The Past on a Plate

Feasts and Festivals: St. Brigid's Day/Candlemas/Imbolc

2012-02-01T07:16:00.000-06:00

Boxty Pancakes

1 lb potatoes, divided
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 to 1 1/2 cups yogurt
up to 1/4 cup butter

Boil 1/2 lb of potatoes until very soft. Peel under cool running water then place in a large mixing bowl. Mash. Wash and peel the other 1/2 lb of potatoes and, using the large side of a box grater, grate into the mashed potatoes. Stir.

Stir in the flour, baking soda and salt. Add the yogurt a bit at a time until dough is soft and thinner than biscuits, but a bit thicker than regular pancake batter.

Melt one tablespoon of the butter over medium-high heat in a large skillet or on a griddle.When the foam has subsided and the butter is hot, fry the boxty pancakes, using 1/12 of the batter per cake. You'll need to work in batches. Flatten each cake with a spatula and cook around three minutes per side, or until nicely browned. Add more butter to the pan, as needed.

Serves 6

Adapted from "Boxty Pancakes" in Darina Allen, The Festive Food of Ireland (Schull: Roberts Rinehart, 1992), 10.

St. Brigid (Wikipedia)

Boxty pancakes are so amazing delectable. They're thicker than ordinary pancakes, but have a similar taste, and they're very buttery. Yum! They're great as a side dish (instead of another method of preparing potatoes, for example), as a teatime treat or as breakfast (with bacon, of course!).

February 1st and 2nd have been important calendar days since before the arrival of Christianity to the British isles. The festival of Imbolc was one of the pagan cross-quarter days (along with Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain).¹ It marked the beginning of the lambing season and celebrated Bride, the Celtic goddess of youth and fertility. The Catholic church merely shifted the celebration of the goddess Bride to a feast for St. Brigid on February 1st.² Definitely convenient! February 2nd is the holiday Candlemas, which marks the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. Taking their cue from Simeon, who described Jesus as "a light to lighten the world," members of the early church began lighting candles to commemorate the presentation at the Temple, thus giving rise to "Candlemas."³ Both The Festive Food of Ireland and Cattern Cakes and Lace suggest making Boxty for St. Brigid's Day/Candlemas, so that's what I've done! Be sure to fry them in butter, because St. Brigid is the patron saint of cattle and dairy work.⁴ Consider taking the time to track down a butter from pastured cows. It will be golden and more flavorful because the cream will have been from cows grazing on grass.⁵

Also check out the Kerry Apple Cake that I made for St. Brigid's Day/Candlemas/Imbolc in 2010.

1. "Imbolc" Wikipedia article
2. "Candlemas" in Cattern Cakes and Lace
3. Ibid.
4. "St. Bridget's Day" in The Feasts and Festivals of Ireland
5. The most readily-available grass-fed butters in the U.S. (or at least around here) are Organic Valley Pasture Butter (has to say "pasture" on the package) and Kerrygold. Just don't get Kerrygold's "Reduced Fat Irish Butter." First off, if it's reduced-fat it's not really butter and secondly, you need that fat for frying. Stick to the stick, not the tub!

Life This Week: January 30, 1939

2012-01-30T08:36:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend! It's Monday, so it's time for "Life This Week." The Movie of the Week is Jesse James, starring Tyrone Power as Jesse and Henry Fonda as his brother Frank. Nancy Kelly plays Zerelda Cobb, later Jesse's wife, and Randolph Scott is the a marshall assigned the duty of bringing the James brothers to justice. In the beginning, the brothers are out to make trouble for the railroad that has forced Missouri farmers off their land. Officers of the railroad have even killed Jesse and Frank's mother. Unfortunately, Jesse gets obsessed with outlawry and his escapades become more and more dangerous and less and less rooted in justice. However, it's Tyrone Power and we forgive him. Plus, much of the movie was filmed on location in the Missouri Ozarks, which look great in Technicolor. It's definitely worth the watch.

Poster from Doctor Macro

In the first part of the film when Jesse and Frank James are hiding out, Jesse shows up at Zerelda's house under cover of darkness (and in a rainstorm). Like any good 19th-century Missouri girl, she offers him a biscuit and a cup of coffee (served in transferware, no less). Here are my light, tall, fluffy baking powder biscuits. The recipe is from the revised Rumford Complete Cookbook from 1939, just like the movie!

Baking Powder Biscuits

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for cutting-out
1/2 teaspoon finely-ground sea salt
2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
2 tablespoons cold un-hydrogenated lard
about 3/4 cup cold whole milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with Silpat or parchment paper and set aside.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a large mixing bowl, then (if you have cold hands, otherwise use a table knife) quickly rub in the lard until the texture of the mixture is like sand. Start with about 1/2 cup of the milk and mix in with the table knife. Add enough milk so that the dough is sticky but still dense.

Pat the dough out on a floured surface until it's 3/4" thick. Cut into rounds with a floured biscuit cutter or upturned glass. I like 2 3/4" diameter biscuits. This recipe will make five.

Place the cut-out biscuits on the prepared baking sheet, being sure to leave plenty of room between them. Bake in the middle of the oven 12 to 16 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.

Adapted from The Rumford Complete Cookbook: Revised (1939), p. 97-98.

Excursion to Chanute, KS

2012-01-28T17:05:00.000-06:00

After breakfast this morning, Paul and I drove out to Chanute, KS (in the southeastern part of the state) to go to the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum. Fun fact: Chanute is where the default pin drops on the Mac version of Google Earth. For info on each photo, please visit my flickr page. Hope you're having a great weekend! See you Monday with another "Life This Week."

Feasts and Festivals: Burns Night

2012-01-25T08:00:00.001-06:00

Robert Burns is considered to be Scotland's greatest-ever poet. He's honored every year on January 25th. Traditionally, the thing to do on Burns Night is to eat haggis and read aloud Robbie Burns's "To a Haggis." A couple of years ago, I had a rather disastrous haggis-making experience. I thought I'd have some genetic predisposition toward it, seeing as a huge chunk of my ancestry is from Scotland. No such luck. So, this year, I'm incorporating sheep in a different way--roasted and with some yummy vegetables.

According to Mrs. Beeton, roast shoulder of mutton should be served with baked potatoes and stewed onions. I have complied with her suggestion and added carrots, as well. Mutton really should be used this time of year, but it's impossible to find, so I've used a shoulder of lamb I bought at the westside farmers market this summer and have had in the freezer until now. It's amazing that I could have forgotten about seven pounds of lamb, but there you have it.

Since I only have a combined electric range/oven and no fire (not even in the living room--a previous owner took out the fireplace in a round of misguided 1960s renovations), Mrs. B's Shoulder of Mutton recipe isn't much use to me. Also, Victorians must have eaten the most appallingly overcooked vegetables. So, I've made a few changes to suit my kitchen and my taste.

Roast Lamb Dinner

Roast Shoulder of Lamb

1 bone-in shoulder of lamb (7 lbs)
coarse sea salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Rub lamb all over with sea salt, place in a roasting pan fat side up and cook approximately 35 minutes per pound. Unlike lamb chops, a shoulder of lamb is served well done. A seven-pound shoulder should take around four hours.

When roast is finished, allow to rest 15 to 20 minutes before serving. Shred and serve with caramelized onions.

Serves 8

Adapted from Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook (1950), 267.

Caramelized Onions

1/4 cup butter
4 yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced
2 teaspoons demerara sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
pepper

In a small skillet or omelet pan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook 15 minutes, or until softened. Onion should not brown; turn down the heat if necessary.

Add sugar, salt and pepper and turn heat up to medium and sauté onions for about 1/2 an hour, or until very brown and very soft. Serve with roast lamb.

Serves 8

Adapted from "Caramelized Onions" in Martha Stewart Living, June 1995.

Baked Potatoes

1/2 lb russet potato per person

Scrub each potato and prick on all sides with the tines of a fork. Roast directly in the oven at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour 40 minutes. Serve with butter, sour cream, salt and pepper.

Boiled Carrots

1/4 lb carrots per person, peeled and trimmed

Boil carrots until fork-tender, then drain. Dress with melted butter or return carrots to pan to boil in 1/4 cup cream per person until cream is almost entirely absorbed by carrots. Season with salt and pepper.

Recipes from Mrs. Beeton:

"Roast Shoulder of Mutton" in Mrs. Beeton, The Book of Household Management (London: Ward, Lock, and Co., 1888), 349. From Google Books.

"Stewed Spanish Onions" in ibid., 578-579.

"Stewed Carrots" in ibid., 743-744.

Life This Week: January 23, 1939

2012-01-23T07:11:00.000-06:00

The cover story this week is a write-up on Bette Davis. I thought I'd watch one of her films I hadn't seen before--The Sisters (1938) co-starring Errol Flynn. They meet at an election-night ball and instantly fall in love. Frank (Errol Flynn) is a sports journalist and aspiring writer; Louise (Bette Davis) is the proper daughter of a small-town pharmacist. They elope to San Francisco and try to make a life for themselves. Too bad Franks's drinking and temper get him fired. Louise tries to keep her household afloat but only manages to drive Frank away. Suddenly--it's the San Francisco Earthquake of 1904. Will Frank and Louise rebuild their marriage while San Francisco crumbles around them?

Images from Doctor Macro

The Sisters will be on TCM Friday, March 9th at 6:15 a.m. CST.

In honor of Louise...

"My-husband-is-charming-yet-worthless" Red Beans and Rice

1 lb dried kidney beans
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons hot sauce
2 cups cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir or beaujolais-villages (or similar)
1/2 cup cold-pressed olive oil
1/4 lb cooked ham, cut into bite-sized pieces
sea salt
cooked and salted white rice, to serve (I used 1/4 cup uncooked per person)

Twenty-four hours in advance:
Place the kidney beans in a large non-reactive mixing bowl. Add the onion, garlic and hot sauce then cover with the wine. Add enough water to cover the mixture by at least an inch. Soak overnight.

In the morning:
Add more water to the bean mixture so that it is still covered by about an inch of liquid.

About three hours before you plan to eat dinner:
Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large stock pot or dutch oven. Add the ham and sauté until just starting to brown. Add the soaked-bean mixture, bring to a boil, the reduce heat and simmer for two to two-and-a-half hours, or until beans are soft. Season to taste with salt.

Serves 6

Adapted from "Dried Red Beans" in The Justin Wilson Cookbook (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 1965), 65.

Feasts and Festivals: The Eve of St. Agnes

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-06:00

St. Agnes’ Eve--Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold...

John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes"

Sources: top painting, bottom painting, medallion

They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,

Young virgins might have visions of delight,

And soft adorings from their loves receive

Upon the honey’d middle of the night,

If ceremonies due they did aright;

As, supperless to bed they must retire,

And couch supine their beauties, lily white;

Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require

Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes"

John Keats is describing a traditional St. Agnes Eve belief--that an unmarried girl will be given a glimpse of her future husband in a dream, if she follows the correct procedure. Speaking of bedtime ritual, posset was a common nightcap in early modern England (see Shakespeare's Macbeth,¹ Hamlet or Merry Wives of Windsor), but it was also closely tied to wedding ritual.

Beginning before the Reformation, a priest would arrive on the wedding night to bless the bride and groom in the bridal chamber, surrounded by friends and family. The priest pronounced a benediction, burned incense over the bed and then blessed the couple's bedtime posset, which became known as the Benediction Posset. This ceremony was practiced well into the 17th century. At the wedding of Mary to William of Orange, Charles II waited until the bride and bridegroom had finished off their bowl of posset and then drew the bed-curtains himself.²

The 17th century Benediction Posset was made of milk, muscadine, egg yolk, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.³ By the eighteenth century, possets were made with sack (sherry) instead of muscadine wine, the cinnamon had been removed and Naples biscuits or bread had been added.⁴

Since I have sherry that needs to be used, I've decided to make an adaptation of eighteenth-century posset. Just a warning--posset is weird. If you'll notice, the milk/egg yolk mixture is boiled. Your posset will be curdled. It's supposed to be curdled. Once you get used to the texture, it's actually pretty tasty. And it does its job--it made me pretty drowsy.

I didn't have a posset pot (see below), so I just used our Mr. and Mrs. C mugs from Anthropologie (they still have the Mr. mugs). The elephant snout on the posset pots was used as a straw--people drank the bottom part of the posset first, then ate the curdled part with a spoon.⁵ The lid kept everything nice and warm.

Posset

2 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs
1 3/4 cups milk
1/4 cup cream
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup cream sherry
1/4 cup turbinado sugar
nutmeg

Divide the breadcrumbs between two mugs.

Bring the milk, cream and egg yolk to a boil, stirring constantly. When the mixture boils, divide it between the two mugs. Cover the mugs with a couple of tea towels to keep warm. Set aside.

Combine the sherry and sugar then grate in some nutmeg and bring to a boil, then divide the mixture between the two mugs. Stir to combine with the milk mixture and the breadcrumbs.

Serves 2

Adapted from Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (London: Alexander Donaldson, 1774), 155.

Notes

1. Shakespeare's Macbeth Act II, Scene 2:

2. "Chapter XVIII: Sports and Pastimes" in John Cordy Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, Vol. I (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1872), 248-250.

3. Ibid., 249.

4. Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1774:

5. http://www.historicfood.com/Posset%20Recipes.htm

Posset pot photos from Ross E. Taggert, The Frank and Harriet C. Burnap Collection of English Pottery in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City: University Trustees, William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 1967), 50. The Nelson-Atkins Museum has a fabulous collection of seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century British pottery. It's definitely worth a visit. Plus, admission is free.

Submitted to Fight Back Friday

Life This Week: January 16, 1939

2012-01-16T07:31:00.000-06:00

The Movie of the Week this week is Gunga Din, which is pretty darn entertaining. Paul even liked it. I don't even want to go into the pitfalls or politically incorrect nature of colonialism or orientalism or any of that. Just accept this for what it is and enjoy it. Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., are charming, Joan Fontaine is beautiful and the Thugee villains are suitably evil. The plot and setting of the final part of the film will probably seem familiar because Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is totally a rip-off of Gunga Din. We liked Gunga Din better, though. Keep this one in mind for family movie nights.

Images from Doctor Macro

Since Gunga Din is so British and there's a Guinness ad in this issue, I knew I needed to try out a recipe I'd bookmarked for a beef and stout stew. Even if you don't like Guinness to drink (I don't), it works perfectly in this recipe. This dish is orgasmically delicious, easy to make and has loads of vegetables. I can't think of a better culinary accompaniment to winter weather and a classic action-adventure movie.

Beef and Carrot Stew with Parsnip and Potato Mash

For the stew:
2 tablespoons expeller-pressed grapeseed oil
1 lb grass-finished stewing beef, cut into large chunks
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 lbs carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 tablespoons sprouted whole wheat flour
1 (1 pint, 6 oz.) bottle or 2 3/4 cups stout
1 tablespoon rapadura or muscovado sugar
3 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
pepper

For the mash:
2 lbs potatoes
3 parsnips
1 tablespoon butter
sea salt
pepper
1/4 cup sour cream, at room temperature

For the stew:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Heat the grapeseed oil over high heat in a large, oven-safe dutch oven (like a Le Creuset). When the oil is very hot, add the beef, in batches, and sear. Remove to a plate.

Sauté the onion and carrots, turning down heat, if needed, to keep onion from burning. When onion is translucent, add the beef (and accumulated juices) back to the dutch oven and add the flour and stir to combine. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring.

Add the remaining stew ingredients and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid and place in the middle of the oven to cook for 2 1/2 hours.

For the mash:
Fill a stockpot halfway to 3/4 full with water.

Peel, wash and chop the potatoes and parsnips and place in the stockpot with some salt. Bring to a boil and boil 15 minutes, or until very tender.

Drain vegetables and mash with the butter and salt and pepper, to taste. Stir in the sour cream.

Serves 4

Stew can be refrigerated or frozen and thawed then reheated (for about an hour) at 300 degrees. Mash can be reheated in a double boiler.

Adapted from "Beef and stout stew with carrots" at BBC Good Food.

Submitted to Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Whole Food Wednesdays, Fight Back Friday, Sunday Night Soup Night

Dinner and a Movie: Queen Christina

2012-01-13T07:24:00.000-06:00

Images from Doctor Macro.

In Queen Christina, the Queen of Sweden (Great Garbo), dressed as a man to preserve her anonymity while out riding, meets the new Spanish envoy to her court, Don Antonio (John Gilbert). They're forced to share a room at an overcrowded inn during a snow storm. This is a pre-code film, so when Antonio discovers Christina's a woman, the two engage in a torrid love affair. What will happen when Antonio discovers she's a queen? I'll let you learn the answer for yourself. I adore this film so much. Paul bought it for me as part of the Garbo: The Signature Collection DVD set, which also includes a couple of my other all-time-favorite movies Ninotchka and Flesh and the Devil, as well as seven other fabulous Greta Garbo films.

I whipped up a wintry Scandinavian menu to go with Queen Christina. It's hearty, simple food, like what might be served at a roadside inn during a snow storm. Enjoy!

Ham with Apples

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 lb ham, cut into two thick steaks
1 cooking apple, cored and cut into 1/2"-thick rings
1 onion, thinly sliced
pepper

Put two plates in the oven and set to 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. When the foam subsides, add the ham and fry a few of minutes on each side, or until lightly browned. Remove the ham to the plates in the oven. Leave in the oven to keep warm.

Add remaining tablespoon of butter to the skillet. Fry the onion slices until they are softened and transparent, about six to eight minutes. Add the apple slices and turn the heat down a bit. Cover the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes, or until apples are soft.

Spoon the onions and apples over the ham and season with black pepper.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Äppel-Fläsk" in Recipes: The Cooking of Scandinavia.

