Schmatz! Lunches at Steidl

I have a complicated relationship with lunch.

As much as I'd like to say that I take my full lunch hour to savor every delectable bite of my homemade meal, and that I use real silverwear, a cloth napkin, and glass stemware, and then take a refreshing walk around the block -- just to clear my head and feel the fresh air on my skin -- I can't.  In fact, that would be a bold-faced lie.

The truth is that the utensils are plastic, the Diet Coke is taken straight from the can, and the plate is either a plastic bento box (Cafe Zaiya), a swath of tin foil (Olympic Pita), or a folded box with "window" (Pret a Manger). The hour is more like 12 minutes and my walk around the block is, well, sitting at my desk reading Lifehacker.com.

I don't feel very proud of how I spend my lunch hour every day, but I felt a lot worse after reading Schmatz! Lunches at Steidl.

Lexical Life

Merguez, orecchiette, tikka masala, veggie. What do those words have in common? They were all added to the Oxford English Dictionary in the same year, 1975.

Ryan Haley, an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse and librarian in the Art Division of New York Public Library (and born in 1975), recently published a limited edition artist’s book. In Autobiography, Volume One (1975-1993), he documents the first eighteen years of his life by chronologically listing the words added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in that time period.

On its website, the OED is described as "an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both past and present," and is the considered to be "the definitive record of the English language." Every year the OED adds new words to the dictionary, thereby cementing that word or phrase to the annals of history. When compiled together, as in this project, the list of words reads like a time capsule capturing the social history of a given year. And while most (if not all) of the added words had been in use before their entry date, their addition to the OED represents when they became more commonly used in the English language.

I was fascinated with the food words in this project, and how certain themes clearly emerge, specifically coffee drinks, ethnic foods, and name brands. For example: Espresso-macchiato and latte macchiato (1976), Shake 'n Bake (1976), kir royale (1977), pad thai (1978), pasta fagioli (1980), amuse-bouche (1982), microbrew (1985).

Len Deighton: The Spy Who Came In From the Kitchen

Those familiar with the writer Len Deighton most likely know him as a spy novelist. His debut in 1962, The IPCRESS File, was a big hit and many other spy works followed as evidenced by his lengthy bibliography: Spy Story (1975), Yesterday's Spy (1976), Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy (1977), Spy Hook (1988), Spy Line (1989), Spy Sinker (1990) and more.

But while a large part of Len Deighton's success came from his novels, he was also a highly regarded food writer with a column in the London Observer and two cookbooks under his belt: The Action Cookbook and  Où est le garlic, both published in 1965 between the releases of Funeral in Berlin (1964) and Billion-Dollar Brain (1966).

Linda Dano's Ten Minute Tomato Sauce

Perhaps in this day and age of celebrity chefs, cookbooks by old-fashioned celebrities are met with a yawn. Mario Batali, Gordan Ramsey, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver -- yes, they're all fine and good. But, really, can they compare to Linda Dano?



Linda Dano was the renaissance woman of late 20th Century daytime television. Many might remember her for her role as Fanny Grady St. George Lindquist Blake Castigliano Radzinsky (aka Felicia Gallant) in the classic soap Another World; she appeared from 1982 until the show's final episode in 1999 (thanks, IMDB!). But if you were like me and spent a lot of time in front of the television at a young and impressionable age, then perhaps you remember a little gem of a show on Lifetime called Attitudes? The hour long program was hosted by Linda Dano and Nancy Glass, but (as subsequent Glass replacements can attest) it was Dano who stole the show. A combination of talk show, gossip rag, and woman's issue program, Attitudes was the trifecta for an eleven year old girl like myself.

While I'm not generally a huge fan of kitsch cookbooks, I grew uncharacteristically aflutter when I saw Miss Dano's headshot and knew immediately the book deserved a good poring over. Here is her simple and quick tomato sauce recipe from Soaps On!

(click to enlarge)

Other celebs in Soap's On! include Diedre Hall (Scallops & Capellini), Michele Lee (Double Chocolate Surprise Muffins), and Heather Locklear (Hamburger Melba: beef, oatmeal, milk, ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, MSG, and peach halves. Whoa.)

Enjoy this clip from Attitudes where Linda and Nancy offer another installment in their "I Hate to Cook" series. They "recycle" turkey six different ways!

You're welcome.

Gourmet

Gourmet Magazine is closing and the news is shocking. Emails are flying, Twitter is aflutter, and the petitions have begun. It will be missed greatly, and I feel for all the Conde Nast employees affected by the foldings.

The good news is that the long and illustrious history of Gourmet lives on, in multiple formats, at the Library.

For starters, those interested in seeing a full run of Gourmet Magazine need only come to the 42nd Street Library and request it.

For electronic access to some of the most recent issues (2008 to the present), any New York State resident with a driver's license, state ID card, or library card can access the Library's subscription to ProQuest Platinum from home or work.

The Library also has hard-copies of the original Gourmet Cookbook (1950-1957) on the open shelves of the main reading room; Gourmet's Guide to Good Eating (1957); Naomi Barry's Gourmet: Paris a table (1971); Margaret Costa's Gourmet: London at table (1971); Gourmet Cookbook (1984); Gourmet's Menus for Contemporary Living (1985); Best of Gourmet from 1986 on; Endless Feasts: sixty years of writing from Gourmet (2002); the yellow Gourmet Cookbook (2004); Remembrance of things Paris: sixty years of writing from Gourmet (2004); and History in a glass: sixty years of wine writing from Gourmet (2006), among others.

