- This is the beautiful Chester River on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Hi there, I'm John Shields.

Today, we'll explore two waterside towns, and enjoy a good, old-fashioned firehall dinner, complete with slippery dumplings.

All this and more coming up next right here on Chesapeake Bay Cooking.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is brought to you in part by the Maryland Tourism Development Board.

In Maryland, enjoying the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay, or sailing its waters are just two of the many fun things to do which are surprisingly close together.

(upbeat music) - [John] Kent County is located on Maryland's eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Home to many waterside communities, this area also boasts dairy farms, and some of the most fertile farmland in the country, producing a great variety of fresh vegetables and fruits during the year.

The Chester River borders the southern edge of Kent County, beginning in the town of Millington, and passing through Chestertown, as it makes its way to the Chesapeake Bay.

The local residents tend to meander like the river, living a slower-paced life.

Today, I'm traveling to Millington, but on the way, I decide to drop by Chestertown, and shop at its famous farmer's market that is held weekly in the town square.

Here, crowds gather to look around, buy, and mingle.

The farmer's market is where everyone in Chestertown shops, including the county commissioner, Clarence Hawkins, a big fan of the local food scene.

- We have the best cooks in the world here.

You know, some of us, as we walk around, you can see evidence of that, (chuckling) but here they, the church dinners, they call them church suppers, and the smorgasbords that the volunteer fire companies have, tremendous, rival food anywhere.

* Well, there's the narrows in Queenstown * * And old Lankton Bay - Another area of resident who frequents the market with banjo in hand is Tom McHugh.

Tom is a local singer and songwriter who has a real passion for the region.

* I would sail the Chester River * * Lay back in the noonday sun * With my feet in the water and no place to go * * Lordy, that's what I call fun * Chestertown is not a rural village, but a small, historic, colonial town.

It is also a tourist destination for the urban dweller who wants to escape to a sophisticated and charming community that affords many fine restaurants, inns, and shops.

I happened to be visiting during Chestertown's annual candlelight walking tour, when residents open their private historic homes to the public.

(marching band playing) The event officially begins with a special performance by the Kent County Marching Band, a volunteer community band comprised of all ages and creatures.

I'd like to see that.

My guide, Joanne Fairchild and I tour the centuries-old homes, enjoying a peaceful and pleasant evening that is made complete by the sounds of the street entertainment.

(handbells playing) It has been a long day, but before I retire for the night, I need to create a dessert for my friends who live up the Chester River in Millington for their firehall dinner.

I've decided upon a mud cake, a rich and dense chocolate cake, flavored with unusual ingredients.

Now to make the mud cake, I brewed up some strong coffee here, about one and three quarter cups, and I have some, mm, very good Maryland rye whiskey, and we'll bring it right on up to about two cups, or maybe a little bit over two cups.

Put that right in there, and I'm gonna take the hot coffee, and put it into a pan, and I have five ounces of unsweetened chocolate.

You don't want to use the sweetened.

It's very important to use the unsweetened chocolate, and we'll put a little bit in at a time, and just gently whisk it until the chocolate begins to melt.

You don't want the fire to be too hot right now, because the chocolate will burn, so a nice, low heat works best for this, and if you're not real sure of yourself with chocolate, put it over a double boiler just to be sure.

Okay, let's get some more of this chocolate in here.

If your coffee's very, very good and hot, this will take absolutely no time at all.

This is kinda how you get the mud color.

You need the chocolate for the color.

When the chocolate is just about melted, what we're gonna do is, I have a half a pound of butter, and we're going to, I've cut it into bits, just small pieces, and I'm gonna start putting them in a little at a time.

If you put all the butter in at one time, what happens is this sauce, actually, it's a sauce, now it will break.

It'll have a kind of a grainy texture.

Okay, we have all the butter now incorporated right into the chocolate, and as soon as it's all melted, we're gonna take it, remove it from the heat, while we add the sugar.

