly commodity.

After serving afternoon tea and with her guests gone, the lady of the house would call for two basins of water, one containing a mild soap and the other clear. She would wash her delicate teacups herself and dry them with a soft cloth.

Taking tea in England crossed all classes. The very rich enjoyed a dainty afternoon tea. Workers of the poorest classes were lucky to have a tea break and a bit of bread and dripping for their tea. Middle-class families or those in trade had a high tea, which was served around 6:00, in the evening and took the place of dinner. It was a hearty repast containing some of the sweets that would have been served at afternoon tea, but thicker slices of bread and butter, potted shrimp, meat pies, eggs incased in sausage and fried, as well as all manner of buns and crumpets dripping with butter.

At the beginning of the 20^th century it was considered proper for ladies to take tea in elegant hotels and in cozy tearooms.

SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF TAKING TEA

• The expanding toasting fork becomes popular for toasting bread and crumpets by the fire.

• Thomas Sullivan, an American tea merchant, gives away samples of his teas in little silk bags. His clients use the “tea bags” to make their tea and ask for more “tea bags.”

• Thomas Lipton starts adding sayings to the tea tags used for his tea bags.

• Iced tea is created when Richard Blechynden, a representative for tea growers, pours tea over ice in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in St. Louis, when patrons refuse a hot cup of tea during the hot weather.

HOW TO BREW A GOOD POT OF TEA

We prefer brewing tea in china, porcelain, stoneware or glass teapots. Brewing tea in a metal teapot might give one’s tea a metallic taste.

We consulted several books on tea for brewing guidelines, but we found that Michael Smith, the author of The Afternoon Tea Book, provided clear simple instructions. He was the consultant for the Masterpiece television series, Upstairs, Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street.

1. Warm your teapot by pouring boiling water into it.

2. Use 1 teaspoon of tea per person and 1 teaspoon for the pot.

3. Bring freshly drawn water to the boil. Do not allow it to rattle once it boils, as this rids the water of air.

4. Empty the water used to heat the teapot and take the pot to the kettle and pour in the boiling water. He suggests that one determines how much water one will need for the pot.

5. He suggests 1 ¼ pints pf boiling water for each ounce of tea, more water for China tea.

6. Steep from 3 to 6 minutes, according to leaf size. Less time for small leaves, more time for large leaves (many people vote for 3 minutes).

7. Always use cold milk.

Taking tea has always been a bit controversial. Since tea started out being very expensive, it was sometimes smuggled, sometimes adulterated, and it was often taxed. We don’t have to remind anyone of The Boston Tea Party.

Some of the controversy centers on some very simple questions:

• Should one warm the cups?

• Should the water be brought to just a boil, not a rolling boil?

• Should milk be poured into the cup before the addition of tea?

• Should two teapots be used instead of one? Mrs. Isabella Beeton, the 19^th century author of The Book of Household Management, suggests decanting freshly made tea into a second warmed pot so that the tea doesn’t sit and become bitter in the first pot.

A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS ABOUT TEA

Barnes, Emily. If Teacups Could Talk, Sharing a cup of Kindness With Treasured Friends. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publications, 1994.

Bailey, Adrian. The Cooking of the British Isles. New York: Time-Life, Inc., 1969.

Manchester, Carole. French Tea, The Pleasures of the Table. New York: Hearst Books, 1993.

Simpson, Helen. The London Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea, The Art & Pleasures of Taking Tea. New York: Arbor House, 1986.

Simpson, Helen. The London Ritz Book of English Breakfasts. New York: William Morrow, 1988.

Smith, Michael. The Afternoon Tea Book. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

Stella, Alain. Mariage Freres, French Tea, Three Centuries of Savoir-Faire. Paris: Flammarion and Mariage Freres, 2003.

Whitaker, Jan. Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn, A Social History of the Tea Room Craze in America. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002.

We can’t believe that March is almost here! We’re sitting at twilight in our living room musing about the culinary past while a not-so-gentle rain falls outside our windows.