So while you may mourn the loss of a monthly subscription, or miss the gorgeous covers at your newsstand, feel free to celebrate Gourmet's legacy at the Library. We keep it so that it never goes away.

Kheer Royale

Of all the puddings in the world, rice is my favorite. I do Kozy Shack rice pudding, I do Greek diner rice pudding, but my favorite is Indian rice pudding, or kheer. It's a thinner, milkier pudding, and with the delicate taste of cardamom, it makes for a refreshing and subtly sweet dessert.

I've attempted kheer before, and failed miserably. But this weekend, as I was cooking a fairly sizable Indian dinner for my brother's birthday, I decided to attempt it again. I know how much that boy loves his rice pudding. This time I used Vij's recipe. Five ingredients, and an hour and ten minutes later, kheer royale.

Rice Pudding
(from Vij's Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine)

Note: I halved the recipe and it served six people. This is the full recipe, as printed.

10 to 12 green cardamom pods
3/4 cup basmati rice
12 cups whole milk
1 cup sugar
raw, unsalted almonds for garnish.

Lightly pound cardamom and peel off the pods. Empty brownish-black seeds into a medium pot. Discard the pods. Add rice and milk and bring to a gentle boil on medium-low heat. Simmer, stirring gently and regular, for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Never scrape the bottom of the pot while stirring, otherwise you maybe get bits of slightly burned milk in your pudding.

As the rice and milk cook, the consistency will become more and more like pudding. Stir often, or turn down the heat slightly if the rice begins to clump.

Remove the pot from the heat and add sugar. Stir well. If you wish to serve it chilled, wait until the pudding is at room temperature before putting it into the refrigerator.

Sprinkle almonds (or pistachios) over pudding before serving.

The Forme of Cury

According to an article in The Guardian this week, the University of Manchester Library will begin a project to digitize The Forme of Cury, a rare 14th century manuscript compiled by King Richard II's royal chefs.

The Forme of Cury is considered the oldest known cookery text written in English (cury is the Middle English word for cookery), and the digitization project, which will include other treasures such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, should be completed by 2009.

The New York Public Library has a 1790 version of Forme in the Rare Books Division. That London imprint is also available digitally through Eighteenth Century Collections online, one of our electronic resources. Lorna Sass' To the king's taste: Richard II's book of feasts and recipes adapted for modern cooking, a1977 monograph that takes some of Forme's recipes and adapts them for modern usage, is also in our collection.

For more background on this historic text, one can read the short, but informative, essay featured on the British Library website.

The British Library's site also features some of Forme's recipes, such as the one printed below. And although Joan Nathan doesn't mention this dish in any of her cookbooks, the blend of honey and wine would make an interesting (and very different!) Rosh Hashana dish.

Tostee XX.IIII. XIII.

Take wyne and hony and found it togyder and skym it clene. and seeþ it long, do þerto powdour of gyngur. peper and salt, tost brede and lay the sew þerto. kerue pecys of gyngur and flour it þerwith and messe it forth.

Take wine and honey and mix it together and skim it clean. And seethe (boil) it for a long time, and add to it powdered ginger, pepper and salt. Toast bread and lay it thereto. Carve pieces of ginger, and flour it therewith, and serve it forth.

Ricotta Tacos

There are cookbooks I own that inspire me in their creative simplicity. The recipes are not terribly fussy or complicated, but the way the ingredients come together is a subtle thing of beauty. Those are the recipes I find myself making over and over again.

Then there are the cookbooks that inspire, sure, but they also intimidate. David Thompson's Thai Food is one that comes to mind. Every recipe seems just out of reach of my cooking abilities or patience. I find myself creating a cost-benefit analysis and ordering takeout. And while I'm ashamed to admit it, Diana Kennedy's The Art of Mexican Cooking provokes a similar reaction. Too many ingredients, too much lard, too time-consuming for me to feel at ease.

However, there is a way to get past that intimidation factor and that is by finding the easiest recipe in the book, mastering it, and then slowly moving forward. And I'm proud to say I've found that recipe, and it's really, really tasty.

Kennedy's recipe for ricotta tacos is hardly rocket science, yet it's unusual flavor pairing creates a simple, light and very summer-friendly recipe. The radish relish served with the tacos is beyond key and soon you'll find yourself making the relish alone and adding it to any old dish that needs a little snazzing up. Last week we added the relish to fish tacos. Perhaps it would go well atop a cold, creamy soup, say Bittman's avocado soup?

It's also the perfect way to use up those orphaned radishes in the crisper drawer or the extra radishes in your CSA box.

Now that I've conquered this--the easiest recipe in the book--I'm ready for...the second easiest. Any suggestions?

Ricotta Tacos
(from Diana Kennedy's The Art of Mexican Cooking)

Radish Relish:
1/3 cup lime juice
Salt
1/3 cup finely chopped radishes
1/4 cup finely chopped white onion
1 chile peron, black seed removed and roughly chopped, or any hot green chile chopped with seeds
1 T. chopped cilantro

Put the lime juice and salt into a bowl, mix in the rest of the ingredients and leave for at least 30 minutes to marinate.

