Cold winds blow, snow swirls, frost etches window panes. Draw the curtains close, pile logs to fire, bring on the soup. But good soup, mind you—good! Choose soups to cast a magic spell, imbued with subtlety, soups to thaw the bones and fortify against the cold. We mean the Crosse and Blackwell sextette.
First try the vegetable brew, a zestful combination of stimulants. It holds the joy of adventure. Dip in the spoon. Here are numerous vegetable oddments of tomatoes, potatoes, peas, corn, carrots, string beans, lima beans, cabbage, celery, onions, red peppers, turnips. In the broth are alphabet noodles and rice and a variety of spices. To give a meat taste to the meatless broth our ol friend the vegetable protein derivative has been added. The vegetables are in big pieces and of natural garden color.
Sample the chicken noodle soup, a clear husky broth, thick with noodles and nice sized pieces of chicken. One taste and you know chicken has been in the soup pot.
One of the best creamy mushroom soups we have ever eaten is the Crosse and Blackwell. It has the typical color of a mushroom soup, a distinct mushroom flavor and fragrance to tease the nose, and biggish pieces of mushroom to indulge the teeth
Whiff the celery soup, doesn't that have just the right celery fragrance? The flavor is there, too. Our compliments to the black bean soup with its ham undertone. This needs a good swig of sherry, two teaspoons at least to give the proper lift. Float on its dark surface thin slices of lemon and of hard-cooke egg. The soup has the rich mahogany color of the black bean and is thick as a medium purée, the texture slightly granular.
The clam chowder is Manhattan style, which means tomato in its mixture. Lots of clam bits are there and cubes of potatoes. It has an honest clam taste an gives solid stomach comfort, so sturdy, so refreshing, one forgets fatigue an the room's shivery corners—or maybe your landlord gives you plenty of heat.
The Crosse and Blackwell line is in numerous stores in numerous cities throughout the country, the price aroun 21 cents for the pound can.
In New York City the complete soup set shows up at Gimbel Brothers, 33r Street and Broadway.
March is avocado's peak month. Then the California crop takes over in the markets, then prices drop to middle-purse levels.
Avocado was the table aristocrat of the twenties, exotic, expensive. Once a single fruit cost a dollar and over. Once it was eaten only in salad or au naturel. Now it fits obligingly into any part of the menu from soup to ice cream.
It was the avocado growers who taught cooks in the States to use this fruit of the strange meaty flavor, the day-by-day food in countries south of the border.
Fruits of the first commercial groves in California and Florida went only to tables in top-flight hotels. In the retail markets the avocado made a slow start. To speed matters the growers trained a crew of “avocado preachers” to teach the public what to do with those crazy-looking things called “alligator pears.” So the avocado got going. Statistics tell the story. In 1925 but 200,000 pounds of the fruit were sold in this country. In 1946 sales passed the 20,000,000-poun mark. This year the avocado crop is expected to hang up a new record.
Consider this butterball fruit (8 to 32 per cent fat) as a rich and exotic sprea for hot rolls or toast. Combine one cup sieved avocado, one teaspoon grate onion, one and one-half teaspoons lemon juice, a few drops of Tabasco, add salt to taste, and whip until smooth. Avocado mayonnaise is a rich stuff made without fat, made without cream. Beat together one-half cup orange juice, one tablespoon lemon juice, one teaspoon honey, and one-half teaspoon salt. A the flesh of one large ripe avocado, a little at a time, beating the while. Yield is one cup of dressing.
Sieved pulp of the fruit can be seasoned as you will with minced onion, horseradish, mustard, Tabasco, to sprea on toast canapés. Avocado blends harmoniously with both fruits and vegetables, with both meats and sea foods for innumerable combinations, for cocktails and salads. Avocado cuts a fine figure in cream soups and clear broths when diced or sieved and added as garnish.
Sieved avocados may be added to any basic recipe for sherbet, ice cream, or mousse—allowing one-fourth cup to one-half cup of the sieved fruit to a quart of the mixture.
