Rarebit Chronicles

Star Struck

2011-10-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Recently spent a few days in Lamar, Colorado. It’s a small town in southeast Colorado, near the Kansas border. Their main street seems to have reached a new gift shoppe heavy equilibrium, like a lot of old downtowns. I did find a used book store, crammed with paperbacks and a few local history gems and a several shelves of vintage hardcovers. I spent a sawbuck on approximately eight pounds worth of books and booklets, one of which was "How to Take a Trick a Day with Bisquick." (Although the title seems to be setting us up for some sort of bridge themed narrative, I couldn't detect one.)

The picture of Clark Gable looked familiar to me, which meant either that I already owned this, or it had been featured by James Lileks. At $5.00 it was twenty times more expensive than similar offerings from the Egg Board or Metropolitan Insurance. Should I take the chance of buying a double? I got my answer when I opened it up to this:

Sigh. I’m such a Dick Powell Fan, that I wouldn't mind having two of these. Isn’t he positively dreamy? I’d let him wade into my kitchen any day. Seriously, how many men do you know that could pull off that apron over double breasted suit?

One of the odd things about this cook booklet is the way it mixes stars of the silver screen with stars of Home Economics. Here's Mildred Maddocks Bentley. I own one the Delineator Institute’s Cookbooks. It has excellent diagrams for carving meat.

And although Dorothy Marsh apparently had a face for radio, I couldn’t help but notice she offered a menu “for the business woman who entertains.” Somehow the 1935 way of describing a working woman trying to get food on the table sounds more glamorous. But she's still just serving tuna casserole.

Incredible, Edible

2011-04-27T00:11:00.000-07:00

Like many a better blogger, I find that I have taken an unplanned hiatus lately. Rest assured, I was up to many important and fascinating things. I even wrote a piece or two for this space. Alas, they were rather too long and in need of ruthless editing, which I have yet to do.

But I recently had a rarebit epiphany, and was thus reminded of my duty to the rarebit devotees who follow these chronicles.

A few weeks ago, Matt suggested an evening of black and white movies and rarebit, and I was only happy to agree. He got a movie ready [Laura with Dana Andrews] and I got the chafing dish out.

While I have the general outlines of a platonic form of rarebit in my mind, I find it’s a good idea to check my proportions and pick out some good seasonings before melting the cheddar. Also, I just like using my cookbooks.

I grabbed a random chafing dish cookery book from my shelf, and looked for Welsh Rarebit. The lack of an index made it a bit of a hunt. When I found it, it was one of those milquetoast versions made with milk instead of beer. Pfui! I grabbed the next chafing dish cookery book. This one had an index, but again with the milk! Oho! A few pages away was the variation “Welsh rarebit with beer.” Now we’re cooking with gas.

This one called for ¾ pounds cheddar and ¾ cup ale. Also butter, salt, pepper, dry mustard (I’d get to use the mortar and pestle! Score!) and . . . an egg?

True confession: over the years, Matt and I have chortled away many a pleasant hour, each armed with a cookbook, trying to top each other for the most ridiculous recipe. A surprising number of them were beverages involving raw egg. The Boston Sour I made last November was my only foray into eggy cocktails and I have not been tempted to repeat the excursion.

At least this one wouldn’t be exactly raw. But then again, not exactly cooked. Like spaghetti carbonara, maybe.

I had to decide whether to include or omit. Had I omitted, I would not be writing this. In it went, under the whisk.

The resulting rarebit was silky smooth— none of that grittiness that Matthew despises. It was incredibly rich and decadent. Each mouthful had sharp cheddar and porter flavor, but with a luxurious, melting texture. In a word: magnificent!

Of course, we had to make sure this was not fluke. We had it again the very next weekend. (I'd never do that with fondue: it takes nearly a week of soaking to clean the pot.) This time with To Have and Have Not. Again: magnificence on toast.

Lauren Bacall wasn’t bad either.

Ten, Nine, Eight . . .

2010-12-08T23:54:00.000-08:00

With our annual Christmas Party coming up in a little over a week, it's time to get serious about planning the menu. Some things are a given. Fondue: yes. Aspic: no. Champagne: Lots.

Usually, about this time of year, every canapé recipe I see looks good (with a few exceptions. See: Aspic, above) and I want to make them all. But, like every other hostess, my time and budget are limited. Of tantamount importance, the guests appetites and patience and palates must be considered. (Inviting a Hindu man to a beef fondue extravaganza was not one of my triumphs.)

I think I'd like to make tiramisu in my single serving trifle glasses. But then, some sort of layered Jello confection would look amazing. There's no rule against repeating an old favorite, like coffee ice cream with candied bacon.

Luckily, I've still got a little time to decide.

Don't Let The Turkeys Get You Down

2010-11-25T00:41:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the Feast of Thanksgiving, a day when retro cookery is too new-fangled.

I don’t mean to write about it since it is a subject well covered elsewhere, but it is because tomorrow is Thanksgiving that tonight found me in the kitchen making mashed potatoes and listening to a recording of Jean Shepherd’s radio broadcast from Thanksgiving Day 1968. You may be familiar with Jean Shepherd from the movie A Christmas Story in which the hapless Ralphie yearns for a BB gun. The movie was based on the short stories of Mr. Shepherd and he narrated the film. I have enjoyed reading and re-reading collections of his work, and whenever I flash back to my first job at the Johnstown Public Library I picture the lurid seventies typography that graced the spine of his book Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Stories because it caught my eye whenever I was shelving in the last row of fiction. I must have passed that book a thousand times before I ever thought of reading it.