I have two cups of sugar we're gonna stir in, and if you just put a steady stream of sugar in, so it doesn't clump up, and just kind of whisky vigorously.

Okay, if you notice we don't skimp here.

We use a lot of chocolate, a lot of sugar, and a lot of butter, a touch of whiskey.

Okay, we stir that around.

We have our chocolate liquid, and I'm gonna just transfer that into this mixing bowl here.

Get rid of our pan.

Give that a little stir.

Okay, next project is our dry ingredients.

I'm gonna put a pinch of salt.

My grandmother always said you have to put a pinch of salt in every cake.

I was never sure exactly why, but she said it doesn't taste quite right without that.

This again is a little unusual on this cake.

This is a one and a half teaspoons of baking soda, not powder.

It gives it a really nice, dense consistency.

So you wanna get the salt, and soda, and flour all mixed together nicely.

Okay, we have that done.

Now we're gonna move over here to next step, get our eggs beaten up.

It takes two eggs for this, and we're gonna beat them up so we get them nice and light.

We want to beat them well, and then we're gonna add two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

That's mixed up together, so they all get to know each other.

All right, now we're ready to put the cake together.

We have our liquid, we have our dry, and we have the eggs.

So again, this is a strange cake.

We're not gonna put the wet into the dry.

We're putting the dry into the wet.

All right, now we just stir a little bit in at a time.

Don't get nervous if you start to get a little bit of lumps here and there.

It's just part of this cake.

They'll go away a little bit later, but you always want to make sure whenever you're making a cake, you wanna get the lumps out, but you don't want to over beat the cake batter, because you have a tough cake, and people's cakes usually are judged on how tender they are.

This looks good.

Now I'm gonna add my beaten eggs to finish this off, get all those in there, and we're gonna give it a good beatin', just before we put in any oven.

My aunt who used to make it always said you had to give it at least 30 good beats before you put it in.

Okay, we have this all mixed together very well here, and we're gonna get a baking pan.

I use a nine-inch round by three-inch high.

I like a nice high cake for this.

It makes a great presentation.

They're a little hard to find.

You don't have one, don't worry.

Use two nine inch round standard size, or a bundt cake works great too.

I've also, again, it's a mud cake.

You know, mud is a little sticky.

So just to ensure that this cake is gonna come out of the pan, I've cut out a round of wax paper, and we'll just loosely put it into the bottom of the pan.

Okay.

You might notice this looks a little loose here, this cake batter, well, it's supposed to be.

You want a nice, liquidy batter, because we're gonna cook it for a long time.

This is a slow-bake cake.

That's the only way you can get this mud consistency.

Get that all in there.

Give it a couple shakes, get those air bubbles out, and we're gonna pop it into the oven.

Now, this is a oven that has been preheated to 275, and that's what I mean, a slow oven.

We're gonna put it in there, let it sit, enjoy itself for an hour and a half, and we're gonna have some cake then.

Woo, it's a hot cake.

Let's take the cake out here, and put it on a trivet.

Now, the way you tell if the cake's ready is you just push on it lightly, and if it's not wet, it's done, but it's a little too hot for us to turnout right now.

It will be kind of all crumble up, so you need to let this sit for at least four to six hours, and then it's ready to turn out.

I know you didn't probably want to sit there that long, so I baked you a cake.

Knew you were coming, and here we go.

Again, this is a very dense cake.

That's why they call it mud, and it's a little difficult to get out of the pan sometime.

So you want to take a very sharp knife, and just run it all around the edge of the cake.

Then take a plate large enough to cover the pan, and we're gonna flip this thing.

Ready?

Flip.

I heard it, sounds good.

It did it.

Okay, now what you wanna do is take off this wax paper, makes for better eating, and I just put a little powdered sugar.

Just dust the top of this with some powdered sugar, get a good, even dusting all over the cake, and I like to serve this cake with some fresh raspberries, and a little bit of lightly-sweetened whipped cream, and you will have one delicious cake, I promise.

