Ann's Blog
Toronto, Canada:
September 21, 2011
Cooking up the past:
Some things never change
I’ve been going through my cookbook collection with a hard eye. It’s out of control, grown way beyond the combined shelf space available on Receta and in our Toronto condo. A few of the titles simply need to move on to new homes. Like The Best of British Bacon Recipes. Never used it. Never will. (I don’t eat bacon; friends gave it to me years ago as a joke.) Ditto The Joys of Jell-O (another joke gift) and the 1971 Playboy’s Bar Guide, which reeks of mildew. (In the exceedingly unlikely event I ever need to mix a “Pink Verandah” or a “Ponce de Leon”, I know the odor-free Internet will help me out.)
“Whenever the menu calls for a delicate dish or a fancy pie,” the first paragraph begins, “most men are more than happy to let their wives take care of the cooking. When it’s a matter of steak, this tolerant attitude is replaced by an unassailable belief in masculine know-how.”
Jacket and tie,
cheese and chili burgers
The Picture Cook Book was first published in 1958 – I have the revised 1968 edition, but the photos and concepts clearly date from the late Fifties – and it offers a wonderful window into what food and entertaining (not to mention food photography) were like during that time period. There’s a whole section on flaming food – including Meat Balls on Flaming Cabbage – and one entitled “Exotic Curry,” with an intro pointing out that the dish need not be hair-raisingly hot, “but can be as bland as taste demands.” Sounds appetizing.
The flames here have been montaged in after the dishes were photographed
I particularly enjoyed the section detailing how to put together a wine cellar for $30. The experts tell us it should include the following: a gallon of California red, a gallon of California white, two bottles of rose, one bottle of Chianti, one bottle of dry white, one bottle of California Cabernet or Pinot Noir, one bottle of French Bordeaux and one of Burgundy, one bottle of German Rhine wine and one of dry sherry. That’s nine bottles plus two gallons for $30. Those were the good old days…..
Those were also the days when a suggestion of what Mom should prepare for a “non-exotic” lunch to be toted to school included “two sandwiches, meat loaf on rye and pimento cheese spread with olives”; carrot sticks and celery; grapes and chocolate milk, “to which an egg may be added.” And those were also the days when the American “housewife” was “prejudiced against sea food,” and needed to be told that fish doesn’t smell when it’s boiled, baked, or broiled. (The recipes for that section include one for canned tuna simmered in a white sauce with tomatoes and served over curried almond rice.)
to add the rope to the feet
of this "hanging" mourning dove
(used to make Mourning Dove
Casserole in the "Game Birds" section).
Every once in a while, though, the book seems surprisingly modern. There’s a section with recipes using “ancient” grains and beans (lentils, cracked wheat, chickpeas, buckwheat, barley, although no quinoa). A recipe for a tropical fruit compote with white wine combines papaya, pineapple, and (surely pushing the envelope in the Fifties and Sixties) cherimoya.
I’m not sure I’ll ever cook from it, but it’s re-earned a place on my shelf.
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Made me laugh my morning coffee out my nostrils. Not a pretty sight.
And here on Beach House, the Admiral also prompts the BBQ guy to check for “doneness”.
at Chez Dave, when I am grilling it’s Lynette’s job to distract me with tasks, reminders, and conversations that are rarely germane. But so far my timing is faultless, with a few remarkably notable exceptions. That’s at the grill; if we are talking about that black lava on the stove top that was meant to be simple syrup, the record is, well…hey, speaking of the Cubs! How about those guys!
Love the picture of them all dressed up to eat BBQ! Reminds me of “Mrs. Cleaver” vacuuming in her pearls! That book is priceless…definitely keep it. Now I have to go hunt down a Mourning Dove! LOL!
The Joys of Jell-O is a classic! You have to keep it. I still have my mother’s copy. Hey, every once in awhile we get an invite to a 60′s potluck and I pull it out and get rave reviews on my Jell-O specialty. You know that no one else will have brought a Jell-O salad! Thanks for your books!