Tacos:
1 cup drained and lightly salted ricotta cheese
6 thin, 5 inch corn tortillas
6 toothpicks
Safflower oil for frying

Spread 1T of ricotta over half of each tortilla. Fold over and secure with a toothpick.

Put oil to depth of 1/4 inch in a large frying pan and heat. When hot, but not smoking, add a few of the tacos and fry, turning once until they are golden and quite crisp. Continue with the rest.

Drain the tacos on paper towels and remove them when cool enough to touch. With toothpick, slowly open them up and add about 2T of the radish relish. Serve at once. (Or just spoon the relish over the tacos...)

Toll House Cookies

In this hot weather I'm willing to chill anything (myself included) and chocolate chip cookie dough is no exception. In today's New York Times dining section David Leite provides some keys to successful chocolate chip cookies, one of which comes from the 1953 edition of the Toll House Cook Book. Unlike the recipe featured on the Toll House chocolate chip packages, the cookbook suggests you chill the dough overnight which, according to Leite, produces a drier dough, more even browning, and vastly improved taste. Leite claimed the cookies that had rest in the fridge for 36 hours had a stronger toffee flavor and a more pronounced brown sugar taste. It's definitely a tip worth broadcasting, but since the Times didn’t provide Ms. Wakefield’s original recipe, I’ll do it for you.

Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies
(as written in the Toll House Cook Book)

Cream
1 cup butter. Add
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar class
2 eggs, beaten. Dissolve
1t. soda in
1t. hot water. Add alternately with
2 ¼ cups flour sifted with
1t. salt. Add
1 cup chopped nuts
2 packages semisweet chocolate morsels
1t. vanilla

Drop by half teaspoons onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Makes 100 cookies.

At Toll House, we chill this dough overnight. When ready for baking, we roll a teaspoon of dough between palms of hands and place balls 2 inches apart on greased baking sheet. Then we press balls with finger tips to form flat rounds. This way cookies do not spread as much in the baking and they keep uniformly round. They should be brown through, and crispy, not white and hard as I have sometimes seen them.

>> Keep in mind that the Library also has some earlier editions of Toll House cookbooks, if anyone is interested in other recipes coming out of Wakefield's kitchen.

Sorrel

A relative of both rhubarb and buckwheat, sorrel is a sour, lemony green which, while delicious, is rather hard to find in a generic supermarket. I was thrilled to see it in my food coop this week and I hope it remains a constant throughout the summer. In my mind, with its flavor and consistency, sorrel is unlike any green around.

I experienced my first taste of sorrel only about two years ago at a friend's house in the Catskills. A bookstore nearby had sorrel growing wild (as it is wont to do) and my friend asked the bookstore's proprietor if he could take some. That night for dinner my friend - and excellent translator - Matvei served up a wildly flavorful soup of potatoes, sorrel, water, and sour cream called Schav (with a name like Matvei it's got to be Schav...). I couldn't get over how a soup so incredibly simple could produce such vivid, unique flavors. I became a sorrel convert quickly.

Last night I tried to reproduce Matvei's Schav as best as I could. And while it was pretty tasty - a bit sour, a bit acidic, with the shredded sorrel completely surrendering itself to the water making for a tasty broth - I still intend to fiddle around with other recipes as much as I can this summer. And from the looks of it, it won't be hard to find suitable candidates. So far I've found a titillating recipe in James Peterson's Splendid Soups which will most likely be the next sorrel recipe I try. Patricia Wells has a simple sorrel filling for omelettes in Bistro Cooking, and a search for sorrel in the New York Times database provides plenty of creative recipes to choose from.

I only wish sorrel was one of the 11 best foods we're apparently not eating, because then I'd be set till next year.

Yogurt, Spinach, and Sorrel Soup (Dovga - can be served either hot or cold)
(adapted from James Peterson's Splendid Soups)

1 quart chicken or vegetable broth
2 cups yogurt
1 1/2 T. flour
1 cup spinach leaves
2 cups sorrel leaves
3 scallions, white part only, chopped
2 T. chopped dill
3 T. chopped mint
pinch of cayenne
salt/pepper
1 T. chopped chives or dill on top

Simmer broth in 4 quart pot. Whisk together yogurt and flour. Shred spinach and sorrel leaves into 1/8" ribbons. Whisk a cup of the broth into the yogurt mixture, then return the mixture to the rest of the broth. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for a minute. Garnish with a dollop of yogurt and either dill or chives.

Wilted Sorrel Sauce
(adapted from Patricia Wells' Bistro Cooking)

8 ounces fresh sorrel, ribbed and stemmed
1 T. unsalted butter
1 T. crème fraîche or heavy cream
Salt and pepper

Washing and dry the sorrel. Combine the sorrel and the butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir from time to time as sorrel begins to wilt. When most of its liquid has evaporated, stir in the crème fraîche and cook until all leaves are willed and it turns a dark green. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Sorrel Mashed Potatoes
(first published in an article by Moira Hodgson in the NY Times on May 19, 1996)

1 lb. russet or Yukon gold potatoes
4 ounces sorrel
2 T. butter
1/2 c. heavy cream
Salt and Pepper

Steam or boil the potatoes until tender. Meanwhile wash sorrel and cut the leaves into strips. Heat the butter in a frying pan and add sorrel. Stir for a few minutes over low heat until it has wilted. Add cream and heat through.

