Pam Schwartz, the head curator at the Orange County Regional History Center has teamed up with Brendan O’Connor at the Bungalower to produce Old Florida themed cooking shows on Zoom during the pandemic.I sketched he first show where Pam demonstrated how to prepare Chicken Pilau (pronounced Pur-lo) in an instant pot. Pam based her creation on a recipe by Florida author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who is best known for writing The Yearling. It was a fun hour of watching Pam and Brendan joke together while she taught him how to prepare the dish via Zoom.
The Pilau had diced white bacon (Pork Belly), Chicken, 1 chopped Green Pepper, 4 medium onions chopped fine, 1 clove chopped garlic, 4 cups chopped tomatoes, 1 teaspoon thyme, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, 6 cups long grain rice, and 6 cups water. If you like hot, add 1 hot Datil pepper shopped. The recipe calls for things to simmer for several hours, but with the instant pot, it took just 10 minutes to cook. The process, after cutting and dicing seemed to be to just throw the ingredients in the pot, set the timer and forget about it while chatting with the audience and Brendan. You can tell the dish is done when the pot’s pressure nipple pops up. The great thing about this show is that I get to taste the leftovers for the next couple of days. This dish was delicious!
Yesterday they were back at it making sour orange pie. The pie was Pam’s personal recipe. Sour oranges are the types of oranges that used to grow in Florida before farmers started growing the sweet navel oranges. I didn’t sketch this recording session since I was working on one of my pandemic themed illustrations, but I heard them joking and of course tasted the final result. Sour orange pie is a real taste explosion covered in a gorgeous lightly toasted meringue. Someone offered her to pick oranges off a tree in her yard but the yard was way out on the Atlantic coast. This seemed an excessive drive for a few oranges. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had one abandoned sour orange tree on her property in Cross Creek Florida. When she wanted to make a sour orange pie she had to ask her assistant where the tree was. The assistant had been using the trees oranges for herself. The tree was right across the road in a ditch from the house. Pam had to call all over Orlando to find a grocery that carried the rare sour oranges and she found them at Fancy Fruit (7192 East Colonial Drive Orlando FL). There is nothing fancy about sour oranges, they are wrinkly and ugly but make a great pie.