Saturday, November 6, 2010

The Glamour Magazine After Five Cookbook by Beverly Pepper

The book jacket claims that "Here at last is the specialty cookbook designed to liberate the working girl, the busy housewife, and the harassed but hungry bachelor."  The Gourmet Magazine After Five Cookbook, published by Doubleday, Inc. in 1952 was the forerunner to Rachel Ray's thirty minute meals with the foundational theory of "A triumphant year of delectable eating and never the same dish twice.  Over 300 menus which can be prepared in an hour or less, containing more than 1000 different recipes with shopping lists included".

I tried finding information on Beverly Pepper and the only reference I found was to a Beverly Pepper who was a famous sculptor-artist but who lived at the same time that this book's author lived.   There was no indication anywhere that they were the same person. Even in this day of instant Google searching, some things remain obscure; nevertheless, Pepper's book is ahead of its time and has a most cosmopolitan and sophisticated bent.  I think she hit the nail on the head when she said in her introduction that ..."here is a...cookbook which is not a cookbook--not in the ordinary sense, but a declaration of independence from kitchen slavery, a declaration of love for good eating.  Taken broadly, perhaps it is also a frank admission of a change in the American way of life.

The book is organized by the months of the year and the weeks of the month.  Each week includes 7 menus prefaced with a shopping list for the week and a staple list to keep your pantry's inventory up to date. The Sunday menu is more time consuming and often includes a roast, the leftovers of which will show up later in the week.  At the back of the book she includes menus for holidays, company and large groups.

Sadly, the worst feature of this book is its liberal use of convenience foods such as canned soups and vegetables (including canned potatoes) which are not difficult to make yourself, nor particularly time consuming, albeit with a little planning.  However, there are a great many innovative and very tasty dishes that do slap together quickly but don't taste like it and it was the beginning of real meals quickly.  The shopping lists and the frugal use of leftovers is to be commended.

A sample Week (1st in December) is as follows:
Sunday:
     Roast Loin of Pork w. Spiced Fruit Sauce
     Baked Idaho Potatoes
     Peas & Cauliflower
     Tossed Green Salad
     Brandied Bing Cherries
     Coffee

Roast Loin of Pork with Spiced Fruit Sauce: 5 1/2 lbs.  Rub with salt, pepper, 1 cut garlic clove.  Roast uncovered in slow oven (325) 4 hours.  Pour off fat, leaving 3 tbs. drippings.  Pour in 2 c. boiling water, 2 tbs. orange marmalade, 2 tbs. cherry jam. grated rind and juice 1 lemon, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. powdered clove, 1/4 c. sherry.  Bring to boil, serve with pork. (Save 1 1/2 c. meat for Tuesday.)

Peas and Cauliflower:  Cut 1 head cauliflower into flowerets.  Boil in salted water to cover 8 min.  Drain.  Cook 1 box peas as directed.  Drain.  Mix with cauliflower, 2 tbs. melted butter. 

Brandied Bing Cherries:  Chill 1 can cherries.  Add 1 tbs. brandy to each serving.  Garnish with whipped cream. 

The aforementioned Tuesday menu then, is as follows:

    Tomato Soup w. Herbs
    Curried Pork, Almond & Raisin Rice
    Escarole Salad
    Chocolate Refrigerator Cake
    Coffee

Tomato Soup w. Herbs:  1 can.  Prepare as directed.  Add 1 tsp. mixed herbs.

Curried Pork:  Cut leftover pork in small sticks.  Saute 1 chopped onion, 1 bay leaf, 1 chopped garlic clove, 1/8 tsp. thyme in 3 tbs. butter.  Mix 1 1/2 tbs. flour with bouillon, stirring until smooth and thickened, 1 diced tomato, 1 chopped unpeeled apple, 1 chopped banana, 1 tbs. white wine.  Simmer 5 min.  Add pork, cook 10 min.

Almond & Raisin Rice:  Prepare 1 1/2 c precooked rice as directed, adding 1/4 c. shopped blanched almonds.

For tomorrow:  Marinate 3/4 lb. sliced round steak in 1 c. vinegar, 1 c. water, 1 sliced onion, 1 bay leaf, 3 cloves, 1 tsp. salt

For me, the strong point of this book is the pre-planned menus which can be tweaked to fit today's life style with the use of more fresh ingredients, but which provide shopping lists and ideas to streamline the cooking day.  My own preference for planning ahead would then include a "cooking weekend"  wherein I would prepare everything possible ahead from scratch ingredients and have them at the ready during the week.  But it really helps to have a menu plan from which to operate.

The book jacket is a whimsical and delightful design; the use of many variety meats which are not even commonly sold in today's market much less eaten by American families for the most part is also interesting from the historical viewpoint. 

All the menus appeared originally in the magazine as an aid for the working girl.  The series brought a torrent of enthusiastic mail from housewives, club women, mothers and even bachelors.  It is a delightful peek at the historical beginnings of modern American cuisine.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Carefree Cooking by Jacquelyn Reinach

At the last count, I owned over 3500 cookbooks (some are pamphlets). It is probably more now as I seem to acquire a few more every year. It didn’t start out that way—I had a better than average collection of cookbooks when I was a newlywed—but definitely in the normal range. Over the years as my interest in cooking grew, I started collecting cookbooks when travelling and most of my family knew that a cookbook was always a safe and appreciated gift for me.

