In the crater dump a heaping teaspoon—or, to use Mr. Vreeland's expression, put in "one and a half heaping teaspoonfuls of baking powder," to which add a half spoonful of salt; mix these together with the dry flour, and when this is thoroughly done begin to pour water into the crater, a little at a time, mixing the dough as you work by stirring it around inside your miniature volcano. Gradually the flour will slide from the sides into the lava of the center, as the water is poured in and care taken to avoid lumps.
Make the dough as soft as may be, not batter but very soft dough, stiff enough, however, to roll between your well-floured hands.
Baked Potatoes
Put the potatoes with their skins on them on a bed of hot embers two or three inches thick, then cover the potatoes with more hot coals. If this is done properly the spuds will cook slowly, even with the fire burning above them. Don't be a chump and throw the potatoes in the fire where the outer rind will burn to charcoal while the inside remains raw.
Mud Cooking
In preparing a small and tender fish, where possible, the point under the head, where the gills meet, is cut, fingers thrust in and the entrails drawn through this opening; the fish is then washed, cleaned and wrapped in a coating of paper or fallen leaves, before the clay is applied. Place the fish upon a pancake of stiff clay ([Fig. 147]), fold the clay over the fish ([Fig. 148]), press the edges together, thus making a clay dumpling ([Fig. 149]); cook by burying the dumpling in the embers of an ordinary surface fire, or in the embers in a pit-fire ([Fig. 150]).
A brace of partridges may be beheaded, drawn, washed out thoroughly and stuffed with fine scraps of chopped bacon or pork, mixed with bread crumbs, generously seasoned with salt, pepper and sage, if you have any of the latter. The birds with the feathers on them are then plastered over with clean clay made soft enough to stick to the feathers, the outside is wrapped with stiffer clay and the whole molded into a ball, which is buried deep in the glowing cinders and allowed to remain there for an hour, and at the end of that time the clay will often be almost as hard as pottery and must be broken open with a stick. When the outside clay comes off the feathers will come with it, leaving the dainty white meat of the bird all ready to be devoured.
Woodchucks, raccoons, opossums, porcupines, rabbits had better be barbecued (see [Figs. 114], [115], and [155]), but squirrels and small creatures may be baked by first removing the insides of the creatures, cleaning them, filling the hollow with bread crumbs, chopped bacon and onions, then closing the opening and plastering the bodies over with stiff clay and baking them in the embers. This seals the meat inside of the mud wrapper and when it is cooked and the brick-like clay broken off, the skin comes off with the broken clay, leaving the juicy meat exposed to view.