Satisfying, this hearty fruit, to use as a hot dish for the main course. Fill its seed cavity with creamed cooked asparagus or mushrooms or one of the sea foods such as crab meat, shrimp, or lobster, or choose among the meats—cooked cubed lamb, veal, ham, or chicken. Place the fruit halves, skin side down, in a baking pan, fill the centers with the creamed mixture, top with buttered crumbs. Pour in warm water to cover the pan bottom and place in a moderate oven (350° F.) for not longer than five minutes. Serve snapping hot. A spoon is the eating tool for the avocado half shell, whether it's served hot or cold.
Merit House is a new grocery name you will be seeing on more and more imported delicacies this spring an down the years. Merit House represents the food division of the Schenley Import Corporation, 551 Fifth Avenue, created a year ago but only now getting into real action as the imports start coming. The firm will handle foods from everywhere with a listing of several hundred items from the world's outstanding firms. Arrangements are now complete for exclusive distribution in the United States and possessions of numerous comestibles of Amieux Frères and Rodel and Fils Frères, leading packers of France; also relishes from Goodall-Backhouse and Company of England, pickles from Gillard and Company, famous in London since 1867, and the products of McVetie and Price, the biscuit makers of Edinburgh.
One of the first imports to arrive was Amieux Frères's pâté de foie gras, available with or without truffles. The pâté sells in two-and-one-half and five- ounce sizes. The same shipment brought whole goose livers and a mousse of foie gras, this a velvet-smooth luxury less expensive than the regular, whippe with 33 per cent cream and evenly blended with finely cut truffles. In the goose liver business the most expensive item is the whole livers valued for their flavor and texture, next the livers in pâté de foie gras, and least expensive the pâté with cream. This fluffy aerate liver spread on bread squares for serving with afternoon tea is wonderfully good, has a most delicate flavor—and won't break the bank.
Other items scheduled for arrival early spring from Amieux Frères are sardines in 100 per cent olive oil an the petits pois, those tiny French peas prepared in the French manner with onion and cooked with a lettuce leaf.
Rodel and Fils Frères of Bordeaux are sending artichokes, snails, chestnuts, mushrooms, asparagus, crêpes Suzette, and other delicacies as soon as there is sufficient tin to turn out the cans.
A Yorkshire relish guaranteed seven years old packed by Goodall-Backhouse and Company of London arrived last month and is only now getting into circulation. The sauce is a combination of vinegar and choice spices, and exotic as an Oriental perfume. It's a relish for general use on fish, game, chops, an steaks.
The London House of Gillard an Company will be sending a pickle on the style of sweet mixed known as the L. B. pickle. The military pickle has been ordered from the Haywood Brothers, this a mixed type packed in a thick fruit sauce; also from Haywood will come a piccalilli and a mixed pickle in mustard.
McVetie and Price, the Scotch biscuit makers, are sending their beloved short- breads, butter fingers, tea rusks, cream crackers, and many other old-time favorites of their biscuit line. English jellies and marmalades are expected before summer.
Products bearing the Merit trademark are handled in the fancy grocery stores in New York City and in other cities, including S. S. Pierce and Jordan Marsh of Boston, City of Paris, San Francisco, Neiman Marcus, Dallas, Texas, and Stop and Shop, Chicago.
Those looking to wine as a cooking aid will be pleased to know that crème de Cassis de Dijon shipped by Noirot-Carrière has finally reached America. It sells for ＄5.25 a bottle at Sherry Wine and Spirits, 678 Madison Avenue. This syrup is made of the juice of black currants and is about 60 per cent sugar and 12 per cent alcohol by volume. Use it as a flavoring for desserts, a little goes a long way. It's a beautiful drink in itself. Mix the syrup with vermouth, add a squirt of soda water for a refreshing apêritif. In Dijon they use the Cassis with Bourgogne Blanc, just ordinary white Burgundy, and drink it like water.
Trader Vic, the restaurant man of Oakland, California, is packing his Javanese salad dressing of the South Seas flavor. A strange creation it is, evolved with rice oil, salad oil, wine vinegar, pineapple vinegar, soya sauce, Worcestershire, herbs and numerous spices; tomato's in the mix, so is egg yolk. This is claimed to be the identical dressing Trader Vic serves on the great green salads tossed at his famed eating place, the hangout of gourmets from coast to coast. It's a restaurant with foods Polynesian, South Seas in atmosphere. At Trader Vic's you may see anything from Hawaiian ceremonial costumes to stuffed sharks. On the menu anything goes from Trinidad cocktail to Chinese precious chicken to Tahitian ice cream. Here is Oriental food extremely edible, so good, in fact, that everyone who eats thereof asks for the recipes. That was Trader Vic's cue for writing a cookbook of food and drink which was published this winter by Doubleday and Company, the price ＄2.50.