Mash the potatoes and stir in the sorrel puree. Season with salt and pepper.

Newlywed Cookbooks

The Times beat me to the (celebratory) punch.

Just last Wednesday, as I was strolling through the stacks of the Library, my eyes landed on this interesting title: The Groom Boils and Stews: A Man's Cookbook for Men.

Cookbooks for men are alone a genre worthy of discussion, but since the New York Times today provides a highly agreeable list of cookbooks suitable for newlyweds, I'm opting to focus on the Groom part of the above title to see what other gems we have in our collection.

In searching for appropriate cookbooks in our online catalog I was somewhat surprised to learn that no subject heading exists for newlywed cookbooks. The closest subject category seems to be Cookery for Two which includes such titles as Cook'n to keep him and the less gendered - and much more appealing title -- Cuisine pour toi et moi.

But back to The Groom Boils and Stews where the first recipe is how to boil water and chapter one starts with "If you've been hooked into the great dragnet of matrimony, there are a few fundamental principals regarding the laws of self-preservation you should know."

Arguably it's not a promising beginning, yet believe it or not, once you get past the silly chapter introductions -- the dessert intro is a doozy -- many of the recipes are straightforward, practical, and dare I say, appetizing. Consider this recipe for Atomic Beets:

Drain and cube two cups of hot cooked beets. Melt one tablespoon of butter in a saucepan. Stir in two tablespoons of horseradish and add the cubed beets. Season with salt and serve steaming hot.

The Groom Boils is also one of the few cookbooks I've found in our collection catered specifically to the groom, that is, a married man sharing the household cooking responsibilities with his wife. Most of the other male-centered cookbooks I've seen simply target bachelors whose main goal is not to starve to death while waiting for the right cook, I mean wife.

Bridal cookbooks are a different story. Cookbooks, in general were often given to young women as gifts upon entering the "great dragnet of matrimony." Some of the more popular gift cookbooks included classics like Joy of Cooking, The Boston Cooking-School cook book, and The Settlement Cookbook , and despite their lack of an obvious "bride" label, there was no doubt as to who they were meant for.

Of the bridal-specific cookbooks, one of the most comprehensive I've found is Betty Wason's 1964 book Bride in the Kitchen. This all-encompassing volume includes wedding gift/kitchen supply suggestions, grocery saving tips, a meat buying guide, and most importantly -- for the groom, at least -- a chapter titled Desserts for a Sweet-Tooth Man.

For more up-to-date newlywed cookbooks, one could try the Williams-Sonoma's Bride and Groom Cookbook (2006) or Abigail Kirsch's The Bride and Groom's First Cookbook (1996).

But really, if you want my professional (and somewhat biased) opinion, just don't marry anyone that can't cook!

Verdura

After what seemed like weeks of boring cooking and eating takeout, my kitchen was miraculously brought back to life this week, bustling with seasonal ingredients and two cookbooks: a new favorite and an old standby.

On Wednesday after a very special day of talking about artichokes in the Library (more about that at a later date…), my boyfriend and I walked the talk and braised some of the “thistly but delectable vegetable”** with peas and shallots. I’m embarrassed to say that prior to Wednesday night, I was more fluent in opening jars of artichokes than spooning out their chokes, but after Lidia’s recipe for braised artichokes in Lidia’s Italy (my new favorite cookbook), I’m officially a convert.

And last night I broke out Viana La Place's Verdura which, alongside some SPF 60 (you think I’m kidding?), is my constant companion until October. Verdura was given to me years ago by one of my oldest friends who at the time was working at Kitchen Arts and Letters – the ultimate cookbook store. If it’s good enough for Kitchen Arts to recommend, it’s been vetted enough for me. La Place's recipes are all wonderfully simple, allowing the flavors of the vegetables to shine through and take their rightful center stage. I can't think of a better summer cookbook than Verdura.

Last night I made La Place’s recipe for escarole bruschetta, featuring a cast of roasted pine nuts, plumped up raisins, and chopped olives all mixed with wilted escarole for a medley of unique flavors that come together seamlessly. And with escarole blending the winter green with the spring flavor, it was the perfect way to start an early June meal.

I also made what I like to call Old Faithful: zucchini coins cooked over high heat in olive oil and then liberally showered with pecorino romano and basil. A simple, but always satisfying side.

As far as I’m concerned, summer has officially begun.

**This quote, describing artichokes, is featured in a December 22, 1935 article in the New York Times detailing Mayor La Guardia’s ban of the artichoke which was put into effect to help put an end to food racketeers.