(upbeat music) If you ask a Millington resident for directions to their town, you're likely to be told to follow the Chester River, since Millington is at the head of it.

Instead, I follow the road, and I discover a small town, a little off the beaten path, that evokes the charm of a quaint, 19th century farming community.

I'd been lured here by stories of the legendary dinners served by the Millington Volunteer Fire Company, and the Ladies Auxiliary Club.

Working together, they prepare this fire hall dinner four times a year.

Edie Morales is the woman in charge of this event, and she explains how and why the fire hall goes to all this trouble.

- [Edie] It's up to us to raise the money to keep the trucks, and the people on the road.

- So it's kinda like when everybody comes together, they make this whole thing.

- Everybody pitches in, and that's what makes it possible.

- Such community spirit is impressive, and it becomes more than words when one sees what the fire company has actually purchased through its volunteer efforts.

After I play out a childhood fantasy of riding on a fire engine, Edie shows me one of her famous recipes served at the dinner, the Millington chicken salad.

It varies from a run-of-the mill chicken salad by its unique dressing.

Now, I noticed that you already have stewed a chicken for us.

- Yes, we've got one already.

We've cooled it down, and for a chicken salad, the first thing we need to do is we need to take the skin, and de-bone the chicken.

- Okay, so we just pull the skin right off?

- Mm-hm, if you'll start on that, we'll work on that together.

- Okay, and then you're gonna cut the chicken into pieces?

Oh, this is perfect.

The consistency is perfect.

It keeps it really moist.

- It does, it makes it nice and juicy, so it's not dry.

A lot of flavor there.

- [John] Make their chickens, they roast it, and I find that makes for a dry salad.

- Some nice fresh celery that we've chopped up finely to go in, and mix in the salad.

- So this is about what, about two cups, it looks like?

- It looks about two cups.

If you want to add that in there, and we'll see.

Chicken's all nice and cool.

- So now, Edie, poaching the chicken is just one of the secrets to this recipe.

- Right.

- The other one is this dressing that you do.

- This is what makes the chicken salad.

I've got two and a half cups of sugar here in this pot, and to this, we're gonna add four large eggs, and if you'll beat those for me we'll get underway.

- I'll be glad to.

- We need a pinch of salt, and then we're gonna add about 10 tablespoons of flour.

- 10 tablespoons?

- Uh-huh.

- Okay.

- Two tablespoons of mustard.

We've got one and a quarter cups of vinegar that we're gonna add in.

- [John] So that's a white vinegar you use?

- Just a white vinegar, yes.

I don't want to add any extra color, little sweet and sour here.

Mix this up well to our sugar.

We mix everything in together.

- So basically what you're doing is you're making a white sauce on this.

- Basically, yes, same principle, and we can add our four eggs now.

- Okay, I'll put them right in.

- Alrighty.

- Four eggs there.

- That's gonna give it its nice color, and we have one and a quarter cups of milk we need to add.

- This makes a really, I mean, it makes a rich sauce, but when you eat it, it's really light.

It's a remarkably light- - I think so, it does, and our last ingredient is a half a stick of butter.

- All right.

- Okay, make it nice and creamy.

Now we're gonna cook this over a low heat.

- Okay.

- Until it thickens.

We have to do it over low heat, because we don't want to scramble the eggs.

- No, wouldn't be good to get an omelet there.

- It won't take long.

It'll come up to a bubble, soft bubble shortly.

This looks like it's just about done, John.

It's thickening nicely.

- [John] Look at the way it coats the back of the spoon there.

- [Edie] Yes it does, so we'll just set this aside.

- Now, I do see that you have a chilled batch for us here.

This is what it looks like when it's, when it's all chilled.

It congeals nicely.

- [Edie] Yes, it does.

- Yeah, it's a beautiful sauce.

So all we have, we have our chicken, and the dressing, and put them together.

It's easy as that, right?

- That's it.

Wanna do the honors?

- Oh, I'd love to.

I love doing a little mixing, especially on the eastern shore.

This is great.

