F. Scott Fitzturkey for Thanksgiving

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Carol

While he was a writer of prodigious talent, F. Scott Fitzgerald has never been at the top of anyone’s list of chucklemeisters. But this voice of the Jazz Age certainly knew how to crack wise on the subject of Thanksgiving turkey. The following comes from his book The Crack-Up. What will it inspire you to do with your turkey?

TURKEY REMAINS AND HOW TO INTER THEM WITH NUMEROUS SCARCE RECIPES

At this post holiday season, the refrigerators of the nation are overstuffed with large masses of turkey, the sight of which is calculated to give an adult an attack of dizziness. It seems, therefore, an appropriate time to give the owners the benefit of my experience as an old gourmet, in using this surplus material. Some of the recipes have been in my family for generations. (This usually occurs when rigor mortis sets in.) They were collected over years, from old cook books, yellowed diaries of the Pilgrim Fathers, mail order catalogues, golf-bags and trash cans. Not one but has been tried and proven—there are headstones all over America to testify to the fact.

Very well then. Here goes:

Turkey Cocktail: To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of angostura bitters. Shake.

Turkey à la Francais: Take a large ripe turkey, prepare as for basting and stuff with old watches and chains and monkey meat. Proceed as with cottage pudding.

Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the latter to the boiling point and then put in the refrigerator. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In preparing this recipe it is best to have a few ham sandwiches around in case things go wrong.

Turkey Mousse: Seed a large prone turkey, being careful to remove the bones, flesh, fins, gravy, etc. Blow up with a bicycle pump. Mount in becoming style and hang in the front hall.

Stolen Turkey: Walk quickly from the market, and, if accosted, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you hadn’t noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg—well, anyhow, beat it.

Turkey Hash: This is the delight of all connoisseurs of the holiday beast, but few understand how really to prepare it. Like a lobster, it must be plunged alive into boiling water, until it becomes bright red or purple or something, and then before the color fades, placed quickly in a washing machine and allowed to stew in its own gore as it is whirled around. Only then is it ready for hash. To hash, take a large sharp tool like a nail-file or, if none is handy, a bayonet will serve the purpose—and then get at it! Hash it well! Bind the remains with dental floss and serve.

Feathered Turkey: To prepare this, a turkey is necessary and a one pounder cannon to compel anyone to eat it. Broil the feathers and stuff with sage-brush, old clothes, almost anything you can dig up. Then sit down and simmer. The feathers are to be eaten like artichokes (and this is not to be confused with the old Roman custom of tickling the throat.)

Turkey Remnant: This is one of the most useful recipes for, though not, “chic,” it tells what to do with the turkey after the holiday, and how to extract the most value from it. Take the remnants, or, if they have been consumed, take the various plates on which the turkey or its parts have rested and stew them for two hours in milk of magnesia. Stuff with moth-balls.

Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: This recipe is for a party of four. Obtain a gallon of whiskey, and allow it to age for several hours. Then serve, allowing one quart for each guest. The next day the turkey should be added, little by little, constantly stirring and basting.

There I guess that’s enough turkey talk. I hope I’ll never see or hear of another until—well, until next year.

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A Taste of Autumn and of a Place

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Carol

 

maple sugar candies fresh from Canada

While most people anticipate turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and all the rest when the year’s end rolls around, my favorite autumn food is those maple sugar candies shaped like maple leaves that you find in New England and Canada. Himself was in Toronto recently, so I asked him to bring me back some.

This candy is swoonworthy stuff. Just set a piece on your tongue and let it dissolve and coat your mouth in the rich, autumnal sweetness that comes only from real maple.

Aside from being really good, these simple little candies represent one of the first times I ever noticed–back in my pre-food writing days–how people react to the food of other places. When I was working as a tour guide conducting fall foliage tours in New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces, I’d buy boxes of maple candy and pass them around to the guests on my bus as I described how maple sap is harvested and made into syrup–and candy. It was a wonderfully personal and special way to help them experience the region we were visiting and gave them an extra reason to love those fiery yellow, orange and red landscapes. Plus, for anyone wanting to bring home the maple experience, it’s much easier to slip a box of candy into your carry-on than to wrap and pack bottles of syrup in your checked luggage.

Autumn leaves are stunning, and the air is crisp and refreshing to bask in, but it’s nice to be able to appeal to yet another sense, to share the flavor of a season and of a place. While most sap is collected in the spring, fall is usually when I find myself in New England and eastern Canada, so I connect maple candy with this season. One bite and I’m transported back to those brisk and beautiful golden lit leafscapes. That’s a good thing, too, since it was 94º in Los Angeles earlier this week.