In any case, though this wasn't the first time I've listened to him tell the story of being caught between two herds of turkeys, I laughed plenty while I was making the potatoes. I used a recipe for mashed potatoes that is designed to be made ahead of time and then reheated in a crock-pot, which should suit nicely for our dinner at our friends’ house where we will be dining in the garage since it will be a crowd of 15 or so. The oddest ingredient on the list was two egg whites. I assumed they were to stabilize the potatoes or something and dutifully separated the yolks out. (The dog got the yolks: they’ll give him a shiny coat!)

But then I was done with the potatoes and there was the bowl of whites still on the counter. Ooops! Maybe I should have been paying more attention to the recipe and less to Shep’s witticisms. Well, I can’t imagine it will make that much difference. I mean if I’ve never heard of adding egg whites to mashed potatoes, how much harm can it be to leave them out?

I was about to slip the whites to the dog, when Matt looked significantly at the bottle of Scotch on the counter.

Whenever we dip into my collection of vintage cooking and entertaining guides, one thing that never fails to amuse is the inclusion of a raw egg in a cocktail recipe. We have read about ever so many! Apparently cocktail people of yore found nothing much unusual about imbibing raw eggs. Even my latest issue of ReadyMade (Arts and crafts for the tragically hip. I’m a subscriber, I should know.) includes a scotch and egg white cocktail.

In the interests of reanimating classic recipes/jumping on the retro bandwagon, how could I not put those egg whites in a cocktail shaker? I’m pretty sure Matt’s thing was to stick it to The Man; ever since he’d read about New York City banning raw eggs in drinks, he's harbored a secret desire to drink a raw egg cocktail. Whatever the motive, fifteen minutes later I was pouring a frothy mix of egg white, lemon juice, sugar and scotch into some cocktail glasses. The Boston Sour! To Thanksgiving!

The egg whites do add a bit of silkiness to the drink, and the froth is a nice touch, but unless I need to bulk up for a title bout, I think I’ll leave the eggs in the ’fridge next time.

Beef Wellington

2010-11-14T21:57:00.000-08:00

My past few Sunday dinners have been basic chicken breast + rice+ frozen peas, so I figured it was time for something with a bit more panache. Plus we got our grocery store rebate, so I had $18.02 extra to spend. (Fred Meyer keeps track of what you spend and four times a year sends you a rebate card. Even though Matt does almost all of the grocery shopping, he hates using coupons or cards of any sort, so when it comes I usually use the rebate on something extravagant.)

Tonight we had Beef Wellington: filet mignon topped with potted mushrooms and draped in puff pastry.

The New Basics Cookbook I was working from comments that twenty years ago, “every dinner party was built around Beef Wellington” but now “beef is one the menu far less often”. Of course the book is twenty years old, so I guess that means forty years ago. Now, dinner parties are on the menu far less often.

Alas, I cannot say that my rendition was a complete success. I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars. I realize now I should have had a hotter oven, to cook the pastry quicker and thus the beef a bit less. But still, three star Beef Wellington beats five star braunschweiger.

Good to the Last Slice

2010-10-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

I’m pretty sure the first baked good I made that did not involve reading the directions on the back of a package was a pound cake. It might have been biscuits, but knowing me, it was a pound cake. The utter simplicity of this old fashioned cake made it a good choice for a first try at mixless baking.

These days, while I haven’t gone much further as a baker, I do enjoy an occasional pound cake. I don’t use a full pound of butter/eggs/flour/sugar, but it still is a cake of abundance. Since there are only two people in the house, one of whom doesn’t much like cake, I can’t really justify making it that often. When I made one a few weeks ago, I resigned myself to the fact that I’d probably have to toss a good portion of it.

In the meantime, though, I’d enjoy a slice every other evening or so. I’d set the slice to warm up in the toaster oven while I brewed the tea and then take them both and settle in to read. The very essence of contentment.

The other night as I was in the middle of this ritual of preparation Matt wandered through the kitchen and asked: “How long does pound cake last?” Realizing that it had been weeks and the cake had no trace of staleness, I had to tell him I had no idea, but it looked like I wouldn’t find out with this cake.

Which was true. I had the last piece this morning with a cup of coffee while I read my new issue of ReadyMade and it was just as lovely as the first piece.

The Sandwich as a Still Life

2010-10-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

It’s October. Time to start thinking about Holiday entertaining. Not that I do much of it, but I like to think about it. I like to imagine myself offering my carefully chosen guests a platter like this:

This is from a section of Snacks & Sandwiches entitled The Sandwich as a Still Life. Which reminds me that the French refer to a still life as a nature morte.

My eye is drawn first of all to the raft of pâté coming into a beach of diced aspic. As I can see from the ‘making of’ photo, that slice of pâté is at least a centimeter thick. Also, you are supposed to have made your own loaf of pâté and diced your own aspic. What richness! What textures!

Then there’s the swirling mound of shrimp. I generally find that one shrimp at a time is luxury enough and I wonder: Would it be possible not to get three shrimps per bite?

Finally, wonders of prune stuffed pork and herring with beet salad aside, we come to the lower left hand corner. What do we have here?

If you’re thinking that that big yellow yolk is a bit off-putting, and you’re not sure you like the idea of raw egg, just remember what caviar is. Me, I was more concerned about the shell.

