A fine experience for the nose! Take a deep whiff of that Spanish saffron. The powerful, sweet aroma permeates your very being, it lingers in the nose. Only recently arrived and in the Ellen Grey Shop, 800 Madison Avenue, it sells for around ＄90 a pound. But no wonder the stuff runs into big money—these thread like flower stigmas are of a special species of crocus, hand-gathered, dried in the sun, with but three stigmas to a flower, each only one-quarter inch long, and requiring 2,000 flowers to weigh out an ounce.
To be good, saffron should be fresh, not above a year old, orange red in color, of sweetish aromatic odor, with a warm bitterish taste. Ellen's saffron is just that. It sells by the half-ounce in cellophane envelopes, and that's enough to last several months, for it takes but the merest pinch to scent and color a dish. Saffron lovers may like a few of the stamens to give today's unexciting teas exotic fragrance and taste.
There is a cheddar-like cheese spread of rich, creamy softness, its flavor touched by just the right tingle of sharpness, which is selling in bulk at Vendôme Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue. About 1,000 pounds are on hand, at eight points a pound. It is a golden spread which at room temperature spreads like butter and similarly melts in the mouth. A spread with merit piled on a finger of dark bread, a merit heightened when enjoyed with a high-ball.
No points for those cheeses made spiritous, and the selection is unending—Edam in Sauterne, Gorgonzola in brandy, Swiss blended Willi Kirsch, Stilton with Port wine, Cheshire with Sauterne, Roquefort with brandy, Cheddar in Port. The Gorgonzola and Roquefort of brandy blending have a Rabelaisian pungency pleasing to men, but too strong for our palate. We prefer (he cheeses less pungent blended with wines; eight-ounce jars ＄1.15, twelve ounces for ＄1.70.
Mung bean sprouts, those crisp, tender bits you find in chow mein and chop suey, promise to be around the large city markets as commonly as spinach. Bean sprouts for the grocery store trade is an idea that had its beginning in San Francisco, then traveled east into Denver, Duluth, Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, Boston. New York. All these cities have firms growing sprouts for the chain grocers as well as for the Chinese restaurants and the Chinatown areas.
Until the war, the bean sprouters imported mung beans from the Orient; now they are being grown here by the thousands of acres. Largest growing areas are in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, California, Georgia.
Sprouting is done, chiefly by the Chinese, in growing rooms, heat and humidity controlled. Seeds are grown in great crocks or galvanized containers, with a harvest every five or six days. These crops grow without soil, being water-fed by gentle sprinklings every few hours. When the sprouts are two to three inches long, the harvest is dumped into vats of running fresh water and given a thorough rinse to remove the seed coating which floats to the top, and which is easy, then, to skim off. The cleaned sprouts get a final fresh-water rinsing, then are put into boxes, cellophane covered, and off to the stores.
The sprout is happily at home in chow mein or chop suey. but try them in omelette, in green salad. Sprouts may be sautéed with onion to serve as a plain vegetable; and they're good in cream sauce. Sprouts need to be cooked but ten to fifteen minutes, only long enough to remove the “raw beany” flavor.
In Vienna, cooking was their Sunday fun. As some people take up photography or antique collecting, the Gottliebs turned to the invention of fine dishes. On cook's day out. Gertrude and Paul moved into the kitchen. Superb little Sunday suppers were prepared for their innumerable friends.
Six years ago they came from Vienna, home gone, friends scattered. What they feared missing most was those Sundays in the kitchen. Two clays in America, and a friend suggested a cocktail party in their honor. “Let me make the hors d'oeuvres,” Gertrude Gottlieb offered. Guests said, “Too lovely to eat.” But almost as they said it, the hors d'oeuvres were gone. “Make some for me,” the women began asking. Gertrude obliged. She made other things, too. salads, desserts; then Iter husband began helping. They set up for business in Sunnyside, Long Island, and for five years catered important parties in Manhattan—Broadway affairs and society's doings. With success assured, the Gottliebs moved into town to open for business at 250 East 57th Street, the sign reading: Ritz Plaza Caterer.
Gertrude's hors d'oueures are jewel-small and colorful as flowers in an old-fashioned nosegay. One we must tell about is a thin ring of bread spread with egg paste, on this a silver-sided anchovy curled to hold a half teaspoon of bright rose caviar, this in turn studded with a snip of black olive. One of the open-faced oblong sandwiches is covered with the thinnest of thin slices of Cheddar, and super-imposed on this is a tall, graceful daisy, the stem made of green pepper. the flower carved from slices of hard-cooked egg. The picture is framed in a curlicue border of golden egg paste. Small hors d'oeuvres go to parties in bonbon cups—less muss for the fingers, less danger of spilling.