Rainy days call for do-it-yourself projects and Marilynn, who gets excited about cleaning products, has fallen in love with a tool for cleaning the Venetian blinds. She admits that she has yet to meet the vacuum cleaner of her dreams.

Sheila is contemplating baking a Honey and Molasses Bread made with crushed Weetabix, the English shredded wheat cereal. What better way to spend one’s time than testing an heirloom recipe for a crusty yeast bread?

Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and even though we are still two “unclaimed treasures,” we never miss celebrating the holiday. While some are showered with chocolates and perfume, we buy our own. Being uncommitted means that we can celebrate Valentine’s Day any darn way we please. In our case, it came down to a good mystery and a cup of hot tea.

We love being on-line to our local library. We can order books on our computer and we’ve lately been reading the mysteries written by Jill McGown, the English writer, who created the crime-solving team of “Detective Inspector Lloyd and his charming young detective sergeant, Judy Hill.” What does it matter that Lloyd and Judy have had an on-going romance for 20 years — that Lloyd a blue-eyed, dark-haired Welshman is short and balding, and that the well-organized Judy is always fashionably dressed, and is as good at any man at solving crimes?

Have you noticed that most inspectors are usually crusty, drink countless cups of hot tea, and their sergeants are almost always sweet young things capable of solving almost any crime and having mixed feelings about advancement?

We are also reading the series of books by Lee Childs. His somewhat enigmatic hero, Jack Reacher, ex-Marine and former Military Police, has the allure of being a rolling stone, no ties, no home base, just a rambling man who lives a suspenseful life solving crimes and righting wrongs.

We find that we often dedicate ourselves to authors who produce a series of several books. We always read the books in chronological order so we won’t miss anything.

We also like requesting those English mystery series like Pie in the Sky, which is based in a gourmet restaurant, and A Touch of Frost, which ran for 15 seasons.

Pie in the Sky is a moveable feast of crime and culinary aspirations. We learn that snails taste a little like ox liver.

The hero’s Steak and Kidney Pie is so wonderful and original it can’t be duplicated in any other restaurant in England. We also learn from two elderly female felons that a good Bread and Butter Pudding is made with orange marmalade and vanilla sugar.

In A Touch of Frost, the hero, Jack Frost, is a once-again crusty crime solver of a certain age who, between solving crimes and facing up to his boss, Mullet, tries to find romance in all the wrong places.

These two crime series are a great way to enjoy a rainy twilight.

Since we are almost into March, we are getting ready to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. We have always celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, wearing a bit of green in its honor. Even though we are two nice Jewish older ladies, we still have pleasant memories of our experiences, as sweet young things, with green bagels and green beer, not necessarily taken together.

These days, we celebrate by baking Winnie McCarthy’s Irish Bread. We found this recipe handwritten on the endpapers of a well-used copy of The Boston Cooking School Cookbook. Winnie McCarthy was an Irish maid working for a Mrs. Powell, in North Scituate, Massachusetts during the 1920s and 1930s. The owner of the book enjoyed Winnie’s bread while visiting with Mrs. Powell, and requested the recipe. This bread is not the traditional crumbly Irish Soda Bread, but a firmer loaf. Winnie suggests testing for doneness with a silver knife.

This recipe is very important to us because it preserves the personal story and recipe of a woman working in service. Once you read about Winnie and bake her Irish Bread, you will never forget her. We love finding recipes credited to those in service. Often, these people, beloved by the families they worked for, were not known to outsiders. Winnie’s recipe is a true heirloom recipe. We treasure Winnie’s story and her Irish Bread.

Lest we forget, Boston is a very Irish city. St. Patrick’s Day is a very big holiday in Boston and in all of the largely Irish neighborhoods in the Commonwealth. There is hardly a household that doesn’t have a family recipe for Irish Soda Bread, Brown Soda Bread, or Corned Beef.

We’d love to hear from you and learn the story of your

family recipes.