Dilled Butter

2010-08-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

For dinner tonight we had one of Rice-a-Roni’s whole grain options, roasted green beans (fantastic!), and sautéed Salmon fillet. I hadn’t been planning on having salmon, but this morning at the grocery store I accidentally made eye contact with the fish monger. Salmon it is then.

As I have learned from my library of cookery guides, it truly is worth it to snip up your dill, mash it with some butter, spread it in a thin layer, chill it and then use cookie cutters to make shaped butter pats. That’s how you show you care.

By the way I took this picure with my Panasonic DMC-FS7 point and shoot. It has 25 Scene Modes in addition to Normal. Of course, its got the usual Portrait Mode, Scenery Mode, Sports Mode. But it also has modes like Transform (it squishes the picture to make your subject look thinner), Baby 1, Baby 2 and Pet, and Food. I guess a lot of people take pictures of their food. I don't really know what Food mode does (increase the color saturation? decrease depth of field?) Maybe I should have taken several pictures in different modes and compared, but the butter was melting and it was time to eat.

Comfort Food

2010-08-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

When I look through my collection, I like to breathe deeply the scent of glamour that still lingers about recipes for rarebit or Beef Wellington.

But dinner is about getting a meal on the table, and glamour is not always on the menu. Dinner can't always be a big production. Some nights are canned soup nights. Some nights are ham steaks and boxed mac-n-cheese.

But when you do enough vintage cooking, something glamorous can become glamorous and simple. You don't need to study the recipe and carefully write down the list of ingredients and scour the aisles of the grocery store to find them. You don't need to read the recipe twice and array your herbs in a complex mise en place before you begin.

You throw some cheese in a pot, you cut up some bread, you slice some ham (thinly) and voilà ! Fondue for dinner.

Matt and I had a wonderfully satisfying dinner. Fondue was, after all, just a way to use hard cheese and stale bread, back when it was Swiss peasant food. If you have to be a peasant, why not a Swiss peasant?

Take him to The Four Seasons

2010-08-07T17:50:00.001-07:00

In last week's episode of Mad Men, when he learns that an important client is coming to the low-budget Christmas Party SCDP has planned, Lane Price tells Roger: "Take him to the Four Seasons. He can have three entrees." Alas that option, which might tempt any other client, is not going to work on the Lucky Strikes heir: "This man doesn't care about food!" says Roger, explaining that Lee Garner, Jr. will be coming to the party and that it will be a real blow-out.

It's too bad. I would have liked to see Lee and Roger having three entrees at The Four Seasons. As Vincent Price wrote in his section on this iconic restaurant:

If there is one restaurant that epitomizes New York today it is The Four Seasons. Sophisticated, urbane, expensive, its stark geometry reflects that city of skyscrapers. Nature is permitted to intrude, as it does on the city itself, in seasonal plantings that scarcely affect the austere architecture. New Yorkers who dine at The Four Seasons know which season has arrived by the plants in the window baskets. Who needs a calendar?

He goes on to wax rhapsodic on the food, especially the vegetables: apparently a basket full of baby vegetables would be brought to your table for you to make your selection. Also brought to the table: a cart of hors d'oeuvres and a dessert wagon. Above you can see the hors d'oeuvres (which seem to be heavy on the charcuterie) in front of a quiet pool of water and the backdrop of Manhattan skyscrapers. I have no idea what the twisted red thing is rising from the cart.

As for all of his highlighted restaurants, Mr. Price provides a facsimile of their menu. This one must be from summer 1964. (The menu changing with each of the four seasons.)

In comparison with many other menus in the book, the design of this one is beautifully understated.

You can click on the menu to bring up a larger copy, and perhaps consider what you might order for an appetizer (I'd try the Ham Mousse in Whole Peach) or salad (Julep of crabmeat in Sweet Pepperoni, anyone?), but let's zero in on those entrees.

'Jersey Poularde' does not sound as sophisticated to my ear as it might have to the New Yorker of '64. I believe I would have ordered the Twin Tournedos with woodland mushrooms. The Côte de boeuf, Bordelaise is the most expensive thing on the menu, even taking into account that it it for two. Its more expensive than anything at Luchows, the Pierre, or Sardis. I imagine Lee Garner, Jr. would have had three of those, all for himself.

Kitchen Science

2010-08-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

After conferring with my esteemed colleague, I made some adjustments to my bread baking protocol.

That is to say that one afternoon at work my office mate and I started talking about food. Which we pretty much do every afternoon at some point, and most mornings, too. We listen to KCRW’s Good Food with Evan Kleiman almost religiously. We inspect most of the cookbooks that come through the office. For my birthday, she gave me a copy of the Silver Palate New Basics Cookbook. Anyway, I was telling her how my No-Knead Bread always came out good, but too crusty. She asked a series of questions taking her through my baking process: cooked in a pot or on a stone? Covered or uncovered? Then she made her diagnosis.

“Sounds to me like it might be too hot.” Ah ha! I was baking it at the prescribed temp, but it’s been a long time since I calibrated my oven, and the oven thermometer has since been repurposed as the cabin’s woodstove temp gauge.

So I tried again, this time reducing the both the baking temp by 50 degrees. Success!

Sort of. I did get a less crusty loaf. In fact, not crusty enough. After about two hours there was no crispness at all to the crust. It was barely even chewy. Still, Matt liked it, and the inside was still tasty. At least I seem to have discovered the key variable. Back to the lab!

What's Going On Here?