His latest idea is to put his goo things into jars to sell through the stores. The Leemar Trading Company of 25 East 26th Street, New York City, handles the Eastern distribution. First item out is the salad dressing which sells in New York at: Stumpp an Walter, 132 Church Street, Charles an Company, 340 Madison Avenue, Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, B. Altman&Company, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street; in Brooklyn, Abraham and Straus, 420 Fulton Street. The price for the eight-ounce bottle is around 49 cents.
Bear meat is back for the first time in six years, selling on E. Joseph's game counter in Washington Market. The bear on hand at this writing is from a game farm upstate New York, a young fellow weighing just under 300 pounds. Old toughies tip the scales at 600 pounds, sometimes more.
The last time we are bear was in 1938 at an Indian dinner party. The dishes were prepared in the kitchen of Princess Atlalie Unkalunt, a Cherokee singer of the concert stage, a writer on Indian lore, and a recognized authority on Indian ways with food. The bear steaks, two inches thick, were marinate briefly in herb-fragrant water, tincture of rosemary and thyme and a mere pinch of saffron. After its herb bath, the meat was dried, larded with salt pork, and put to roast, covered with a handful of juniper berries, soft from soaking. A diced yellow turnip was added to the pan along with sliced onion. The steak was baked in a moderate oven for just under an hour.
We prepared one of Joseph's bear steaks by an Alaskan recipe. The steaks were cut thick, well over one and one- half inches, then trimmed. A mixture was made of one cup of flour, one-half tablespoon ginger, a dozen or more crushed cloves, and a pinch of rosemary, all pounded into the meat. After this it was seasoned well on both sides with salt and pepper, then seared in hot fat over a high flame, first one side, then the other. After this the heat was reduced, the pan covered, and the meat slowly cooked 10 to 15 minutes according to how you like your steaks—rare, medium-rare, or well done. That steak was delicious, so tender it could be cut with a fork. It looked very much like beef but had more character in flavor.
Joseph's will sell bear steaks by mail at ＄2.50 a pound, leg roasts ＄2 a pound, plus mailing charge within a radius of 200 miles. For greater distances the order will be sent air express.
Glacéed fruits are scaled to bite size. Miniature dates, figs, and prunes are filled with fruit pastes and packed in bon bon holders like chocolate creams in a box. The baby Calimyrna fig is use for this purpose, the stem left on for a neat little handle, its inside filled with the ground Kodota. Smallest of prunes go into the box stuffed with a paste of dried peach, glacéed, then topped off with an almond. Crème de menthe perfumes the stuffing of the date. Fillings in the other pieces are moistened with brandy, just enough used to point up the fruit's natural flavor. All are honey-sweetened. Each fruit is individually wrapped and sealed in cellophane to keep moist and tender.
Filled fruit is packed in two sizes, the one and one-half-pound box ＄2.97 an the two-pound pack ＄4.05, selling at the B. Altman candy counter, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.
A dehydrated onion soup hard to beat is the “Pierre Picard” brand. The small tin holding just under two ounces makes five cups of the French style onion soup by the mere addition of water. The onions used are the finest grade of sweet California, sliced thin, then dehydrated down to big creamy flakes, these made crunchy by toasting. Packed with the onions is a powder composed of a beef extract, a protein derivative, made of part corn and part wheat, natural herbs, salt, and spices. The cook adds the contents of the can to five measuring cups of water an brings this to a boil. The heat is reduced, the pan covered and the soup simmered gently 10 to 20 minutes. Serve it piping hot and garnish with toast strips which have been sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese, dotted with butter, and run under the broiler. Pour the soup and float on its surface the cheese-topped toast.
If you want to make less than five servings use a proportionate amount, storing the leftover contents of the can in a sealed jar.