Have fun baking and cooking,
Marilynn and Sheila

A Great Way to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day:

Winnie McCarthy’s Irish Bread

Circa 1925

3 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

2 cups milk

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vegetable shortening

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup currants

1 tablespoon butter, melted

1. Set the oven rack in the middle position. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Cut a wax paper liner to fit the bottom of a 9-inch cake pan. Coat the pan with vegetable spray, insert the liner, and spray again to coat the liner.

2. Sift together flour, sugar and baking powder into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add milk gradually, beating to combine. Add eggs, one at a time, and shortening. Fold in raisins and currants.

3. Mix batter twice with folding motion before turning out into pan. Brush top of loaf with melted butter. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes or until top of loaf is crisp and golden brown and a tester inserted into loaf comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack. Store loosely wrapped in wax paper at room temperature.

Yield: 16 slices

Sweet Tip: Winnie suggests adding 1 tablespoon of caraway seeds to the batter to give this bread a more authentic Irish taste.

Sweet Touch: This bread is wonderful toasted and served with butter and orange marmalade.

Winter is here in the Northeast, and especially in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The snow almost rivals those six-feet-high mounds when Marilynn was in the first grade at the Shirley Street School, in 1947.

The good thing about winter is that once we get through January, February is a short month usually with a thaw, and then there’s just March to get through. We don’t mind if it snows in April, or even in May which it did in 1953 when Marilynn was in Miss O’Donnell’s sixth-grade class. Just for the heck of it, we sang a Christmas carol that day as a light snow fell on Shirley Street. Snow in April or May is usually just a dust like confectioners’ sugar.

It’s hard to believe that Christmas and Chanukah are over for 2010. The older you get, the more holiday memories you accumulate, along with a few wrinkles here and there.

When Marilynn moved to the Cambridge YWCA, in December of 1967, she spent Christmas alone. Most of the girls had gone home, and the ones who didn’t have a home to go back to spent the holiday with Mrs. Ilene Beyor, the Residence Director, at her home. So Christmas dinner was tuna fish eaten from the can, alone in the Residence Kitchen. Although it was a plain meal, it was sauced with a sense of coming adventure, because Marilynn was living in one of the most exciting places a very young 26-year-old could live, Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was the Brattle Theater with its screenings of Casablanca, hot dogs at The Tasty, and Viennese pastries at the Window Shop.

Going back even further in our memory banks, we made our mother’s Fruited Tea Bread this year, and it’s a great wintertime treat. This is the same recipe that appeared on page 253 of Heirloom Baking With The Brass Sisters.

Our family was never enamored of the traditional fruitcake which, when made badly, is brick-like. However, we’ve tasted some traditional fruitcakes which are wonderful because their larger ratio of dried fruit to crumb is like eating a slice of candy.

Auntie Dot’s Fruited Tea Bread was originally called Auntie Dot’s Fruitcake, but after numerous friendly arguments with Aunt Ida (Ida Tucker Katziff, Mama’s sister-in-law and a formidable home baker, herself) that the recipe was not a fruitcake because there was more crumb to fruit, and, besides, no one likes fruitcake anyway. If you can follow this, we give you credit.  We decided to call the recipe a Fruited Tea Bread, and no one has complained since about what we call it.

Mama baked more than a dozen cakes every year and festively wrapped and tied them with either a red or a blue ribbon and presented them as gifts to family, friends, and business associates of our father.

This holiday season we baked a dozen of her Fruited Tea Cakes, and our kitchen smelled wonderful just like the kitchen on Sea Foam Avenue, in Winthrop, where we grew up.

A confession is in order. When we were sweet young things in the 1960s and 1970s, we made an R-rated version of this recipe. We wrapped the cooled fruitcakes in cheesecloth, which had been dipped in brandy or cognac. We stored the fruitcakes in the refrigerator to season, and we occasionally poured more brandy over them. After doing this a few times, the cakes were mellow beyond belief, and a thin slice served with a hot cup of orange pekoe tea was a real treat.