If you can’t get your hands on maple candy right now, you can still have fun with a bottle of maple syrup and substitute it for honey or molasses. And by maple syrup I don’t mean Mrs. Butterworth, Aunt Jemima, Log Cabin or any of those other super-sweet products made of corn syrup and flavored to be reminiscent of maple. Real maple syrup is a little runnier, but you don’t need as much, because the flavor is rich and intense. A little goes a long way.

Drizzle some over vanilla ice cream. Stir it into your oatmeal instead of honey.

Or make a cocktail. This recipe comes from Bar None Drinks, which has a nice array of cocktail recipes that call for maple syrup. I have my eye on several, but right now I’m having a Woodstock.

Woodstock

This one appeals to me because it calls for gin, which I prefer over amber spirits. While I usually connect gin and lemon juice with summery drinks, including maple syrup and orange bitters give this cocktail a nice hint of fall.

Woodstock

1½ oz. gin

1 oz. freshly-squeezed lemon juice

1½ tsp. maple syrup

a dash or two of orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, shake and serve in a cocktail glass garnished with a twist of orange peel.

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Uncommon Measures

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Carol

they don't make 'em like this anymore...

I love browsing through old cookbooks for many reasons. It’s fascinating not only to learn what foods people ate in earlier times, but also how they acquired them and how they prepared them. And how much a cook back then could be expected to know how to do without needing the minutest of step-by-step instructions.

For example, I once found a recipe for rabbit pie that began: “Skin and clean rabbit and wash. Joint and take out bones.” How many of us could do that without a dozen pages of detailed instructions and illustrations? When an old recipe tells you to “go get a young chicken,” it’s understood that you’ll head out into your yard and look around until you spot a bird that’s of the appropriate age and size. And that you’ll dispatch it and clean it yourself. Then you can get around to actually making the dish.

Looks like a lot more salt in my tiny hand than it does in the spoon!

Measurements in those times required similar ingenuity. Take a trip in the wayback machine, courtesy of an aged cookbook, and you’ll find recipes routinely calling for a wineglass of buttermilk, a coffee cup of beef stock, or a knob of lard the size of a walnut. Still, these steps are easier to follow than those of a lot of the cooks I grew up around in the South, who couldn’t have told you the precise measurements for making any of their specialties if their lives had depended on it. As with Thoreau’s conviction that he was too busy living his life to record it, they were too busy getting those meals onto the table to write down exactly how they made them.

A lot of us cook this way, though, especially once we’ve seen that a particular recipe has merit and potential, but needs a tweak here and there to make it even better. Or to accommodate our preferences, dietary requirements or available ingredients.

In honor of those who still have the temerity to measure things the old fashioned way–and to devise whatever measurements work best for them–I share with you a recipe from Peter Ward of Country Choice in Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland. He devised

this really good Irish soda bread recipe 

for his son when he headed off to college, for he knew that the only thing the lad would have to reliably measure with was a pint beer glass. (Here’s Saveur‘s version of Peter’s Pint-Glass Bread, which details the ingredients, measurements and temperature required for American cooks.)

 

I raise my Guinness to Peter’s ingenuity. Sláinte!

 

 

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French Press To the Rescue!

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Carol

Sometimes we change things up just for the sake of variety. Other times we have variety thrust upon us.

I broke the coffee carafe yesterday.

“Crappage!” I growled.

Busy with a deadline, I didn’t have time to race to the mall and buy a replacement. Or to go out in search of my morning brew, which would have necessitated changing out of my pajamas and doing everything else required to make myself presentable to polite society.

Whew! Catastrophe averted!

So I reached into the cabinet and pulled out the French press I’d had for years but seldom used. Yeah! Belated use of nephews’ Christmas present! Thank you, nephews!

I didn’t remember how to use it and couldn’t find the instructions anywhere.

Tick…tick…tick…

So I consulted the Internet for a few basic pointers and then plunged right in, ground the beans coarsely and poured in the not quite boiling water. And in less time than the coffeemaker takes to do its thing I was enjoying some really good, really smooth coffee. (No offense to my tea drinking friends, but I believe the best thing you can do with a tea kettle is heat water for your French press!)