Braised Artichokes with Pecorino (and added peas...)
(adapted from Lidia Bastianich’s Lidia’s Italy)

2 lbs. small artichokes
1 lemon for acidulated water
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, sliced
2 cups chopped onion (we used shallots)
1/2 t. coarse sea salt
1/2 t. red pepper flakes
1 cup shredded pecorino

Trim the artichokes, slice very thinly and soak the slices in acidulated water.
Pour the olive oil into the skillet, and set it over medium heat. Scatter the garlic and onion in the pan. Cook for 4 minutes or so, stirring and tossing occasionally; season with the salt and red pepper flakes.
When the vegetables are sizzling and wilting, lift the artichoke slices from the acidulated water, drain briefly, and drop them into the skillet. Stir well, cover the pan tightly, and let everything cook slowly.
After 10 minutes, the artichoke slices should be softening - if they're hard and the pan is try, add some spoonfuls of acidulated water and continue cooking, covered. Braise for 15 to 20 minutes total, until the artichokes are tender and lightly colored.
Turn off the heat, and spread the artichokes out in the skillet bottom. Scatter the shredded cheese evenly on top, and cover the pan. Let it melt into the vegetables for several minutes before serving.

Bruschetta with Sautéed Escarole
(adapted from Verdura by Viana La Place)

2 T. raisins
2 T. pine nuts
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 medium head escarole, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2 inch strips
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more as needed
1/3 cup Kalamata olives
6 thick slices country bread

Cover raisins with warm water until plumped, about 20 minutes. Drain. Toast the pine nuts in a small sauté pan over medium heat, until light brown, then transfer to a small dish. Pit olives and cut into quarters. Finely chop 3 cloves garlic. Rinse escarole in cold water, and drain but do not dry. Place a large pan over medium-low heat. Add olive oil and chopped garlic, escarole and salt and sauté until escarole is tender, about 10 minutes. Add raisins, pine nuts and olives, and toss. Grill or toast bread. Rub with remaining garlic cloves and drizzle with olive oil. Spoon escarole over bread, and serve.

A Good Meal is Equal to Victory

The other day my friend and colleague Jessica Pigza was teaching her class on all things Hand Made (she'll be teaching more of those in the coming months so be sure to check it out...) and she emphasized something I should have brought up with culinary researchers long ago: pamphlet volumes.

In non-library lingo, pamphlet volumes are essentially short pamphlets that have been bound together into a book. The pamphlets range from topic to topic, and sometimes pamphlets bound together have absolutely nothing to do with one another except format, while other times they're bound by subject as well.

What makes these little guys so great is that they often cover subjects that are difficult to find in any free-standing book. Case in point: A Soldier's Simple Cooking Recipes for Cooking in the Trenches and Billets (with vocabulary of French words), published by Harrison and Sons, London and printed sometime between 1914 and 1918.

The preface reads:

Tommy Atkins has the best rations of any soldier in the world, but at the same time Tommy Atkins is the very worst cook in the world. These recipes, however, will help him in his difficulties when he needs to turn his hand to cooking.

The pamphlet provides recipes for trench cooking, including a jam roll and trench cake, and also provides a glossary of French words and pronunciations for those soldiers needing to purchase supplies.

Some examples include:

Chicken...Poulet...Poo, lay

Dining Room...Sale a manger...Sarle ah monjhay

Tongue...Langue deboeuf...Longe der berf

So if you're ever looking for wonderfully quirky cookbooks, look no further than pamphlet volumes (indicated by a p.v. after the call number).


Trench Cake

Crush 4 or 5 Army biscuits into powder.
Add enough water to make a stiff paste, mix in sugar and a tiny pinch of salt with a tablespoonful of butter if available.
Knead it well, but not too heavily.
Bake on a flat hot stone which has been heated in a fire. (If you can, use a beaten egg instead of the water; it will make the cake much more tasty and light.)

Ma Gastronomie

If you tuned in to Charlie Rose last night you might have seen Rose's interview with Thomas Keller. While the conversation was hardly earth-shattering, Keller did mention Fernand Point as the one person, living or dead, that Keller would most want to share a meal with. Keller went on to mention that Point's Ma Gastronomie is a must-read for all his staff.

Fernand Point, former chef and owner of Lyon's famed Restaurant de la Pyramid (you can see the menu and interiors in Vincent Price's book), died in 1955. After his death, Point's wife kept Fernand's high standards in place and the restaurant continued to thrive. Ma Gastronomie was compiled by Madame Point from her late husband's notes and was published in 1969.

It's not the easiest book to get a hold of. Recently Charlie Trotter mentioned the book in a Wall Street Journal piece, and the book flew off the shelves of used book stores. Rest assured, a new edition will be published this year by Overlook Press. In the meantime, get inspired by Point's gastronomical genius at the Library! We have both the French and English versions in the stacks.

Fannie Farmer

Fannie Merritt Farmer, Boston Cooking School’s esteemed graduate, director, and the author of its best-selling cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, was born on this day in 1857.

Within just a few years of graduating from the Boston Cooking School, Farmer became its director and in that role she revised the school’s previous cookbook, Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book written by her former teacher Mary J. Lincoln in 1883. Farmer's The Boston Cooking- School Cook Book was published by Little Brown in 1896 and was an immediate hit. The book not only cemented Farmer’s reputation as a thorough and creative cook, but also forever labelled her as the “Mother of Level Measurements.” Farmer strongly believed that one could not produce consistent results with vague instructions and her book was the first to insist that measurements be leveled with a knife or spatula. Gone were instructions for heaping tablespoons or scant teaspoons. As Farmer writes “A cupful is measured level. A tablespoon is measured level. A teaspoon is measured level.”