Swedish Potato Pancakes with Chives

2 Yukon Gold potatoes
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
1 teaspoon sea salt
pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon expeller-pressed grapeseed oil

Peel and wash the potatoes. Using the side of your box grater with the largest holes, grate the potatoes into a mixing bowl and stir in the chives, salt and pepper.

Heat the butter and oil in a large skillet over high heat until foam subsides. Working with 1 tablespoon of potato mixture at a time, fry three or four pancakes at a time, flattening with a spatula. Fry 2 to 3 minutes per side until golden. You may need to turn heat down to medium-high to keep pancakes from burning.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Rårakor med Gråslök" in Recipes: The Cooking of Scandinavia.

Mushrooms in Sour Cream

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 lb mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 tablespoons homemade breadcrumbs
1/4 cup sour cream
pinch of sea salt

In a small skillet or omelet pan, heat the butter over medium heat until it foams. When the foam subsides, add the onion and cook until onions are soft and translucent, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Turn down the heat, if necessary, to keep onion from browning.

Add the mushrooms and cook another three to five minutes, or until lightly browned. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. Add the breadcrumbs and stir to combine.

Remove pan from the heat and gradually stir in sour cream and add salt to taste.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Paistetut Sienet" in Recipes: The Cooking of Scandinavia.

Submitted to:
Foodie Friday
Fight Back Friday
Monday Mania

Think Thin Thursday: Shrimp and Dill Soup

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-06:00

Shrimp and Dill Soup

1 quart court bouillon
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup sifted sprouted barley flour
1/4 cup cream
1/4 cup milk
squeeze of lemon juice
glug of dry white wine
sea salt

To serve:
1 lb shrimp, cooked
1/4 cup cream
Dill

Place court bouillon in a small saucepan and heat to boiling, then turn heat down to low and place a lid on the saucepan.

In a soup or stock pot, melt the butter over medium heat, then whisk in the flour and cook, whisking, for a couple of minutes. Gradually whisk in the hot court bouillon and bring to a boil. Boil three minutes then turn heat down to a simmer.

Whisk in cream, milk, lemon juice and wine. Stir to combine. Simmer a couple more minutes. At this point, you can store any extra soup in a covered container in the fridge.

To serve, place 1/4 lb shrimp in the bottom of each bowl (four total). Pour the soup over the shrimp then drizzle each bowl with 1 tablespoon cream and snip some fresh dill over the top.

Serves 4

Adapted from "Shrimp Soup with Dill" recipe in Best of German Cooking by Edda Meyer-Berkhout.

As far as cream soups go, this one isn't too horrible calorie-wise because of the shrimp (only 80 calories in 1/4 lb!). While not from The Slenderella Cook Book, I felt this recipe represents the spirit of it pretty well. This recipe is a great way to use up the extra court bouillon from Filets de poisson cardinal and a great way to use up some leftover frozen shrimp from the holidays.

Submitted to:
Simple Lives Thursday
Foodie Friday
Fight Back Friday
Monday Mania
Sunday Night Soup Night

Life This Week: January 9, 1939

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-06:00

The always-adorable Myrna Loy stars in this 1939 De Soto ad. It mentions that Ms. Loy's next film will be Another Thin Man. I'm always up for watching a Thin Man movie and I couldn't for the life of me find the "Movie of the Week," Zaza, starring Claudette Colbert and Herbert Marshall (anyone know if it even still exists?). So, I got Another Thin Man from Netflix and had a thoroughly good time. Sure, the plot is a bit convoluted, but William Powell and Myrna Loy are as charming as ever. Definitely recommended.

William Powell and Myrna Loy

You'll have to pardon me for not testing this week's Baker's Chocolate recipe myself. Paul's grandmother isn't doing well and we're going to visit her in the hospital today. I'm not sure what our plans will be for the next few days, so I didn't want any leftovers hanging around the house if I could help it.

However, the Delicious Chocolate Cottage Pudding does indeed sound delicious. If you try it out, please let me know!

Week-in-review

2012-01-08T00:00:00.000-06:00

Life This Week: January 2, 1939

Film: The Dawn Patrol, starring Errol Flynn, David Niven and Basil Rathbone
Recipe: Escalopes de porc à la normande (Pork chops and apples in a cream/brandy/cider sauce)

Feasts and Festivals: Twelfth Night/Epiphany

British Twelfth Night cake recipe
Sprouted whole wheat flour
No white sugar

Dinner and a Movie: The Three Musketeers

Dinner: Vincent Price's Filets de poisson cardinal (White fish roulades with shrimp in a tomato/brandy/vermouth sauce)
Movie: The Three Musketeers (1948) starring Gene Kelly, Lana Turner and Vincent Price

Anyone else counting down the hours until the premiere of season two of Downton Abbey? Paul and I can't wait! :-)

Dinner and a Movie: The Three Musketeers

2012-01-06T16:05:00.000-06:00

When I found this recipe in Vincent and Mary Price's A Treasury of Great Recipes, I knew it was destined for a write-up on the 1948 version of The Three Musketeers. What better accompaniment to Vincent Price's portrayal of Cardinal Richelieu than a dish of Filets de poisson cardinal? This recipe is a bit involved, but what else would one expect of a recipe from the famed Tour d'Argent? Just give yourself some time and be sure to read the entire recipe before you start. Bonne chance!

Filets de poisson cardinal

5 (4-ounce) white fish filets (sole, flounder, cod, pollock, etc.)
1 egg white
1 tablespoon heavy cream
salt
pepper
nutmeg
3 tablespoons brandy, divided
6 tablespoons dry vermouth
1 cup court bouillon (see recipe, below)
1 shallot, minced
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, minced
1/4 lb shrimp, cleaned, deveined, shells and tails removed
1/4 cup tomato purée
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon barley flour

Forcemeat
Mince one of the fish filets until it is reduced to a paste. Place in a bowl and beat in the egg white and heavy cream (just use a fork). Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Set aside.

Fish
Warm two plates on your lowest oven setting.

Place 1/4 of the forcemeat mixture on each of the four remaining filets. Roll up then place in a cheesecloth package to keep filling in. Set aside.

Add 2 tablespoons of the brandy, all the vermouth and court bouillon as well as the shallot and parsley to a lidded skillet along with a bit of salt and pepper. Place the fish packages and the shrimp into this liquid. Bring to a boil, cover the skillet, then turn heat down and poach for 10 minutes, or until fish and shrimp are just finished (check early).

Remove plates from oven and place fish (unwrap it) and shrimp on the warmed plates while you make the sauce.

Sauce
Add tomato purée and chicken stock to poaching liquid and bring to a boil until reduced by 1/2 to 3/4, depending on how thick you want the sauce. Turn heat down to medium and whisk in the final tablespoon of brandy.

In a separate bowl, stir together the butter and flour. Whisk this mixture into the sauce and keep whisking until sauce is smooth and thickened. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve over the fish and shrimp.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Filets de sole cardinal" in Mary and Vincent Price, A Treasury of Great Recipes (Ampersand Press, 1965), 70.

Court Bouillon

Fish/shellfish scraps (about enough to fill a gallon-size bag)
1 large onion, peeled
2 carrots, peeled
1 stalk celery
1 tablespoon sea salt
small handful whole peppercorns
2 sprigs parsley
2 bay leaves
3 quarts water
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 lemon

Add all ingredients except lemon to large stock pot. Halve the lemon, squeeze the juice into the pot and throw the squeezed-out lemon into the pot, as well.

Bring to a boil, then simmer rather rapidly 20 minutes. Strain.

Makes about 2 1/2 quarts

Adapted from "Court Bouillon" in Edda Meyer-Berkhout, Best of German Cooking (Tucson: HP Books, 1984), 64 and "Fish Stock" in Mary and Vincent Price, A Treasury of Great Recipes (Ampersand Press, 1965), 57.

Lana Turner as Lady de Winter, Vincent Price as Cardinal Richelieu and Gene Kelly as D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers (1948). Stills from Doctor Macro.

While more than a bit silly, I quite enjoyed the 1948 version of The Three Musketeers. Yes, June Allyson annoys the bejeezus out of me, but the rest of the cast works well. Lana Turner is stunning as Lady de Winter, Gene Kelly is likeable as D'Artagnan, Vincent Price is a natural as Cardinal Richelieu and Angela Lansbury makes a lovely Queen Anne. All in all, The Three Musketeers is a good way to spend a couple of hours. The technicolor is vivid, the costumes are great and it's just a lot of fun.

Angela Lansbury in publicity shots for The Three Musketeers (from TCM).

The Three Musketeers airs on TCM Wednesday, January 11th at 9:15 p.m. CST.

Submitted to:
Monday Mania
Fat Tuesday
Traditional Tuesdays
Real Food Wednesday
Simple Lives Thursday
Foodie Friday
Fight Back Friday

Feasts and Festivals: Twelfth Night/Epiphany

2012-01-05T07:10:00.000-06:00

Well, here it is: the end of the Christmas season. The three wise men have finally found baby Jesus, so we can all take down our trees now. Yes, I'm being a bit flippant. (Not that you're surprised!) It's funny how we end holiday festivities on January 1st and everyone goes back to work, but there are still four more days of Christmas left after the first of the year. Surely there's time for one more fruitcake?

I wouldn't call fruitcake a health food, but I've replaced the white flour and sugar in the original recipe with more nutritive options.

Twelfth Night Cake

1/4 lb unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup turbinado or rapadura sugar
1 tablespoon black treacle (or molasses)
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons brandy
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sprouted whole wheat flour
pinch cinnamon
pinch salt
1/2 cup Zante currants
1 cup raisins
1 cup golden raisins (sultanas)
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and line an 8"-round cake tin. Set aside.

Cream the butter, sugar and treacle then beat in the eggs and brandy. Mix in the flour, a bit at a time, along with the cinnamon and salt. Stir in the dried fruits and nuts. Spread batter into prepared tin and bake, in the middle of the oven, 1 hour, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool in the pan on a rack 15 minutes then turn out of the pan to cool completely.

Serves 8-10

Adapted from "Twelfth Night Cake" in Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, Cattern Cakes and Lace (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1987), 30.

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About ingredients:

Where possible, everything is organic.
I've suggested sprouted whole wheat flour so you can get all the nutrients of the wheat without the phytic acid that blocks mineral absorption, which is prominent in unsprouted whole wheat flour.
I use a finely-ground sea salt.
If you can't find Zante currants, just use more raisins. FYI, they're not always called "Zante," either, sometimes they're just "dried currants" or plain old "currants." The term "currant," when applied to the dried fruit, is a bastardization of raisins de Corinthe, which is the French term for them. They're actually dried grapes and not dried redcurrants or blackcurrants. Go figure!

Back in 2010, I made wassail and mincemeat tarts for Twelfth Night. I still haven't managed to get those twelve pipers...

Submitted to:
Simple Lives Thursday
Foodie Friday
Fight Back Friday
Monday Mania
Fat Tuesday
Traditional Tuesdays
Real Food Wednesday

Life This Week: January 2, 1939

2012-01-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

I have to admit that I'm very much looking forward to my Life This Week feature this year. Think of all the great movies I'll get to watch--1939 is often hailed as one of the best years (if not the best year) in filmmaking. Well, The Dawn Patrol isn't quite Gone with the Wind, but how could I resist after seeing this ad in the January 2nd issue of Life magazine? January 2, 1939, that is.

Looks exciting, right? I even convinced Paul to watch it with me because it's about, like, airplanes and stuff. I think he definitely enjoyed the movie more than I did. Not that I wasn't entertained, I just wasn't that interested in all the aerial warfare. I'm really not much on war movies in general, but this one's not bad and it makes up for it with lots of Errol Flynn and David Niven (along with Donald Crisp and Basil Rathbone).

If you couldn't tell from the poster, The Dawn Patrol is about the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. When the film begins, the commanding officer of the 59th squadron, Major Brand (Rathbone), is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He's losing several pilots every mission and the replacements HQ sends have less and less training. Plus, he has to attempt to reign in Captain Courtney (Flynn) and Lieutenant Scott (Niven). Not an enviable job!

Stills from TCM

Since the action of The Dawn Patrol takes place in France, I made a recipe that's originally from Normandy (although I found the recipe in The National Trust Farmhouse Cookbook). I just love apples and pork together! Since I don't plan out my vegetables in advance and I just buy what looks good, I served my escalopes with a rather un-French roasted sweet potato.

Escalopes de porc à la normande

2 (4 ounce) boneless pork chops, pounded to 1/4-inch "escalopes"
1 1/2 tablespoons barley flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon brandy
1/4 cup hard cider
1 apple, peeled, cored and sliced
2 tablespoons heavy cream
salt
pepper

Dredge the pork in the seasoned flour. Put the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the foam starts to subside, add the pork and cook two minutes per side, then remove to a warm plate.

Deglaze the skillet with the brandy and cider, then add the apple slices and boil until the volume of the liquid is quartered. Stir in the cream, then add the pork and any juices back to the pan and adjust seasoning.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Escalopes of Pork with Apples and Cider" in Laura Mason, The National Trust Farmhouse Cookbook (London: National Trust Books, 2009), 101.

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Submitted to:
Monday Mania
Fat Tuesday
Real Food Wednesday
Simple Lives Thursday
Foodie Friday
Fight Back Friday

Dinner and a Movie: Hollow Triumph

2011-12-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

Oh my. This stuff was so amazingly yummy. Chicken Pie with Yam Biscuits is another recipe from my 1940s Better Homes and Gardens. While it's baking, it will make your house smell like grandma's. I made a few changes, including making my own chicken-y white sauce instead of using canned cream of chicken soup (ick!). Prior to baking, filling can be refrigerated or frozen. Refrigerate or freeze yam biscuits separately. To cook from refrigerated, place the casserole in the oven while it comes up to temperature then cook as usual.

Chicken Pie with Yam Biscuits

1 cup cooked yam, mashed (about 1 large yam)
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 egg
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 carrots, cut in small dice
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup milk
2 cups cooked chicken
2 sprigs fresh parsley, leaves chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

To make the yam biscuits: Beat together the yam, melted butter and egg. Gradually mix in the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside and move on to filling.

In a medium saucpan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the carrots and onion and cook until onion is translucent.

Stir in the flour, salt and pepper and cook a couple of minutes, stirring. Remove pan from heat and stir in chicken stock and milk. Return to the hob and heat on medium until mixture boils, boil one minute, stirring constantly, then reduce heat to low and cook 10 minutes.

Stir in chicken and parsley and pour mixture into a casserole. Drop yam biscuits on top of the filling (I used an ice-cream scoop). Bake in the middle of the oven 35 to 40 minutes, or until biscuits are cooked through.

Serves 4

In case you've overdosed on holiday movies---

Hollow Triumph is a really fantastic film noir about a criminal (Henreid) who botches a robbery and has to go on the run. He discovers that he has a doppelgänger in a local psychoanalyst and plots to start a new life by becoming him, down to the analyst's facial scar.

As you're reading this, we're headed back to Wichita from an extended Oklahoma City visit. I'll be spending New Year's Eve Eve getting caught up on my blog reading and getting my hands on a bottle of champagne!

Photo sources:
Poster
Screen cap

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-25T08:00:00.000-06:00

Seasons Greetings from Paul and Lauren!

I hope all of you are enjoying whichever winter holiday you're celebrating. Thank you so much for your readership and your lovely comments over the past year. Here's to 2012!

Think Thin Man Thursday

2011-12-22T00:00:00.000-06:00

The Thin Man is one of my absolute favorite movies. It also happens to be a holiday movie, but thankfully, it's not sappy or sentimental. It's really just a fabulous, witty mystery that happens to be set during the holiday season. Guess what? It's on TCM tonight, followed by all five sequels. The first one is my favorite, but they're all watchable. I LOVE Nick and Nora Charles. They really know how to make marriage look like fun.

Image from Doctor Macro

So, to go with The Thin Man, I had a 1930s menu (straight out of my Modern Meal Maker) all lined up:

White and Green Casserole

Corn Pudding

French Bread

Lettuce with Grecian Dressing

Baked Apple Tapioca

Coffee, Tea or Milk

The only problem? The White and Green Casserole wasn't very nice and neither was the Corn Pudding. I ended up not even attempting the Baked Apple Tapioca! I was scared of what it might be like. However, the Grecian Dressing is very good, but we'd had it before. Overall, this menu is not recommended! The White and Green Casserole might be worth a revisit, because I think its failure is my fault for subbing collard greens for the spinach. It seemed like a good idea at the time... Anyway, the fish-in-cream-sauce bit was actually pretty tasty. The Corn Pudding, however, was made to spec and it will not get a retrial.

Grecian Dressing

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup lemon juice (or as close to it as you can get without using an extra 1/8 of a lemon or something ridiculous like that)
2 scallions, white and green parts, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon honey
1/4 teaspoon paprika

Put all ingredients in a mason jar and shake, shake, shake. Extras can be kept in the refrigerator.

Adapted from "Grecian Dressing for Lettuce" in Martha Meade, Modern Meal Maker (San Francisco: Sperry Flour Company, 1935), 367.

Life This Week: December 19, 1938

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-06:00

Eggnog

1 egg, separated
1 1/2 tablespoons turbinado or demerara sugar
1/3 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons bourbon whiskey
2 tablespoons brandy
nutmeg

You'll need two mixing bowls, one for the egg yolk and one for the egg white. In the bowl with the egg yolk, add the sugar and beat until yolk becomes thick and pale. Beat in the cream, milk, whiskey and brandy. Chill.

In the second mixing bowl, beat the egg white until firm peaks form. Fold the egg white into the chilled mixture in the other mixing bowl. Chill the entire concoction for a few hours.