Paul prepares the hot dishes with seasoned authority. He is proud of his roasts. He can do great things with a Vienna goulash. He does the most difficult of sauces with the greatest of ease. But salads and fancy fixings he leaves to the Mrs.
Gertrude's cheese platter is to a man's taste, the center a high cone of Hungarian Liptauer on a farmer's cheese base, blended with anchovies. capers, chives, paprika, caraway seeds, and just enough salt. The tower is a bower of radish roses, while the edge of the platter is ringed with a multitude of small sandwiches, every one a cheese kind. Cheese ribbon is a pretty thing, made with thin pumpernickel slices layered like cake, with white Canadian Cheddar alternating with the yellow American type. It's six layers high, the slices cut in thin fingers.
Fresh salmon salad for the buffet table takes the salmon's own shape. Chicken salad heart twins are for wedding buffets. One heart goes adorned with the name of the bride, the other with that of the groom.
These caterers make a wedding cake that has nothing to do with tradition—it's French ice cream sandwiched between thin layers of white cake, then the whole frosted and decorated in true bridal fashion.
The Gottliebs will turn out cocktail hors d'œoeuvres to your order of a dozen or into the thousands. Delivery is made in the neighborhood of the shop, that is, within a few blocks. Larger orders of 150 to 200 canapés will be delivered within a thirty to forty-block area. If the firm caters a party, it delivers to Long Island, Westchester, nearby Connecticut and New Jersey.
There is going to be precious little maple syrup around, and sugar, too, will be short, because of that early burst of spring which sent the sap up the tree and into the leaf so fast that it had the maple boys breathless. They hardly had the buckets hung and the fires started in the sugar house until the run was done. But maple man John Shelby of Barre. Vermont, has sugar to sell—five pounds “soft” or “pail” for ＄4, delivery charges prepaid if you live east of the Mississippi, or ＄4.50 for those of you who live farther west; three pounds soft sugar, carton-packed. ＄2.50 east, ＄2.75 west; five pounds old-fashioned hard sugar, ＄4 east, ＄4.50 west.
Mr. John has a package he calls “Sugarmaker,” a box chockablock with that fresh maple flavor one gets only in the springtime. In the pack is one of those nice little two-ounce sugar cakes just right for eating, a pound brick of old-fashioned hard sugar for converting into syrup, another pound of soft sugar, just right for cooking purposes, and one pound of maple cream, perfect for spreading on hot breads, on waffles, the price ＄3.75 east of the big river, ＄4 west.
Sweet memories of old Vienna are in those Pischinger tartlettes sold by Alt man & Kuhne, 700 Fifth Avenue. These are made in exact replica of the Viennese tartlettes composed of seven crisp, paper-thin layers sandwiched with a paste of almonds and chocolate. No more than a fourth of an inch thick are these pie-shaped wedges covered with bittersweet chocolate. They sell for ＄2.75 for a tin box of twenty large pieces.
A delicate brew is the pineapple vinegar which carries the faint taste and perfume of ripe Hawaiian crushed pineapple. It's pale vinegar, sparkling, perfect for a French dressing to use with a salad of fruit. The juice of the pineapple is processed in Hawaii, the vinegar made in California, aged in the wood. This is one of sauce-maker Barra's excellent products, here from Los Angeles, selling at B. Altman & Company, Fifth Avenue and 34th St reel, at 27 cents a pint bottle.
Nuts are everywhere. Baskets of mossy brown filberts, great bags of English walnuts with that fresh look of early harvest, new crop almonds, golden as honey, and southern pecans, in shell, out of shell, plain, or toasted and salted. Visit the Sutton Nut Shop, 159 East 57th, for nuts roasted daily, and a variety of kinds. Yes, pistachios. Almonds are there imported from Spain, and almonds domestic. Cashew nuts, too, jumbo in size, crisp-roasted, not the least greasy. The burnt sugar peanuts are one of the specialties. The nuts are dry roasted, then stirred in caramelized sugar, which gives a bitter edge to the sweetness.
Pecan bark is one of the good things of life; there's nothing to it but pecans thinly covered with bittersweet chocolate. This shop has an amazingly large assortment of chocolate bars, both the sweet and the bitter.