Farmer eventually left the Boston Cooking School in 1902, yet she continued to lecture and write. Her Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent in 1904 was a particularly personal cookbook for Farmer. When she was in high school Fannie was taken ill with a sickness (most likely polio) which not only kept her bedridden for months, but also ruled out any college prospects and left her with a permanent limp. Food and Cookery (the 1912 edition is available in the full-text via Google Books) promotes a healthy diet “from infancy to old age” with the emphasis on nutritional values and digestibility. One glance at the first few pages and one knows Farmer was serious about the subject. In addition to elaborate diagrams of the stomach and intestine, Farmer covers the chemical breakdowns of various foods and also includes tips on making food more palatable to the patient. Farmer wanted others to receive better treatment than she herself had received as a young woman.

Fannie Merritt Farmer died on January 15, 1915.

In addition to the 1896 edition, the Library has a number of facsimiles and later editions of the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, as well as her later writings. We also have Marion Cunningham’s wonderful Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Farmer’s contribution to American cooking cannot be underestimated. Her sophisticated recipes somewhat belie her scientific approach to cooking, which reminds me of my favorite Vermont “Farmer” Christopher Kimball who, to many people, has created something of his own Boston Cooking School via Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen. Something about Boston brings out the precise measurements in people.

For more information on Fannie Farmer, please consult the indispensable Perfection Salad by Laura Shapiro.

Oatmeal Muffins
(These muffins are a favorite of my colleague (and wonderful cook) Jessica Pigza.)
(Adapted from Marion Cunningham’s Fannie Farmer Cookbook)

1 ½ cups flour
2 T. sugar
4 t. baking powder
½ t. salt
½ cup milk
1 egg, well beaten
2 T. butter, melted
1 cup cooked oatmeal

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter the muffin pans. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl stir the milk, egg, and butter into the oatmeal. Stir until well-blended. Combine the two mixture and mix well. Spoon each muffin cup two-thirds full of batter. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out dry when inserted in center.

Rice Griddle Cakes
(from Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cookbook)

2 ½ cups flour
½ cup cold cooked rice
1 T. baking powder
½ t. salt
¼ cup sugar
1 ½ cups milk
1 egg
2 T. melted butter

Mix and sift dry ingredients. Work in rice with tips of fingers; add egg well-beaten, milk, and butter. Drop by spoonfuls on a greased hot griddle; cook on one side. When puffed, full of bubbles, and cooked on edges, turn, and cook other side. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

Vincent Price

There's no need to argue that Vincent Price was a fine thespian. I should say that his work in The Tomb of Legia ("I tried to kill a stray cat with a cabbage, and all but made love to the Lady Rowena....") and The Tingler speaks for itself. But many might not realize that Mr. Price was quite the gourmet and also wrote a few cookbooks. The Library has two of his culinary works in our collection, both of which he co-wrote with his wife Mary Price.

A Treasury of Great Recipes is not simply a recipe book, but a celebration of fine dining around the world, something the Price's - no doubt - were very familiar with. Restaurants throughout Europe, Mexico, and the United States are all represented, from Restaurant de la Pyramide in Vienne, France to Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. The menus of these establishments are printed inside, along with lush color photographs of the dining rooms.

It's so nice (yet rare) to have photographs of restaurant interiors. It's one question I get asked frequently by scholars researching historical restaurants. Yet we sadly have very few restaurant photographs unless images of the interior are part of the menu (La Côte Basque for example), or are included in the Library's extensive postcard collection.




Also in the Price family oeuvre is a five-volume set celebrating our nation's culinary history. Called A National Treasury of Cookery, each volume celebrates a different historical movement of American history and food. From the recipes of Early America (pickled oysters and chicken pudding) to Victorian America (Bonne Femme Soup and Beef Roulade), these quick little volumes feature surprisingly appetizing recipes with beautiful prints and photographs. Any lingering bad memories of cooking in costume at Philipsburg Manor* in grade school have suddenly vanished with the Price's recipe for Roast Duck with Virginia Cornbread Stuffing.

Gâteau Grand Marnier
from Hostellerie de la Poste, Avallon FRANCE
(adapted from A Treasury of Great Recipes)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream one cup butter with one cup sugar until pale and fluffy.

Cabbage, Two Ways

I've always been a fan of the cabbage family. I even had a cabbage family of my own in the 4th and 5th grade. One little girl Cabbage Patch Kid named Angelina Alberta (whose name I changed — but I won't say to what), and my dear little "preemie" Roy Len. I loved those two kids until mildew grew on their cloth limbs. Then, instead of hugging and kissing members of the cabbage family, I started eating them. And I haven't stopped.

Brussels sprouts are still my favorites. From steamed with lemon and butter, to roasted with olive oil and lots of salt, to the magnificent cream braised recipe from Molly Stevens' All About Braising, which will make any Brussels hater into a Brussels inhaler.

Molly Stevens' book is chock-full of wonderful braised vegetable recipes. One of my other favorites is her Braised Cabbage with Saint-Marcellin Cheese. It's pure decadence, and perfect along side some roast chicken during these cold winter months.