To serve, divide between two punch cups and grate nutmeg over the top. Enjoy!

Serves 2, but can easily be doubled, tripled, etc.

Adapted from "Eggnog" in Letha Booth, The Williamsburg Cookbook (Williamsburg: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1975),162-163.

This is the first time I've ever made eggnog. It wasn't that difficult and the payoff is enormous. If I do say so myself, my eggnog is one of the yummiest things I've tasted. There will be eggnog every holiday season from now on!

I was inspired to have a go at eggnog-making, because of the ad below. Don't you just love the sideboard? And the wallpaper? It's fantastic!

Photo source

On page sixty of this issue, Life writes, "Joan Bennett, blonde screen star, makes her debut as a brunette, Jan. 5, in the new film Trade Winds." She never looked back!

I got the chance to see Trade Winds earlier this year when it was on TCM. I like Joan Bennett and Fredric March, so I was definitely going to watch it! Fredric March plays a private detective who sails halfway around the world to track down a murder suspect, played by Joan Bennett. It's pretty entertaining, if a bit contrived.

Week-in-review

2011-12-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

Cary Grant portrait from Doctor Macro

Dinner and Movies: Cary Grant Double Feature

2011-12-16T00:00:00.000-06:00

Images from Doctor Macro

Who doesn't love watching movies starring Cary Grant? I've picked two in which his characters are charming wastrels. In Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, Johnnie marries wealthy and quiet Lina (Joan Fontaine) and promptly starts burning through all her money. Then, Johnnie's friend ends up dead and Lina worries that she might be the next victim.

If that's all a bit serious, The Philadelphia Story will lighten things up considerably. It's Cary Grant's fourth (and final) pairing with Katharine Hepburn and it's one of the best movies ever. If you haven't seen it, you need to run out and get it right away. In The Philadelphia Story, C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) sells a tabloid editor access to his ex-wife's wedding (the ex-wife is Tracy Lord, played by Hepburn). "Dext" might be a worthless drunk, but he's a heck of a lot more charming than Tracy's straight-laced fiancé. James Stewart and Ruth Hussey are the down-on-their-luck writer and photographer assigned to cover Tracy's marriage. Roland Young and Virginia Weidler add to the fun.

The Philadelphia Story will be on TCM Saturday night at 9:00 and Suspicion will be on Monday at 5:00 p.m. Both films are available on DVD.

Images from Doctor Macro

Since The Philadelphia Story came out in 1940 and Suspicion came out in 1941, I thought I would make a dish from my 1940s Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. Mrs. E.W. Brockman, Jr., of Chapel Hill, North Carolina contributed her recipe for Spanish Chicken. We'll assume Mr. E.W. Brockman, Jr., didn't worry too much about indigestion. Or maybe he did, poor man! Alas, I'll never know. Yes, I did attempt an internet stalking, but didn't have much luck.

So--1940s Spanish Chicken is an American housewife's approximation of paella. It's got rice. It's got onion, garlic and green bell pepper. The original recipe also calls for jarred pimiento, since red bell peppers weren't as readily available in American supermarkets as they are today (my dad said so). You could use a fresh red bell pepper, a jar of pimientos, or even roasted red bell pepper. I've used saffron and paprika along with the originally-called-for chili powder. The source recipe calls for turmeric, which is often used as a saffron replacement. I actually had a jar of Spanish saffron in the cabinet, so that's what I've used. You can't tell from the photograph in Better Homes and Gardens (below, left), but since this is baked without a lid, the top of the rice gets crunchy like upside-down paella. My resident Spaniard says the crunchy bits are the best part, but if you don't fancy crunchy rice, I believe you could solve that problem by putting a lid on the pan while it bakes.

I thought Spanish Chicken was pretty tasty. The leftovers are easy to heat up, too. I just wrapped everything in a tin-foil packet and heated at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour.

Spanish Chicken

1 1/2 cups chicken stock, lightly salted if using homemade
saffron, a few strands
2 tablespoons lard*
1 chicken, jointed*
All-purpose flour, seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika and chili powder
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, ribs removed and diced
1 red bell pepper, ribs removed and diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup rice, uncooked
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 dash chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the chicken stock in a small saucepan and add the saffron. Bring up to a boil then turn heat down to low and put on the lid to keep stock warm.

Melt lard in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Dredge chicken joints in seasoned flour and fry in lard until browned. You don't need to cook them all the way through. Remove to a plate. Sauté the onion and bell peppers in lard until softened. Turn down the heat, if necessary, to keep vegetables from burning. Add minced garlic and sauté one minute.

Lower heat, stir in rice and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Pour in warm stock and add paprika, chili powder, salt and pepper. Turn heat to high and bring to a boil. Place chicken pieces on top and move to oven. Bake between 75 and 90 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through and the rice has absorbed all the liquid and browned on top.

Serves 4

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*The original recipe called for a 2 to 2 1/2 lb chicken. Four pounds is standard today, so you have two options a) make this with half a chicken, b) cook all the chicken and reserve half for recipes calling for cooked chicken. (I went with "b.")

I use lard that hasn't been hydrogenated. If you can't find it locally, Chef Shop ships. I couldn't even get lard from pig farmers, so I had to order it. The way meat processing is set up can be really stupid.

Think Thin Thursday: Chicken Divan

2011-12-15T00:00:00.000-06:00

1957 photo

It's that time again--another recipe from The Slenderella Cook Book (1957). It's really not much of a recipe. Basically you boil some broccoli and put that in a casserole with leftover chicken and pour cheesy sauce on top of it. Then you stick it in the oven for ten minutes. It's not wow! spectacular!, but it's tasty enough and a great way to use up leftover chicken (and work in some veggies at the same time).

Chicken Divan

2 heads broccoli, cut into forkable pieces
2 teaspoons cornstarch (GMO-free)
2/3 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons parmesan or pecorino cheese, grated
salt
pepper
shredded chicken, either a breast or a thigh and drumstick of a 4-ish-pound chicken

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Steam broccoli for 5 minutes. While you're waiting for that, make a slurry with the cornstarch and a bit of the chicken stock. Add to a small saucepan along with the rest of the chicken stock and heat on medium, whisking until the mixture boils, then boil 5 minutes, still whisking. Remove sauce from the heat and stir in milk and cheese and season with salt and pepper.

Place the broccoli in the bottom of a shallow casserole and pour half the sauce over it. Place the chicken on top of the broccoli and cover with the rest of the sauce. Grind a bit more salt and pepper over the top of the casserole. Bake 12 minutes, or until starting to brown.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Chicken Divan" in Myra Waldo, The Slenderella Cook Book (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1957), 117.

I went with "Parmesan Yam" instead of "Parmesan Sweet Potato" because of the assonance with all the short a sounds: divan, parmesan, yam. I am a nerd.

Parmesan Yam

1 large yam washed and halved
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
salt
pepper
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese, grated (you could also use pecorino-romano)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Brush the cut halves of the yam with the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper then place cut side down on a baking sheet and bake 30 minutes, or until easily pierced by a sharp knife.

Turn the yams over and grate the parmesan on top of them. Bake another 15 minutes.

Serves 2

Black and White Wednesday: Lauren's Pale Hot Cocoa

2011-12-14T00:00:00.000-06:00

I like chocolate, but I'm far from being a chocoholic. I like a pale, rather insipid, cup of hot cocoa. I mean insipid in the best way possible--comforting but not assertive. It's unashamed nursery food. The most exotic, gourmet hot cocoa blend never charms me quite the way this pale cocoa in its transferware cup and saucer does.

Lauren's Pale Hot Cocoa

1 cup whole milk
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder
sprinkle of vanilla powder or dash of vanilla extract

In a small saucepan, heat the milk over medium heat, whisking in the sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla. Continue whisking until milk starts steaming heartily, but doesn't quite start to bubble. (You want it steaming enough to be hot, but not so hot it forms that nasty skin.) Pour into a mug or cup and saucer and enjoy immediately.

Susan at The Well-Seasoned Cook hosts Black and White Wednesday.

*****

I made this cocoa to go with a viewing of Cracks. With write-ups at both Small Earth Vintage and Leopard and Lipstick, how could I resist? Go check out their screen caps.

The film is gorgeously filmed and costumed. Eeriness seeps through even on sunny days. I really loved the cinematography, art direction and costume design. OK, so it's not the best movie ever(!!!), but I found it quite entertaining (it's like a darker The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). Plus, I really like Eva Green in bad-gal roles. I watched the first couple episodes of Camelot, which was embarrassingly bad, but I loved her as Morgan and James Purfoy as Lot of Lothian. Unlike Camelot, I felt that Cracks was well worth the time I put into it!

The Cure for the Common Cold, Snow Days or any Wintery Malaise

2011-12-12T00:00:00.000-06:00

First thing you'll need are some fabulous pajamas. I have the Brooks Brothers cotton ones already and I love them. (You can click each image for more information.)Leather ballet slippers are my house slipper of choice. I usually buy them a size up from the size I wore for ballet class so I have room to wear socks.

Next up, you'll need a hot toddy. I always start out with these and then things devolve into Scotch with near-boiling water because I don't want to bother with the lemon and the honey when I'm sick!

Hot Toddy

large mug
1 jigger whisky (I like Johnnie Walker, Paul likes Maker's Mark)
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon honey (local and raw is best)
boiling water to top it off

The third (and probably most important) aspect is entertainment. Personally, I like to get in bed and watch all of the George Sanders The Saint movies. Mine are recorded onto a VHS tape from TCM, but those nice people at Warner Brothers have recently put them on DVD (feels like they did it just for me, doesn't it?). Honestly, I couldn't give you a rundown of the plot of any of these films. Every time I watch them I've probably only eaten digestive biscuits, washed down with hot toddies. I do, however, thoroughly enjoy each and every movie.

These help too:

Mulaga-Tawny with sriracha
My trusty Neti pot (gross, but totally effective)
Ice cream
Suffering with exquisite dignity like Camille (as played by Greta Garbo, of course)

The Saint image sources: The Saint in London poster, The Saint in Palm Springs poster, The Saint Strikes Back poster, George Sanders portrait

Week-in-Review

2011-12-11T00:00:00.000-06:00

First some housekeeping: You may have noticed I now have a custom domain name. It was an anniversary present to myself. I've included a link to follow the new domain on bloglovin'. Google Friend Connect should still work since I bought my domain from google. Also, if you follow through e-mail, you may need to sign up again. Sorry for the inconvenience! And thank you for being the best readers in the blog-o-sphere.

This week on The Past on a Plate:

Dinner and a Movie: White Christmas, Visions of Sugarplums, and Exciting News

2011-12-09T00:00:00.000-06:00

I love picking up old magazines at estate sales or antique stores. This December 1956 issue of McCall's is chock-full of great recipes, including Huntburgers and Polka Dot Pudding, which went perfectly with a viewing of White Christmas (1954). A couple of notes: next time, I'd use homemade marinara sauce in the Huntburgers, so that's what I've listed in the recipe. Secondly, the marshmallow ad has obviously used torched marshmallows, rather than the browned-in-the-oven variety (see my photo). Paul's hoping I'll make this again and let him take his propane torch to the unsuspecting confections.

Huntburgers

2 hamburger buns (unsplit, preferably)
1/3 lb ground beef
1/4 onion, grated
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons marinara sauce

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Hollow out buns, leaving 1/2" all the way around and on the bottom. Crumble the removed bread into a mixing bowl and add the beef, onion, salt, pepper and 1/4 cup marinara. Mix together then form into two large meatballs and place in the hollowed-out buns. Place Huntburgers on a baking sheet and bake 20 minutes, top with remaining sauce and bake another 5 minutes.

Serves 2

Adapted from Hunt's ad in December 1956 issue of McCall's.

Polka Dot Pudding

2 large sweet potatoes
1/4 cup unsalted butter
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup miniature marshmallows

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Peel the sweet potatoes, cut into cubes and boil until tender. Mash them well and measure out 2 cups (if you have much more than that, reserve it for another recipe). Add butter and salt and combine. (I used my hand mixer for all of this.) Transfer to a greased casserole or baking dish (an 8" round Pyrex cake pan in my case) and bake 15 minutes. Sprinkle marshmallows over the top and bake another 10 minutes, or until marshmallows are browned.

Serves 4

Adapted from Kraft Miniature Marshmallows ad in December 1956 issue of McCall's.

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Photo sources clockwise from top left: Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3, Photo 4

OK, so White Christmas is a pretty ridiculous movie. It does, however, have fabulous costumes and the ability to make me want to spend Christmas in Vermont. When I first saw White Christmas, I was twelve or thirteen and in Show Choir. My friend Grace and I went around for weeks doing the "Sisters" number! It's practically an old friend, which makes it the perfect movie for cold and gloomy weather. If I were pretentious about movies, I would decry White Christmas as overly-sentimental drivel. However, all of you know I don't watch very many "serious" movies.

Be sure to check out today's posts from:

Christina at I Gotta Create!
Jennifer at Just Wedeminute
Lori at Choux-choux
Mika at Mika's Pantry

Some very exciting news: my Sachertorte recipe was published in Ruche's A Homemade Holiday. It's actually been up since last month, but I didn't find my acceptance letter until yesterday because either I accidentally deleted it or it was classified as spam. Probably a good idea to remember when newsletters say "please add us to your safe list" to do so. Anyway...

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Beef and Mushroom Cobbler

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

For the past few days, we've had very cold weather and we even woke up to snow Tuesday morning! It's definitely time to get out some hearty, warming recipes. I love mushrooms and I love dumplings, so I love this recipe!

Since there are only two of us, I make an entire recipe of the filling and put half in the fridge. When I cook it, I just add the topping and bake as usual. I had homemade chicken stock, so that's what I used. Feel free to use beef stock if you have it.

Beef and Mushroom Cobbler

Filling:
2/3 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
salt
pepper
1 lb crimini mushrooms, halved
1 tablespoon thyme leaves
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
dash of Worcestershire sauce
2 cups chicken stock

Topping:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard, softened (or other fat)
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon thyme leaves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place a 1-quart capacity au gratin dish or other casserole on a baking sheet and set aside.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, sauté the beef and onion until the beef is no longer pink. Stir frequently to prevent sticking. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir in the mushrooms, thyme and 2 tablespoons flour. When the flour is all stirred in, add the Worcestershire sauce and deglaze the pan with the chicken stock, bring mixture to a boil, then simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, make the dumpling topping by putting the 2/3 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a mixing bowl and rub in the lard. Stir in the milk and thyme. Set aside.

When the filling has simmered 10 minutes, transfer it to the au gratin dish and top with rounded tablespoonfuls of topping. Bake in the middle of the oven about 25 minutes, or until dumplings are cooked through.

Serves 4

Adapted from "Minced Beef Cobbler" at BBC Good Food.

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For posterity, I snapped a photo of my chipped tooth just before we left for the dentist. Turns out, the doctor was more concerned about Paul's tooth--one of his front teeth has a teeny fissure where we made contact and he has to go back next week to make sure it'll be all right. No Sugar Daddies for him any time soon (none for me, either)! The dentist just wants to make sure Paul's tooth will heal on its own and that there's no nerve damage. I'm all fixed up and the only difference I can see is that my left front tooth is no longer longer than my right front tooth!

Two Robins and Nottingham Pudding

2011-12-06T08:00:00.000-06:00

I'm a huge fan of the 1938 film, The Adventures of Robin Hood, so I thought it was time to finally sit down and watch the silent, Douglas Fairbanks version. Robin Hood (1922) also stars Wallace Beery as King Richard and Alan Hale as Little John (the same part he played in The Adventures of Robin Hood). While the '38 version is suitably Olde England, it's much more streamlined than the '22 version, which shows a marked pre-Raphaelite influence. Practically everyone (except Douglas Fairbanks) turns out in a William Morris print at one time or another. It's amazing how the preferred style of representing the Middle Ages changed in the sixteen years between 1922 and 1938.

I was also surprised at how different the stories of the two films are. I expected the 1938 version to follow the plot of the earlier version. Not so! During the first half of Robin Hood, Douglas Fairbanks is still a nobleman and Prince John has yet to claim power over England. The meeting of Robin and Marian, the grudge with Guy of Gisbourne, and Robin's loss of his lands are all presented in a different manner.

Even though I'm a big fan of Wallace Beery, I still like The Adventures of Robin Hood best. Robin Hood was a bit slow at times. It's great for a silent film, but it's more interesting for who's in it and its style than for the actual plot. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is a great watch-it-with-the-kids movie for the holidays or for snow days; children who are excellent readers and have long attention spans and are interested in England, the Middle Ages or the 1920s would probably enjoy Robin Hood (1922), but I wouldn't count on it to entertain a large group.

I love Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland!

*****

Since I obviously can't get enough of Nottingham...I made a Nottingham Pudding (just like I said I would!). It's basically spiced apples in Yorkshire pudding batter.

Nottingham Pudding

Batter:
1/2 cup flour
salt
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water

Spiced apples:

2 Granny Smith apples
1/2 lemon, zest only
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon walnut oil

Serves 2

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl, add a pinch of salt and whisk in the egg yolk. Add the milk and water and whisk like crazy until all the lumps are out of the batter. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Peel, core and thinly slice the apples and place the slices in a casserole or au gratin dish. Grate the lemon zest over the apple slices then add the mixed spice, brown sugar and walnut oil. Stir to combine.

Place the casserole in the middle of the oven and set oven to 400˚ Fahrenheit. When the oven comes up to temperature, take the casserole out, give the apple mixture a stir and pour the batter over the hot apple mixture. Return casserole to oven and bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until batter is golden brown and cooked through. Serve warm.

