Roses are red, Roquefort is blue; Serve me this cheese, And I'll always be true.
Who said a gourmet wasn't sentimental? It was great news when the first shipment of Roquefort cheese since 1940, a total of 500,000 pounds, came from France in December, and now a second shipment of 300,000 pounds is scheduled for arrival this month.
Roquefort-making was continued right through the war, hitting lowest production in 1945 at 55 per cent of normal. This year the makers expect to produce 13,500,000 pounds, or about 60 per cent of their prewar output.
Laws protect the name Roquefort. Only the cheese which is matured in the caves of Mount Combalou, above the little town of Roquefort, can wear the red sheep label and bear the Roquefort title. All other cheeses of similar appearance and flavor must find names for themselves. Italy's Gorgonzola, England's Stilton, the Danish and American blues are Roquefort types, that is, all are produced by the ripening action of penicillium mold which manifests itself in the blue-green veining throughout the body of the cheese. They all have that certain sharpness of flavor. But these are not Roqueforts, they haven't been cured in the Roquefort caves. One other difference, they are made of cow's milk; Roquefort is cheese from the milk of the ewe.
The Roquefort country of Aveyron is composed of some 200 square miles where 15,000 farmers raise sheep bred especially for their milk. The raw product is sold to twenty-two producers who own the Roquefort caves, which were formed centuries ago when one side of the mountain collapsed into a tunneled mass of stone. Winds sweep the passageways, the warm moist winds of the Mediterranean blow in at evening, the cold winds of the north chase them back in the morning. This everchanging temperature during the curing is said to give the cheese its inimitable flavor.
In New York City Roquefort is selling at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, Reuben's, 212 West 57th Street, and Alan Berry, Ltd., 676 Madison Avenue.
Imported olive oil is easier to find, and one to admire is the Spanish oil imported by Victori's, 164 Pearl Street, selling for ＄10.75 a gallon when shipped out of town or ＄10 over the counter.
Other imports on the Victori shelves are the manzanilla olives stuffed with anchovies. The Turron is there, left over from Christmas. Of two types of these Spanish nougats available, one is called the Alicante made with egg white, honey, and almonds, the nuts broken into large pieces. The other is the Jijona in which the egg white is mixed with blended, toasted ground almonds, a product which crumbles easily and is slightly greasy to the touch as the toasting expels a part of the oil of the nut.
Guinea broilers, the White African, can be ordered freshly killed and dressed, shipped direct to your kitchen from Shadowbrook Farm, located high in the Berkshires outside Williamstown, Massachusetts. The birds weigh two to two and one fourth pounds, so young that even the legs are tender, one bird serving two. These broilers are handpicked, aged five days in a cooling chamber; then the backbone is removed and the final dressing touch added. Two strips of salt pork are laid over the bird's breast to provide the rich fat which guineas lack. The giblets are cleaned and wrapped separately and tucked into the cavity. Private New York City clubs have been receiving these broilers for several seasons now. This year, with the flock increased, the business is extended to include mail orders for home kitchens. A small folder of recipes accompanies the dressed birds, telling how to prepare them in various ways with directions for sauces.
Shadowbrook Farm has bacon a part of the year. There's a stock on hand now, selling at ＄1 a pound and postpaid on orders of ＄5 and over. And don't forget the Shadowbrook sausage which we recently mentioned. This is a pork sausage made from the meat of young hogs, made by an old New England farm recipe. The meat is coarsely ground, nothing is added except the seasonings. Every piece of the hog that goes into the sausage could be used as an individual cut for the table, according to J. Ritchie Kimball, the sausage maker. A batch is turned out every two weeks in 250-pound lots. This is divided into two-pound and five-pound rolls, wrapped in cellophane, then in stockinette, in locker paper, and into the freezer. The sausage sells at ＄1 a pound, parcel post, special delivery prepaid on shipments of five pounds and more. The minimum shipment is two pounds, the price ＄2, plus carrying costs. The sausage is taken from the freezer, wrapped and shipped immediately, frequently arriving at journey's end still in its hard-frozen state.
Thirty-five years ago a young fellow named Arnold Reuben owned a modest little sandwich shop on upper Broad-way. Possessed of an exuberant personality, Reuben began to snare in the famous ones of the stage for after-theater eating. Soon Reuben's became the meeting place of the “greats” and “near-greats” of the amusement world. No everyday sandwich did young Reuben serve. His sandwiches had a touch, a look all their own.
“Move downtown,” his celebrity customers urged. “It's unhandy coming up here just to get a quick bite.” Reuben moved to the fifties and promptly doubled, tripled, quadrupled his business. Now he opens his new million-dollar restaurant at 212 West 57th Street. This establishment is more than a restaurant, it's a village of shops. Enter the lobby and look to your left—there's the men's grill, the cocktail lounge, and the bar. Ahead is the main dining room. But turn right to visit the flower shop to see the fruit baskets, the bakery, the delicacies. Theater tickets are sold, there's a novelty counter if you want to pick up a small gift. Maybe you'd like a shave before dinner? There's a barber shop on the premises, open all hours.
The food department is postwar as a radar range. Here are the finest of the canned and jarred delicacies of the food world.
STUFF AND STUFF: Crêpes Suzette, disjointed roasted goose in tins, smoked turkey of many brands, pâté de foie gras, herring tidbits, a collection of fine cheeses, pitted dates in brandy, a section of roasted meats and poultry, smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon, smoked turkey.