All right, mix this up nicely.

- It does nice when you put the dressing on it an hour or so ahead of time.

It tends to absorb in the chicken more, and give it a fuller flavor.

- [John] Okay.

This looks great.

(upbeat music) On the day of the Millington fire hall dinner, I arrive early to see the behind-the-scenes preparation.

Edie leads me into the kitchen to witness firsthand the famous slippery dough production line.

Since these dumplings taste best when fresh, the volunteer cooks will make them to order throughout the dinner.

In the corner of the kitchen, I spot an old-fashioned dish being prepared.

- We have two ladies that have a special recipe.

They like to make Harvard beets, which is something you don't get very often anymore.

- [John] No you don't.

- And they're served warm at the dinner, and people seem to enjoy them.

They're gone usually before the dinner is over.

- [John] As I watch from the sidelines, the volunteers work at a feverish pace to produce the 600 meals which will be served in a three-hour period.

(upbeat music) I finally sit down, and join the rest of the hungry diners.

Surrounded by heaping mounds of food everywhere I look, I remember Edie's wise words.

- Well, we'll have plenty of food here.

You should get enough to eat.

- After tasting Edie's delicious slippery dumplings, I twist her arm to teach me how to make them, of course, for a much smaller crowd than 600.

All right, Edie, this is the part I've been waiting for, these slippery dumplings.

- That's right.

You get to play in the flour and dough.

- I like that part.

I like to play.

- (chuckling) All right, we've got about three cups of flour here.

- Uh-huh.

- And we're gonna add possibly a half a teaspoon of salt to this, and about a half teaspoon of baking powder, make 'em light and tasty.

- [John] You can just feel them half teaspoons, can't ya?

- Just about.

Practice.

- [John] That's practice it.

- [Edie] And we're gonna add some shortening.

- [John] Okay, you don't use lard, huh?

- Well, it's kind of hard to get sometime.

We're gonna work this through the dry ingredients until we have a mealy dough, make some little balls.

You wanna- - Sure.

- You wanna help?

- I want to get my fingers right in here, and here's a little bit for you.

- [Edie] Thank you.

- Throw that all around there.

This is nice.

It's like playing in the backyard.

- Mud pies.

- Mud pies, yeah.

And what kind of, what are we looking for here?

What kind of consistency?

- [Edie] Just mealy, small balls appear in there.

- [John] Oh, okay, so kind of like a course meal?

- A course meal.

We're gonna add some water at a time, because it just, we don't want to work the dough too much.

We don't want tough dumplings when we can get finished.

- And you don't like a tough dumpling.

- No, nobody does.

- So you made a well.

- [Edie] Add some small water in that well.

- [John] Water in the well?

- [Edie] A little water in the well.

We'll just bring our flour down into it as it thickens.

- And then are you gonna work this a little bit?

- A little, yes, until it all gets blended together, and it's not so sticky to touch, so that we can be able to roll those out into dumplings after it rests a little while.

- Okay.

Well, if Grandma says that's the way to do it- - Grandma says that's how you do it.

- That's the way you do it.

You don't question that.

- See, we have a nice, it's not too wet.

- [John] Yeah, that's a nice consistency.

- We really need to set the dough aside a while.

We'll cover it, and sit it aside, and let it rest for a while.

It makes your dumplings lighter, and they're much tastier that way.

- You just cover it, and you don't have to refrigerate it?

- No, you don't have to.

You can sit it aside.

- And let it rest?

- Let it rest.

- And I see we have one that has already had its nap.

It's finished resting.

- All finished.

- Oh, that's beautiful.

- Now you really get to play in flour.

- Okay, we're gonna roll?

- We're gonna roll dumplings.

- Rolling on the Chester River.

- If you'll dust our table surface off nice.

Gonna get some dough off here.

- [John] Look at this.

This is great.

- We can always add some more if we don't have quite enough.

- Okay.

So you don't take a whole lot at once.

You just are gonna work a small piece?