Another cabbage recipe I love is from Marcella Hazan's Marcella Says'. It's a raw cabbage salad which is obviously much lighter than Stevens', yet equally satisfying. While I'm the first to admit I've only tried a handful of recipes from Hazan's book, this recipe stood out for its simplicity and ease. So while Angelina and Roy have been sent along to Cabbage (Patch) Heaven, these two recipes should be titled, ahem: Heavenly Cabbage.

Savoy Cabbage Gratin with Saint-Marcellin Cheese
(from Molly Stevens' All About Braising)

3T. unsalted butter
1 head Savoy cabbage, cored, halved, and cut into 1/2" shreds
1 bunch scallions, greens and whites, cut into 1/2" pieces
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
1 ripe Saint-Marcellin cheese

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a large gratin dish. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add cabbage and scallions, season with salt and pepper and saute, stirring often, until the cabbage is just beginning to brown in spots, 10 to 12 minutes. Pour in the stock, and bring to a steady simmer, scraping the bottom of the pan, and cook for about 2 minutes.

Scrape the cabbage, scallions, and all the juices into the gratin dish. Cover tightly with foil, slide onto the middle rack of the oven, and braise for 45 minutes. Remove foil and continue to cook until the liquid is mostly evaporated, another 20 minutes.

Cut or tear the cheese into small lumps (about 1/2") and scatter them across the gratin. Increase oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook until the cheese is thoroughly melted, about 10 minutes. Serve hot or warm as a first course, side dish or on its own as a light supper.

Savoy Cabbage Salad with Avocado
(from Marcella Hazan's Marcella Says...)

3 to 4 cups shredded Savoy cabbage (I've also used red cabbage, shredded finely)
2 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly smashed with the flat part of a heavy knife blade
1/2 large ripe avocado or 1 small, peeled and cut into thin strips
Fine sea salt*
1 1/2 T wine vinegar
2 T extra virgin olive oil
Black pepper ground fresh from the mill.

Put all the ingredients in the salad bowl, toss thoroughly, and let stand at room temperature for 30 to 40 minutes (or longer). Remove the garlic cloves and serve at room temperature.

* I do think sea salt makes a difference here. Maldon entered my life recently and will never leave it.

This Bug's For You

Edible bugs, according to last week’s New York Times Magazine, are making a comeback. Writer Sam Nejame explores the new fascination (and long history) of eating insects. When asked why Americans don't include more -- or any -- insects in their diet, Florence Dunkel, the current editor of the Food Insects Newsletter, blames simple social aversion.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a social aversion to them. I have close to zero interest in trying insects. I am, however, fascinated by the fact that a Food Insects Newsletter exists, which yes, we do have at the New York Public Library. The Newsletter, which began in 1988 and is published out of the Department of Entomology at University of Wisconsin, Madison, has helped foster a community of scholars and scientists interested in consuming bugs. They make some valid arguments. According to their first issue, "...the prevailing opinion among those most knowledgeable about the situation in specific regions is that edible insects not only continue to be nutritionally important but could make an even greater contribution to human nutrition if supplies were increased or better distributed seasonally."

While searching through our collection of edible bug cookbooks I came across Creepy Crawly Cuisine by Julieta Ramos-Elorduy, a biology professor from the National University of Mexico. If you only buy one book dedicated to insect consumption, buy this. Even for someone like myself who has no interest in bugs, I thought some of the recipes sounded...edible. Ramos-Elorduy also includes nutritional information on these critters, all of which -- you'll be happy to know -- are very Atkins-friendly. She also describes what the insects taste like, and some sound downright tempting. For example, wasps resemble pine nuts, stinkbugs resemble apples, and Nopal worms taste similar to fried potatoes.

If you’re not interested in preparing bugs at home, try to score a ticket to the annual Explorer’s Club gala at the Waldorf-Astoria. When I went a few years ago, the insects were served atop rice, like sushi. For more of their recipes, try The Explorer’s Cookbook, so that after you’ve perfected insects, you can move onto snakes, lions and giraffes: A regular Great Adventure safari.

Wasp Salad (from Creepy Crawly Cuisine)
1/2 lb. larvae and/or pupae of bees or wasps
1/2 c. olive oil
1/2 c. peanut oil
1/4 c. honey vinegar (or other vinegar)
1/2 lb. mushrooms, finely chopped
1/4 head lettuce, finely chopped
1 can hearts of palm, chopped
1 mango, peeled and cut in pieces
1 t. salt, or more to taste
1/8 t. pepper, or more to taste

Fry the larvae in the olive oil at medium heat until they are crunchy. Place in a serving dish and add the peanut oil, honey, vinegar, mushrooms, lettuce, hearts of palm, and mango. Mix well, adding salt and pepper to taste. This salad makes an excellent accompaniment to the main course dishes.

Fried Katanga Termites (from The Explorer's Cookbook)

Trap them, put them in a jar, and seal with a tight screw top. When they are dead, simply dump in a frying pan rubbed with olive oil. Fry just a few seconds until crisp. Serve while hot. Goes wonderfully well with ice cold tequila.

Snow

While New York City hasn't had much snow this winter (it's nearly 60 degrees in New York today), when the big nor'easter does come there will be plenty of recipes to choose from. Snow, as an ingredient, makes its appearance in quite a few early American (and many British)cookbooks as evidenced in a search through Feeding America, the wonderful digital archive of American cookbooks from the University of Michigan.