Don't be overlooking Reuben's world-famous cheesecake. Before the war this honey-toned cake traveled to addresses as far apart as Bermuda, Honolulu, and London. The cake's client list of more than a thousand names is kept by card file. This is a cheesecake of the soufflé type, its center firm like a custard. And a custard it is, being made of cream cheese lightly whipped up with eggs to a satiny smoothness; zwieback crumbs give tender walls. Rich and tiny are the petits fours, gooey and yummy the French pastries. Here are the crumb cakes, fig puddings, fruit pies, all be-seechingly entreating the passerby to be taken home and eaten.
Take a look behind the scenes. The kitchens are equipped with stainless steel walls, the most modern of stoves, the ultra in refrigeration. Kitchens number four, the cold kitchen, the hot kitchen, the dish-washing department, and a meat preparation center which is a regular meat shop in every detail. Preparation centers are set aside for vegetables, delicatessen foods, dairy products, meats, fish, baked stuffs, vegetables. Each kind of food has its own unit of refrigeration.
Put Reuben's on your list when you visit New York, go for a drink, for a and we wish we had it ourselves to stow away for the future.
For six years the jam-maker has been experimenting with plums to get what she considered a conserve of perfection. This fall she cooked up the answer. The plums go into the kettle unpeeled, for half a plum's goodness lies in the skin. That's one of her secrets. Another is in the choice of the nuts. Until this year she had used California's walnuts, then someone suggested she try black walnuts instead. “Blackies” went into a batch, and that something which she had been searching for in a plum conserve was achieved. Black walnuts give a rich tang, a wild woodsy taste, like no other nut. The labels had been printed—and read English walnuts—but it's black walnut you'll crunch.
The label is a study in geography. It reads: “Made of Oregon plums, California walnuts and raisins, Florida oranges, Jamaica ginger, and Cuba cane sugar.” But you can eat it anywhere and with almost anything and be pleased that a gracious lady likes spending her leisure in creating a cook's masterpiece. The price for the one-pound jar is 89 cents. snack, for a meal, for a corsage, for a cheesecake, or for a half pound of that glorious smoked sturgeon. It doesn't matter what you go for—but go. No one has been around really until he knows Reuben's.
Food imports come almost daily now from the Continent. News of the month is that the hard Roman cheese so splendid for the grater is back in the stores. Back too are the Italian egg-shaped tomatoes in tins. Perfect for sauces, these tomatoes of almost solid flesh, of low water content, richer in sugar than the tomatoes of the ordinary varieties.
Italy sends the baked figs, each stuffed with an almond, dusted with caraway seeds, packed in two-pound straw baskets as in the days long ago. There are the Moscioni pressed figs and the filberts again, Italy the shipper. Also coming are dried white mushrooms, as fine as any packed in the world. Again Italy sends her fruit cake, the Torino Brand, a flat loaf of fruit and nuts, the fruits, candied citron and orange; the nuts, almonds and cashews; the whole dusted over with powdered sugar blended with clove. A tough number to cut, it's chewy, more confection than cake, the price ＄1.50 for fourteen and one-half ounces at Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, New York City.
The Italian bakers, Antonio Veniero's, 342 East 11th Street, New York, have the imported Torrone Finissimo, an extra fine almond candy which returned for the holiday for the first time since the war. Each half-ounce piece is wrapped in waxed paper, individually boxed, eighteen boxes to a packet—the price ＄1.25.
Olives come from everywhere, Italy, Tunisia, Portugal. And Portugal is sending the antipasto packed in a spicy sauce, packed in tin, and hand-packed, every little piece of pickle, sardine, tuna fish, olive, onion, carrot, cauliflower, and pimiento arranged with exacting precision. Portugal sends the sardines boneless and skinless laved in pure olive oil. Never been a prettier pack of anchovies than the one here from Italy, hand laid in layers, the rolled anchovies alternating with layers of the flat.
Again the peperoncini in vinegar, these the little hot peppers which the Italians like with boiled beef. They arrive in 100-pound barrels, to be repacked here into jars. An item new to us is tuna confagiolini or tuna fish with string beans put up in olive oil, made in California, styled for Italians, who use it in salad.
Twelve tons of the Tjoklat brand Holland Swiss chocolate, the first to arrive since 1939, imported by I. Kosloff and Sons, Inc. has been distributed to stores around New York City. The chocolate is from the Holland Swiss factory of Amsterdam of which W. C. Sickeze, the well-known European economist, is board chairman.
Short materials in Holland limit the shipment to the bittersweet only, but as conditions permit, other flavors will follow, including milk, orange and coffee. The chocolates are made by a combination process of Swiss and Dutch. The result is a chocolate technically a fondant, very smooth, a type we much prefer to the dry and gritty chocolate in which the cocoa butter or fatty element is reduced to a minimum. The Swiss Holland bars have a fresh taste, a melting warm brown flavor leaving a bitter-sweet edge on the tongue.
With the bars come the Camée pastilles made of the same chocolate but made in thin oval and round pieces molded with cameo figures. These will sell for ＄1.75 to ＄2 a pound. The bars are 15 cents apiece. Both the bars and pastilles are carried by following stores: Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue; Hildebrand's, 1371 Sixth Avenue; Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street; Greyhound Fruit Shop, 254 West 34th Street; Alice Marks, 9 West 57th Street; Colonial Nut Shop, 63 East 59th Street; Everfresh Nut Shop, 37 Seventh Avenue, all of New York City, and Ecklebe and Guyer, 1 DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.
There's a woman who wishes to remain anonymous because of her husband's position who amuses herself summers in making a small income by selling jellies and jams and rich, rich conserves. Some years she has several items in her line, but this winter she has but one, due to the shortness of sugar—this a plum conserve. B. Altman's, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, New York, have her entire output.