Adapted from a recipe in the Coventry Telegraph.

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The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) images from Doctor Macro. My screen caps from Robin Hood (1922).
Both films are available on DVD. The Adventures of Robin Hood airs on TCM Sunday, February 5, at 11:45 a.m. CST.

*****

Horror of horrors. I chipped my front tooth late last night. It's the second time in my life this has happened. Only difference? Last time it was a baby tooth. It's a good thing I don't have a job to go to, because I am mortified. Plus, we just changed insurance and I don't have a dentist yet. Fingers crossed that I can get an appointment quickly! I just can't believe it.

Update 12/6/11 8:37 a.m.- I just got an appointment for 11 a.m. today! I'm so relieved. Evidently, the dentist office had a few cancellations due to the snow. Every cloud has a silver lining?

Life This Week: December 5, 1938 and Visions of Sugarplums

2011-12-05T00:00:00.000-06:00

My regular readers (hi, guys!) know all about "Life This Week," but if you're visiting from Visions of Sugarplums (more about that later), first, welcome to my blog. Second, "Life This Week" has been a regular Monday feature on The Past on a Plate for most of this year. I post when the issue for the corresponding week in 1938 has an interesting movie reviewed in it or features an interesting recipe, sometimes both! You can visit this week's issue by clicking the graphic above.

Chocolate Kriss Kringle Cookies

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour ( plus extra for rolling)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
sprinkles, to decorate

Cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the eggs one at a time. Stir in the melted chocolate.

Add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the baking powder, soda, salt and cinnamon with the first 1/2 cup of flour.

Wrap the dough in waxed paper or plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Roll out the dough (you'll probably need to roll it out in batches, say 1/3 at a time) on a floured surface to 1/8" thickness and cut out with cookie cutters. Decorate with sprinkles.

Bake 5 to 8 minutes on a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking sheet or parchment. When the cookies just start to brown around the edges, they're ready. Let them cool on a wire rack.

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Adapted from a Baker's Chocolate ad from 1938.

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See? I let "hubby" help. He doesn't like being called that, though. He prefers "Paul." One note: the original recipe doesn't specify when to apply the sprinkles. I thought the cookies would be warm enough when they got out of the oven for the sprinkles to stick. Not really. So--I've instructed you to put the sprinkles on before baking in the instructions.

I know it's not Christmas-y, but Paul and I listened to Glenn Miller while enjoying our Kriss Kringle Cookies. I've got a former jazz trombone player in my house, so he's always "In the Mood" for Glenn Miller! Here are some of our favorites (at least the ones I was able to find on Grooveshark).

Glenn Miller by Lauren Hairston on Grooveshark

*****

For more info, click on the graphic, above. Be sure to check out today's bloggers:

My mom, Lori Hairston

Mika at Mika's Pantry

Jennifer at Just Wedeminute

Week-in-review and Screen-free Sundays

2011-12-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

This week's posts:

Last Sunday was our first "Screen-free Sunday," meaning we went without both the television and the computer. We both spend most of the other six days on the computer, so we need a day where we can't be computer/DVD zombies. The Sunday New York Times took up the entire morning, but Paul got restless and started scouring the drip pans for our stove. I kept trying to tell him that we were supposed to be relaxing, but he said that's what he was doing! I spent the day working on finishing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, so I can record the film version Monday night on TCM, and playing solitaire with actual playing cards. In the evening, we ventured out and bought an obscene amount of imported cookies from World Market.

So--as you're reading this, we're in the middle of another Screen-free Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes!

Dinner and a Movie: David Copperfield

2011-12-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

To go with David Copperfield, I've made Mulaga-Tawny Soup from the "19th Century England" chapter of Esther B. Aresty's The Delectable Past. It's a very flavorful, a bit spicy and very simple to make. You can even make it several days in advance and reheat, which makes it nice and easy to use up the leftovers! I've served it with buttered and salted white rice, as suggested, and the Green Beans in Tomato Sauce from yesterday.

Mulaga-Tawny Soup
(I'm using Dr. Kitchiner's 1817 spelling.)

1 chicken
1 onion
4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
2 teaspoons gingerroot, grated
1 lemon, zest only
1 bay leaf
1 red chili pepper, halved
1 tablespoon peppercorns
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
sea salt, to taste

Place all of the ingredients in a large stock pot and add enough water to cover the chicken by at least 2 inches. I used 5 quarts for my (I believe) 12-quart stock pot. Bring water to a boil then turn down heat and simmer, partially covered, for 1 hour 20 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Shred chicken and divide between bowls. Strain stock over the chicken.

Serves 8

Adapted from "Mulaga-Tawny Soup" in Dr. William Kitchiner, The Cook's Oracle (1817) qtd in Esther B. Aresty, The Delectable Past (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), 165 and "Mulligatawny Stew" in ibid., 166.

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David Copperfield is my favorite Charles Dickens novel. I do really really like Bleak House and Great Expectations, but I love David Copperfield. There's no substitute for actually reading it, but the 1935 film version is a fun way to revisit some of my favorite Dickens characters, as portrayed by some of my favorite actors:

Enda May Oliver (Aunt Betsey)
Basil Rathbone (Mr. Murdstone)
Una O'Connor (Mrs. Gummidge)
Lionel Barrymore (Dan Peggotty)
W. C. Fields (Micawber)
Roland Young (Uriah Heep)
Lewis Stone (Mr. Wickfield)
Maureen O'Sullivan (Dora)

David Copperfield will be on TCM Monday night at 10:15 CST. It appears as though the DVD is out of print except in a boxed set. The individual DVD is available from Netflix and it looks like the Amazon marketplace has a few copies. I hate when DVDs are out of print!

All David Copperfield images are from Doctor Macro.

Think Thin Thursday: Veal Hungarian

2011-12-01T08:00:00.000-06:00

More pretty clothes from the same year as our cookbook!

This week's menu is only 531 calories (according to the calculations at food.com), but it's sure got a lot of flavor! The veal is moist and juicy and the vegetables that are cooked with it are tender and yummy (cabbage, mushrooms, onions, red bell pepper). The acorn squash is the same recipe as the last Think Thin Thursday and the Green Beans in Tomato Sauce are a nice change from my usual steamed green beans with lemon and butter.

Veal Hungarian

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, seeds and ribs removed, diced
4 (1/4 lb) veal chops, around 1-inch thick
1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cabbage, cored and shredded
salt
pepper
3/4 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup dry vermouth

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt the butter in a large skillet (one that has a lid, you'll need it later) over medium-high heat. When the foam just begins to subside, add the onion and red bell pepper. Sauté for a few minutes then push to the edges of the pan and add the veal chops (seasoned) to the middle of the skillet and cook 4 minutes per side.

Remove the veal chops to a plate, stir the onion and red pepper around then add the mushrooms and cabbage. Stir together and season with salt and pepper. Pour over the tomato sauce and vermouth and stir to combine. Return the veal chops to the skillet, cover, and place skillet in bottom 1/3 of preheated oven. Bake 15 minutes, stirring halfway through. Be sure to wear an oven mitt!

After 15 minutes, remove the veal chops to heated plates and put the vegetables back on the stove, over high heat, to reduce the sauce. When sauce is very well-reduced (after about 5 to 10 minutes), serve alongside the veal chops.

Serves 4*

Adapted from "Stuffed Breast of Veal" in Myra Waldo, The Slenderella Cook Book (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1957), 148 and "Côtes de veau aux herbes" in Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 369-371.

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Green Beans in Tomato Sauce

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 (28 ounce) can chopped tomatoes
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1 bay leaf
3 lbs green beans, topped and tailed

Serves 8

For the tomato sauce, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the onion and sauté for 5 minutes, being sure to not let the onions brown (turn down heat if necessary). Add garlic and sauté another minute then stir in the tomatoes, salt, pepper, oregano and bay leaf. Bring sauce to a boil then turn down to a simmer and cook 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally and adjusting heat if necessary. You can do this up to several days before you make the green beans. Discard bay leaf.

To cook the green beans, bring the sauce up to a boil over high heat in a large saucepan or stock pot, add the green beans and cover, cooking 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep sauce from sticking to the bottom of the pot. If you need to fix this for less than eight people, make all the tomato sauce and store in individual containers then cook with green beans, as needed.

Adapted from "Green Beans in Tomato Sauce" in Myra Waldo, The Slenderella Cook Book (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1957), 166.

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Brown Sugar and Ginger Baked Acorn Squash

Click here for recipe!

*I made just two veal chops, but all the vegetables. I'm saving them to put over egg noodles.

Feasts and Festivals: St. Andrew's Day

2011-11-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

St. Andrew's Day is celebrated in Scotland as that country's National Day (the same idea as Bastille Day or Independence Day, but much more low-key), since St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland. According to legend, a supernatural force brought his relics from Constantinople to Scotland, specifically to the town that is now St Andrews. Don't ask me how they are supposed to have arrived. Teleportation, maybe. It's also commonly believed that the relics were probably brought to Fife by a monk who then built a church at the behest of an angel. I still like my teleportation theory. According to legend, St. Andrew helped a ninth century Pictish king in battle and was thus especially venerated by the Picts. St. Andrew's saltire eventually became the flag of Scotland. St. Andrew is also the patron saint of several other countries, as well as the patron saint of fishermen...and golfers.*

In keeping with the fisherman theme, I decided to make a smoked trout omelette along with some spicy cabbage, both adapted from Scottish Traditional Recipes. There's something really satisfying about a good omelette and this is a good omelette. It's a variation on Omelette Arnold Bennett, created for the author by the Savoy Hotel. Instead of smoked haddock, which I can't find anywhere in Wichita, I've used smoked trout. The last time I used smoked trout it was from Idaho, but Dillon's has stopped carrying it and so I had to use canned smoked trout imported from Germany. It worked well, but if you have to use a canned smoked trout, be sure to wash off all the oil.

I was really happy with the cabbage, as well. It's a bit spicy since it's got chili pepper and fresh ginger in it, but it's also nice and gooey from the combination of walnut oil and leek. I just happened to have one lonely leek chilling out in my crisper drawer--you could use a shallot or even a bit of onion.

Smoked Trout and Cheese Omelette

3 ounces smoked trout fillets
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1/4 cup milk
4 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon heavy cream
pepper
1 1/2 ounces cheddar cheese, grated ( about 1/3 cup)
salt, if needed

Rinse the smoked trout and remove any skin or bones. (If your smoked trout isn't "ready to eat," you'll need to poach it before you do any of this.) Flake the trout and set aside.

In a small saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of the butter and the 1/4 cup milk over medium heat. When the milk starts to steam, add the fish, stirring occasionally. When the mixture comes up to a boil, remove the saucepan from the heat, cover and set aside for 20 minutes.

Preheat broiler. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and set aside. Beat the heavy cream into the egg yolks and season with pepper. Add the fish/milk mixture and stir together. Fold in the egg whites.

In an omelette pan over medium heat, melt the remaining tablespoon of butter. When the butter is bubbly, pour in the omelette mixture and cook (without stirring or flipping) until underside is golden brown. Remove pan from the heat, sprinkle cheddar over the top of the omelette and place pan under the broiler. Broil until cheese is browned.

Serves 2

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Spicy Cabbage

1/2 tablespoon walnut oil
1/2 teaspoon gingerroot, grated
1 garlic clove, minced
1 leek, white part only, finely sliced
1 red chili pepper, seeds and ribs removed, julienned
1/2 medium cabbage, cored and shredded
salt
pepper

In a large skillet (one with a lid), heat the walnut oil over medium heat. Stir in the ginger and garlic and keep stirring. When oil starts sizzling, add the leek and chili pepper and sauté until leek is softened.

Stir in the shredded cabbage, cover skillet and cook around 6 minutes or until cabbage is softened but still a bit crisp, stirring halfway through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serves 2

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*"St. Andrew" from Wikipedia and "St. Andrew's Day" in Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, Cattern Cakes and Lace: A Calendar of Feasts (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1987), 10.

December Movies and Visions of Sugarplums Event

2011-11-27T08:00:00.000-06:00

December 2011 Film Recommendations

Jewel Robbery (Th 12/1 7:00 p.m.) Such fun! William Powell is a dashing jewel thief in this pre-code comedy.
Mogambo (Sa 12/3 2:30 p.m.) Paul and I spent a lazy, rainy Sunday morning watching this remake of Red Dust; great on-location filming
While the City Sleeps (Sa 12/3 11:00 p.m.) George Sanders + Vincent Price + Ida Lupino + Dana Andrews = a movie I will watch every time it's on TCM
Alias Jesse James (Su 12/4 1:00 a.m.) Silly Bob Hope vehicle where he's mistaken for Jesse James; the shoot-out scene at the end is worth the wait
Top Hat (Su 12/4 11:00 a.m.) Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dance around the Lido in "Venice"--a childhood (and adulthood) favorite
Libeled Lady (Su 12/4 1:00 p.m. and F 12/30 3:30 a.m.) William Powell/Myrna Loy pairing, Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow co-star; newspapermen try to avoid a libel lawsuit
David Copperfield (M 12/5 10:15 p.m.) excellent, albeit abridged, adaptation of Dickens novel; fabulous cast includes Lionel Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, Roland Young, W.C. Fields; Edna Mae Oliver steals the show as Aunty Betsey; a must-see
A Tale of Two Cities (Tu 12/6 12:30 a.m.) Ronald Colman is wonderful as Sydney Carton; bring a hankie
You Can't Take It With You (W 12/7 7:45 a.m.)
North by Northwest (Th 12/8 11:45 a.m.)
My Man Godfrey (Th 12/8 10:30 p.m.) After discovering William Powell while searching for a bum on a scavenger hunt, Carole Lombard hires him as her butler
Road to Utopia (Su 12/11 11:00 a.m.) Bing Crosby and Bob Hope team up, this time for the Alaskan gold rush; naturally costars Dorothy Lamour
Pygmalion (Tu 12/13 3:15 a.m.) better than My Fair Lady, even without the Cecil Beaton costumes, Rex Harrison and Jeremy Brett
The Three Musketeers (Tu 12/13 10:45 a.m.) This is the 1948 version with Gene Kelly, Lana Turner and Vincent Price. It's ridiculous but I actually really enjoyed it.
Witness for the Prosecution (Th 12/15 1:15 p.m. and Tu 12/27 3:00 p.m.) Based on an Agatha Christie play; Charles Laughton defends Tyrone Power in a murder case, Marlene Dietrich costars as Power's wife
Life with Father (Th 12/15 7:00 p.m.) One of the most enjoyable films ever made; William Powell and Irene Dunne raise a family in turn-of-the-century New York; get the family together, pop some popcorn and be prepared to thoroughly enjoy this movie
The Shop Around the Corner (Fr 12/16 11:00 p.m. and Su 12/18 9:00 a.m.) this sweet romantic comedy tells the story of coworkers who can't stand each other in person, but are falling in love as pen pals
Bringing Up Baby (Sa 12/17 7:00 p.m.)
The Philadelphia Story (Sa 12/17 9:00 p.m.) one of my most favorite films: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart and one of the best child actors ever, Virginia Weidler
Sylvia Scarlett (Su 12/18 1:00 a.m.) Katharine Hepburn disguises herself as a boy so she and her father can evade the French police and escape to England, where they meet up with con artist Cary Grant
Victor/Victoria (Su 12/18 2:45 a.m.) James Garner falls for female female-impersonator Julie Andrews

Little Women (Su 12/18 5:00 a.m.) Katharine Hepburn is the best-ever Jo March. End of discussion.
The Man Who Came to Dinner (Su 12/18 9:00 p.m. and F 12/23 3:00 p.m.) Not your typical holiday movie--a bitchy radio personality takes over his hosts' home when he slips and falls and has to stay over
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (M 12/19 1:00 p.m.) In this charming film, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy discover that building a house isn't as easy as they think
Topper (M 12/19 3:00 p.m.) Ghosts Cary Grant and Constance Bennett decide to shake up Roland Young's staid existence
Suspicion (M 12/19 5:00 p.m.) Wallflower Joan Fontaine marries bounder Cary Grant against her parents' wishes; is he a murderer, too?
Ball of Fire (W 12/21 9:00 p.m.) a houseful of professors take in nightclub singer Barbara Stanwyck
Born Yesterday (W 12/21 11:00 p.m.) William Holden is a newspaperman hired to tutor Judy Holliday, who turns out to be not a stupid as everyone thinks!
A Face in the Crowd (Th 12/22 1:00 a.m.) You MUST see this film. It is one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen. Andy Griffith plays against type to perfection and Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau are magnificent; Elia Kazan was a genius.
Strangers on a Train (Th 12/22 10:15 a.m.) Super-creepy Robert Walker traps Farley Granger in a murder plot. Not to be missed.
The Thin Man (Th 12/22 7:00 p.m.) followed by several sequels
Auntie Mame (Sa 12/24 11:00 p.m.) Rosalind Russell goes around being absolutely fabulous; who wouldn't want an Auntie Mame?!
The Scarlet Pimpernel (M 12/26 9:30 a.m.) So my favorite Pimpernel is the 1982 Anthony Andrews/Jane Seymour one, but Leslie Howard does a fantastic job in this version (if you can stand Merle Oberon as Lady Blakeney)
The Thief of Bagdad (M 12/26 1:15 p.m.) great technicolor adventure, definitely an inspiration for Aladdin
The Drum (M 12/26 3:15 p.m.)
Casablanca (Tu 12/27 11:15 a.m.) You've probably already seen it, but if you haven't, what are you waiting for?
Touch of Evil (Tu 12/27 5:00 p.m.) Director's cut of Orson Welles's noir masterpiece
Love Crazy (Th 12/29 10:15 p.m.) William Powell/Myrna Loy romantic comedy; not one of their best films together, but worth the watch
I Love You Again (F 12/30 12:00 a.m.) William Powell's character gets amnesia and he can only remember his former con-artist self, not his current upstanding, teetotaling persona; what will wife Myrna Loy think?
Manhattan Melodrama (F 12/30 1:45 a.m.) William Powell must prosecute childhood friend Clark Gable for murder--the fact that Gable's ex-girlfriend (Myrna Loy) is now married to Powell doesn't make things any easier
Evelyn Prentice (F 12/30 5:15 a.m.) Marital problems lead to blackmail and murder; third Powell/Loy pairing
Trouble in Paradise (F 12/30 2:30 p.m.)

