Betty Lives!

Sunset Magazine

1960’s

I have written about these little wonders before so in this entry I’ll just give the recipe.

12 oz oil-marinated artichoke hearts

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 small onion, finely chopped

1/4 tsp salt1/4 tsp each: pepper, dried oregano, tabasco

4 eggs

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

1/2 lb sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

1. Drain about half of oil marinade into a skillet and heat over medium heat. Chop artichokes and set aside. Add garlic to skillet and cook, stirring, about 30 seconds. Add onion and cook until limp, about 5 minutes. Add seasonings, remove from stove and let cool sightly.
2. In a bowl, beat eggs with a fork. Add half of crumbs, cheese, and reserved artichokes. When cool, add onion mixture.
3. Turn into a lightly greased 7×11 baking pan and sprinkle with remaining crumbs. Bake at 325 for 30 minutes. Let cool in pan then cut into small, bite-sized squares.
   Serve at room temp.

The Fireside Cook Book

James Beard

1949

I think a lot of people my age who watched Cheers throughout high school wished that they too could eventually find a bar where the bartender (and everyone) knew their name (la, la, la). Not me. All I really dreamed of was a neighborhood butcher shop and a butcher who knew my name. When we moved to Park Slope I found that shop, Great Western Fine Foods, and that butcher, Jimmy. Over the last six years Jimmy has provided me with countless pounds of ground beef, also chickens, ducks and sausages. Not to mention indulged my requests for bizarre pig parts, 2-inch t-bone steaks, and various fresh game birds in season. He is a sweet and gentle man whom I have come to know well and like immensely. He talks to me about the changing neighborhood, about my recipes, and, when I shipped my daughter off to camp on the bus for the first time, he allayed my fears and calmed me down. He is an accomplished photographer, he thinks that one day he would prefer to coach wrestling, and on the first warm day of Spring he puts his boat in the water and spends every free moment he can aboard it. He has two little girls who are excellent swimmers. His siblings are all successful professionals but it was Jimmy who followed in his father’s footsteps at Great Western and the store has served the Park Slope community for over 60 years. So it was with both shock and grief that I walked over to buy a leg of lamb and found the gates down, the lights out.

A few months ago Jimmy had whispered something to me about selling the building so he could spend more time with his kids on Long Island, but the plan seemed vague and without body. I wish he had told me how quickly it would happen. I wish he had written me a letter of recommendation for another butcher so I could just walk in, hand over the document, and shop at the new place like they know me. Mostly I just wish he had said goodbye.

I ended up buying the lamb at a sort-of Park Slope mini-chain called Union Market from a guy who wouldn’t be able to tell a skirt steak from a shell steak if there weren’t little plasticized labels. The meat in the case was getting dark and crusty at the edges. There is no way these guys will ever order tripe for me. I’m heartbroken.

The Fireside Cook Book was Beard’s fourth effort and by the time he wrote it, he was well on his way to celebrity. It’s a fantastic piece of work to read and experience (the magnificent illustrations are by Alice and Matin Provensen). The lamb recipe, which Beard claims is traditional in Sweden, sounded odd: roast lamb “in the usual way” (meaning to add some onions, carrots and potatoes to the pan) and halfway through, pour a cup of coffee with cream and sugar over the top. Beard says to baste with the coffee every ten minutes but because his lamb was cooked until medium and mine was cooked until rare, he got more bastings in. When I took it out of the oven it just looked like a regular roast that someone had mistakenly spilled their drink on, so I reduced the liquid. This worked out because the cream and sugar created a nice glaze for the meat and vegetables and removed the deep coffee flavor. The resulting taste was more like caramel with a slightly bitter aftertaste. I made Doug guess the secret ingredient which he insisted was truffles for ten full minutes.

The quality of the lamb was adequate I suppose, but it didn’t come with any banter or good boating stories. So long Jimmy, I’ll miss you, and you still owe me a suckling pig.