We’ve found that one of the best ways to get through the winter is to bake. We’ve been looking over our collection of handwritten Manuscript Cookbooks, and we’ve been testing recipes for Irish Soda Bread, Orange Yeast Bread, and Butter Kuchen.

For those of you who want to try Auntie Dot’s Fruited Tea Bread, this is the recipe.

Auntie Dot’s Fruited Tea Bread

From Our Mother, Dorothy Katziff Brass

Circa 1950s

Yield:  12 Slices

1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

1/2 cup coarsely chopped glazed apricots, pineapple, cherries

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup sour cream

1. Place oven rack in middle position. Pre-heat oven to 350ºF. Prepare a standard 9 by 5 by 3- inch loaf pan by lining bottom of pan with strip of wax paper, running paper up the two narrow ends of pan. Coat pan and liner with vegetable spray. Dust pan with flour.

2. Place chopped walnuts and glazed fruit in bowl. Measure four on piece of wax paper and add 1/4 cup of flour to nuts and fruit and mix until coated with flour. In another bowl, sift flour, spices and baking soda and set aside.

3. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar until soft and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla to batter. Mix well.

4. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla to mixture. Mix thoroughly. Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream to batter. Fold in floured nuts and fruit. Bake for approximately 1 hour or until tester inserted into center of cake comes out dry. Place bread on rack. Allow to cool for 20 minutes and remove from pan onto another rack. Store loosely covered with wax paper in refrigerator.

Special Note: • Once we passed the age of 21, we found that brushing the tea bread with brandy, wrapping it in brandy-soaked cheesecloth and foil and storing it in the refrigerator took this innocent treat to a new level. We sometimes refreshed the cheesecloth if we found it had become dry.

Sweet Tip: This bread is best eaten at room temperature after being kept a day in the refrigerator. Cut just after removing from refrigerator and return to refrigerator for storage. Fifty years ago, we couldn’t easily find the variety of glazed fruit now available. We suggest that you try candied orange and lemon peel, dried figs, candied pineapple, and candied citron.

Sweet Touch: • Once the bread has cooled, brush with honey and place candied cherries and pecans on top in design. Press fruit and nuts gently into honey. Do not follow this step if you are going to be brushing the bread with brandy and wrapping in brandy-soaked cheesecloth.

• Alternately, candied cherries and pecans can be placed on top of batter and baked with bread.

THE BRASS SISTERS CELEBRATE THE SEASON ON COOKING CHANNEL WITH A ONE-HOUR SPECIAL

PREMIERING SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5 AT

8PM ET/5PM PT

We will be celebrating the holidays on Cooking Channel this season with our one-hour special The Brass Sisters Holiday, premiering on Sunday, December 5 at 8pm ET/5pm PT*

In this original Cooking Channel special, we are celebrating the holidays close to home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by serving a homemade, sumptuous feast for the dedicated, young firefighters in our neighborhood. But the firefighters have a surprise for us — a special visit from Boston Celtics rookie Luke Harangody, who arrives as dinner is served.  We were thrilled to meet him, and after serving dinner, Sheila shoots some hoops with Luke, and Marilynn becomes the official cheerleader.

Recipes featured in The Brass Sisters Holiday include sweet potato latkes, Chanukkah gelt (chocolate coins), holiday spice cookies Marilynn’s lasagna, and red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.

We hope you will enjoy viewing our holiday special as much as we did making it.

*The Brass Sisters Holiday special will re-air throughout December on Cooking Channel – check local listings.

For a taste of more, check out www.CookingChanneltv.com, Facebook.com/CookingChannel, Twitter.com/CookingChannel.

