Ten, Nine, Eight . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.