I just sat down to Day #2 of French press coffee. I’m liking this. Suddenly I’m not in such a hurry to replace the broken carafe, except that when friends come over, it’s annoying if I have to make coffee two cups at a time. So I’ll eventually get out there and replace that carafe. But nothing says I can’t keep right on using my French press. We’re good friends now.

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A Gift From the Heart

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Carol

Chocolate & Zucchini

Every time Himself and I visit our dear pal John Remy, I go straight for his copy of Chocolate & Zucchini, Clotilde Dusoulier’s delightful Parisian cookbook. I’m drawn to it like a cat to a fish cart. I love browsing in it, admiring Clotilde’s evocative photos and dreaming of what I’d like to cook from it. Her pix of the markets in Montmartre in particular remind me of the week Himself and I stayed in a flat in Rue Coysevox and prowled the markets in search of ingredients for our meals, practicing our French on the shop keeps who wanted to practice their English on us. During each visit with John I scratch out a recipe from the book onto a scrap of paper and spirit it home to make the next day.

But one of the things I love most about this particular book is its state of fatigue, of loving use, evidenced by all the dried food spills and dog-eared pages. I love the look and the feel of a cookbook in this state. John spent a summer cooking his way through the entire thing, and it shows–in the best possible way. You can tell it is a muchly used and appreciated book.

lots of use, lots of love

I’ve looked in secondhand bookstores and on Amazon, not just to buy a copy, but to try to find one that has been similarly used, but to no avail. So I decided to buy a new copy and see if I could render it well used through lots of cooking and some, let’s be honest, intentional sloshing and splashing of ingredients, but…

Looks like at least a full serving on these pages...

this past weekend John handed me a present that was obviously a book. He’d been to Powell’s Books in Portland the previous weekend, so I figured it was a treasure he’d found there for me. It was Chocolate & Zucchini, but not just a copy. It was his copy that he was bestowing on me. He’d decided that, as we sometimes do, it was time to let go of something special when the right person to have it came along.

Flipping through it, I found at least a couple dozen little tabs he’d used to mark his favorite recipes. Bits and flecks of food. A piece of dried lavender leaf. And a couple of pages so firmly stuck together with a bit of pasty mango (at least I think that’s what it was!) that I may never be able to separate them. I even found my own handwriting in there, from the time I’d asked his permission to clarify the soufflé recipe so he’d be reminded to make sure the milk added to the roux blanc was hot when making the bechamel.

Not to short Clotilde any of the money she’d have made if I’d bought a brand-spanking new copy of her book. Something tells me she’d understand the sheer heart-value of having such a special tome. I treasure this book, and every time I cook from it, I’ll be reminded of John and of the sort of generosity that springs from giving such a gift. And the generosity that springs from sharing recipes from one’s own family as Clotilde has done.

Thanks, John! Merci, Clotilde!

Gâteau au Yaourt

from Chocolate & Zucchini by Clotilde Dusoulier

Two aspects of this cake make it a winner in my book–it’s quick and easy (no mixer required!), and it’s not too sweet. I guess that’s three. Okay, here’s a fourth reason–it’s amenable to all sorts of modifications. Like Clotilde, I love to tinker and substitute and experiment. For me a recipe is just the point of departure.

1/3 c. vegetable oil, plus 1 tsp. more to grease the pan

1 c. plain, unsweetened yogurt, preferably whole milk

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 Tbsp. light or amber rum (optional but recommended)

1  2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1  1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

a good pinch of fine sea salt

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease the sides of a 10-inch cake pan or springform with oil and additionally line the bottom with baking parchment if you’re not using a springform.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together yogurt and sugar. Whisk in eggs, one by one. Add vanilla, oil and rum, and whisk again.

In another bowl sift together remaining dry ingredients. Pour dry mixture into wet mixture and whisk just until combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer pan to cooling rack and let stand for 10 minutes. Loosen springform or run a knife around the pan to loosen if not using a springform, and flip the cake onto a plate, then flip it back onto the rack to cool some more. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

 

This cake has a delightfully springy quality and great body. I had only non-fat yogurt on hand, but it was Greek yogurt, so I don’t think the texture suffered at all for that (by the way, my springform is a 9-inch pan). In place of the rum, I substituted brandy infused with lemon peel, left over from making Laurie Colwin‘s gingerbread and added the zest of one lemon and 1 teaspoon of dried lavender blossoms. See what I said about tinkering?!

If you don’t fall face down on it and devour it all in one go (which could happen, it really could!), you can wrap it in foil and keep it at room temperature for several days. Top it with anything you like. Anything at all.

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