It's high-test glamour you get in that seven-and-a-half-ounce jar packed with the smoked pheasant, the Fin-n' Feather Club label out of Dundee, Illinois. The sides of the jar are lined with perfect slices of the meat carved from the bird's breast. The central portion of the pack is made up of the unsliceable bits. The meat is kept moist and flavorsome with a dribble of the rich broth. The smoke flavor hides the gamy taste of the bird, but today;s domesticated pheasant haven't much gaminess to boast of in the first place.
Pheasant, of course, is a natural for the open-face sandwich to go with the cocktails. We suggest it, too, for the chafing dish and in a la King manner, and as an accent for salads, By all means, remember it for scrambled eggs at midnight. This jar of concentrated luxury sells for ＄4.00, three jars for ＄11.50, carried by Stumpp and Walter, 132 Church street, New York City.
Jewels in jars are offered by the Neiman-Marcus store of Dallas, Texas, mailed parcel post anywhere in the States. Emerald- and ivory-toned these jewels of the pickle kingdom—cucumbers, green peppers, butter beans, little green tomatoes, each vegetable hand packed in dilled brine with sprays of the fresh dill, flower head and all. The brine is made snappy with little red peppers, made beguiling with garlic. Into each jar has gone a bit of the crimson of the sweet ripened pepper, long spikes of celery, silvery rings of the onion. This pickle contingent is designed to use as an hors d'oeuvre, the dill flowers, pepper bits, and onion to add festive notes to the platter.
The dilled Italian tomatoes have been carefully chosen, each as like the other as peas in the pod. Tomatoes come in three sizes, little fellows no larger than marbles, others big enough to halve or to quarter, as a meat-plate garnishment. The little ones belong to the cocktail service; spear them with a toothpick and eat all in one bite. If smoked-turkey sandwiches are going to your party, serve them open-face with the sliced dilled tomatoes for a novel topping, these decorated with snippings of the dilled scarlet pepper—gay as a glow-worm!
Quarters of sweet green and red peppers are packed in the same spicy brine as the tomato. Try the red pepper bits to replace the pimiento in an a la King sauce. Keep the green quarters at hand and add snippets to give a dill tang to potato salad. Good too with the hamburger.
Whole butter beans are dilled and made snappy of pepper, a novelty as a cocktail niblet—but not very tender and apt to spurt juice.
Choice item of the set is the jar of dilled pickles, crisp as repartee, spicy as gossip, a pickle hot with the heat prick of pepper. Thinly sliced, these flavorsome chips are the garnish glamorous for the fish platter. The price is 65 cents the quart jar. Dilled peppers are 75 cents for a quart, the cocktail butter beans 85 cents, and 55 cents for the cherry-size tomatoes. There is a 20.cent mailing charge on individual jar orders. A set of four jars would be a grand Christmas gift for the gourmet on your list.
Add to the fruit list prickly pears, a fruit thrust out of the maleficent leaves of the cactus. Handle with gloves, because of the needle-like spines, Take a slice from each end, then slit the skin the length of the fruit, and the flesh can be taken out whole to use as you will. The crimson flesh gives new interest to a fruit salad, or serve it sliced with a touch of sugar and a downpour of lemon juice, enough to rasp the tongue. It is bland its flavor, yet refreshing all the same. It amuses us to remember that P. Morton Shand describes this fruit as resembling “a ripening carbuncle or a publican's nose.”
Dried apricot halves encrusted with sugar, selling around 59 cents a pound, are here and there in the stores. The rumor is that the dried apricots are sent from California to Cuba, there sugar-coated, and returned to the States. The fruit may be used as a cake filling snipped to bits with the scissors, water added, half a cup or less to a half pound of the fruit, this cooked over low heat to jamlike consistency, just right for spreading between layers of cake. The apricot halves can be served as they are—a fruit-sweet confection. Selling in New York City at the Callanan grocery, 41 Vesey Street.
What is apple pie without the shock sharp cheese gives to the palate? Nine times in ten, apple pie is too sweet and mince too heavy, without the leavening of Cheddar. What is the fresh apple or pear without the nip of sharp Cheese—a Cheshire, perhaps, nicely blended with sauterne.
If you have ＄10 to spend for palate pleasure, the Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, can set you up handsomely with a five-pound crock of the cheese of your choice made snapping with spirits. What shall it be—Cheddar in Port? Edam or Cheshire in sauterne? Roquefort of Gorgonzola, brandy fired? Stilton in sherry? Swiss in kirsch? We bought a crock of the Stilton, influenced for the moment by that glorious epicurean paradox, “Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.”
Paper-thin Brune Kager (Brown cookies), a specialty of the Danes, are offered, made with finely ground chopped almonds added to a batter sweetened with molasses and fragrant with ginger. Old Denmark, 135 East 57th, makes them to retail at ＄1.80 a pound, about five dozen—that thin!
Pinterest
