Luxury today has the flavor of vice. In the ancient world of 1940, luxury was nearly a virtue—that is, if you could come by it honestly. So the world turns. Now turtle steak, once an out-and-out gourmet's dish, gets its chance to pinch-hit for the once-upon-a-time everyday beef and veal. So the menu changes.
Turtle steak is still expensive at 65 to 75 cents a pound—but not a slice of waste. Anyhow, that doesn't seem such an outlandish price in a world where good red meat is worth its weight in ration books.
Turtle steak is red meat in color, and tastes something like veal, only more delicate and sweeter, with an underlying odd flavor distinctly its own. These steaks come from green turtle giants taken on the sunny sands of the Caribbean, weighing from 100 to 300 pounds each, and imported by Moore and Company, 137 Beekman Street, one of the East's largest packers of turtle products. Steaks are taken from the sides, only thirty-five to forty pounds being available per turtle, these to sell to hotel kitchens and local specialty shops. Much of the turtle's weight is made up of the juicy meat of the large flippers, so fine for a stew. The meat in the shell does duty by the soup pots.
Steaks may be ordered cut thick for broiling, or in wafer-thin slices for breading and frying. When frying, sprinkle the brown crusted pieces at the very last with a few drops of Sherry. Cover the pan a moment to let the aroma penetrate the meat, then serve, and in a hurry. No Sherry on the shelf? Tsch! Tsch! Then shed a brief tear of lemon juice for the golden brown cubelets. Prepare for them a bed of crisply fried parsley. A rare stimulant!
Turtle steaks may be purchased direct from the Moore Company. They are retailed also by S. Comollo, Inc., 357 Sixth Avenue, and F. Rozzo & Sons, 159 Ninth Avenue. Flippers, too—these are for stews or a homemade broth. Cook the flipper with bone in to lend extra goodness. The bone is removed easily after the meat tenders. Bake the fins as you will.
Horn's Restaurant on Pearl Street broils the steaks beautifully, dealing them out with mushrooms in regular beef-steak fashion. The Voisin Restaurant, 375 Park Avenue, serves turtle steak broiled, and does the flippers in a Maryland sauce with Sherry.
The Moore Company imports the cow turtle only, since her meat is more tender, her shell superior to that of the bull. Genuine clear green turtle soup is made of that most prized portion, the outer circumference of the two heavy shells, the upper, “calipash,” the lower, “calipee.” And good for you, in case you care. The green turtle is a vegetarian, existing on seaweed; thus its meat is enriched with valuable minerals—iodine, calcium, and manganese.
“We served your grandfathers,” is the boast of Bellows and Company, established in 1830 as importers and dealers in fine wines and other spirits. Twenty-one years later, in 1851, the house was offering a few rare delicacies in its annual catalog. Among those early-day items were Canton preserved ginger, fine Dijon and London mustard, China and India teas, Sumatra, Java, and Mocha coffees, spices from the Orient, wine vinegars out of France. Today, in spite of war, there are five imports on the shelf still. Domestic items offered are of equal importance, each food selected with scrupulous care. The de luxe olives are a notable example, with four different stuffings for these super-colossals of the California groves. The fillings are celery, pimento, almond with capers, and finely-cut olive meat. Jars are in two sizes, the 1-pound, 6-ounce ＄1.65, the 10-ounce 75 cents.
The sweet spiced cantaloupe is cut in voluptuous strips, nearly four inches long and at least an inch wide, packed in heavy syrup, sharpened with vinegar, blended with spices.
There are still stocks of pears, cherries, and peaches, matured in old brandy. You serve these flambé or as a sauce for ice cream or other desserts. Just as a century ago, the firm offers olive oil produced from the first pressing of hand-picked ripe olives, grown on the French Riviera slopes. Like the great wine vineyards, the yield of French olive trees is small, but high in quality. The oil is triply clarified, and is classed among the finest olive oils in the world. Packed in France (but before the war, of course), the price ＄1.50 a pint.
Tooth and tongue! Now what is this? A West Coast chili sauce made with spiced fruit—one sniff and there is no escaping from such insidious fragrance. So good it is we could enjoy it served in a dessert dish to be lapped up with a spoon. This is first of all a tomato sauce with mild sweet peppers in it, onions finely cut, and then the different thing—quite large chunks of pickled peaches. How mystically wedded are the peaches and the tomato! There is a simplicity to the combination of the few ingredients, yet a sapient harmony. It would do a deal for the humble hamburger. Yet it is equally acceptable passed with veal cutlets. It's a sweet-sour stuff such as is beloved by the Pennsylvania Dutch. Sold by B. Altman & Co., Fifth Avenue at 34th Street.