2010-07-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

As he leafed through the pages of Snacks & Sandwiches, Matt kept saying: “That’s not a sandwich . . . that’s not a sandwich . . . that’s not a sandwich!” He doesn’t believe open-faced sandwiches are sandwiches.

As a long time fan of the open-faced hot turkey sandwich, I have no such quibbles. But even so, this page stopped me in my tracks. In fact it was the deal closer, in deciding whether or not to add this book to my collection or to give it a pass.

It’s not just the attention to detail. Although it is impressive. Sigh. Look at the way the meat is trimmed to exactly fit the bread, the repeated groupings of three, the radishes sliced to translucence. Such artistry!

It is another translucent ingredient that made me realize this was a keeper. An ingredient I have long been fascinated by, though I’ve never eaten it. It is used here in a way I had never seen before. From the caption:

A coat of clear aspic is spooned over French gourmandises. […] Chilled until firm, the aspic will provide a shining surface for the open faced sandwiches, and will hold the elaborate garnishes in place.

Who knew aspic could be so functional?

A Play of Geometry

2010-07-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

This is the latest addition to my collection. It came out in 1980, but it was one of a series of Time-Life books. If you remember the Time Life music collections advertised on television around that time, you know that the “time” usually focused on was “the past”. This book seems to be looking back over a glorious past where precision in presentation was prized above all, where you could get pretty far on piping skills alone, and everything was arranged like an Annie Leibowitz photo shoot, even if, or especially if, it was supposed to look natural.

Isn’t this loaf amazing? Things are sandwiched between slices of bread, but this is like no sandwich I’ve ever seen. It’s built like a Murano glassworker builds a milliefiori cane. The assembly must take forever, and then you’ve got to slice it without distorting the gorgeous cross-sections, no easy task especially since the dots in between the pink squares of ham are pistachio nuts. By the way the green is asparagus.

At first I assumed the binding agent was some sort of cream cheese, but when I turned to the directions for this dish I found that it was butter. Butter! Each slice must contain like half a stick. I like butter, don’t get me wrong. But that’s a little too much, even for me.

Then I looked even closer. It’s not plain butter. Its beure fermière: butter flavored with wine and egg yolks. So, no problem.

The Secret Skewer

2010-07-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

Even if it’s a grey, chilly, kind of rainy day, the Fourth of July really ought to involve grilling. So yesterday I made chicken spiedies and grilled corn. I don’t know if I can call spiedies vintage cookery since I got the recipe from the June/July 2009 issue of Cook’s Country, but hey, Wikipedia says the spiedie got its start back in the 1920’s. Plus it’s obscure enough to qualify. The introduction in Cook’s Country called them “upstate New York’s best-kept secret”. I agree, since I grew up in upstate New York and I’d never heard of them. They are skewers of grilled chicken that you slide off into a bun for a sandwich.

Cook’s Country is the slightly larger format magazine with color photos from America’s Test Kitchen, the same people behind the decidedly black and white Cook’s Illustrated. Cook’s Country features a bit more down-home fare: more BBQ ribs, less Chicken Kiev, but it still has the signature Christopher Kimball introduction about catching fireflies and chatting with crusty old Vermonters, and the OCD level of testing : Vanity Fair paper plates are better at weight bearing, but Solo has the advantage in spill prevention. The recipes follow the inevitable Cook’s Illustrated pattern. There’s an introduction outlining the glorious history of the dish, then the slightly longer section detailing what has gone wrong and how all the recipes they’ve found fall short: “I wasn’t surprised that my first batch of spiedies tasted pickled. Worse, the chicken was grainy and chalky, as if it had been overcooked.” Next the goals are laid out and the steps in the testing process, including the dead ends are described, before the recipe itself is presented.

The spiedie recipe is relatively uncomplicated for the Test Kitchen people. It does call for fresh basil and dried oregano. Most people just use dried herbs because it’s easier, while some people insist that fresh are always superior and should be used whenever possible. The Test Kitchen goes further to assert that fresh and dried are two different things and thinks of each distinctly. I wouldn’t argue with them, but my basil plants are still only knee high to a grasshopper, so I reached for the jar of dried basil. On the other hand, we were out of dried oregano, but had plenty of fresh, so I chopped up some of that, and some parsley, why not? Actually there might have been a jar of oregano in the cupboard, but I couldn’t find any. Matt, for some reason, refuses to alphabetize the spices.

In any case their recipe has it all over one I found on the internet which just called for marinating the chicken chunks in a bottle of spiedie marinade. I’m not against store-bought marinades, but if I could find spiedie marinade in the store, I’d bet my set of skewers it’s got directions printed on the bottle. Plus where’s the sauce? I don’t know if it’s traditional, and I don’t care, but the mayonnaise based sauce you make in step one of the Cook’s Country recipe is the best part. Even sauce averse Matthew loves it. And it gives me a chance to use one of my collection of small pitchers.

To sum up: Chicken Spiedies have a New York History, are cooked on the grill, let me use specialized dishware, and make Matt happy. What more could I ask for? Oh yeah, they’re also super delicious.

Rarebit Spotting

2010-06-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

Welsh Rarebit was the subject of one of the questions on the latest PodQuiz: episode 275. I like to torment Matthew with PodQuiz whilst we do dishes.

Rookie Mistake

2010-05-31T23:31:00.001-07:00

Let us pause to consider the chafing dish itself.

There's a scaffolding that holds a water pan over a heat source and the blazer pan over the water pan. The heat reaching the food is a very even 212° F, perfect for melting cheese, making delicate sauces, or keeping food warm at the buffet.

