Now you can make the cultured milk of the Balkans right at home in the kitchen and serve it fresh as this morning. A scientifically made incubator has been developed which will turn any type of fresh milk into that custardy food of the refreshing clean taste that the world knows as yogurt.
You know what it is? Whole milk is inoculated with special strains of pure lactic acid culture, mainly bacillus bulgaricus, which is one bacterium that will live in the intestines with benefit to their muscular tone, helping to maintain or restore normal intestinal conditions.
In Europe this milk product was sold originally at the pharmacist's on a doctor's recommendation. But users soon came to have such a yen for the curd that various firms began manufacturing it in volume. Before the war everyone in Europe was eating yogurt as we eat ice cream.
Twenty years ago the product was introduced as a health food in New York, and slowly but surely it's catching on here. Now one firm alone is selling 60,000 jars weekly. Some eat it for health reasons but mostly it's eaten to pleasure the palate. It's sour but not too sour, and it contains all the elements of milk partially digested. Keep a few bottles chilled in the refrigerator, a tasty snack to lap up with a spoon just as it is. Again season to taste with spicy sauces and dump over fresh vegetables to serve as salad. Sweeten with strawberry preserves or orange marmalade, honey or sugar—and this time it's dessert. A real refreshment when served over berries well sweetened with sugar.
The story of the discovery of the bacillus bulgaricus goes back to the end of the last century when Pasteur Institute scientists, interested in the longevity of the Balkan people, made an investigation of their diet. They found the hardy peasant stock subsisting chiefly upon this special milk food. The scientists undertook to isolate the souring agent. One Ilya Mitchnikoff found the lactic acid bacterium, never before identified, which he named bacillus bulgarius
After that, yogurt could be made in any part of the world, in anyone's kitchen. But without scientific control the lactic cultures are gradually weakened and the different strains have a tendency to become unbalanced. When homemade in the past, it was never certain that the culture preserved and regenerated the original species. Now the culture is prepared bottled and sold, a month's supply at a time, with complete directions for using with the new yogurt maker.
This gadget consists of a tray with a high domed cover to fit neatly over. Into the neck at the top an electric light fixture fits for radiating the heat. This is rigged out with a cord connection for plugging into any convenience outlet. Small openings in the dome's neck are for regulating temperature, there is an opening in the side of the cover to accommodate the thermometer which is a part of the outfit.
It takes but five minutes to prepare the milk for yogurt making, then into incubator for a three-hour stretch, two hours in refrigerator for the custard to set.
Any type of milk may be used, cow's milk, goat's milk. Those who are dieting usually prefer skim milk, those wishing to gain add cream to whole milk. Yogurt carries the same caloric count as the milk of which it's produced.
The yogurt outfits costs a fancy penny but it lasts a lifetime, made as it is of 16-gauge, hand-spun aluminum. It is a dual purpose gadget and can be used also as a food warmer. The price of $19.95 includes the thermometer. In New York City it is sold by Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, and lewis and conger, Sixth Avenue and 46th Street.
The culture sells for $2 an ounce and will be carried by the various health stores and handlers of the yogurt maker throughout the country. Also it may be ordered direct from Yogurt Master headquarters at 225 West 34th street. The “starter” should be renewed monthly for the best results. Special rates offer a six-month subscription for $9 or twelve months for $17.
Ham tang, all without ham at hand, is waiting in those little jars of James River deviled Smithfield meat spread.Use it in sandwiches, put it in salads, handy of course when running up a few canapes. It's a quick way to add “devil” to eggs. We like it spread over hot buttered toast, a poached egg atop. It can be scrambled into eggs, stuffed into onions, added to sauces to use over bland vegetables.
That smoky taste with its concentrated ham flavour goes back three hundred years to the early settlers of Virginia.The meat is cured the Smithfield way with dry salt and spices, then hung in the smoke of hickory oak and apple-wood fire. A long mellowing period follows, so that spices and smoke impregnate the meat to the bone. The spread is made by grinding the meat and blending with ground peanuts; more spices are added for the deviled effect. Selling virtually everywhere in better class grocery stores, the four and three-fourths-ounce jars 27 cents.
Gravalox is that cold spiced salmon dish the Swedes like in summer along with creamed spinach as a main course at dinner. New Yorkers can find this sweet sour salmon in Nyborg and Nelson's Delicatesan, 841 Third Avenue. It's a whole salmon dressed and boned, the two sides sandwiched with great handfuls of dill, over all a spicy sour .pb1 sauce, then more dill for a covering, and it's ready for three day's marinating. price, $2.50 a pound.
Those who like to be inventive with their menus will be amused to sprinkle the cream soups with egg nuts. These are tiny cream soups with egg nuts. These are tiny cream puffs no bigger than your thumb nail, light as bubbles, crisp as crackerjack, if oven-toasted a few moments just before the soup's dished. At the grocery counter at B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th, in cellophane bags enough for several generous servings, 12 cents a bag.
Mushrooms of button size are being picked, washed, and sauteed in butter, then sealed into tins with two teaspoons of the fat in which they were tenderized. These fat sweet fungi, Oxford Royal brand, are processed by Lescarboura Mushroom company, Kelton, Pennsylvania, Five-ounce tins selling for 85 cents at Hammacher Schelmer's, 145 East 57th Street, Dussourd and filser, 960 Madison Avenue, Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, and about thirty delicatessens scattered around Manhattan Island.
The price may seem uppity but actually canned mushrooms prove an economy over the fresh. Four of these small tins represent approximately a three-quart basket of the fresh caps. Ready prepared, they require no more fixing than saucepan heating. Serve them plain or on toast, on steaks, chops, or chicken, or in any recipe calling for the fresh product.