Two chutneys, one called Mogul, the other a pineapple-ginger, have been added to the long list of delectables on the shelves of the Connoisseur's Corner of Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street. Both of these chutneys are the type called Indian—but Mogul is the more exotic. It has the most tang—a man's condiment. The combination is of apples, raisins, garlic, ginger, onion, lemons, celery seed, brown sugar, and spices innumerable. The other chutney is a sweet, spicy type, favored by women, and featuring pineapple and ginger, with raisins and apples and the usual spice array.
Grandma missed a bet when the didn't freeze the pumpkin pies along with the mince. Cooked pumpkin pie filling, needing only the addition of eggs plus milk, is a new quick-frozen item. The mix consists of cooked sieved pumpkin sweetened with molasses and sugar, and delicately spiced. R. H. Macy and Company have the filling, but buy it from any grocery carrying Bird's Eye foods.
Nova Scotia sends the cloudberry to appease the appetite of Scandinavians who miss this golden fruit of the Arctic. The Nova Scotia packer labels the can “Bake-Apples,” heaven knows why. But open a tin, it's cloudberry all right, a round, yellow fruit built on the style of the red raspberry, and soft to the tongue. Nyborg and Nelson, the Swedish delicatessen at 841 Third Avenue, handle the delicacy, the 8-ounce tin 50 cents.
Believing that little Davids still have their chance against the mighty Goliaths, Ellen Grey, twenty-two, has opened a shop. She has invested her own money, her own ideas—and there is just her own nimble self to run the whole works.
“Deviled Crabs,” you read in black lettering a foot-and-a-half high across the red awning that trims her match-box store at 800 Madison Avenue. In the refrigerated window are deviled crabs on view, stuffed high and mighty with sweet lumps of the crab meat from Chrisfield, M.d., the nation's crab capital. The crabs get their deviling in Ellen's little kitchen back of the shop. “Want to see the kitchen?” Customers are welcome. Everything is gleaming, stove, sink, work table, the caviar ice box—"Taste the caviar, it's fresh out of Russia. Big eggs, see? Scarcely any salt, ＄18 a pound.
“Look into the refrigerator. Here's the stuff for crab deviling.” Creamery butter, fresh eggs, fresh cream, parsley, green peppers. Nearby are two barrels of California dry Sherry. Therein rests the secret goodness of the deviled crab mixture. Or order deviled lobster—but place orders for these one day in advance. Three tender chicken lobsters are used for two servings. The shop doesn't open until 10:30 in the morning. But Miss Twenty-two is there before eight to get the crabs ready.
Green turtle soup and onion soup are other Ellen specialties, made for her by a young Italian who learned the art from his father, a well-known chef of the town. Four-inch long strips of turtle meat are packed into the broth, and the whole is blended with Sherry. The onion soup has a marrow bone base, with turtle meat in this, too, and Sherry singing soprano over onion's deep bass. The kettle-made soups wear the shop's proud label, a glowing scarlet crab being pitch-forked by the Devil.
Since August this young grocer has been searching for fine foods. The result is a remarkable array for food-short times.
Pastry and candy makers who have been searching the shops for a genuine almond paste can find it again at Gimbel's, Broadway and 33rd Street, vacuum-packed, in 5-pound tins, the price ＄5.74. This is a fresh, soft paste made of blanched sweet almonds ground after the extraction of the oil, and easily workable. If kept stored in a refrigerator, it keeps indefinitely for use as it is needed in candies, cookies, and petits fours, but best of all, in macaroons.
A herring is one thing. Sour creamed herring is quite another matter, and sour creamed herring with wine in its sauce is something else again. The addition of wine is a small difference—but oh my! This herring, which is creamed and wine scented by the kitchen of Vendôme Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, is brought down from Iceland; the wine is a California Chablis; the onions mild and sweet, the spicing delicate. Great crocks of herring are creamed and let stand for a week to give the fish and sauce time to exchange flavors and savors. Herring in sour cream is a main dish for dinner when served with a dry and mealy boiled potato. Hot buttered beets are a good tag-along, with dark bread. In the words of Dr. Samuel Johnson, complimenting his host, “Sir, we could not have had a better dinner had there been a synod of cooks.”
