Have you ever wondered what it was like to cook all one’s food over an open hearth, as people did in the 18th and 19th centuries?
Find out, when the Durand-Hedden House & Garden Association presents “A Taste of History: Cooking at the Open Hearth,” a fun and educational program for adults and children Sunday, January 25, 2015, from 1pm to 4pm.
This year’s annual, historic cooking program honors late, longtime trustee, Irene Kosinski and features Carlotta Defillo, a new cook skilled in 18th and 19th century foodways. For over 20 years, Defillo has demonstrated open hearth cooking at Historic Richmondtown in Staten Island.
Kosinski, a gifted educator and lover of living history, oversaw the restoration of Durand-Hedden’s beehive oven in 1981 and established the open hearth cooking program, which has for thirty years has drawn visitors who are “hungry” for history, according to a press release.
On the menu this year: chicken roasted in a tin reflector oven, crumpets fried on a griddle, tasty “cobblestones” and preserved foods from the fall harvest. Children will be able to try their hand at old-fashioned cooking chores like kneading dough and making butter.
Visitors can still catch The Maplewood Theater: Its Forgotten Saga, an exhibit that explores the 87-year history of the Maplewood Theater, which spans silent films, vaudeville, talkies, a famed era of live theater, neighborhood cinema, and the current sixplex.
The Country Store in the carriage house sells historic- themed treasures such as early American children’s games, books and toys, facsimile documents, quill pens and ink, historic cook books, cookie molds, tin lanterns, reproduction decorative ceramics, vintage photos, hiking sticks and more. The hard-to-find original Doors of Maplewood poster and Smile, the history of Olympic Park, will also be available.
The Durand-Hedden House is located in Grasmere Park at 523 Ridgewood Road in Maplewood. For more information or to arrange group tours call 973-763-7712.