Salted nuts turned out fresh-roasted three times daily by the Maison Glass Kitchen are the best salted nuts in this or any other city. Crisp, dry, sweet of the fat, salt-tinged, they have a brown roasted taste which defies words. You pay for such quality, $2 a pound for the cashews and hazelnuts, $2.20 for pecans and almonds, 60 cents a pound for jumbo size peanuts. Trying to diet? Don't touch a one or the harm is done. Once you start, you can't stop helping yourself to another. Mail orders of $2 and over are filled; add enough to the price to cover the postage. Address Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street.
Something to enjoy with the cold cuts is a jar of the red cabbage, pickled raw in old English style. Crisp, tangy, it can be eaten as a salad or as a hot dish cooked with apple and seasoned with butter. It's the kind of pickled cabbage once “put up” by our grandmothers in ten-pound crocks to use along through the winter. Abraham and straus, 420 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, have the cabbage, the “Wellworth” brand,39 cents a quart. Bloomingdale's, Lexington Avenue at 59th Street, have it and think so highly of the product they present it under their own “Garden Restaurant” label. The Great Eastern stores of New Jersey are also stocked with this delectable relish.
Fish and shellfish are getting a new freezing treatment in which the pieces are individually frozen and glazed so each item can be handled as a single unit. That is, you can take three or four scallops from a packet, or one filet, or six shrimp, or four oysters, and leave the remainder for another day.
This unit method of freezing has been used to some extent for vegetables and fruits, but never before applied to the fruit of the sea. Individual rather than block freezing makes possible two and three fish combinations to a single package. A series of these will be ready for introduction by early fall by Beaver Brand Frozen Foods, Inc., a subsidiary of the Brooklyn Bridge Freezing and Cold Storage Company of New York City, heded by William Fellows Morgan, Jr., former Commissioner of Markets.
The firm's first product to hit the Eastern markets is a rich, old-fashioned New England fish chowder. The recipe originated in the Morgan's kitchen, a fish chowder the family has enjoyed for long years. It's made five gallons at a time in the home kitchen manner. Salt pork is tried out, onions fried golden, then diced, potatoes added, these first cooked separately in a rich fish bouillon. Haddock is the fish used, this too is cooked by itself and goes into the chowder pot on the heels of the potatoes. Milk follows, then the fish bouillon and seasonings. After a period of cooking the chowder is packed in cartons and rushed immediately to the freezer.
To serve, the carton is peeled from the soup and the frozen cylinder placed in the top of the double boiler to dissolve into a thick, creamy goodness. Serve and give thanks!
The chowder is stocked by R. H. Macy and Company, Ultima Frozen Food Stores of New York City and at the following locker plants: Young and Halstead, Mr. Kisco, New York, Peakskill Frozen Food Industries, 1320 Park Street, Peekskill, New York, Country Life Frozen Foods, Westbury, Long Island, Frostoria Inn, Garden City, Long Island, American Frozen Food Lockers, White Plains, New York, Hubert Hilder Locker Plant, Flemington, New Jersey, and at the Summit Frozen food Lockers, 12 Bank Street, Summit, New Jersey. The price is around 50 cents a carton, fifteen ounces net, chowder for two.
Combination packages of uncooked sea food are ready now for volume production and are on display in the deep-freeze cabinet at the Beaver Brand Frozen Foods. Inc., under the Brooklyn Bridge, 109 Cliff Street, New York City.
Four new meat spreads, Stahl Meyer products, made their debut in time for summer parties; the kinds are tongue, ham, corned beef, and liverwurst. Hearty, and a lot of savory spreading for your money; the liverwurst 21 cents for six ounces, the corned beef and the ham 29 cents, the tongue 23 cents. These prices were noted at Roth's Delicatessen, 166 Second Avenue, but ask for the spreads in your neighborhood store, they are around everywhere. Doctor up these smoothies with one thing and another for the ultra in fancy fixing. Take the ham pâté, for example; add 1 teaspoon chopped onion, ½ teaspoon dry mustard, and about 3 tablespoons mayonnaise, and beat all together. To a tin of the tongue, add 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, 2 tablespoons chopped olives, 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, and a dash of Worcestershire. The corned beef spread is the color of corned beef, of smooth texture but the flavor might be that of any potted meat. This is mightily improved by the addition of 2 tablespoons of chopped green pepper and ¼ cup chili sauce.
At drinking parties of the “free-for-all” type, it's really a wasste of money to serve de luxe pâtés. Once the taste buds are dulled by demon rum, they can't distinguish corned beef spread from pâté de foie gras. Okay! if you say so, you can! But you, my friend, are one in a hundred.
Heat-resisting eggs are the big talk with poultry men. A line of chickens has been bred by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to lay eggs that keep to A-1 table quality for a period of two weeks at a temperature of 100 degrees F. The eggs are infertile, of course, or at that heat, chicks would be hatching. The Department of Scientists has developed another type of chicken which lays eggs with whites thicker than usual, superior for poaching. A third line has been bred to produce eggs tough-shelled to stand the rigors of shipping.
Mrs. George Wayne's spaghetti meat sauce, handy on the shelf, is a now-and-then solution for the meat hunt problem. A feast for the eye, a delight for the nose, a sauce all fragrant with hunger smells, a sauce meaty and rich, one long simmered. The meat is a combination of ground beef and pork, the hogs raised right at home on the Wayne farm. Onions in it—lots of onions; garlic—lots of garlic; green pepper, parsley, homemade tomato paste. Mrs. Wayne goes easy when it comes to the spicing, there's just a speck of cayenne. “No one,” she says, “wants to burn his throat out eating spaghetti.”
This homemade sauce is packed in pint jars, sells two for $1.30, postage prepaid. Address Mrs. George Wayne, Freemont Center, New York.