Shelled raw Virginia peanuts may be ordered by the 5-pound bag ＄1.75, through Direct Shipping, 32 Bedford Street. These are peanuts for those who like to do their own roasting, peanuts for folks from Florida and Georgia who know raw goobers boiled or baked make mighty fine cating. In Southern states, peanut boilings are as common as cane boilings. Peanuts are gathered just before they mature, washed, then boiled in their hulls in very salty water. The nuts cook gelatinous, with a full peanut sweetness.
Iridescence after iridescence is in the case of glacéed fruits and nuts seen at Henri's, the French confiseur, at 15 East 52nd Street. Meaty halves of nuts, and in variety—almonds, cashews, walnuts, pecans—are stuck together with almond paste, and the whole glacéed in a casing as thin as one layer of lacquer. There's crackling like thin glass when the teeth break through. The price, ＄2.50 a pound for 26 to 30 pieces. In the case adjoining are the sugar fondants in flower shapes—white daisies with golden hearts, pansy faces, yellow orange lilies with pale blue tongues. Any color you wish, madam, price ＄2 a pound.
It is the dark breads of Continental type that bring customers from everywhere to the Daylight Bakery, 607 Tenth Avenue. More kinds of dark breads are there than we have ever seen in one place: sweet rye, sour rye, Konnis brot, pumpernickel, light pumpernickel, Vollkorn brot, and farmer's bread, called Bauern brot. The last bread, in tremendous demand, is made with 100 per cent rye flour, without yeast. It is sour bread without being too sour, the texture firm and moist. It is kneaded long and slowly by a technique that the baker claims is the secret of its quality. Sample the Westphalian pumpernickel, 100 per cent whole rye grain, very chewy, but not so stiff and dry as the average variety. This is made by the same kneading method as Bauern brot, but is baked less than two hours, while Bauern brot spends sixteen hours in the oven.
Its name is Apiphene. It comes from the Southwest and is as much a funny honey as ever we have seen. You take it by chews, about three chews a day, and chew as with chewing gum. After ten minutes' jaw work the honey has melted away. The ailments it promises to benefit reach from us to you—covering colds, hay fever, asthma, to mention a few. The stuff is the comb and comb-wax, a natural product of bees which sip the nectar of desert plants in the Southwest. Nothing is added, nothing taken away, price ＄2.50 for 4 ounces, or enough chews, three times a day, to last you almost a week. The honey is sold by Hetty's Honey House, 671 Lexington Avenue.
After a year of talking. Louisiana has let Canada heat her to the eastern muskrat market. The province of Quebec sends cooked, boned muskrat packed in its own broth, to sell at Gristede's Bon Voyage Shop, 12 Vanderbilt Avenue, for 89 cents a half-pound tin—not so expensive, for this is solid meat. Did you ever dress muskrats? They are a fine network of bones. It's a pleasure for once to dip up the dark-red, gamy flesh without first applying knife and fork in a boning technique.
Louisiana keeps promising quick-frozen muskrats—but we haven't seen the critters. To get back to that half-pound tin of what is prettily dubbed marsh rabbit, however, what shall we do with it? Turn the meat into a heat-proof casserole, add one-half cup red wine, a bit of grated nutmeg, black pepper, and a pinch of oregano (Mexican sage). Now cook in boiling salted water four washed, unpeeled Jerusalem artichokes and one pound washed, unpeeled celery root, cut in two pieces. When the vegetables are tender but still firm, drain them (saving the water for soup), peel, and cut in small cubes. Season, and add to the muskrat in the casserole. Cover with pastry, and bake. That's pie for two. A purée made of boiled, sieved parsnips, half-and-half with mashed potatoes, is a good thing with this.
A new chopped chicken giblet sauce is the acquisition of Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, a “carriage trade” item, the 14-ounce tin 95 cents. It's a sauce ready to use, nothing to add, for the seasoning is perfection. The giblets are cooked tender, held together by the sauce, nicely spiced, onion scented. Heat the contents of the tin, and pour over rice or noodles, or dip into nests of fluffy mashed potatoes. Giblets are beloved by the mushroom; add an equal volume of fresh mushrooms briefly sautéed, finely cut, the tin will serve six. Now add a little more seasoning, if you so desire.