Tune In:

December 05, 2010 8:00 PM

December 05, 2010 12:00 AM

December 10, 2010 10:00 PM

December 10, 2010 2:00 AM

December 11, 2010 7:00 AM

December 11, 2010 11:00 PM

December 11, 2010 3:00 AM

December 14, 2010 8:00 PM

December 14, 2010 12:00 AM

December 19, 2010 7:00 AM

December 20, 2010 8:00 PM

December 20, 2010 12:00 AM

December 25, 2010 8:00 AM

December 26, 2010 6:00 PM

All times Eastern

For more information about The Brass Sisters Holiday, please contact: Lauren Sklar, lsklar@foodnetwork.com, 646-336-3745

Some Thoughts About The Holidays from The Brass Sisters

We try never to forget that the holidays are a time for sharing the comfort and joy of being together with family and friends and of celebrating by eating the foods that symbolize the true meaning of the holidays. Sometimes, these encounters are brief, other times they are more enduring – a quick trip to drop off home-baked cookies, or a holiday meal prepared for many.

What makes us happy at the holidays is to visit old friends and make new ones. We love the reassurance of the rituals of eating and drinking at the holidays. We find ourselves engaging with new friends in conversations reflecting what they most love about the holidays. We listen to their memories and join them in their preparations for these special days. We love to share the dishes they serve at the holidays, and we are eager to be introduced to foods and recipes.

We realize that the holidays are a time to talk and laugh and pay tribute to those who are no longer here. Holiday gatherings are a time to do a gentle interrogation of the elders to hear their stories and to cook and bake once again the food that both nourished and fulfilled them.

More than ever, at the holidays, we realize that every day is a gift and provides us with a chance to try dishes in kitchens that are new and unfamiliar. It is the baking and cooking together that we relish.

There is something universal about cooking or baking in a kitchen. We use the same elements, fire and water. We work with the harvest of the earth, and the air is permeated with the aroma of what we plan to serve.

Logistically we may be challenged by a lack of space. Sometimes, the pot or pan or spoon we need is not available. The ingredients may be limited to what is at hand. We substitute; we make do; we improvise; we are intuitive. We celebrate the moment and proudly present the results of our efforts.

We want to make what we cook beautiful to look at, delicious to eat, but we also want to decorate the places in which we prepare our food and serve it to reflect the joy of the holidays.

We choose our most attractive dishes and we package our gifts with embellishments suitable to the holiday. We use our imagination and creativity to enjoy the fun of celebrating the holidays. The soft light of candles, the abundance of holiday greens, the sizzle of a latke, the scent of cookies baking, we embellish our spaces to reflect the glorious presence of the holidays.

We never forget that food nourishes the body, but it also feeds the soul.

We will be appearing with Chef Ming Tsai on show #803, preparing our recipe for Chicken Salad with Mangos and Toasted Cashews.

We made the dressing from a master pair of ingredients requested by Ming, — Rice Wine Vinegar and Honey. We served our salad on a bed of baby arugula.

The show will be aired on WGBH, in Boston, on October 30 and on PBS stations all over the country.

CHICKEN SALAD WITH MANGOS AND TOASTED CASHEWS

YIELD: 4 SERVINGS

This chicken salad uses rice wine vinegar and honey, two of Ming’s master ingredients. It is a simple recipe that can be put together quickly. This spicy salad uses ingredients found in most home kitchens. The texture of the sliced mangos and the toasted cashews give this salad a nice contrast.

For the Salad

4 cups cooked chicken cut into 1-inch dice

2 ripe mangos, peeled and sliced into wedges

¾ cup salted toasted cashews, 1/4 cup reserved for topping

For the Vinaigrette

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

¼ cup rice wine vinegar

¼ cup honey plus 2 tablespoons

3 tablespoons chili sauce

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons finely minced garlic

3 tablespoons peeled ginger root, finely minced

1. To make the salad: Combine chicken, mangos, and ½ cup of cashews in a large bowl and set aside.

2. Whisk together olive oil, rice wine vinegar, honey, chili sauce, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic and ginger root in a small bowl. Add vinaigrette to chicken a little at a time, tossing with two serving spoons. You may have a small amount of vinaigrette left which can be served on the side.

3. Refrigerate salad until ready to serve. Place salad on a bed of crisp arugula or other greens, and sprinkle remaining ¼ cup cashews on top of chicken salad when ready to serve. Store leftover salad in refrigerator in covered container.