Then I married (second marriage) a man who sold antiques. He went to auctions on a regular basis—mostly estate sales. A majority of people who attend these auctions leave when the item or items in which they are interested have been sold. Not Zig—he never left until the auctioneer was packed up and turning out the lights. He is a detail-oriented, meticulous sort who stays to watch all the credits roll at movies, too. Anyway, at the end of the auction there are usually a lot of box lots (boxes filled with like-objects sold for $1 or $2 per box). Lots of them held cookbooks and I was the lucky recipient. I began to take an avid interest in the collecting aspect of these books; some of them turned out to be quite rare and in cookbook-collecting-circles, valuable.

There are three books on collecting cookbooks that I own and the only ones of which I am aware: Price Guide to Cookbooks and Recipe Leaflets by Linda J. Dickinson (updated version, 1993), A Guide to Collecting Cookbooks by Colonel Bob Allen (updated version, 1995), and Antique Trader’s Collectible Cookbooks Price Guide by Patricia Edwards and Peter Peckham, 2008.

I have organized my cookbooks by subject and have them all housed in a humidity-controlled room. I have had to destroy a few that came to me smelling of mildew or in such rough condition they just had to go. The question I am most often asked when someone learns of my collection is, “Do you cook from these books?” The answer is a resounding, “YES”, but not from all of them, of course. I read them. I play with them. I love them.

Now, I have decided to share the wonderful stories, cultural insights, personal glimpses into bygone cooks from all over the world with readers of this blog. I am going to review as many of them as I deem interesting and for which I have time in this lifetime. Perhaps I will weary of this and perhaps you will weary of reading about them—but, for the present, it seems like a wonderful adventure. For me, this is similar to Julie’s fantasy of cooking all of Julia Child’s recipes in the movie, Julie and Julia.

These will not necessarily appear in any particular order other than what is interesting to me at the moment. However, I welcome comments and requests.

Now, to start with my first cookbook: Carefree Cooking by Jacquelyn Reinach, published by Hearthside Press Inc. in 1970.

This is one of my favorite types of cookbooks because it is full of small anecdotes and a personal way of talking to the reader. It is also a cookbook that was written in my lifetime and reflects the era when I was a young married—I recognize many of the recipes as being trendy at the time—and was entertaining a lot. It is essentially a cookbook for a vacation home, or what we call it in Minnesota, the cabin up north.

She opens her book in the Acknowledgments by saying, “Carefree Cooking was conceived out of frustration when I was first faced with the problems of surviving, coping and cooking in our own vacation house. Thinking I was not alone in my struggle, I sent a questionnaire to people in second houses all over the country. Many of the solutions, styles and recipes have come from them . . . . including the idea that a vacation house is more a state of mind than a particular place.”

Chapter One is entitled, “Survival, Vacation-House Style” and has on its Chapter frontispiece the Old French Saying, “Be Careful What You Wish For, You May Get It.” It is filled with suggestions and, more importantly, philosophy on how to cope with a vacation house and still enjoy it; including practical ideas for meal planning, marketing, eating styles, housekeeping, opening and closing, and all manner of shortcuts and sanity-savers.

Chapter Two is alike in that it also is a compendium of practical suggestions on equipment and supplies and how to improvise if necessary. She quips:

“Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To get her poor doggie a bone
But when she got there,
The cupboard was bare. . .”
Pity she hadn’t read this chapter.

The third chapter opens the recipes section, but doesn’t stint on the verbalisms. The title of the chapter is, “If it’s morning, it must be breakfast . . . . or it might be brunch or lunch. I don’t know who Sir Harry Lauder is but he opens this chapter with “Oh, it’s nice to get up in the mornin’ But it’s nicer to lie in bed.”

I was continually surprised and delighted to find recipes in this book of the “pass around” variety—you know, you heard it from a work colleague or your neighbor or a friend and then, everywhere you went for awhile, someone was serving it. Several of them seem possibly to be the beginning of a trend that lasted a long time. Margaritas as a cocktail, posole, salad bars, submarine (or hero) sandwiches, melons injected with booze, Mexican dishes of all kinds, shish kebabs, are only a few of the now-standard foods Reinach includes.

She was also a forerunner for the natural and healthy food trend we all strive for in our cooking today. In her chapter on children’s food she says, “Whether you have your own darlings raiding the icebox, or grandchildren for a visit, or friends who never go anywhere without the children. . .feeding the kids should certainly be numbered among the facts of second house life. Which brings me to a small lecture on the number of no-good starchy and prepared products on the market we buy for kids because (a) we need snacks around to fill the gap between meals, or (b) the printing on the package looks nice. If you read the fine print on the labels, you’ll become aware of such hydrogenated muck and additives, you hopefully may want to question the wisdom of including those products in your kids’ cultural heritage. (Or your own.) End of lecture.” And that was in 1970.

This is one of my favorite quotes from this interesting and delightful cookbook,

If the cocktails had been as cool as the soup
If the soup had been as warm as the wines
If the wines had been as old as the chicken
If the chicken had been as plump as the maid
If the maid had been as available as the hostess
By Jove! It would have been a marvelous party!


Anonymous French Diplomat