(all times are CST, all films air on TCM)

Jewel Robbery lobby card, Little Women lobby card, Trouble in Paradise publicity photo

Coming soon:

I'll be participating Monday, December 5th and Friday, December 9th in Visions of Sugarplums--a Christmassy blog event dreamed up by my super-creative mom. There are also several giveaways, so be sure to check it out.

From My Collection: Haddon Hall Gingerbread

2011-11-18T15:37:00.000-06:00

I'm amassing quite the collection of vintage magazines and cookbooks! The November 1933 issue of Better Homes and Gardens has an ad on the back page for Gold Medal Flour that features Haddon Hall Gingerbread (see illustration below). Unfortunately, there was no recipe provided because housewives were supposed to send off for the recipe booklet! Too bad I'm only seventy-eight years too late...

So, I cobbled together my own version from recipes in All About Home Baking and the Joy of Cooking. If I say so myself, it was very tasty (I think the lemon sauce was my favorite part.) If you double the gingerbread and the frosting recipes, you can have a filled and iced cake like in the original illustration.

Haddon Hall Gingerbread

Gingerbread:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg
3/4 cups milk
1 1/2 cup cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon mixed spice

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8" square cake tin and line the bottom with parchment. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat in the egg.

Alternate between mixing in the flour (about 1/2 cup at a time) and milk (about 1/4 cup at a time). Beat well to combine, but don't over mix. Add the baking powder, salt, ginger and mixed spice with the last addition of flour.

Pour batter into the prepared tin, smooth out and bake in the middle of the oven about 40 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool cake in the tin 10 minutes, then leave on a rack to cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

6 ounces cream cheese, very soft
1 1/2 tablespoon milk
3/4 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 tablespoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon brandy

Stir together the cream cheese and milk, then sift in the powdered sugar, a bit at a time. Stirring after each addition. Add the 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon zest and brandy and stir to combine. Spread over the top of the cooled cake. Refrigerate to set the icing.

Lemon Sauce:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 cup water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice (strained first)
1/8 teaspoon salt

Combine the sugar, cornstarch and water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook, stirring, over medium heat until mixture thickens. It should be slightly thicker than you want your finished sauce to be. This will take 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove from the heat and stir in butter, 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest, lemon juice and salt. Leave sauce to cool to just above room temperature or cooler, so it won't melt your cream cheese frosting. Serve sauce alongside slices of cake.

Serves 12

Adapted from All About Home Baking (1933), p. 36 and The New Joy of Cooking (1953), p. 704 and p. 757.

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Haddon Hall is in the Peak District and has been used in several films including three versions of Jane Eyre (however, not the one with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine). These photographs are from Cornell University's A.D. White Architectural Photographs collection, available on flickr. These photos were taken in 1865:

P.S. Don't forget Stir-up Sunday is this weekend!

Life This Week: November 14, 1938

2011-11-14T15:15:00.001-06:00

You can read more about cover girl Brenda Frazier and the rest of New York's 1938 debutantes in the article "The Debutante: as Seen at New York's Velvet Ball".

This week's Movie of the Week is The Young in Heart, a sweet all-star comedy in which a family of society con artists comes to love their proposed next victim, a wealthy old lady with no family of her own who takes them in after a train wreck. If you're starting to think about movies to watch with your family over the holidays, give this one a try. The Young in Heart is available on DVD.

Images from Doctor Macro

Life This Week: November 7, 1938

2011-11-07T14:30:00.000-06:00

Sources, clockwise from top left: Robert Donat, still from The Citadel, Rosalind Russell, still from The Citadel

This week's "Movie of the Week" is The Citadel, starring Robert Donat as a young doctor who must decide what's important in life. Not to be all preachy or political, but this film outlines a few reasons why universal healthcare just might be a good idea. Keep an eye out for a young Rex Harrison.

*****

How awesome is it that there's a cake named after a dance in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie?

Week-in-review, Autumn Photography and Earthquakes

2011-11-06T08:00:00.000-06:00

This week on The Past on a Plate:

In other news, it's finally looking like autumn around here! Yippee!

In more news, Paul and I felt our first earthquake last night. At first, we had absolutely no idea what was happening! Our entire house was shaking and the pictures were rattling on the walls. The epicenter of the 5.2 magnitude earthquake was actually near Sparks, OK. They had had another around 2:00 a.m. yesterday, as well. We didn't feel that one. To show you how far away we were from the epicenter:

My family is in Oklahoma City, so had to make an 11:00 p.m. phone call to my mom to make sure everyone was all right. Thankfully, they're OK. I'm just hoping there aren't any more any time soon--they've become much more common in Oklahoma in the last few years. I don't think it's a coincidence that earthquakes have become more common as natural gas companies increase their hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") operations. Here's a fracking infographic from Planetsave, with love from me to you, from my soapbox:

Feasts and Festivals: Guy Fawkes Day

2011-11-04T07:23:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, November 5th, is Guy Fawkes Day. I've posted a link to some detailed information from Parliament on my 2009 post. However, if you've only got half an hour, I just found this awesome (very irreverent) television program about The Gunpowder Plot (and it has Ronald Hutton in it, too!). You should go check it out. That way, you'll know all you need to know about Guy Fawkes Day (and it might make you laugh).

I've decided to make one of our favorite, comforting, autumn-y dishes for Bonfire Night (another name for today's festivities). Lincolnshire Sausage Simmer has a lot of flavor from the bacon, sausage, garlic, rosemary, thyme, white wine vinegar (I use the good stuff!) and tomatoes. Yum! Plus, it's pretty easy to make. It just takes some planning since you have to soak the beans and it takes a couple of hours to simmer. However, all you have to do once it gets going is check it every once in a while to give it a stir and make sure everything is simmering adequately.

Lincolnshire Sausage Simmer

1 tablespoon grapeseed oil (expeller pressed)
6 ounces bacon, chopped
2 (10-ounce) packages breakfast sausage links (not maple-flavored)
1 small onion, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
3 sprigs rosemary
3 sprigs thyme
1 1/2 cups dried navy beans, soaked
1 quart hot chicken stock
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 (14.5-ounce) can chopped tomatoes

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large lidded skillet. When oil is hot, add the bacon and sausages and sauté for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove sausages to a plate and set aside.

To the bacon in the hot pan, add the onion and carrot. Cook 3 minutes, turning down the heat if necessary. Add the chopped garlic and cook another minute.

Put the sausages back in the skillet and add the rest of the ingredients along with a little bit of salt and a generous amount of black pepper. Bring up to a boil and cook 5 minutes, stirring constantly, turning the heat down if there's a danger of boiling over. Turn heat down and simmer, covered, 2 hours, or until beans are tender. Remove herb stalks before serving.

Serves 8, but leftovers can be frozen

Adapted from BBC Good Food

*****

Back in 2009 when I first decided to try my hand at making lots and lots of British food, I posted these recipes for Guy Fawkes Day:

New Feature: Think Thin Thursdays...

2011-11-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

...where we'll have fun with diet food from the past! I picked up a copy of The Slenderella Cook Book (published in 1957) on an antiquing trip while my parents were here visiting. It's written by a lady who was the "food consultant to Pan American Airways." Can't get more glamorous in 1957 than that!

Vogue February 1957

This dinner is from the 1200-calorie-menus section (that's for the whole day). I've changed the squash and pudding recipes, because I don't use sugar substitutes. Oh, and I left out the vegetable soup, because I'm lazy. I was surprised by how tasty 585 calories could be--the pork chops and squash have excellent sweet and savory flavor and the vanilla pudding in its cool and creamy goodness is so much better than the stuff from a box. Eat like this and you'll be in those shorts in no time! :-)

Pork Chop and Apple Casserole

2 thin boneless pork chops
salt
pepper
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1 crisp and tart apple, cored and thinly sliced
2 teaspoons golden raisins
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 cup chicken stock
pinch nutmeg
sprinkle of dried thyme or 1 sprig fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1 sprig parsley

Preheat oven to 375˚ Fahrenheit. Preheat broiler, as well.

Place pork chops in a single layer in an oven-proof lidded skillet. Broil 5 minutes on each side then season pork chops with salt and pepper. Add the remaining ingredients and give everything a stir. Put the lid on the skillet and return to oven and bake 1 hour.

To serve, place each pork chop on a plate and top with onion/apple/raisin mixture. Discard the bay leaf and the parsley and thyme sprigs.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Pork Chops and Apple Casserole" in Myra Waldo, The Slenderella Cook Book (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1957), 159.

Brown Sugar and Ginger Baked Acorn Squash

1/2 acorn squash, seeds and stringy bits scraped out
1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
salt
pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
pinch ground ginger

Preheat oven to 375˚ Fahrenheit. Brush the cut side of the squash with the melted butter then season well with salt and pepper. Place cut side down on a small baking sheet and bake 40 minutes. Meanwhile, but the brown sugar in a small bowl and stir in the pinch of ginger. Set aside.

After squash has baked 40 minutes, take it out of the oven, turn it over and sprinkle the cut side with the brown sugar/ginger mixture. Leaving the cut side up, return the squash to the oven and bake 20 more minutes.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Squash with Three Toppings" in Everyday Food October 2005, 132 and "Baked Acorn Squash" in Myra Waldo, The Slenderella Cook Book (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1957), 182.

Vanilla Pudding

1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 eggs or 2 egg yolks
2 cups milk
1 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch and salt. Whisk in the egg and whisk until mixture is smooth. Whisk in the milk a bit at a time.

Place the saucepan over medium-high heat and whisk until mixture comes up to a boil (will take about 10 to 15 minutes). Let the mixture boil a full minute, still whisking, then remove from the heat.

Whisk in the butter until it melts then whisk in the vanilla. Divide pudding between six ramekins or custard cups (or other small dishes). Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled.

Serves 6

From "Cornstarch Custard" in Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book (Minneapolis: Macmillan and General Mills, 1950), 219.

Way Back Wednesday: 17th Century Mustard-and-Anchovy Broiled Fish

2011-11-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

This recipe is from the "17th-Century England" chapter in Esther B. Aresty's The Delectable Past, which was recommended to me by Susan at The Well-Seasoned Cook. As usual, I've used cheap, domestic, sustainable Pollock. I've gotten to the point where I almost always have some in the freezer. It defrosts quickly and cooks quickly, which is perfect. Once thawed, this dish only takes about 10 minutes of cooking. I served it with rice and sautéed mushrooms and green beans (I grew the green beans myself!).

Mustard-and-Anchovy Broiled Fish

2 white-fish filets
pepper
pinch mustard powder
1/2 (2 oz) can of anchovy filets (about 6)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 lemon
1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed

Preheat broiler and place oven rack in top portion of oven. Place the filets in a broiler-safe casserole, season with pepper and mustard powder, then place the anchovy filets on top of the fish filets. Set aside.

In a small saucepan over low heat, combine the butter, juice from the lemon and garlic clove. Heat until butter melts, then pour mixture over the top of the fish. Throw the squeezed-out lemon half into the casserole as well. Put the casserole under the broiler and broil the fish for about 8 to 12 minutes (depending on thickness) until opaque. Remove casserole from the oven and serve fish immediately with sauce poured over it.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Flounder with Mustard and Anchovies" in Esther B. Aresty, The Delectable Past (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), 86.

We've also got more Baroque music! Can't forget that! I really love the selections from Orlando, but I'm a big fan of Händel's work in general.

Händel- Orlando
Act I: 7-11

Rameau- Les Indes galantes
Quatrième entrée:
"Les sauvages" (1/2)
"Les sauvages" (2/2)

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5

Feasts and Festivals: All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

It's quite the week for Feasts and Festivals--Halloween yesterday, All Saints' Day today, All Souls' Day tomorrow and Guy Fawkes Day on Saturday. I'm all for extending the holiday spirit (except the Christmas season has been expanded too much already--I've already heard carols; it's ridiculous!). Who doesn't love festive celebration? To get you in the All Saints/All Souls spirit (what a triple entendre!), how about some Spiced Ale?

Spiced Ale

2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 jiggers brandy
1 pint brown ale
pinch of mixed spice
1 cinnamon stick
2 cinnamon sticks (optional, for decoration)

Place a teaspoon of brown sugar in the bottom of two (12-ounce) mugs. Pour a jigger of brandy into each mug and stir to combine.

Meanwhile, heat the ale, mixed spice and cinnamon stick in a saucepan over high heat. When the ale starts to bubble and almost come to a boil, strain the ale and divide between the two mugs. Stir and garnish with cinnamon sticks. Enjoy!

Serves 2

Adapted from "Spiced Ale" in Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, Cattern Cakes and Lace: A Calendar of Feasts (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1987), 116.

Print at food.com

*****

Although it can't be proved, it is widely thought that the Celts believed Samhain (which lasted at least through November 1st) was a time when the gates were opened between this world and the next,* let's keep up with the supernatural fun by watching I Married a Witch, starring Fredric March (love him!) and Veronica Lake. Wallace Wooley (March) is a New England politician, from an old family--a family that happens to have been cursed by a witch one of them condemned in the seventeenth century. That witch, Jennifer (Veronica Lake), made sure all of the men in the family were unhappily married! Unfortunately, Jennifer creates complications for herself (and everyone else!) when she arrives in 1940s New England and falls in love with Wallace.

If you don't mind a few commercial breaks, you can watch I Married a Witch on hulu. If you'd prefer to watch it on TCM, it airs November 14th at 3:30 p.m. CST.

*November 1st marked the Celts' new year, when they acknowledged beginnings and endings and the cycles of life and death. The weakest animals in the herds were slaughtered at this time as well, to free up resources and to provide meat (Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, 360-362).

I Married a Witch photographs from Doctor Macro.

Feasts and Festivals: Halloween

2011-10-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

According to Cattern Cakes and Lace, a cookbook I couldn't live without, Mash of Nine Sorts is a quintessential Halloween dish and was even used to determine who would be married next--the hostess's wedding ring was hidden in the Mash and whoever found it was next to be married. I don't relish the thought of cleaning mashed root vegetables (and cheese!) out of a diamond setting, so I skipped this part!

I thought I was being original and clever, but Karen beat me to it by posting her recipe for Mash of Nine Sorts last week! You should go check it out--she has a lovely blog and great recipes.

Mash of Nine Sorts

1 lb potatoes, peeled, halved if large
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 rutabaga, peeled and sliced
2 parsnips, peeled and sliced
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 leeks, thinly sliced (white and lightest green part only)
1 cup frozen green peas, thawed
2 ounces cheddar cheese, grated (about 3/4 cup)
2 ounces parmesan cheese, grated (about 3/4 cup)
salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 350˚ Fahrenheit. Boil potatoes, carrots, rutabaga and parsnips in well-salted water for about 15-20 minutes, or until potatoes are very tender. Drain vegetables and return to pan. Meanwhile, melt butter in a small skillet over medium heat until foam starts to subside. Add leeks and sauté until leeks are soft and starting to brown.

Mash the vegetables and then stir in the leeks (and butter), green peas and half the cheese. Stir in salt and pepper to taste then spread mixture in a casserole and top with the remaining cheese. Bake in the middle of the oven 40 minutes, or until cheese is starting to brown.

Serves 4

Adapted from "Mash of Nine Sorts" in Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, Cattern Cakes and Lace: A Calendar of Feasts (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1987), 112.

If there are only two in your house (like mine), you can put half of the Mash of Nine Sorts (before baking) in an oven-proof refrigerator container for another dinner. I just put it in the oven while the oven comes up to temperature and then set the timer for 40 minutes.

Print at Food.com

*****

Speaking of cheesy and British--
You probably already know that I often use music as motivation to actually get into the kitchen (I enjoy eating a lot more than I enjoy cooking) and you probably already know about my abiding love for the music of Tom Jones. He's pretty cool, too. Paul and I were in the fifth row for one of his concerts and he was very funny and personable. Paul used to refuse to listen to his music, but after we went to the concert, Paul has become almost as big a Tom Jones fan as I am. (Don't tell him I told you!) In case you were wondering, I kept my underwear on. But there were panties thrown--just by women old enough to be my grandmother.