But the very name blazer pan seems to suggest it might be used a bit more aggressively. And so it can. You remove the water pan and use the blazer pan directly over the heat source like a skillet. This is how you can use the chafing dish for cooking performances wherein meat is browned and a fond created for rich sauces. This is how you create sizzle!

In retrospect, it seems obvious that for Steak Diane, you would want to use direct heat.

Illustration by H.W. Doremus from The Chafing Dish Cookbook by John and Marie Roberson.

Meat: The Yardstick of Protein Foods

2010-05-22T14:05:00.001-07:00

At this point we will take a break from the Prices. Don’t worry, we will come back to them. I have barely lifted the crust of the deep dish pie that is A Treasury of Great Recipes. Just remember that this pie is as likely to contain jellied meat as anything.

But in the meantime, I ought to actually cook something. Not that there aren’t things I can cook in A Treasury of Great Recipes, but so far the only things that seem doable are cookies or desserts. As for main courses, I keep getting distracted by things like Polynesian Coconut Duckling or Königsberger Klops. What I need is something relatively simple, not too terribly expensive, that will appeal to Matt, while keeping me interested.

It is time to turn to Fondue, Chafing Dish and Casserole Cookery by Margaret Deeds Murphy. I’d really like to use the chafing dish again: the drama! The easy cleanup! And Mrs. Murphy seems to know that the exotic cooking equipment is novelty enough: she doesn’t load up her ingredient list with saffron or three kinds of meat.

She has a recipe for Steak Diane that looks good. I’ve made Steak Diane successfully (i.e. Matt liked it), but the recipe I used in the past was made in a skillet and used as a crêpe filling. The basic formula is the same: steak lightly sauced with mustard.

The first hurdle is always meat selection. It ought to be simple, yes? One pound boneless sirloin steak.

The thing is, I have to admit I’m not very good with the packages of meat at the grocery store. Really buying meat in general. Whether I go to an actual butcher shop or to the butcher counter, or select from among the wrapped Styrofoam trays, whatever cut was called for in the recipe doesn’t seem to be available, only available in quantities more suited to a mess hall than my kitchen. I’ve read and re-read all about the primal cuts, and the difference between chuck and round, but when I get to the store I can’t keep sirloin, tenderloin and top loin straight, much less filet mignon vs. “tournedo of beef”. I write down what it is I want but nothing at the store is labeled that way, and I’m not sure if that’s because they don’t have it, or they just call it something else. Substitution is fraught with peril. Tip steak and sirloin tip just do not work the same.

Matt is quite knowledgeable about meats. He has been cooking daily for years now, loves meat and studies it like a Mets fan and the box scores. When we’re at the store and he heads to the meat department, I usually wander over to the bakery to look at the pretty cakes because he has to examine everything from chops to skirt steak. More than a few of my cookbooks point out that any fool can make a tasty meal out of an expensive steak, but it takes a truly skilled cook to make a good meal out of a cheap cut. (This is usually before the section on organ meats) Matthew is a Master of Chuck, a Magician of Brisket. He always selects his meat with an eye on the price, and he will go for quantity over quality every time.

I am of course, the dilettante who would always choose a tiny, expensive piece of meat over the solid trencherman’s slab. So whenever I ask Matt’s advice on which cut of meat I could substitute, I always suspect he is steering me towards some tough piece that is completely unsuitable for the delicate recipe I have in mind.

Luckily this time around I was able to find a package of meat that matched my recipe. It only took about twenty minutes, and it was twice as much as I really needed, but now I have everything I need. Tonight’s cooking performance starts at six.

Photo from New Delineator Recipes.

Rabbit or Rarebit?

2010-05-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

Some people spell it rabbit, some spell it rarebit. What's Vincent Price's take on the question? He includes a recipe in the section on England and the introduction addresses that very question. (All of the recipes except for a few in the back for basic sauces, doughs etc. get a paragraph introduction.) Go ahead an click on the image to bring up a version that should be large enough to read. He does agree with me about milk-based rarebit. Never!

Feast Your Eyes

2010-04-29T23:11:00.000-07:00

Few of my vintage cookery books have photographs. Those that do usually make gravy look like an oil spill and vegetables look like the surface of an inhospitable planet. Food styling was either non-existent or demented.

The photos in A Treasury of Great Recipes, though, are like everything else in the book: luxurious. It is hard for me to imagine all the technical challenges of trying to capture entire restaurants, or the Prices at home, with the cameras, film and printing processes of 1965 but the photographers represented in this book certainly seem to have done a fantastic job. Better than my scans can represent.

In the above photo by William Claxton, we see the authors, in casual dress, in their own kitchen. There is a lot going on here, but let me just point out one detail: The monogrammed panels on either side of Mr. Price.

There is also a lot going on in the below photograph, not all of which I'm sure I understand, but you don't grow up in the home town of Knox Gelatin and not know an aspic when you see it. Or maybe that's just me.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon at La Pyramide restaurant.

A Treasury of Great Recipes

2010-04-22T23:12:00.001-07:00

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “What makes this cookbook so great?” Er, actually you’re probably thinking; “Wait, Vincent Price? Really?”