Tips: • Do not use over-ripe mangos because they will be too soft. • When peeling or cutting mangos hold them in a paper towel in your hand so that they don’t slip.

© Marilynn and Sheila Brass 2010

Exciting News!

We are finally able to let you know about a show we taped in March.

Just wanted you to know that we will be appearing on a Throwdown with Bobby Flay, to be aired on Wednesday, June 30, on the Food Network, at 9:00 PM EST/PT.  We suggest that people check their local cable listings to see when the program will be aired locally.

When we taped the show in March, we had no idea that we were going to be on a Throwdown, and we weren’t allowed to let anyone know until the show was scheduled to air.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Show: Throwdown with Bobby Flay • Episode: BT0802H

Tune In:

Jun 30, 2010
9:00 PM ET/PT

Jul 01, 2010
12:00 AM ET/PT

Jul 10, 2010
7:00 PM ET/PT

From Food Network website: Sassy sisters Marilyn and Sheila Brass learned the basics of baking as children growing up in their mother’s kitchen. One-hundred fourteen years of combined cooking experience later, they find themselves with thousands of collected recipes and a James Beard nomination for their cookbook Heirloom Baking. One of the tasty dishes from this award worthy book is their classic Pineapple Upside Down Cake. The fun loving Brass Sisters are all set to put their culinary skills on display, but when Chef Bobby Flay challenges the ladies to a Throwdown, will he be able to surprise the sisters with his own succulent version of this classic cake? Stay tuned for a Throwdown that will turn the competition upside-down!

Our father was an optimist.  He worked hard, and he always felt that something better was on the way.

The stories he told at the dinner table in the second floor kitchen of the three-decker, on Sea Foam Avenue, in Winthrop, reflected this optimism.   His stories, which were Horatio Alger in content and tone, were an after-dinner treat, something like a second helping of dessert.  His was an optimism tempered with common sense.  If good things were on the way, and one’s ship would someday come in, one should be prepared to meet that ship which always carried the promise of a welcome cargo of prosperity and success.

Most of his stories centered around a virtuous young man, innocent in the ways of the world, but pure of heart, an example of filial devotion, a possessor of intelligence, but with an instinct for recognizing opportunity.

There was the story of the devoted son who is willed his late father’s rocking chair as his share of the family estate.

While his siblings fight over the more valuable items in the will, the unassuming young man begins to repair the broken chair, which he treasures because it has belonged to his father.  The son discovers diamonds hidden in the joints of the chair and realizes that his father has loved and valued him.

The son repairs the chair and sets it in a place of honor in his home.  He starts a business with the money he receives from selling the diamonds and becomes incredibly rich.

We also heard the story of the bowl of Jell-O brought to school by a poor boy as part of his show and tell.  It was the only thing he could afford to bring to school.   His more affluent classmates bring more expensive items like toys and games to show off at school, but he turns the lights low, and the bowl of Jell-O sparkles like diamonds, the boy wins a prize for bringing the most interesting item to school.  He gives his mother his prize.

Listening to our father’s stories, we always found the moral imbedded in them.  We learned that it was all right to come from a humble background, but it was important to work hard and be prepared for what destiny had to offer.

One of our favorite stories was about a boy who goes to bed and dreams about a huge bowl of ice cream.  He has no spoon and can’t eat any of the ice cream.  Awakening, he is filled with disappointment.  The next night, he goes to bed with a large spoon on his pillow.  “Why,” asks his mother, “are you taking a big spoon to bed?”

“If I dream about the bowl of ice cream, I want to be able to eat it,” says the young boy.

Thinking back to those nights when we sat around the table in front of the old kerosene-burning cast iron stove, with the light from the Sabbath candles burning in the brass candlesticks that Grandma Katziff carried from the old world to the new, we thought, someday, we want to be like that boy in the ice cream dream, always carrying a big spoon, ready for whatever life has to offer.