Newspaper clipping

A time long ago

It’s that time of year again: my son’s pre-school class picnic.  This is my fifth consecutive school picnic if I count the years my daughter attended the same school, and because it’s my last I felt measurably less committed to cooking for it.  Why should I care about impressing people I will never see again?  I opted for The World’s Greatest Cookie because the preparation is effortless and I didn’t have to make a separate shopping trip to collect ingredients.

First, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Then line a sheet pan with parchment and lay out saltines, side by side, to fill the pan.  Heat 1 1/2 sticks of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar until sugar is melted.  Pour the butter evenly over the saltines and bake for 10 minutes.  Take the pan out of the oven, sprinkle the saltines with bittersweet chocolate chips and allow the chips to melt slightly into the crackers.  At this point cool down the pan and eventually refrigerate it for at least a couple of hours.  When chilled the butter/sugar hardens into crispy caramel and you can easily break up the cookies.  I am telling you, it is the greatest cookie ever invented.  I forgot to take pictures and at the point I realized I needed to they had all been eaten.  Just go make them.

Summer Cooking

Elizabeth David

1955

It is so blazing hot in New York right now that the thought of turning the oven on makes me cringe. Naturally, I turned to the one book that is geared specifically for hot weather and found an instant winner. I don’t really need to go into the glory that is Elizabeth David, do I? If you are reading this blog there is a good chance you not only know her work but own it.

The Eggs with Skordalia was just about right for tonight plus I had all the ingredients on hand. There’s not much of a “recipe” here, just directions for making the skordalia and then the suggestion to serve it with hard-boiled eggs, raw tomatoes, black olives and some radishes. David’s skordalia is made from 4 large garlic cloves, two egg yolks, salt, pepper, 1/4 pint of olive oil, 2 oz fresh bread crumbs, 2 oz ground almonds, lemon juice and chopped parsley. A side note for those who care: To insure that your mayonnaise (which is essentially what this is) emulsifies, all the ingredients must be at room temp, including the egg yolks. And know that if the first drop goes well, the rest is cake.

I don’t know if I weighed out 2 oz poorly, but my skordalia came out thick as paste and had to be diluted with water. Once thinned, it was a sight to behold and the scent was pure garlic heaven. My eggs were bought from the magnificent Flying Pigs Farm stand at the greenmarket and were of such buttery deliciousness that it seemed unfair to swath them in skordalia, but it was yummy. Also bought at the greenmarket were radish seed pods which I substituted for the radishes. I’d never had these before and they are excellent - crisp and spicy. I supplemented the feast with sliced cucumbers, a tart purslane salad and our favorite bottle of Rosé. All in all, it hit the spot and the house stayed cool. Thanks ED.

The Hundred Glories of French Cooking

Robert Courtine

1973

I have lived in Paris during two different periods of my life, the last being cooking school in 1993. Since then I have gone back every year for at least one week to visit my friends, walk the city end to end, eat like I haven’t seen food for the previous 51 weeks of the year, pretend I am French, and, since the arrival of my children, to retrieve my balance. I know it has become out-of-fashion to love France (Spain being the new France), but without this single and singular week in Paris I would lose my mind. Adam Gopnik writes in his brilliant Paris to the Moon:

“The hardest thing to convey is how lovely it all is and how that loveliness seems all you need. The ghosts that haunted you in New York or Pittsburgh will haunt you anywhere you go, because they’re you’re ghosts and the house they haunt is you. But they become disconcerted, shaken, confused for half a minute, and in that moment on a December at four o’clock when you’re walking from the bust stop to the rue Saint-Dominique and the lights are twinkling across the river…you feel as if you’ve escaped your ghosts.”

My one week in Paris is transforming in exactly that way.

