Betty Lives!

The Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Famous Eating Places

1955

I am never going to be able to do justice to this book.  I’ve been mulling over how to explain it here but can’t find the right words or even something pithy and clever to say.  It’s just such a goddamn fantastic find so I’m going to be literal.  It’s a mid-century motorists guidebook sponsored by Ford/Lincoln, disguised as a cookbook, with pictures and a dust jacket that folds out into a map.  And what pictures! Note that a lot of the contributing illustrators went on to have important careers including Dom Lupo, William Halsey, Charles Harper and Arthur T. Lougee.

The contents of the book say a lot about how cookbook editing has evolved in the last fifty years: there are three recipes for Lobster Thermador, three for Pecan Pie and a whopping FIVE for Clam Chowder. Also, about the way we ate and cooked which in the 50’s was whatever tickled our fancy regardless of season or regional availability. There is “Red Snapper Gumbo” from Chicago, Il, “Maine Blueberry Griddle Cakes” from New York City, and “Barbecued Brisket” from Los Angeles. It’s not all bad,  a good portion of the contributing restaurants offered area specialties and the Cherry Pie from Colorado even specifies the use of “Fresh Colorado cherries.” But it blows my mind to imagine how they brought this book together.  Writers for the descriptions (and no doubt the recipes) plus artists for the individual illustrations.  It’s an incredible work of art.

I chose the Frozen Lemon Pie in the dead of winter because we were invited to my friend Ted’s house for ribs and I figured as long as we were having a summer meal we might as well have a cold dessert.  It was very simple: Beat 3 egg yolks, 1/8 tsp salt, and 1/2 cup sugar (I used less because I like tart things) in the top of a double boiler.  When it’s pale and frothy add 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1/2 tsp lemon zest (I used more of each, see above).  Stir the lemon mixture until thick and curd-like, then chill.  While it’s chilling, whip one cup of heavy cream and also 3 egg whites, both until stiff.  Fold together and then fold in the cool lemon curd.  Pour mixture into a shallow mold in which there are about 3/4 cup of crushed Nila wafers on the bottom.  Then sprinkle the top with more crushed wafers and chill for a few hours.

I have never made anything like this and it was SO good! Cool, tart, rich but refreshing.  Ted kept repeating, “This is exactly something that my mother would have made!” We all enjoyed it immensely, even Doug who does not particularly like lemon-flavored foods.

Shout out to Charlie S. who recommended this book!

The Art of Cuisine

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Maurice Joyant

1961

I don’t recall where or why I bought this cookbook but it was not for the same reasons I buy old cookbooks today and it certainly wasn’t with the idea of preparing any food from it.  I think I liked the artwork.

Toulouse-Lautrec was a legendary gourmand and bon vivant who lived equally to paint and to eat.  According to the introduction “He imagined a dish as an artistic creation, like writing a poem or dancing a ballet.” His lifelong friend and eventual executor of his will, Maurice Joyant, partook in many meals cooked by Toulouse-Lautrec and traveled with him as the painter scouted local specialties and ingredients.  The original cookbook was printed by Joyant after the death of Toulouse-Lautrec as a monument to the men’s friendship, but sadly no specific date is given for that publication.  The editors of the 1961 version admit that the recipes were devised by and for someone with a firm knowledge of cuisine and note that they have done their best to modify with notes to facilitate modern preparation. What that means is at the end of certain recipes the 1961 editors add a line that translates grams/liters into ounces/spoons/cups.  I can tell you that the book is certainly beautiful, with loads of Lautrec paintings and menus interspersed with recipes which are also filled with little drawings.  Are the recipes workable? The fricassee was, but it’s a classic French preparation.  The jury is still out.

I chose the fricassee because of the opening paragraph on how to make a chicken tender:

“In order to make chickens immediately edible, take them out of the hen-run, pursue them into open country, and when you have made them run, kill them with a gun loaded with very small shot.  The meat of the chicken, gripped with fright, will become tender.”

Nice!  So after I took my Bell & Evans chicken out of the meat section of Key Food and pursued it to the cash register, I picked it off with a very small shot of cash, gripped it firmly and walked tenderly home. Phew.  Now the easy part: joint the chicken, set aside.  Chop four slices of bacon, toss into in a large saucepan until almost but not completely rendered, and remove to the side.  Brown the chicken well on both sides in the bacon fat.  At this point I poured off some fat leaving about a tablespoon in the pan.  Add the chicken back, sprinkle with flour, salt, pepper and five shallots which have been “chopped with some parsley.”  The pan gets covered and the chicken is cooked for an hour and a half.  The recipe says two hours but my chicken was small so I reduced the time.  After an hour you pour 1/3 cup of cognac into the pan and re-cover.