Like most people of a certain age, my most vivid memory of Vincent Price is from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but what made him so perfect for Thriller was that he was already established in my mind and in everyone else’s as Creepy. Über –creepy. What performances gave me this impression, I’m not sure. I’d probably seen him in House of Wax, and in various roles here and there. More recently I came across him in an old time radio episode where he played a guy who liked to wall people up in his pipe organ. (Suspense: June 1^st, 1944 Fugue in C Minor) Very creepy.

What I didn’t know is that Vincent Price and his wife, Mary, a costume designer, were noted gourmands and art lovers. Check it out on Wikipedia.

When this book came across my desk at work, though, it wasn’t the name Vincent Price that made me fall in love with it. Sure it adds a fillip of interest, and the photos of Vincent Price are quite something, but really all the photos are Quite Something.

I think of my favorite cookbooks as narrative cookbooks: they tell a story with their recipes. They offer the romance of fine cooking, the history of a great restaurant, or a slice of a certain lifestyle. This book does all of those. Divided into geographic areas the recipes are grouped not by meal or ingredient, but by restaurant. Major restaurants are introduced with an essay, two photographs, and a reproduction of their menu. Each recipe is introduced with a paragraph on its virtues. One can imagine oneself the jet-setter of 1965 visiting all these restaurants or the housewife trying to re-create some of their glamour for her dinner party (à la Betty Draper).

The book itself is sumptuous. Lots of color photographs on coated paper interspersed with the uncoated pages of text printed in two colors decorated with charming illustrations. There are two ribbon bookmarks. In the back: pages for you to record not only your own recipes but notes on your favorite wines and your favorite guests. That last makes me wish the previous owner of this book had filled in a few pages.

And of course, it offers a generous helping of delicious absurdity. The very first recipe is Truite Farcie Fernand Point (Stuffed Trout Fernand Point) from M. Point’s restaurant, Pyramide, in France. The recipe is in three parts: Stuffing (four steps), Fish (five steps) and Garniture (seven steps). Per the introduction:

At the Pyramide, the fabulous trout they serve are caught in a nearby brook and kept alive in an outdoor aquarium near the kitchen until the chef is just ready to cook them. Moral: Only the freshest fishes are truly delicious.

The garniture is mostly what you see on top of the fish: the shrimp topped with a mushroom, topped with a shaving of truffle. Because the dead eyes of the fish weren’t disturbing enough, we thought we’d add some eyes made of mushrooms. As the caption notes: “Beautiful to look at, beautiful to eat”

A Brown Paper Package

2010-04-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

It's here ! It's here!

I know this means I've crossed some sort of Rubicon, but for the first time rather than just browsing the used book stores or library book sales and buying things that turn up, I actually hunted down a book online and ordered it from a dealer. And I admit I paid more than $12.95, my previous high.

But look at it!

Besides the fact that it's really tough to get an image of a cover with that much faux-gold leafing, do you notice anything? Like the author?

Yes, that Vincent Price. And there are pictures. We will definitely be dipping into them in coming posts. Definitely.

An Authority

2010-04-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

I came across a book at the library today: American Regional Cookery by Sheila Hibbing (1947 Little Brown & Co.). Around sixty years ago, some library worker cut of the inside flap from the dust jacket and pasted it inside the book. The flap copies stated:

The author of this cook book is an Authority.

Ahem. Well. There is no arguing with that capitalization. In her introduction to this second edition, Hibbing noted that while in the thirties she had to use all her arts of persuasion to get cooks to give up their secrets, now it was almost impossible to get them to shut up. What was worse, they were doing things like topping apple pie with marshmallows and adding raisins to puddings that should have no raisins. Modern Jiffy-mixes and ready-made products and their advertisements were making a wasteland of of our dinner tables.

Will a four-color layout for a pumpkin pie bring solace and contentment to a generation that has forgotten the trick of making a flaky crust?

Chez nous, we try to have a side of contentment at every meal, but solace is more of Sunday supper thing.

Rarebit and Ibsen

2010-04-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

One of the key parts of an après theater cooking performance is the theater. Really it doesn’t have to be theater. It could be the symphony or the opera (but not The Hold Steady, or Avatar). Something refined to begin with, so the refinement continues into the rarebit portion of the evening. The ‘theat-ah’ just seems quintessential. I had checked the various theater schedules for the spring and settled on Ibsen’s A Doll House performed by students at the University.

I do not have a great knowledge of Ibsen, but certainly enjoyed what I had seen. I had a vague affinity for Ibsen because one always hears Chekhov compared to him. I admit I like getting to know an acclaimed ‘Classic’ if for no other reason than to use it as Vega around which to build a lyre.

I dutifully checked out a copy of A Doll’s House from the library and read it the other night. I found the transformation of Nora from a woman who hides macaroons from her husband to a woman willing to leave her home with nothing but a carpet bag in the middle of the night with no prospects to be unbelievable. But then, I had been reading rather quickly and it can be hard to judge a play by reading it.

Alas, even in performance the abrupt change was a bit hard to accept. Some of the few early lines in that showed Nora’s strength were cut, making her resolve in the final act even less creditable. The actress did a fine job: she lost some but not all of her girlishness, et cetera. It just didn’t work for me.

The whole production seemed a bit heavy handed in holding Torvald up for scorn. The actor who played him used to be my barista, and I always liked him. His performance had some wonderful moments. He played drunk rather well. But there were a couple of times when he would hold on to a word just a little too long, gesture a bit too dismissively for me not to think even he held Torvald in contempt. I suspect the director encouraged him in this.