I got back last Saturday and, as usual, my heart is aching from the rupture. I decided to soothe the pain with a traditional French recipe for Boeuf à la Ficelle which Courtine describes as having an “uplifting effect on the spirit.” Bingo. Courtine was considered one of the most famous French gourmands of the 20th century, known primarily through his column “The Pleasures of the Table” written for the newspaper Le Monde. The Hundred Glories is less a cookbook than a paean and if you’ve never gone to cooking school in France, I wouldn’t attempt to actually prepare a dish from it. But Courtine’s prose is beautiful and I certainly agree with him on everything. Sorry Señor Adria, all the molecular cuisine in the world can’t hold a candle to honest, old-fashioned French bistro food.

Boeuf à la Ficelle (beef on a string) is crazy easy but also rich and deeply flavorful when done right. I made a stock, as Courtine suggests, with leeks, carrots, turnips and herbs, but also added onions, celery, and also some veal bones I had in the freezer. Courtine says to simply let it come to a boil and then submerge your meat (on a string, of course), but the point is really to create an exceptional stock that lends its flavor to the beef during cooking. For this reason I let the stock simmer for two hours and then added a big dose of salt. I let my kids cook their own beef (I used fillet) and served it along with the simmered vegetables, some steamed, buttered potatoes, cornichons, and good French mustard.

It’s not much to look out so forgive me, I mostly took pictures of the kids. Later that evening Doug and I enjoyed our own fillets and then finished off the meal in the traditional way with a bowl of the broth. Comforting yes, but not quite Paris.

Meatballs:

Ladies Who Lunch

Ann Reed and Marilyn Pfaltz

1972

Rolls:

Betty Crocker’s All-Time Favorites

1972

I chose this week’s menu quickly and carelessly because the truth is I have been frustrated with my Betty project. I’m not entirely sure that I have more than a handful of readers, among them my husband and sister. I receive daily reports from Google that analyze the traffic on Betty Lives, and it can be wrenchingly depressing. I see how many people view my site and from the average time I can tell if they actually read anything or if they arrived by error, didn’t find what they need, and moved on quickly. I have recently stopped reading the reports entirely. Why the fuck am I doing this? But then grace arrived in the form of a comment from a long-lost college friend. I have no idea how he found me but the fact that he did, and then commented, made me feel re-energized and excited to write. Thank you Andy Eig, this post is for you. You were my very first gourmet partner and the meals (and wines) we had together laid the foundation for my crazy, twisted, culinary life.

Ham meatballs on pineapple rounds. I can’t explain this choice at all except to say maybe it was a form of attempted culinary suicide. I was frustrated and sad so I picked the weirdest recipe I could find to nudge me over the ledge. The meatballs are simple: equal amounts of ground, smoked ham and ground pork mixed with milk and an egg. What’s over the top is the sauce: 1 cup of brown sugar mixed with 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup water, and 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard. This gets poured over the balls and the lot is baked for an hour. I mixed the sauce but realized that I couldn’t possibly use the entire amount because the hamballs would give off liquid during cooking and, with all the sauce, become totally submerged, so I used about half. They browned nicely in the 350 degree oven and the liquid was halfway up the hamballs. The pineapple slices are painted with a mixture of melted butter and (more) brown sugar and then quickly tucked under the broiler. They weren’t fabulous, for me the taste of the ham overwhelmed it all, and they were definitely too dry. Also, I think Mimi Sheraton once wrote that pineapple is one of those foods that overwhelms anything with which it is served and should therefore only be served by itself. I’m with her on this.

The rolls however were lovely, brown and crisp on the outside with a nice crumb. What defines the dough, which is yeast-risen, is the addition of both buttermilk and sour cream. I was hoping for more of a tang but was disappointed. I chose to make them in “cobblestone” form - placed side by side in a round cake pan and pulled apart after cooking. It is so wonderful to have the smell of fresh bread in the house and I’m glad that the recipe actually makes a triple batch of dough that can be frozen. Next time I’ll try “cloverleaf” rolls - baked in muffin tins and snipped on top with scissors.