Week-in-Review and November Film Recommendations

2011-10-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

This week on The Past on a Plate:

November 2011 Film Recommendations:

Joan Bennett seduces Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street

Scarlet Street (Tu 11/1 1:15 p.m.) bad girl Joan Bennett lures meek Edward G. Robinson (definitely playing against type); directed by Fritz Lang
From Here to Eternity (W 11/2 9:00 a.m.) You know you need to watch it for the Burt Lancaster/ Deborah Kerr beach make-out scene
The Killers (W 11/2 12:45 p.m.) an insurance investigator tries to piece together the puzzling murder of a former boxer
Niagara (W 11/2 7:00 p.m.) Marilyn Monroe wiggles around the resort town driving Joseph Cotten out of his mind; it's so much better than I thought it would be
Some Like It Hot (W 11/2 8:45 p.m. and Su 11/27 11:15 a.m.) I could watch this one over and over and over--and I have!
Alias Jesse James (F 11/4 3:00 p.m.) Silly Bob Hope vehicle where he's mistaken for Jesse James; the shoot-out scene at the end is worth the wait
Gold Diggers of 1935 (F 11/4 8:30 p.m. and Tu 11/29 8:00 a.m.) The whole franchise went rather downhill after 1933, but this is still worth it for the production numbers
Roberta (Sa 11/5 5:00 a.m.) Irene Dunne has top billing, but Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire steal the show; the costumes are marvelous, too
A Letter to Three Wives (Su 11/6 1:00 p.m.) the town slut has run off with the husband of one of the three wives in the title, but which one?
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Su 11/6 10:15 p.m. and W 11/16 7:00 a.m.) fairly faithful adaptation of novel; Lana Turner smolders
McLintock! (Tu 11/8 9:00 p.m.) this John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara comedy is great fun
Dinner at Eight (W 11/9 5:00 p.m.) Great ensemble cast including Lionel and John Barrymore; bickering couple Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow are a treat
Born Yesterday (W 11/9 7:00 p.m.) William Holden is a newspaperman hired to tutor Judy Holliday, who turns out to be not a stupid as everyone thinks!
Bombshell (W 11/9 11:00 p.m.) Jean Harlow plays a poor-little-Hollywood-star who has to deal with a grasping family, an aggravating agent and a media circus
Platinum Blonde (Th 11/10 12:45 p.m.) Society dame Jean Harlow steals a reporter from nice working girl Loretta Young
The Girl from Missouri (Th 11/10 3:30 a.m.) Jean Harlow plays a likable gold-digging chorus girl who sets her sights on Lionel Barrymore; too bad his son (Franchot Tone) finds her more interesting!
Now, Voyager (Th 11/10 9:45 p.m.) ugly duckling Bette Davis gets a makeover and falls in love with yummy Paul Henreid
Dodsworth (F 11/11 2:00 a.m. and Sa 11/26 7:00 p.m.) automobile company president Walter Huston's marriage is tested when he decides to retire--wife Ruth Chatterton isn't ready to give up her youth; very well done
The Americanization of Emily (F 11/11 9:00 p.m.) Julie Andrews and James Garner eighteen years before Victor/Victoria; also stars James Coburn and Melvyn Douglas
Trouble in Paradise (Sa 11/12 8:30 p.m. Sa 11/19 8:00 a.m.)
The Producers (Sa 11/12 10:00 p.m.) You've probably seen it, but if you haven't, you're in for a hilarious treat.
Woman of the Year (Su 11/13 8:00 a.m.) first Hepburn/Tracy picture; both are reporters at the same paper who fall in love, but have a hard time adjusting to married life
My Fair Lady (Su 11/13 2:00 p.m.) Did you ever notice that Jeremy Brett is in this movie?
Shanghai Express (M 11/14 9:00 p.m.) Marlene Dietrich is terribly well-dressed in this pre-code train film set in the midst of the civil war in China

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle

The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (Tu 11/15 3:00 p.m.) It's Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers! As Vernon and Irene Castle! What more do you need to know?
A Slight Case of Murder (W 11/16 10:45 a.m.) Edward G. Robinson plays a bootlegger confronted with the end of prohibition in this--wait for it--hilarious comedy. Definitely a must-see.
Nothing Sacred (W 11/16 7:00 p.m.) reporter Fredric March makes "dying" Carole Lombard famous
To Be or Not to Be (W 11/16 8:30 p.m.) Jack Benny and Carole Lombard star in this Ernst Lubitsch comedy about Polish actors who get caught up in the resistance
She Done Him Wrong (W 11/16 10:30 p.m.) Mae West plays saloon gal Diamond Lil, Cary Grant plays a Salvation Army captain
I'm No Angel (W 11/16 11:45 p.m.) Mae West plays a circus performer in this pre-code gem; also stars Cary Grant
Gunga Din (Tu 11/22 11:15 p.m.) Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. defeat a crazy thuggee cult leader in this action-comedy buddy movie based on the Rudyard Kipling poem
Treasure Island (W 11/23 5:00 a.m.) adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel with Wallace Beery and Lionel Barrymore
The Adventures of Robin Hood (W 11/23 9:00 a.m.)
Mogambo (W 11/23 5:00 p.m.) Paul and I spent a lazy, rainy Sunday morning watching this remake of Red Dust; great on-location filming
Down Argentine Way (W 11/23 8:30 p.m.) one of the better Betty Grable vehicles, probably because it also stars Don Ameche and Carmen Miranda
My Favorite Wife (Th 11/24 2:00 a.m.) Cary Grant has missing-at-sea wife Irene Dunne declared legally dead so he can remarry; only problem is that she's still alive
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Th 11/24 3:30 a.m.) cute romantic comedy with Myrna Loy, Cary Grant, Shirley Temple and Rudy Vallee
The Lady Eve (Th 11/24 9:00 p.m.) con artist Barbara Stanwyck sets her sights on beer heir Henry Fonda in this Preston Sturges classic
Shall We Dance (F 11/25 2:00 a.m.) the film that got me hooked on classic film and Astaire and Rogers
Ivanhoe (F 11/25 7:00 p.m.) This movie is pretty much terrible, but it has George Sanders in it. You might want to read the hokey book instead.
The Maltese Falcon (Su 11/27 5:00 p.m.) Humphrey Bogart helms this Dashiell Hammett adaptation
Doctor Zhivago (M 11/28 7:00 p.m.) Be prepared for "Somewhere My Love" to be stuck in your head for days; it really is a good movie, though
Dames (Tu 11/29 6:15 a.m.) Busby Berkley musical; Joan Blondell and ZaSu Pitts are great fun
Captain Blood (W 11/30 1:00 a.m.) the first pairing of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland; swashbuckling at its best
To Catch a Thief (W 11/30 7:00 p.m.) Cary Grant and Grace Kelly look very stylish while tracking down a cat burglar on the French Riviera
Dial M for Murder (W 11/30 9:00 p.m.) Ray Milland thinks he has the perfect plan to murder Grace Kelly

All times are CST, all films air on TCM

Dinner and a Movie: The Tomb of Ligeia

2011-10-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

Roast Chicken with Bread Sauce

For the chicken:
1 chicken
salt
pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
8 rashers bacon

For the bread sauce:
1 cup milk
1/4 onion
8 cloves
nutmeg
15 peppercorns
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, divided
1 tablespoon cream

Preheat oven to 350˚ Fahrenheit.

Dry off the chicken and season the inside with 1 teaspoon salt and a generous amount of pepper. Place the chicken in roasting pan (breast side up) and rub the skin of the top of the chicken with the softened butter. Season skin with salt and pepper. Roll each piece of bacon up and place them around the chicken. Place roasting pan in the middle of the oven and roast 30 minutes.

Remove chicken from oven and baste with bacon grease and chicken juices. (If you're making baked potatoes to go with your dinner, you can put them in now.) Return roasting pan to oven for another 30 minutes, then baste again and roast another 30 minutes (1 1/2 hours total).

During last 30 minutes of roasting time, start on the bread sauce. Put the milk, onion, cloves, grating of nutmeg and peppercorns in a saucepan and cook over lowest heat. After the chicken has been in the oven for an hour and a half (total), check to make sure it's cooked through by piercing the thickest part of the thigh with a sharp knife. The juices shouldn't be pink. When chicken is finished, remove to a carving board to rest while you finish the bread sauce.

Strain milk into a separate container and discard the onion, cloves and peppercorns. Set aside. Wipe out saucepan and add the breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon of the butter and salt and stir together over medium heat. When the butter melts, stir in the cream and the rest of the butter and continue to cook until the breadcrumbs are softened. Serve with the carved chicken and bacon.

Serves 6-8

Adapted from "Roast Chicken with Bread Sauce" in Mary and Vincent Price, A Treasury of Great Recipes (Ampersand Press, Inc., 1965), 184.

It practically looks like a film adaptation of an Anthony Trollope novel. For his last Poe adaptation, director Roger Corman decided to get out of the sound stage and film on location. He picked a few winners! The Tomb of Ligeia definitely looks less cheap than its predecessors. Make no mistake--it's still ridiculous, but I think we've had fun with our Vincent Price movies this month!

In The Tomb of Ligeia, Vincent Price plays the resident of a crumbling abbey who's convinced his wife, Ligeia, isn't really dead. However, he remarries and tries to start a new life, but the memory of his first wife and a certain black cat make things very difficult (especially for the new wife!).

The Tomb of Ligeia is available on Netflix Watch Instantly and is also available on DVD as a double feature with An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe.

Feasts and Festivals: Punkie Night

2011-10-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

Pumpkin Alfredo

4 (3/4 lb) pumpkins
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup milk
1 clove garlic, smashed
1 teaspoon dried thyme or 1 tablespoon fresh
1 ounce parmesan, grated

Preheat oven to 300˚ Fahrenheit. Cut the tops off of each pumpkin and scrape out the seeds and strings. Reserve the tops.

Wrap each pumpkin in tin foil (in case one bursts) and place in a baking pan. Set aside.

In a saucepan, heat the cream, milk, garlic and thyme over medium heat until the mixture starts to bubble. Remove from the heat, take out the garlic and stir in the parmesan. Divide between the pumpkins.

Replace the lid on each of the pumpkins, place them in the middle of the oven and bake for between one and one-and-a-half hours, or until softened.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Roast Pumpkin with Cream, Thyme and Parmesan" in BBC Good Food.

I made Pumpkin Alfredo for Punkie Night, which is a holiday from the area around Hinton St. George in Somerset. According to legend, a group of local men got plastered at a fair and couldn't find their way back home. Their wives had to go out in search of them, carrying punkie lanterns (which are actually mangolds, but the festivities have evolved to use jack o'lanterns made from pumpkins). Rather than candy, children go around asking for candles for their lanterns.*

Church of St. George in Hinton St. George

*"Punkie Night" in Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, Cattern Cakes and Lace: A Calendar of Feasts (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1987), 109.
Vintage pumpkin illustration from The Graphics Fairy

Guest Post at Nifty Thrifty Things

2011-10-26T07:41:00.000-05:00

Vanessa at Nifty Thrifty Things is going to be in Houston for an extended visit and asked her readers to help keep her blog going while she's out of town. I'm really happy to have today's guest post--it's all about three upcoming holidays: Halloween, Guy Fawkes Day/Bonfire Night and Stir-up Sunday. Please stop by and check it out!

Also, we've got this week's Baroque music:

Barbara Strozzi
"Sino alla morte"(couldn't find the recommended piece, but this one's lovely)

Scarlatti
"Correa nel seno amato"

Purcell
"From Rosy Bowers"
"The Plaint"

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4

Marguerite d'Anjou Pear Cake

2011-10-25T08:00:00.001-05:00

Marguerite d'Anjou Pear Cake

1 1/2 lbs soft pears, peeled, cored and sliced into 1/2"-3/4" chunks
juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon brandy
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
3 egg whites or 2 whole eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350˚ Fahrenheit. Line the bottom of a 9"-round springform pan with parchment paper, then grease the bottom and sides of the pan. Set on a baking sheet and set aside.

In a large bowl, stir together the pear chunks, lemon zest and juice and brandy. Set aside.

Over medium heat in a large saucepan, melt the butter, being careful not to let it brown. Remove from the heat and stir in the flour, baking powder and sugar. Gradually stir in the egg whites (or two whole eggs). Fold in the pears and any accumulated juices then pour batter in the prepared cake tin. Bake in the middle of the oven for 50 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool the cake in its tin for a few minutes, then turn out and serve warm.

Serves 6

Adapted from "Anjou Pear Cake" in BBC Good Food: Cakes iPhone app.

Print at Food.com
Print at Food52

Portrait in stained glass of Marguerite at Mucklestone Church (from flickr)

Born in 1430, Marguerite was the daughter of the Duc d'Anjou. She was married at the age of fourteen to England's King Henry VI, as part of a peace treaty between England and France. She wasn't able to get pregnant until 1453 and by the time she gave birth, Henry was so mentally and physically ill that he wasn't even aware of the birth of his son. Marguerite now became much more important in the political arena as she was forced to work with the protectorate of Richard, duke of York. An incapacitated king led to a power vacuum York was only two happy to fill. I don't want to get into the Wars of the Roses, because it's super-complex and would take a much longer blog post to explain! After the deaths of her husband in the Tower and her son on the battlefield, Marguerite spent 1471 to 1476 as a captive of Edward IV (the new king) and was finally released into French custody, where she died six years later, dependent on French King Louis XI, who confiscated most of her lands to compensate for his supposed expenses on her behalf (Diana E. S. Dunn, ‘Margaret (1430–1482)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18049, accessed 6 Oct 2011).

So, not a very happy story, but I always loved her name and I think of her every time I see an Anjou pear, so I thought it appropriate to name a cake after her! Besides, I think she needs some love!

Life This Week: October 24, 1938

2011-10-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

This week's Movie of the Week is the Tyrone Power vehicle Suez. It costars frequent love-interest Loretta Young and Annabella, who would become the first Mrs. Tyrone Power. It seems I say this a lot, but like many other films made in 1938, this isn't a great film, but it is mildly entertaining. I wasn't terribly impressed, but I also didn't feel like it was an hour-and-a-half of my life I couldn't get back. Suez is supposed to be the true story of Ferdinand de Lesseps, but I couldn't possibly vouch for the veracity of the film, since it's not a period in time I've studied at any length. We talked a bit about Napoleon III in a couple of my French literature classes, but really only to provide context for Zola's Le Ventre de Paris. Anyway, you don't want to hear about my French studies! Bottom line: Tyrone Power is very handsome, Loretta Young and Annabella are very pretty and "Egypt" is very exotic. Good enough for me.

Suez is unavailable on DVD, but you can get it from Amazon Instant Video. Also, if you do some sleuthing, you just might be able to find it on YouTube.

Images from Doctor Macro

*****

In other news, watch out if muffs come back in style. These photos are from the article "A New Epoch Sets in for Muffs: History Shows They Presage War."

Week-in-Review and More Dallas Photos

2011-10-23T10:21:00.000-05:00

I've upgraded to flickr pro. We'll see how that goes, but it made sense since it's the easiest way to get photos from my computer (where I hook up my camera and iPhone) and Paul's computer (where the Photoshop is) and I like having a backup of my photos! I'll let you know how it goes.

The rest of my Dallas photos are up! They're not edited or anything, but I think it's kind of fun to see people's unedited lives every once in a while. :-)

My favorite Dallas photo:

Paul is just trying to eat his Chick-Fil-A in the food court at Northpark Center and I have to take a photo. This one makes me laugh every time. We love each other. Really.

Does anyone else feel like the last two weeks have been a blur? We were in Texas last weekend and my parents came to visit this weekend. We found some great antique-y things and ate cake--I'll post more about both later! Here's what was on the blog this week:

Life This Week: October 17, 1938
North by Northwest Guest Post
Dinner and a Movie: The Pit and the Pendulum

On the menu for today: checking all the e-mail that has piled up in my inbox over the past fortnight. Scary! One of my major failings is being consistently behind in checking e-mail, facebook, twitter, etc. I always laugh when I hear life coaches on TV advise people to lessen their stress by only checking their e-mail a couple of times a day! I obviously don't have that problem... Ah, technology. It's a love-hate thing.

I hope all of you are enjoying what's left of the weekend!

Dinner and a Movie: The Pit and the Pendulum

2011-10-21T08:00:00.008-05:00

Vincent Price's Caesar Salad for Two (with shrimp!)

1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 slices stale pain de campagne, cubed
6 ounces peeled, deveined shrimp
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Cayenne pepper
Tabasco
3 anchovy fillets, chopped and mashed
2 romaine hearts (or one head romaine), torn into bite-sized pieces and washed and dried
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1 egg
Parmesan

Lazy garlic toast:
4 slices pain de campagne
2T butter, softened
Garlic powder
Dried parsley (optional, it's just for looks)

The night before:
Place the garlic clove and olive oil in a covered container. Refrigerate.

The next day:
Add 5 tablespoons of the garlic oil to a small skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Set the rest of the oil aside.

When the oil is hot enough to start browning the cubes of bread immediately, add the cubes of bread in batches, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Fry, turning occasionally until dark brown, adjusting the heat, if necessary, to prevent scorched croutons. Remove to a paper towel-covered plate to drain.

When the croutons are done, add the shrimp to the pan and cook until pink. Set aside.

To the reserved oil, remove the garlic then add the sugar, cayenne pepper, Tabasco and anchovies. Place the romaine in a large bowl and dress with this mixture and lemon juice. Boil the egg one minute, then crack over the salad and stir to combine. Season well with salt and pepper (about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of each).

Divide salad between two large bowls, grating Parmesan over the top. Add shrimp and croutons and serve with garlic toast.

To make lazy garlic toast, spread bread with softened butter, sprinkle over garlic powder and brown under the broiler. Top with dried parsley. Enjoy!

Adapted from "Caesar Salad" in Mary and Vincent Price, A Treasury of Great Recipes (Ampersand Press, Inc., 1965), 185.

Well, The Pit and the Pendulum is ridiculous, but no one ever claimed it wouldn't be. Like the other films this month, though, it's still pretty entertaining. You'll find yourself wondering what Lieutenant Cable is doing wearing that ruff (yes, that is John Kerr in the screen caps above as Francis Barnard). Last week we watched a 1960s version of the Middle Ages, this week we have a very '60s 16th century.

Luana Anders, above, plays Catherine Medina, sister to Vincent Price's character, Nicholas. Barbara Steele (below) plays Elizabeth Medina, Nicholas's wife and Francis's sister.

Last week: The Masque of the Red Death. Next week: The Tomb of Ligeia.