However it was good fodder for discussion, which is just what I wanted. I had invited a couple that Matt and I have had over to the house quite a few times. It turns out the lady of this couple was unable to make it, so the gentleman brought another young woman. They both enjoyed the play. He thought the writing was superb, the acting enjoyably bad. She delighted in the humor while taking exception to the casting. We all agreed that the man who stumbled in late and fell asleep two rows in front of us had uncanny timing: his snores rang out just as Nora was pleading with her Torvald in the last act.

Neither of our guests had had Welsh rarebit before, nor knew what it was. As I stirred the cheese into the ale, I explained about it being a classic chafing dish specialty. The cheese melted with a quickness. I always thought of chafing dish heat as gentle. Gentle perhaps, but prodigious. We all had to laugh when our gentleman guest admitted that he’d always thought a chafing dish was a bowl of water you dipped your hands in, getting them wet and then drying them in the wind leading to chafed hands.

This time we used Bass Ale instead of porter and the result was a less overpowering rarebit, but still rich and tangy. I had been nervous having a new guest over and forgot to put out the sliced apples. They would have been a nice counterpoint.

Matthew did not dislike it but he steadfastly refused to eat it poured over toast. Rather he swirled hunks of bread through the rarebit in the chafing dish. He later regretted not getting out some of the left over ham we have in the refrigerator, which I admit would have been a nice addition.

The best part was that the next morning I was able to clean the chafing dish and have it put away before noon. No soaking, no scraping, no scrubbing. Could the chafing dish become my new fondue pot?

My Time to Shine

2010-04-06T21:00:00.001-07:00

Matt’s plan for dinner didn’t work out. He asked if I could figure out something to make. Could I? Most assuredly. I love cooking with specialty ingredients, but I also love the challenge of whipping something up with whatever is in the cupboard. Cooking with canned goods and non-perishable staples seems is very much in the ethos of many of my favorite cookbooks. Plus, dinner gains a seasoning from frugal virtue.

Spying a can of corn back behind the boxes of spaghetti (why do we have three half finished boxes of spaghetti/) I immediately thought: Corn Fritters!

I really dislike canned corn except when it’s folded into light, airy batter and deep fried. Then canned corn is perfect, giving a little pop of sweet savory goodness in the pillowy fritter. I don’t think I’ve ever had corn fritters for breakfast, but because we always ate them with pancake syrup, they always had the camping-in-the-living-room-fun-time aura of Breakfast for Dinner. We had them regularly when I was a kid.

Korn Fritters with Honey Butter are a staple of the Anchorage street fair and sporting event culinary scene. No Aces game is complete without a third period order of Korn Fritters, but they are not quite the same as my at-home rendition. Furthermore Fritz, the chef of Nero Wolfe (the fictional detective and gourmand extraordinaire) was known to make corn fritters, although his were usually drizzled with wild thyme honey from Greece.

But of course, the corn fritters I make from the recipe copied from my mother’s Betty Crocker have a flavor all their own. It's made up of the salty richness of deep fried batter, the of the velvety finish of that wooden table with its varnish worn off, my brothers' jokes and sweet sticky pancake syrup. Which is appropriate given how sappy I'm feeling about corn fritters. Maybe tomorrow should be salad night?

Easter Bonus

2010-04-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

Some advice from 250 Ways to Prepare Meat, a 1950 cookbook from the Culinary Arts Institute:

Something Old, Something New

2010-04-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

In a step back from my “Mid Century Modern” cookbooks, this weekend I’m exploring a modern/ancient foodway. Modern because it’s a recipe that I got from The Internet and because it’s quite fashionable right now. But ancient because it’s bread. Simple bread. The kind a peasant might throw together and still have time to harvest the grapes or turnips or what have you. I’m talking about Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread. It’s got 4 ingredients: flour water salt and yeast, and requires about 15 minutes of work. Hours of rising and baking time, but seriously no kneading.

I first tried this a few weeks ago working directly from the recipe that was in the New York Times a few years back. I learned a few things along the way. Well, no. I learned One Thing. Active Yeast ≠ Instant Yeast. Okay, okay rookie mistake. But when you go to the store and the only kind of yeast you see is Active, you figure that must be what the recipe called for. There was no mention of it being hard to find and I’m in a Safeway store, not exactly a tiny, limited options kind of place.
But when my bread seemed to be taking twice as long to do what the recipe said it was I looked into it further and discovered that there is a difference. Apparently yeast comes indifferent levels of liveliness and instant is the liveliest.

So yesterday while Matt and I were out and about scouting locations for Flat Stanley photo shoots, we were in midtown and I remembered that Jenny had mentioned the Natural Pantry probably has Instant Yeast. So in we went. The Natural Pantry is an alternative grocery store. It moved into one of the spaces left empty after the grocery wars of a few years ago. The first thing I noticed on entering was the smell of incense.
We moved quickly through the store, looking for baking supplies. I stifled my urge to stop and look at all the weird and wonderful products on the shelves (Dr. Oetker’s Trio Treat anyone?) We found a baking aisle but there was no yeast there. Alternative flours and sugars of various refinements, but no yeast. We scanned the aisles again. No yeast of any kind. I lost Matt somewhere along the way. I finally found a young woman restocking the organic lip balms and she brought me to a refrigerated case where I found a one pound brick of Instant Yeast. Refrigerated! Of course!

Okay, so I’ve got my instant yeast. But rather than make the same recipe again, my impatience gets the better of me and I go for the newer, quicker recipe. Only four hours of rising! Since I get started at about 5 pm, this means fresh bread at around ten pm. Matt asks if I need any help, but it’s really just a matter of stirring the ingredients together and letting them rise.