- We need to have our dumpling dough, after you roll, it needs to be very thin.

So we can see almost a little color of the table coming through the dough.

They'll cook quickly that way, and they won't, they'll be done all the way through, and they'll be nice and chewy, but not hard.

- So you want thin.

So these are kind of like a little bit of a cross there between a dumpling and a noodle, actually, huh?

- Very similar, very similar.

The dough, you notice the dough's much softer, and it should be pliable now, and it rolls out once it's rested a while.

It's beginning to look good.

- [John] It's beginning to look like slippery.

- [Edie] See?

- [John] Oh yeah.

- See the difference how thin it is?

- [John] So actually, the table, you can start to see the table through the dough.

- That looks perfect, John.

- Okay.

- That looks perfect.

Dust off this little bit of extra here, and I cut mine in a little larger squares.

- And so some people like a small amount?

- Some even like to make different shapes.

- [John] Well, these look like you can sink your teeth into these.

- [Edie] Well, I hope so.

We'll know shortly.

- [John] So next?

- Next, we're just need to pick them up.

- Okay.

- [Edie] And we have our broth over here that's bubbling along nicely.

Oh, we are thin, look.

- [John] Is this good, is this good?

- [Edie] That's good.

- All right, okay.

- Alrighty, drop our dumplings in.

- [John] So it goes right into, it's bubbling, huh?

- [Edie] Right.

I usually try to drop them about a layer at a time, so that they don't glue together.

There, it went right down, and as it cooks, they'll come right back to the surface and float.

- Oh great.

So how many of you put in, I mean, can you just keep putting them on top of each other?

- As soon as the liquid bubbles over the dough, they won't stick, as soon as that comes in contact with the hot liquid.

Gonna keep adding until we get our pot, or our essence, or broth fairly well-used.

- Oh, so that's what happens.

This is how you make that gravy?

- [Edie] Yes, just thickens right along as the dumplings cook.

- Consomme, you have sort of like an instant gravy.

Throw in the dumpling, and- - One-pot meals.

- [John] All right.

- You need to keep, the broth needs to continue bubbling as you drop dumplings.

If not, the dough has a tendency just to- - [John] Let me see that.

- All glue up right together.

We're gonna make sure we get some hot broth on all the new dumplings.

Try not to stir 'em too hard, so they won't break apart, and just let 'em bubble along a few minutes until our dough is done.

It doesn't take but four or five minutes more of the broth boiling for them to be completely done for you.

- [John] So they're bubbling up nice, huh?

- It looks like we're just about there, John, and we can give them a little taste test.

- Put them slipperies in the bowl.

(Edie chuckling) - I think we can do it like this.

- All right, I'll jump back here.

- Yeah, don't let me burn you.

(John chuckling) - Oh, they're jumping.

Oh, that is heavenly.

- Nice aroma.

- Right here on Earth, Edie.

- [Edie] Think you'd like to make these some time?

- I can understand why these are an eastern shore legend.

- [Edie] They are.

- [John] Makes perfect sense.

- [Edie] They make us happy.

(John laughing) - [John] That's why everybody's so happy up here?

- [Edie] Oh, part of it.

(both laughing) (upbeat music) - Thanks for coming along on our visit to the Chester River.

I've had a grand time, and I hope you have as well.

Join me next time for another culinary adventure, right here on Chesapeake Bay Cooking.

- [Announcer] Bring the flavors of the Chesapeake into your home with John Shield's companion book, Chesapeake Bay Cooking.

To order, call 1-800-235-3000, or write to the address on your screen.

This 300-page volume with nearly 100 photos includes all the recipes you've seen in this episode, plus a whole lot more.

The cost is 27.50, plus shipping and handling.

Please have your credit card ready when you call, 1-800-235-3000.

- [Announcer] Funding for this program is brought to you in part by the Maryland Tourism Development Board.

In Maryland, enjoying the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay, or sailing its waters are just two of the many fun things to do, which are surprisingly close together.

(upbeat music)