But according to Alan Davidson in his Oxford Companion to Food, when cookbooks list snow as an ingredient they are not necessarily referring to the stuff found outside, but rather to a mixture of stiffened egg whites, cream, and either rosewater, sugar or a variation on the two. Sometimes this edible "snow" was used on twigs to replicate real snow on table centerpieces, and sometimes it was used in recipes.

Apple Snow, a recipe found in quite a number of cookery books of the time, Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book and Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cookbook to name just two, calls for heated, peeled, and cored apples to be mixed with sugar and then added to stiffened egg whites.

Another recipe, Snow Cream, also calls for egg whites to replicate snow. It was apparently a very popular recipe throughout the 18th and 19th century, as I found recipes for it ranging from Richard Bradley's 1762 book The Country Housewife, to Fanny Gillette's 1887 book The White House Cookbook. Richard Bradley's recipe reads:

A pint of cream, sweetened to your taste, and the whites of four eggs, whip them up in a froth; take it off as it rises, and lay it in glasses, or a dish, with mashed raspberries or strawberries underneath.

Elizabeth Lea's 1869 book Domestic Cookery also features a recipe for Snow Cream but she forgoes the egg whites completely, and adds real snow to the mixture right before serving:

Take the richest cream you can procure, season it with a few drops of essence of lemon, or syrup of lemon peel, and powdered white sugar, and if you choose a spoonful of preserve syrup, and just as you send it to the table, stir in light newly fallen snow till it is nearly as stiff as ice cream.

And some recipes just use the snow, as is. Take, for example, the recipe for Snow Griddle Cakes in the Women Suffrage Cookbook:

Take six tablespoonfuls flour, add a little salt, and six tablespoonfuls of light freshly-fallen snow. Stir the flour and snow well together, adding a pint of sweet milk. Bake the batter in small cakes on a griddle, using only a very little nice butter. They may be eaten with butter and sugar, and are very delicate.

So next time you're out and about in the mess of the city, cursing the mile-high snow banks stained brown and yellow, think of all these delicious recipes you could be making instead.

Elizabeth David's Cookbook Picks

With all the "Best of 2007" cookbook lists that have come out in the past few months, I was reminded of an article in the London Times from February 1971 that my friend and colleague at the Library, Amy Azzarito, pulled for me. The article lists twenty-seven cookbooks that culinary writer Elizabeth David recommends one have in one's library. The books are broken down into categories such as French and International; English and Scottish; Basic; Levantine and Mediterranean; Oriental; and Reference.

While some of these cookbooks are very familiar (Escoffier, Child, Roden), there are also quite a few I had never heard of. Fortunately, the Library owns most of those listed and I intend to pull them from the stacks and get more acquainted with these writers and their works.

I will list them as David has done in the article.

French & International:
1. Guide to Modern Cookery by Auguste Escoffier (1903)

2. Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Child, Beck and Bertholle (1963)

3. Cooking with Pomiane by Edouard de Pomaine (1962)

4. Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery by Jane Grigson (1967)

5. The Constance Spry Cookery Book by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume (1956)

English and Scottish:
6. Food in England by Dorothy Hartley (1954)

7. Good Things in England by Florence White (1932)

8. The Scots Kitchen by F. Marian McNeill (1946)

9. Farmhouse Fare by Agricultural Press (1935)

10. The Best of Eliza Acton edited by Elizabeth Ray (1968)

11. Mrs. Beeton's Household Management - facsimile of the original 1861 edition.

12. Jams, Preserves and Home Made Sweets with supplement for Home Freezing (1969)

Basic:
13. The Penguin Cookery Book by Bee Nilson (1952)

14. The Peacock Cookery Book by Betty Valk (1964)

Bread, Cakes and Yeast Cookery:
15. Home Baked by George and Cecilia Scurfield (1956)

16. Talking About Cakes, with an Irish and Scottish Accent by Margaret Bates (1964)

Levantine and Mediterranean:
17. A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden (1968)

18. Home Book of Greek Cookery by Joyce Stubbs (1963)

19. Italian Regional Cooking by Ada Boni (1969)

20. Mrs. Balbir Singh's Indian Cookery Book by Mills and Boon (1961)

Oriental:

21. How to Eat and Cook in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao (1956)

22. South East Asian Food by Rosemary Brissenden (1970)

Reference Books:

23. Larousse Gastronomique, English translation by Paul Hamlyn (1928)

24. Herbs, Spices and Flavourings by Tom Stobart (1970)

25. The Oxford Book of Food Plants (1969)

26. A Garden of Herbs by Eleanour Sinclair Ronde (c.1920)

27. Herb Gardening by Claire Loewenfeld (1964)

Elizabeth David's own works are definitely worth looking through as well, especially her studies on Italian and Mediterranean food. "She was hailed not only as Britain's foremost writer on food and cookery, but as the woman who had transformed the eating habits of middle-class England," writes the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The Library has most, if not all, of her books.

As for the cookbook list above, if any of you are familiar with the more esoteric of these titles, please share your thoughts and perhaps your favorite recipes of the bunch.

Here's to a new year of cooking and reading! Happy 2008!