As you can tell, there is nothing so unusual about this recipe that would cause it to be disastrous.  It’s a simple preparation and it was very, very delicious, especially when we served the sauce over buttered noodles. The true test of this book will be a more complicated recipe which I’ll try later on.  Of course the really exciting ones are nearly impossible because they call for ingredients that just aren’t available any more such as “eels from rivers of fast-flowing and clear water-downstream eels with pointed snouts rather than blunt” or snipe or thushes or wood pigeon. Sigh, if I could only get my hands on a brace of snipe…

Original Bubbe recipe dating from 1930’s, possibly earlier

Bubbe, my mother’s mother, was, like many Bubbes, a phenomenal cook.  A natural, never weighing or measuring, just an eye and a little stir.  In addition to cooking my Bubbe could also quilt, crochet, knit, grow flowers and vegetables, make mosaics and sew beautiful clothes for me, my sister AND my Barbie.  My mother talks about the different foods my Bubbe made but we have almost no recipes for the obvious reason: she didn’t use them.  I can tell from the way it was written how my mother must have acquired the recipe for latkes: standing behind my Bubbe and scrawling frantic notes.  The recipe is on a piece of scrap paper and written in a cook’s shorthand.  But I’m here to attest that it is The World’s Most Perfect Latke Recipe and my proof is Doug.  I used to believe that latkes were like ketchup: you preferred  the brand you grew up eating.  But after tasting my Bubbe’s latkes for the first time Doug declared them to be superior to the ones he knew.  See: Proof!

Here are the proportions for approximately 30 latkes: 2 lbs Idaho potatoes, 1 medium onion, 1 tsp kosher salt (plus more for soaking), 1/4 tsp pepper, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder.  After peeling the potatoes, grate them immediately. A note from Bubbe: have a large bowl of salted water on hand in which to throw the grated potatoes.  A note from me: use a madoline for “grating”.  Nine years ago I bought an inexpensive Japanese mandoline and it has served me brilliantly year after year.  Bubbe and my mother always used a box grater but the julienned potatoes from the mandoline don’t get mushy in the middle when they’re cooked.  Once all the potatoes are julienned/grated, allow them to soak in the salted water for two hours.  Drain the potatoes first in a colander and then dump them in to a clean dishtowel and squeeze out every last drop of water.  In a bowl combine the dry potatoes, the onion (which you have grated by now), and the rest of the ingredients.  Heat a good amount of peanut oil in a large, non-stick skillet and use tongs to scoop out about 2 Tbl of the mixture, squeezing it out before you put it in the hot oil and flatten it slightly.  Brown well on both sides and then remove to a rack which is sitting over a baking sheet.  You can keep them in a warm oven until the whole batch is finished.

Bubbe’s latkes are crisp and lacy, with the perfect balance of onion and salt.  Here’s she is (sorry, the latkes got eaten too quickly to photograph):

Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 4

It’s snowing in New York right now.  To be specific, it’s a blizzard.  This is highly unusual so early in the winter and I’m spending some time appreciating the spectacle of the snowy urban landscape before it turns black and slushy with yellow spots. Of course, snow means soup.  To be specific: butternut squash soup with sage, chestnuts, cardamom seeds, and barley. It was a warm and filling meal to be sure, but I wanted something more.  I wanted Nicky and Olivia to look back on their childhoods and remember that we celebrated the snow by drinking hot cocoa and eating special foods.  So I made dessert dumplings.

It will not surprise any one who has read my posts about the Woman’s Day Encyclopedia, but there is a whole section on dumplings in Volume 4: Main-course, Stews with, and Dessert.  I chose the Grandpères because the base flavor is maple syrup which is extremely popular among certain small beings in my household.  We use the Grade B kind which is darker and more intense; my dad sources it out at random groceries in upstate New York. For the recipe two cups of maple syrup are combined with two cups of water and brought to a boil in a wide saucepan.  While it heats you measure two cups of sifted flour, four teaspoons baking powder, and one teaspoon of salt.  Once sifted, I added it to the food processor and tossed in the butter.  As I write this post I realize that I mis-read the recipe and added four tablespoons of butter instead of two.  Oops.  Anyway, I processed it until it resembled coarse crumbs, turned it into a bowl, added one cup of milk and gave it a good stir with a whisk.  Then I added big, heaping spoon-fulls to the simmering maple syrup, covered the saucepan and let the dumplings cook for about 12 minutes, turning them halfway.

Oh. My. God.  The dumplings were texturally perfect: light as air and ever-so-slightly chewy.  They were not at all cloying (my fear) since the syrup is diluted and the batter contains salt.  And a little scoop of vanilla ice cream edged the dumplings towards bliss in a bowl.  The best part was that from decision to dish it took all of 25 minutes! On the downside, you need about $15 worth of syrup.

Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 10

1966

Sometimes I get in the mood for something extremely specific and a little odd.  Since Saturday I’ve been craving shrimp in a creamy sauce over rice.  In my head it was one of those curried dishes that’s not-really-a-curry made with bits of pineapple, apples, slivered almonds and raisins, but for the life of me I could not find the perfect recipe.  I set up a footstool in front of my cookbooks, sat myself down and searched book after book for the perfect recipe.  Nothing.  Fortunately, I came across this recipe instead.

My beloved Woman’s Day Encyclopedia has an entire Shrimp Cook Book which made the shrimp recipies easy to find.  FYI: the Shrimp Cook Book follows the Sausage Cook Book and precedes the Smorgasbord Cook Book.  Love.

The Deviled Shrimp goes like this: 4 Tbl butter melted to which 1/4 cup of flour, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1/8 tsp pepper, 1/2 tsp mustard powder, and 1 tsp grated onion are added.  The flour is cooked slightly and then 1 1/4 cup milk is added to make a thick, ruddy-colored cream sauce.  Also added: 1 pimiento, minced, 1/2 cup sliced stuffed olives and 2 Tbl white wine. At this point I did a little taste test and decided the sauce tasted more angelic than satanic so I added a spoonful of coarse mustard which was just the right amount of sin for my palate.  Although the directions instruct you to add cooked shrimp to the sauce I decided that since the dish cooks at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, this was unnecessary.  I folded in about a pound of large shrimp, topped it with dry bread crumbs and bits of butter and baked it.

Despite the fact that they love both shrimp and olives, my kids were not fans.  Doug liked it, however, and it totally satisfied my craving.

(Note: sorry the photo makes it look a little puke-like.  It was not green-tinged in real life, it was yellow.  And the mustard color did not detract from the dish’s deliciousness for me)

Better Homes and Gardens Jiffy Cooking

1967

I’m still intrigued by this book…

I think that canned fruit gets a bum rap.  Fruit that is preserved (well) in sugar syrup (not corn syrup) can be divine.  I love peaches, apricots and pears this way.  Of course Blue Apron has what might be the world’s finest peaches, from the Di Camillo bakery in Niagra Falls, NY.  The owner makes them in honor of his mother and her picture graces the label, isn’t that nice?  These peaches are so sweet and perfumed;  intensely peach-y in a way that even the best, ripest fresh peaches could only aspire to be. Normally I eat them straight from the jar or with a little cream.  But I had this recipe so off I went!

The peaches get drained and the liquid is brought to a boil with two sticks of cinnamon.  I did not add the extra two Tbl of sugar because the Di Camillo syrup is completely perfect.  After it boils for a few minutes the syrup is removed and into the pot goes two Tbl orange juice and 1/2 cup of Sauternes.  The peaches and syrup are reunited and left to sit overnight in the fridge.  With a little vanilla ice cream it was heaven in a bowl.  I swear: this will be the last Jiffy entry, even though it’s only getting better!

p.s. No photos of my peaches but here’s a nice one from the book.  And by nice I mean glaringly disgusting:

Note: In the background, wine spiced peaches.  In the foreground, barf in a scallop shell.

Better Homes and Gardens Jiffy Cooking

1967

Oh yes I did.  I went to that place.  The dark side called to me and I answered back.  With stacks of Canadian Bacon, canned sweet potatoes and corn syrup.  I happen to like a sweet/salty combo on my plate (bacon dipped in maple syrup anyone?) so the fear factor was not high.  It was just a matter of making healthy substitutions.

The recipe calls for 1 cup whole cranberries to be combined with 2 Tbl light corn syrup for the sauce, but I subbed out leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving.  My mother makes hers with a cup of good bourbon and it’s really, really delicious with a deep, smokey flavor.  Then you are supposed to whip canned sweet potatoes with 1 Tbl butter, 1 Tbl brown sugar and 1/4 tsp ground ginger.  I exchanged the canned for fresh which I boiled, mashed and then faithfully whipped as directed (adding extra butter to lighten them).  Then the stacking, which my daughter happily helped with.  The bacon I get is the peameal variety you find throughout Canada and not the unnaturally circular kind shown in the photo.  It definitely tasted better than the pink kind, although my stacks weren’t nearly as cute as the ones in the book.

Book:

Me:

The stacks get baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees which seemed a little long considering you’re using ingredients that have all been cooked.  But it gives the sweet potatoes time to melt a little into the bacon and the cranberry sauce to caramelize on top and around the stacks.  All good.

My only complaint is a philosophical one: I don’t really consider this “cooking”.  But then again, that is exactly the point of this book.  It’s a like a precursor to that Semi-Homemade show on the Food Network.