The recipe states ‘warm room temperature, about 70 degrees’. None of our rooms is regularly kept at 70 degrees. Unless the fireplace is going, we’re in more of a 60-65 range. I want to stick as close as possible to the recipe, so I turn up the thermostat in the reading room to 70 and use that as my proofing box.
About five hours and two steps later, I have my rustic loaf of bread. It has thick, crisp crust. I would describe it as heavier than chewy. The loaf I made a few weeks ago with the longer rise time and wrong kind of yeast was chewier and tastier. Maybe I should have baked this loaf a little longer? Matt was not terribly impressed, but he was really in the mood for chicken wings anyway.

I am next on the list for Jim Lahey’s book at the library, so I’ll see what kind of improvements I might make next time. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to whip up a loaf that would work for the Welsh Rarebit.

Roadblock

2010-03-28T14:01:00.001-07:00

So Matt and I did a practice run on the Rarebit last night. A pound of sharp cheddar, a cup of porter, some butter, salt, mustard, paprika, Tabasco, and Worcestershire, finished off with an egg, well beaten. It was the consistency of heavy cream, and had a kind of rosé color, like the port swirls in port wine cheddar. We ladled it over the toasted bread and ate it with knife and fork. The rarebit was rich and tangy. It didn't have enough kick for Matt so we added some cayenne, which gave some afterburn heat, but didn't add anything flavor-wise.

Matt did seem to like it at the time, but this morning he couldn't stop going on about how fondue is so much better. Why make rarebit when you can make fondue? He says he like the subtlety of fondue and how flavors like nutmeg can come through. Also, when it comes to the introduction of bread to cheese, he is all about the long fork dunking and not so much the open faced sandwich scenario.

Of course, I don't disagree that fondue is the bees knees. And nobody loves nutmeg and melted cheese like I do. But why limit yourself? Why not expand your melted cheese vocabulary? Plus, as I discovered to my delight this morning, the chafing dish is incredibly easy to clean, unlike the fondue pot. Cleaning the fondue pot is a multi-stage project that involves a lot of elbow grease. The chafing dish did not requires soaking or scraping, or trying to avoid getting the wooden handle wet.

I am eager to move forward with the perfection of rarebit, but it seems my biggest roadblock will be Matt. How can I convince him that its worth another try?

Building Blocks

2010-03-27T18:45:00.000-07:00

Okay. Back from the store. I asked Matt to come along. Of course the first thing he asked was “What kind of beer?” The recipes had not been too specific on that point, but one had mentioned porter. Matt was skeptical. He opened his laptop as he said “Alton Brown won’t let us down.” A few clicks and Alton had indeed confirmed porter as the beer of choice. But even more than his beer expertise, I knew Matt would have a calming influence on my natural tendency to head for the island of imported cheeses in the deli section. In the end we decided Tillamook sharp cheddar was good enough for us. But I did get a fancy loaf of bread, which may have been a mistake. It may call too much attention to itself. We'll see.

Conceptual Food

2010-03-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

Welsh Rarebit is one of those concepts that it seems has always existed in my mind, even though I have no direct knowledge of it. I’m pretty sure I read about the pronunciation of Rarebit as Rabbit long before I had any cause to speak the term. But regardless of pronunciation, this is food. Taste, texture, aroma are the key characteristics. As to them, I can only extrapolate.

This is one of those dishes that seems to have been popular because it was so easy you could make it yourself. You know, when your servants had their night off, or had already gone to bed, or you were away at school. I’m not a culinary anthropologist, and it’s possible that this originated as peasant food: yet another way to use up hard cheese and stale bread, or a meal that didn’t require expensive meat but in my mind this is the sort of thing one makes after coming home from the theater.

It is a classic in the chafing dish repertoire. Though nowadays the chafing dish is mostly used to keep foods warm at a buffet, it used to be used much more often for cooking at the table. Crêpes suzette anyone? Ah! An unstorable, unwieldy rather specialized piece of kitchen equipment that involves open flame? I am so there.

I have started the process of inviting a few friends out to the theater and then back here for some Welsh Rarebit. (I may never feel the special satisfaction of feeding myself on cook’s night off, but I can replicate the après-theatre part of the experience). Of course, I’ll have to have a trial run before the cooking performance. Tonight seems like a good night.

First I have to find a recipe. Welsh Rarebit is a melted, spiced cheese and bread combo. It’s similar to cheese fondue except you use cheddar and beer instead of Swiss and wine. Also you pour it over toast rather than dunking in hunks of bread. Checking the index of ten or so of my most likely cookbooks yields seven recipes.

If I were Christopher Kimball, I might make each recipe as a written so I could compare the results and then begin making adjustments, but I don’t have the time or the patience. We can rule out the 1929 New Delineator cookbook along with the 1950 Chafing Dish cookery for substituting milk for beer. The 1989 Silver Palate New Basics addition of cornstarch doesn’t seem right, and the 1996 BH&G inclusion of sliced tomato and Canadian bacon is right out. Of the seven recipes, 3 have no egg, two have yolks only, and two have a whole egg. I think I’ll go with the 1937 For Men Only recipe as my base. It does include an egg. I may tone down the seasonings just a tad: Tabasco, cayenne, mustard and Worcestershire might be a bit much all together.

Of course which cheddar and beer I choose will have the most impact. I’ll have to see what looks good at the store.