If you haven't been over to Andrea's Hitchcock Blog Party, go check it out! Yours truly has a North by Northwest Dinner and a Movie. ;-)

North by Northwest Guest Post and More Baroque Music

2011-10-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Exciting news! I've written a North By Northwest, 20th Century Limited Dining Car-inspired menu for Andrea's blog, Paper Sparrow. Please stop by and check out the Hitchcock Blog Party.

A preview of my menu

*****

Since it's Wednesday, we've got some Baroque music to listen to! I wasn't able to find all the selections this week, but here's what I was able to dig up:

Cavalli- Giasone
Act I, Scene 14

Guédron- "Si le parler et le silence"

Lully- Armide
Act II, Scene 5
Act III, Scenes 2-3
Act V, Scene 2

Week 1,Week 2, Week 3

Life This Week: October 17, 1938

2011-10-18T07:31:00.000-05:00

The cover story this week is all about Carole Lombard: "A Loud Cheer for the Screwball Girl." If you're as big a fan as I am, you'll want to read this article!

Secondly, I love that there's an article about tweed, because I just watched the documentary suggested by Karen at Small Earth Vintage about the current ails of the Harris Tweed industry. There's a link to watch the video at her post.

Finally, what better to go with tweed than a bit of porridge ("oatmeal" to us Americans)? I call this version "Golden Porridge" because it's got golden syrup and golden raisins!

Golden Porridge

1 serving oatmeal
2 tablespoons golden raisins
1 tablespoon golden syrup
pinch mixed spice

This isn't much of a recipe, because all you do is top the oatmeal with the other ingredients and enjoy!

Not only is this a nod to the chilly weather we're having today (especially odd-feeling since it was 85 in Dallas!) but also to the sweet Scots couple we met on the elevator Saturday morning who guided us through the complementary breakfast. The husband was getting oatmeal, so I figured it would be a safe bet! ;-)

Speaking of Dallas, the photos for our first day there are up on flickr, but I've reached my storage limit, so I have to decide what to do now! Is the "Pro" version worth the $25 per year?

Week-in-Review and Road Trip Photos

2011-10-17T08:45:00.000-05:00

Paul and I are enjoying a four-day weekend. Today, we're recovering from a fourteen-hour drive to Dallas and back! To check out photos from our trip, click here. I'll be uploading photos throughout the day.

Dinner and a Movie: The Masque of the Red Death

2011-10-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Vincent Price, Jane Asher, Patrick Magee and Hazel Court wear rather ridiculous (and very '60s) "medieval" costumes in The Masque of the Red Death

Oh my. What to say about this one? It's pretty entertaining, in a bad-movie way. The costumes are hilarious and look like they were put together with a glue gun from bits out of the bargain bin at Jo-Ann. They remind me of nothing so much as the costumes for the production I was in of Once Upon a Mattress in high school. Don't get all excited--I only had one line.

You can watch The Masque of the Red Death on DVD, from Netflix Watch Instantly, or on TCM October 25th at 4:00 a.m. CST.

On to the food--
Yippee for more British recipes from Vincent Price! This week we have Welsh Rabbit and Mushrooms in Cream. (The salad dressing is at this post.)

Welsh Rabbit

4 slices sourdough bread*
1/2 cup + 1 teaspoon brown ale, separated, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
pinch cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 lb sharp cheddar, grated
1 egg yolk

Put oven on lowest heat. Add two plates. Toast sourdough bread and keep warm on plates in oven while you make cheese sauce. In a small bowl, stir together the teaspoon of ale with the paprika, mustard powder, cayenne pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Set aside.

In a double boiler over lowish heat, melt the butter, then gradually stir in the cheddar. Keep stirring and add the 1/2 cup ale, a bit at a time, stirring constantly. When mixture is smooth, temper the egg yolk, then stir into cheese mixture and keep stirring. Add paprika/mustard mix and keep stirring. When cheese sauce is warm and smooth, pour over the toast and serve immediately.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Welsh Rabbit" in Mary and Vincent Price, A Treasury of Great Recipes (Ampersand Press, Inc., 1965), 165.

Mushrooms in Cream

1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 lb mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
salt
pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream

In a small skillet, heat the butter over medium-high heat. When the foam has just subsided, add the mushrooms and stir well for 1 minute to coat thoroughly with butter. Season well with salt and pepper, then add cream and simmer until mushrooms are softened.

Serves 2

Adapted from "Mushrooms in Cream" in ibid., 183.

Last week: House on Haunted Hill, next week: The Pit and the Pendulum

I'm not sure if I'll be able to check comments over the weekend, so I'm leaving comment moderation up to Disqus. I'll check it Monday to make sure your comments get published. Have a great weekend!!!

Black (and White Wednesday) Treacle and Baroque Music

2011-10-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Why oh why is black treacle so difficult to find? I believe it's almost identical to blackstrap molasses, but I'm partial to Lyle's and I love its jaunty red tin. I've never seen it in Wichita period (even at World Market) and I used to buy it at Canterbury British Imports in Oklahoma City, but it looked like they'd gone out of business the last time I drove by. Plus, it's expensive on the internet due to shipping costs. Anyone know of a reliable source?

Black Treacle is awesome stuff--it looks like crude oil and tastes like a more-metallic molasses. That's probably totally unappealing but I love it in its unappealingness. It's also rich in vitamins, minerals and iron. It's practically a health food! Not that what I normally do with it is particularly healthful--

Click for recipes!

Susan at The Well-Seasoned Cook hosts Black and White Wednesday.

Continuing on to Week 3 of the Baroque Music Syllabus I found--

All works for this week were written by Claudio Monteverdi.

Orfeo
"Prologue"
"Possente Spirito"

Lamento d'Arianna
Lamento della ninfa
Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

Poppea
"Or che Seneca è morto"
"Pur ti Miro"

Enjoy!

Week 1, Week 2

P.S. Yesterday's post has a recipe for Chocolate-Orange Custard!

Life This Week: October 10, 1938

2011-10-11T07:52:00.000-05:00

Do you ever feel like you really really don't want to deal with rolling anything out? Yeah, it totally happens. However, I adore chocolate and orange (and the cute 1938 ad below), so I decided to make a super-easy chocolate-orange stovetop custard instead.

Chocolate-Orange Custard

1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
finely grated zest from 1/2 an orange
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, grated
2 cups milk
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk together sugar, cornstarch, salt, egg, orange zest and grated chocolate. Place saucepan over low heat and gradually whisk in the milk, whisking well after each addition. Continue whisking until mixture boils, then boil 1 minute, still whisking.

Remove saucepan from heat, whisk in butter and vanilla. Cool a bit then divide between four cups. Chill.

Serves 4

Adapted from "Chocolate Pudding" in Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book (Minneapolis: Macmillan and General Mills, 1950), 219.

Download printable copy

*****

As usual, the article in Life contains spoilers. Have you seen Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion? It's absolutely amazing. I've already mentioned my affection for Jean Gabin movies, but this film also stars Eric von Stroheim, Pierre Fresnay and Marcel Dalio, which makes it even more awesome. Having taken a French films class, I know that many paragraphs have been written praising and analyzing this movie, so I'll leave all that to the experts and just provide some screen caps. Somehow, this group of French officers (and Erich von Stroheim, as a German officer) manage to look really spiffy while at a POW camp during World War I. Who wouldn't love all the monocles, scarves and pipes? If you love a man in uniform...

I watched the Criterion collection DVD--there is a good amount of bonus material and it has a no-subtitles option. I found von Stroheim, Fresnay and Dalio easy to understand. Jean Gabin has rougher pronunciation (his character is meant to be working class), but I didn't have too many problems. My German isn't quite up to scratch, but there's not much of it in the film and it's frequently basic and/or translated into French.

My screen caps, publicity shot of Erich von Stroheim from Doctor Macro

*****

Crazy Sweet Tuesdays, Mushki Loves My Stuff, Show Me What Ya Got, Tasty Tuesday Party, Tasty Tuesdays, Totally Tasty Tuesdays, Tuesday Talent Show

Feasts and Festivals: Devil's Blackberry Day

2011-10-10T07:19:00.000-05:00

In the interests of full disclosure, Devil's Blackberry Day could very well be September 29th. At one time (before the calendar change), Michaelmas was on October 10th and the archangel Michael is credited with kicking Lucifer out of heaven, which caused a very pissed-off Satan to land in the middle of a blackberry bush (which, I suppose, did nothing to improve his mood). A legend arose that no one should eat blackberries after this time each year because the devil spit on the blackberry bush in which he landed and that spit magically reappears every year on October 10th.*

Now for the botanical evidence--

In mid-October a nasty creature called a flesh fly lays eggs on blackberries in a saliva-like substance and besides being disgusting, the eggs are mildly poisonous.** Gross, right? So, I've decided to leave Devil's Blackberry Day on its old date and warn all of you lovely people not to go around picking blackberries after the flesh flies have landed on them. It's my service to humanity for the day.

There's also an old Cornish belief that the weather today determines the weather for the upcoming winter. Warm and windy? Mild winter. Wet? Stormy winter.* How's your winter going to be? I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a mild winter in south central Kansas. We've had multiple blizzards and ice storms every year I've been here.

Cattern Cakes and Lace suggests making blackberry jelly from blackberries picked just before Devil's Blackberry Day. Since I'm almost never able to find decent fruit here (even organic, farmers market, etc.), I decided to use frozen blackberries. Are you ready to see how much jelly $7 of organic frozen blackberries makes?

Yup--that's an 8 oz. jar. Sad, huh? I could have bought a jar of the imported French stuff for lots cheaper. :-(

If you've got some blackberries around the house and aren't up to jelly-making, may I suggest:
*"October 10: Devil's Blackberry Day" in Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, Cattern Cakes and Lace: A Calendar of Feasts (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1987), 107.
**"Monday 19th September 2011" in Pontifications on Poison at The Poison Garden Website (http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/blog/blog190911.htm).

Vintage blackberry image from the Graphics Fairy.

Week-in-Review and Resources for People Who Like Old Stuff

2011-10-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

This week on The Past on a Plate:

I just wanted to share a couple of fun finds with you. First off, the Rapidly Rotating Records podcast, which is a weekly show featuring 20s and 30s jazz and popular music from 78rpm records. This is my go-to dish-washing music! I hate washing dishes, so I have to give myself an incentive! You can find out more at the Rapidly Rotating Records website or iTunes.

Secondly, I really like the tumblr blog, My Daguerreotype Boyfriend. Its mission is to provide readers with early photos of attractive men, which is too much fun, especially for a gal like me, who happens to love going through old photographs. Unlike the bins of them at antique stores, My Daguerreotype Boyfriend usually has at least some information about the subjects. Here are a few of my favorite portraits:

Claude Monet, Robert Cornelius, Gustave Doré

Of course, I'm used to Monet looking like this:

:-) Hope you're having a great weekend!

Dinner and a Movie: House on Haunted Hill

2011-10-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Week 1 of a special all-Vincent month on Dinner and a Movie! That's right--all the movies for Dinner and a Movie this month star Vincent Price and all the meals are going to be adapted from his cookbook, A Treasury of Great Recipes. I'm so excited! This week, I've made Vincent Price's Kedgeree, which is based on the recipe from London's The Ivy. A product of the empire, Kedgeree (to quote Vincent) "originated, I believe, in Singapore."

The Ivy (p.151 of A Treasury of Great Recipes)

Kedgeree is great if you're in a bit of a hurry, because a lot of the work can be done in advance. The salmon can be leftovers from another meal, or you can poach it (Vincent says you can used canned salmon, but I was a bit afraid so I poached some myself) and keep it in the fridge. The hardboiled eggs can also be stored in the refrigerator. AND, if you want to be a totally-got-it-together 1960s housewife, you can prep the base for the curry béchamel (everything but the milk) and keep that in the fridge or freezer. In which case, you will feel so efficient there will be no stopping you and I would most definitely take you out for a drink to celebrate.

Kedgeree

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup long-grain white rice
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 lb cooked salmon, flaked
2 hardboiled eggs, quartered
fresh parsley, minced

Curry béchamel:
1 tablespoon very soft unsalted butter
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper
1/2 tablespoon curry powder*
1 cup milk

In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the butter over medium-high heat. When the foam just starts to subside, add the chopped onion and sauté for about 5 minutes, turning down the heat if necessary to keep the onion from browning. Add the salt and rice and stir to coat the rice in the butter, then pour in the chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to low and simmer, covered, for thirty minutes. Make sure the rice continues to simmer and be sure not to stir. After 30 minutes, remove the pilaf from the heat, fluff with a fork, cover, and let sit 5 minutes.

To make the curry béchamel, mix together the softened butter, flour, salt, pepper and curry powder. Set aside. Heat the milk in a small saucepan over medium heat until it steams and whisk in the butter/flour mixture until it's lump free. Turn the heat up to high, continue whisking and bring the sauce to a boil and boil one minute.

To assemble Kedgeree (see this illustrated below), divide the pilaf between two plates, top with salmon, surround with egg and cover with béchamel. Top with minced parsley. Enjoy immediately!

Serves 2

Adapted from "Kedgeree of Salmon" in Mary and Vincent Price, A Treasury of Great Recipes (Ampersand Press, Inc., 1965), 158-159 and "Béchamel Sauce" in ibid., 424.

*The mixture I use is: 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder + 1/4 teaspoon mustard powder + 1/4 teaspoon ginger + 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander + 1/4 teaspoon cumin + dash of cayenne pepper

Download printable version

1. Pilaf on plate? Check.
2. Top with flaked salmon.
3. Surround with quartered hardboiled egg.
4. Cover with curry béchamel and sprinkle with parsley. Done!

*****

This one is great fun. Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart play an unhappily married couple, who have invited strangers to a party in an abandoned, supposedly haunted house. I think it's one of the better low-budget offerings of the period and I like that it's really more "suspense" than "horror." I enjoyed trying to figure out what was going on along with the characters. Also, some of the banter between Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart is darkly humorous. However, there's only one thing that bothered me and I think that's because I'm the daughter of an architect: the "exterior" and "interior" of the house don't match. The interior looks like it might go with the house in the poster, but not the house actually used in the film (which you might recognize from The Rocketeer). Ah, well. We can't have everything, especially for only $200,000.

Last, but certainly not least: Carol Ohmart showing us what "slutty" looked like in 1959--pretty darn fabulous if you ask me.

House on Haunted Hill airs October 17th at 8:30 p.m. CST. It's also currently available from IMDB and Netflix Watch Instantly. Also on DVD.

Next week: The Masque of the Red Death
Be sure to visit Jenny, who never waits for October to roll around to cook like Vincent Price!

House on Haunted Hill screen caps are mine; poster, Vincent Price portrait, and interior shot are from Doctor Macro.

*****

Full Plate Thursday

Nifty Thrifty Sunday
Savory Sundays

From My Collection: Tart Tomato Salad

2011-10-06T07:52:00.000-05:00

It's been too long since I've shared recipes from my vintage cooking pamphlet collection, so I thought today that I would share a recipe from this art deco beauty:

The recipe I've chosen is from the Salads section. Isn't this illustration fabulous?!

When I first saw the illustration and started reading through the recipe, I thought I would make it myself, but then I saw the dreaded pickles, which are one of the few foods I don't like. It still looks pretty, though.

I hope you'll join me tomorrow for a very special Dinner and a Movie!Oh, and if you came here looking for not-icky recipes, be sure to check out Tuesday's and Wednesday's posts. Thanks!

Way Back Wednesday: Forks are for Fricassées

2011-10-05T07:44:00.000-05:00

Clockwise from top: Fricassée close-up, Fricassée served with a green salad and chardonnay, vegetables cooking, parsley from my garden

Thomas Coryate brought the fork from Italy to England in 1608. At first, they were rejected as "effeminate" and "unnecessary," but the wealthy soon adopted them as a status symbol, buying forks made with expensive materials to impress their guests.* The fricassée, a French invention that became popular in England, was tailor-made for these newly fashionable forks. Neither knives nor spoons are required, meaning that cooking fricassées encouraged using forks and vice versa.**

Click on each photo for more information.

Here's my adaptation of Hannah Woolley's "fricasie of Chickens" from The Cook's Guide, 1664:

Fricassée

1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 onion, thinly sliced
4 stalks celery, trimmed and thinly sliced on the diagonal
4 carrots, peeled, trimmed and thinly sliced on the diagonal
sea salt
freshly-ground pepper
3 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
3 cups boiling chicken stock
2/3 cup dry (French) vermouth
2 sprigs parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon dried (or 1 tablespoon fresh) thyme
3 bay leaves
1 lb shredded cooked chicken
1 (8 oz) can oysters, drained and rinsed

The enrichment:
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup whipping cream
grated zest from 1/2 orange
nutmeg

To serve:
1 cup dried egg noodles per person, cooked according to package directions

In a large (13" skillet), melt the butter over medium heat. When the foam starts to subside, add the onion, celery and carrot then season with salt and cook until the onions are softened and translucent, 10 to 15 minutes, being careful to not let the vegetables brown.

Season vegetables with pepper then stir in the flour and cook, stirring, for four minutes. Pour over the chicken stock and vermouth and add the herbs, chicken and oysters. Bring mixture to a simmer then cook, covered, at a slow simmer for 25 minutes. Meanwhile, prep the enrichment by placing the egg yolks in a large bowl and whisking the cream into them.

At the end of 25 minutes, turn the heat up and bring the mixture to a boil. Boil off the liquid until only a small amount remains and is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Meanwhile, temper the enrichment by adding the boiling cooking liquid to it, about a tablespoonful at a time, until about a cup has been added. Whisk well after each addition. When the cooking liquid has been sufficiently reduced, remove the pan from the heat and slowly whisk in the egg yolk/cream mixture. Return pan to the heat and add the orange zest and about a pinch of nutmeg. Stir to combine and divide the fricassée over cooked egg noodles.

Fricassée (minus egg noodles) can be stored in the refrigerator or frozen. To reheat, simmer in a saucepan until warmed through.

Serves 6

Adapted from "To make a fricasie of Chickens, or any meat else" in Hannah Woolley, The Cook's Guide (London: Peter Dring, 1664), 76 and "Fricassée de poulet à l'ancienne" in Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 258-261.

Download printable copy

Here are this week's Baroque pieces. Be sure to check out last week's music if you missed it!

Monteverdi- "Luci serene e chiare"
Cavalieri- "Dalle più alte sfere" (actually found this one a bit annoying)
Cavalieri- "Godi turba mortal"
Caccini- "Sfogava con le stelle"
Peri- L'Euridice

*"Forks" in California Academy of Sciences, The History of Eating Utensils (link).
**"Mad Master Cooks" in Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007), 134.
To learn more about the fork, check out this article at Design*Sponge.

*****

Cast Party Wednesday
Whisking Wednesdays
What I Whipped Up Wednesday @ Sugar and Dots
My Best Recipes Every Wednesday

Baking and Books: Pear Crisp and The Strange Woman

2011-10-04T07:20:00.000-05:00

I just used my Peach Crisp recipe and subbed pears for the peaches and reduced the sugar a bit. Easy!

Pear Crisp

Topping:
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly-grated nutmeg
¼ pound unsalted butter, chilled and cubed

Filling:
2 lbs pears, peeled, halved and seeds and stems removed
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon freshly-grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon non-GMO cornstarch

Preheat oven to 350˚ Fahrenheit. In a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, ½ cup sugar, salt and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg. Rub in the butter until topping mixture resembles lumpy oatmeal. Set aside.

If the pears are firm, halve again. Otherwise, place halves in an 8” square baking tin and cover with ¼ cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg and cornstarch. Stir to combine. Spread topping evenly over pears and bake in the middle of the oven for 50 to 60 minutes, or until topping is a nice golden color, but not browned. Serve hot or cold.

6 generous servings

Download printable copy

*****

Not that they really have anything in common other than sharing a similar palette, but I still want to talk about my interlibrary loan! The Strange Woman by Ben Ames Williams became a movie shortly after its release. It's quite possible the book really was "talked of in a Whisper!" It's quite scandalous--sadism, murder, incest, pre- and extra-marital sex, prostitution...all going on within the realm of the temperance movement in 1830s Bangor, Maine. You may suspect (particularly if you've read/seen Leave Her to Heaven) that Ben Ames Williams didn't have a very high opinion of women. In the last chapter of The Strange Woman he writes, "Oh, men were fine, sensitive and delicate and tender as no woman would know how to be," and begins the novel with a quote from Proverbs:

For the lips of a strange woman drop honey,

And her mouth is smoother than oil:

But her latter end is bitter as wormwood,

Sharp as a two-edged sword.

The quotations are apt; Jenny Hager is one nasty piece of work. She makes Scarlett O'Hara look like Mother Theresa. I'd already seen the movie, so I thought I knew what to expect--boy howdy, was I wrong. First off, the movie doesn't follow the book very closely at all and, secondly, the book is much more lascivious. Makes for fun reading, right? I was actually surprised by how absorbing The Strange Woman turned out to be. I wanted to know what Jenny would do next!

Be sure to watch the film* before you read the book so you won't be aggravated. The movie version suffers from the prudery of the production code, but whoever did the casting did a great job (if only the film had a dialog coach!). Hedy Lamarr (Jenny Hager), Gene Lockhart (Isaiah Poster), Louis Hayward (Ephraim Poster) and George Sanders (John Evered) are all a good fit for their respective characters. Ah, what might have been!

*Download free at Internet Archive
All Strange Woman photos are from Doctor Macro.

*****

Crazy Sweet Tuesdays
Sweet Treats Thursday
Cast Party Wednesday
Whisking Wednesdays
What I Whipped Up Wednesday @ Sugar and Dots
My Best Recipes Every Wednesday

Life This Week: October 3, 1938

2011-10-03T08:00:00.020-05:00

When I saw this ad in this week's Life magazine, I knew I had to try to find the movie! (By the way, the original U.K. title was The Drum) Roger Livesey and Valerie Hobson play a newly married couple (Captain and Margery Carruthers) who have to go to Tokot, in the Northwest Frontier, where a local ruler who has just signed a treaty with the British has been murdered by his evil brother, Ghul Kahn (Raymond Massey, obviously enjoying his villainous role). I'm sure you can guess this film isn't very politically correct. It takes a pro-colonial, paternalistic view of the British Raj. I had to keep reminding myself that when this was filmed, it was meant as a contemporary film and wasn't a period piece like The Charge of the Light Brigade or Gunga Din. It's amazing that only four years before Gandhi's Quit India movement that Indian natives were portrayed as being so completely subservient that any Victorian colonist would have been overjoyed.

However, if you can overlook the pro-colonial, rather racist (although I actually don't think it's meant to be) undertones, the film is pretty entertaining. The young Indian actor Sabu plays Prince Azim, who is forced to flee Tokot when his father is killed and his uncle takes over. Sabu plays every scene with relish and steals the show. Captain Carruthers is honorable, capable and reliable and Margery Carruthers looks very pretty while doing a lot of hand-wringing (although we soon see she's quite capable of taking care of herself if required). The best part? It's completely FREE at Internet Archive. The Drum will also air Monday, December 26, 2011, at 3:15 p.m. CST on TCM.

For your viewing pleasure, screen captures of Margery Carruthers's fantastic wardrobe:

Gorgeous in lamé and chiffon:

Burgundy evening gown, pink nightgown:

Smart day dresses:

Jodhpur "casual" and close-ups:

*****

Film poster from Wikipedia

The Movie of the Week is That Certain Age, another Deanna Durbin film! This time her co-stars are Jackie Cooper (formerly of Our Gang) and Melvyn Douglas. It's silly and predictable but fun family fare. However, I didn't find it quite as entertaining as Three Smart Girls. Juanita Quigley, playing Jackie Cooper's character's baby sister, is ridiculously cute.

Juanita's on the right. (from All-Star Pics.net)

Week-in-Review, Garden Progress and Vintage Silver

2011-10-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

This week on The Past on a Plate:

Also this week:

For Flea Market Finds today, I'm sharing a set of silverplate fruit spoons I bought from etsy store The Lazy Peacock. The pattern is Oneida's Queen Bess 1924. I almost wanted to keep The Lazy Peacock to myself, because the store has such amazing things at such great prices! Why fruit spoons? I got really really tired of being covered in grapefruit juice every time I ate grapefruit for breakfast!

Dinner and a Movie: Two Thousand Women

2011-09-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

Carrot and Raisin Salad

4 carrots, peeled, bottoms trimmed (leave the tops untrimmed so you have something to hold on to while you grate)
3 tablespoons raisins
2 tablespoons blanched, slivered almonds
juice from ½ lemon
approximately 1 tablespoon olive oil
sea salt
freshly-ground black pepper

Grate the carrots into a mixing bowl, then stir in the raisins and almonds. Add lemon juice, then stir in enough olive oil to coat the carrots and make them shiny. Season to taste with salt and pepper then cover and refrigerate several hours until thoroughly chilled.

Serves 2

Adapted from “Carrot Salad with Raisins” in Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book (New York: Atheneum, 1979), 164.

Download printable version

Neeps

1 (1 lb.) rutabaga, peeled
sea salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
pinch of ground mace

Cut the rutabaga into chunks that are around a couple of inches apiece. Throw into a medium-sized saucepan, cover with water and add a handful of salt. Boil until very tender. Drain, return rutabaga to saucepan and mash with butter and mace. Add more salt, if needed, and serve.

Serves 2

Adapted from “Bashed Neeps,” The Great British Kitchen.

Download printable version

These two side dishes went with a couple of Lammas Lample Pies that I'd been keeping in the freezer. I've never had Carrot and Raisin Salad before, but I was curious, so I made it! All I have to say is "yum!" It's bright from the lemon juice and sweet and crunchy. Rutabaga (or "Swede") is the main component in a dish of Neeps (Scots for "turnip"). While similar to a turnip, a rutabaga is milder and less peppery. I think it tastes way better! It does, however, benefit from the addition of butter and a good amount of salt! Mace really compliments the milder flavor of the rutabaga. If you don't have mace, just substitute nutmeg.

Some music for cooking:

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Jean Kent and Patricia Roc

I found Two Thousand Women browsing through Netflix and thought I'd give it a try. I'd never heard of it, so I didn't have very high expectations. I just wanted to be entertained! Two Thousand Women delivers--it's the story of a group of ex-patriot British women who are sent to an internment camp after the German invasion of France. It has its funny moments but also a fair bit of suspense after three RAF pilots show up looking for a hiding spot. I can't imagine that women in internment camps had the extensive wardrobes these gals have, but that's no reason we can't enjoy it, right?

Top row: Patricia Roc, Flora Robson

Bottom row: Patricia Roc, Renne Houston, Phyllis Calvert, Jean Kent, Flora Robson

Bottom left: Anne Crawford

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Feasts and Festivals: Michaelmas

2011-09-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

Michaelmas is the feast of St. Michael, archangel and patron saint of soldiers, horses and St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall. As a quarter day, Michaelmas was when rents were paid and when Hiring Fairs were held throughout England. Those looking for work carried an emblem of their vocation (mops for maids, whips for drivers, straw for those who tended cattle and crooks for shepherds) which they would trade with their new employer for a ribbon and a shilling, which they could then spend at the fair.*

Photo of St. Michael's Mount from 1900 (Wikipedia), which is extremely similar to better-known (at least to us Americans) Mont St-Michel in Normandy.

Goose is the traditional meat for Michaelmas, but Paul couldn't get one for me since goose season doesn't start until the last weekend in October and we don't have any waiting in the freezer. But I really liked the idea of the apple-and-walnut-stuffed roast goose from Cattern Cakes and Lace, so I made an Apple and Walnut Roast Chicken. I didn't make a stuffing, because I don't know how one would fit a decent amount of stuffing in a chicken, but I did stuff the cavity of the chicken with apples, walnuts, onions and herbs, which gives a nice flavor and the apple keeps the chicken moist. The accompanying vegetables get all caramelized and gooey and yummy.

Apple and Walnut Roast Chicken

1 (4lb) chicken
1 oz. walnut halves, roughly chopped
8 sage leaves, cut into a chiffonade
3 bay leaves
1/2 lb Granny Smith (or other cooking) apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 small onion, peeled and cut into wedges
butter, softened
sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Per person:
1/4 lb parsnips
1/4 lb potatoes
1/2 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat oven to 375˚ Fahrenheit. Peel and chop the parsnips and potatoes then toss olive oil, salt, pepper, half the apple slices and half the onion wedges in a large roasting pan. Push to the edges of the pan to leave room for the chicken.

Season the inside of the chicken with salt and pepper. Stuff the cavity with the walnuts, sage and bay leaves. Add the remaining half of the apple slices and onion wedges. Truss and nestle the chicken (breast-side up) in the roasting pan, surrounded by the potatoes and parsnips. Spread the skin of the chicken with the softened butter and season with salt and pepper. Roast in the middle of an oven 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until the juices from the chicken run yellow (not pink) when the thickest part of the thigh is pricked with a knife or skewer. Roast longer if necessary.

Remove the chicken to a carving board and tent with aluminum foil. Let it rest 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, return the vegetables to the oven and turn the heat up to 425˚ Fahrenheit. Roast another 20 minutes.

When the vegetables are ready, carve up the chicken and serve alongside the veggies.

Download printable version
Print at Food52

Cattern Cakes and Lace also recommends serving Hot Baked Wardens, which are pears baked in a spiced red wine. My version is an English-units, hard-pears version of Karen's wonderful recipe. Be sure to check out her blog, Lavender and Lovage, as well.

*"Michaelmas" in Julia Jones and Barbara Deer, A Calendar of Feasts (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1987), 103.

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Way Back Wednesday: Spiced Pears with Cream

2011-09-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

In The Cook's Guide (1664), Hannah Woolley gives instructions "To stew Pippins with cream:"

Take your Pippins, pare them and core them; if you would have them red, bake them first, or else put to them as much water as will cover them and some cinnamon and cloves unbeaten; turn them sometimes and cover them close; set them over the fire till they begin to be tender, then sweeten them with sugar; and boile them when the sugar is in till they are clear, then put sweet cream to them, and let them stew together till you find they be enough; thus you may do with baked pears (58-59).

I decided that baking the pears in a spiced sugar syrup and then pouring the cream over would give better results after attempting to follow Hannah Woolley's instructions, which ended in curdled cream, which wasn't terribly attractive. However, the pears were so tasty I thought it worth my time to rework the recipe:

Spiced Pears with Cream

2 tablespoons sugar
½ cup water
1 cinnamon stick
10 cloves
2 pears
¼ cup cream

Preheat oven to 350˚ Fahrenheit.

Place the sugar and water into a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan over high heat and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved then don’t stir any more! When the sugar/water mixture comes to a boil, let it boil two minutes then take off the heat and add the cinnamon stick (broken in two) and the cloves.

Peel the pears, halve them and remove the cores. Place them in one layer in a baking dish or casserole that is just big enough for them to fit. Pour the syrup and spices over the pears and bake in the center of the oven 45 to 60 minutes, or until softened, turning the pears halfway through.

Serve the pear halves topped with syrup and two tablespoons cream per person. Discard the spices.

Serves 2

Inspired by “To stew Pippins with cream” in Hannah Woolley, The Cook’s Guide (London: Peter Dring, 1664), 58-59 and adapted from “Baked Apples” in Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book (Minneapolis: Macmillan and General Mills, 1950), 215.

Download printable copy

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Baroque recipe, baroque music:

In an effort to expand my musical knowledge, I discovered this syllabus from the Indiana University School of Music and thought it might be nice if we listened to some of the listening assignments together each week as part of Way Back Wednesday.

These are actually Renaissance pieces, so they should prepare us (chronologically, at least) for upcoming Baroque music.

Palestrina- "Dum Complerentur"

Lassus- "Timor et tremor"

Gesualdo- "Beltà poi che t'assenti"

Luzzaschi- "Deh vieni ormai," "Cor mio deh non languire," and "T'amo mia vita"

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Susan at The Well-Seasoned Cook hosts Black and White Wednesday.

Caviar, like this Alaskan salmon roe, is one of my guilty pleasures, even when it's on a saltine! How embarrassing...

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Cabbage with Bacon

2011-09-27T08:00:00.005-05:00

I get bored with eating the same thing fairly easily, so I'm always looking for new vegetable recipes. I love cabbage and I love bacon, so trying this recipe was a no-brainer. I really liked how the fatty sweetness from the onion/bacon combination caramelized the cabbage. Yum!

Cabbages are great because even the organic ones are cheap (this one was $1.99) and they're filling and good for you. Cabbage with Bacon is a natural as a side dish, but it makes a nice main dish, as well.

Cabbage with Bacon

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped
¼ lb bacon, cut into lardons
sea salt
freshly-ground black pepper
1 (2 lb) green or white cabbage, shredded

Heat the oil in a 13” skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and bacon then season with salt and pepper. Sauté for 10 minutes, or until onion is beginning to become translucent. Turn down heat, if necessary, to keep onion from browning.

Add the shredded cabbage, cover and cook 15 minutes, or until cabbage is softened and reduced by half. You’ll have to stir everything around pretty frequently to make sure the cabbage cooks evenly and the onion and bacon don’t stick. Add more salt and pepper if needed.

Serves 4 to 6 as a main dish or 6 to 8 as a side

Adapted from “Cabbage with Bacon” in Hilaire Walden, ed., Traditional British Cooking: The Best of British Cooking, a Definitive Collection (London: Hermes House, 1997).

Download printable version

I thought I was going to need a machete! Paul just took photos and laughed at me.

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I've switched to Disqus for commenting. You can still use your blogger account to comment by clicking on the google button (or use twitter or facebook, even, if you prefer). I'm hoping that using Disqus will make the comment process easier and more interactive.

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Out and About in Wichita and Life This Week: September 26, 1938

2011-09-26T08:00:00.027-05:00

Paul and I stopped by World Market to pick up some not-ground-up cinnamon and ended up buying a rather eclectic assortment of items, which happens every time. First off, they have a display of pegs and pegs of scarves that I (obviously) can't resist. Then, we get to the groceries and they have salmon roe and it's only $8.99. Sold! Then Paul has to get the Bock-Wurst, which are like enormous Vienna Sausages. (I'm told they're much better than Viennas, but I wouldn't know from first-hand experience.) Then, in the center of the store are the seasonal displays--and they have the cutest squirrels and owls! And I'm totally lost and the squirrel and the owl (which is an ornament) come home with us. I guess that's why I kept turning the thermostat up all summer, will keep turning down all winter and save all my breadcrumbs--I need that cash for scarves. And woodland critters. And caviar.

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Have you read any of the Skippyjon Jones books? He's a Siamese cat who desperately wants to be a Chihuahua. He's the cutest ever. So---when Paul and I walked over to Watermark Books (our neighborhood independent bookstore) the other night and I saw this window display, I had to take a photo!

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I was disappointed not to be able to get a copy of the Movie of the Week, Too Hot to Handle, but I did enjoy a full-color spread of "French 18th Century Paintings in America." Also be sure to check out a short article about Madame de Pompadour.

Madame de Pompadour (1759) by François Boucher, Wallace Collection, London via Flickr

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