Ready for the trout season? Get your appetite in trim. But you haven't got him, remember, until he's flapping in the creel. You may whip a pool to a rich creamy lather, yet go home without a blessed trout for dinner. Attention, worm-dunker! Attention, fly expert! Here's a way to insure yourself a fine treat in trout. Cast a fly in a purling stream at Green Spring Farm, Newville, Pennsylvania, where brook trout by the hundreds flip their tails in the green shadows—reel in a fine dinner! A dozen fat beauties weighing maybe half a pound apiece, eleven inches long, the ideal table size, are yours for the asking along with a check for ＄9.75. Express is prepaid east of the Mississippi.
Here's trout grown in spring water, pampered on a diet of fresh liver an fish. Here are fish netted just when they come to perfection for the platter; gutted, washed, and within ten minutes packed in a vaporproof bag and into the freezer held 20 degrees below zero. This speed handling and low temperature freezing lock in the sweet flavor, preserve the texture of the firm flesh. Orders are shipped in double-lined cartons with enough dry ice to keep the trout frozen for three days.
The trout are raised by two Baltimore businessmen who make the business their hobby and week-end recreation. Colin J. S. Thomas, investment counsel, and his banker friend, Samuel Shriver, have been fresh-water anglers since boyhood days; for many years they have fished and hunted together over week ends and on vacations. Trailing trout streams, they cooked their catch as they caught it and marveled at the wonderful flavor. Trout they carried home never tasted the same. One of the fishermen had the bright idea of carrying along dry ice and freezing the catch as it came from the water, then home to defrost for the frying pan. Trout thus treated, they discovered, tasted exactly like that fresh from the hook.
An idea there, why not raise trout to sell frozen by mail? There were plenty of trout hatcheries raising fish for stocking streams but few were raising them for food, none was selling fish frozen a moment after catching.
The friends decided to pool money on the venture. First came the search for a place with ample spring water. An abandoned water cress farm prove the right spot with its spring yielding 3,000 gallons of water a minute. Green Spring it was called, a spring used by the Indians in Colonial times.
Two years ago the work began on readying the farm for the trout-raising business. The State of Pennsylvania Fish Commission gave advice on laying out the ponds and locating the freezing plant. Today the growing and breeding ponds cover three acres holding 100,000 brook, brown, and rainbow trout, ranging from four to twelve inches. Wesley Henry, a 38-year-old Pennsylvanian who has spent seventeen years of his life working in fish hatcheries, is the farm manager. His pet theme on trout raising is the feeding of a balanced ration during the spawning season. That, he says, is what produces the “whopper”fish at maturity.
Food for trout is made of a groun mixture of fresh salt-water fish and fresh beef liver. In the very beginning the little shavers are fed on liver alone because of its high vitamin content. Gradually the diet is brought to a half an half mixture.
To insure that “freshly caught wild”flavor, the partners believe food for the fresh should be kept absolutely fresh. A part of the quick-freezing plant is use to freeze the fish chow, which is kept stored around zero. Never any ranci feed for the young trout of Green Spring.
We had a mess for a taste test. Amazing the sweet flavor, the flesh so firm and so tender. Certainly here's a trout socialite of the very first water.
Champagne or a quart bottle of beer or a trio of cokes can be chilled to a tingling in twenty minutes without ice, without the aid of electricity or gas. This trick is accomplished by a new refrigeration process which is a chemical cooling salt. The device consists of a tall, narrow aluminum bucket, seamless, anodized, noncorroding, and a spun aluminum cup for measuring the salt. The salt you buy extra, packed in a waxpaper container; stored away in a dry place, it will keep next to forever. The cost is around 50 cents to cool a quart bottle. That may sound a bit stiff but well worth it, we'd say, when champagne is on short order and there is no ice in the house and thirst is demanding. What's more, this cooler can be put to work at the summer cottage, at camp, on picnics, wherever ice isn't.
It's a two-step process. First pour one cup of the special salt into the aluminum bucket and add one measure of water to the salt. Insert the bottle into the brine and move gently up and down until the salt is dissolved. After that move the bottle frequently for a goo heat exchange between bottle and brine. Allow ten minutes for the first bath. Discard the brine and repeat the process for deep cooling of the bottle. In general the colder the water you use, the colder the final temperature of the bottle. On very hot days use a towel or newspaper around the bucket as an insulator. The new Fahrenheitor aluminum bucket is selling at Lewis and Conger, Sixth Avenue and 45th Street, the price ＄6.50; Fahrenheitor salt is ＄3.50 for twelve shots, enough to cool six bottles of quart size.
Now it's cinnamon toast in one swoosh of the knife! Toast your bread. Smooth over a thin coating of that new cinnamon butter from the Hoenshel firm of Sandusky, Ohio. Now under the broiler with it to bubble and melt.
The Hoenshel firm, famous for their fruit cakes, plum puddings, and brandy hard sauce, have devised this new product to keep the hard sauce base in year-round sale. The spread is made like the hard sauce of creamery butter, granulated sugar, and corn syrup, but instea of brandy for flavoring, cinnamon is added, with a brief touch of vanilla.
The new item is stocked in New York City by Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue; Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street; Charles an Company, 340 Madison Avenue; William J. O'Hara, 216 West 84th Street; H. Hicks and Company, 660 Fifth Avenue and 30 West 57th Street; B. Altman and Company, Fifth Avenue an 34th Street; the price around 87 cents for the ten-ounce jar. The spread goes into national distribution this summer, so ask for it in any delicacy shop.
Cooked snails removed from their shells, packed forty-eight to a tin, their shells tagging along in a cellophane bag, have trailed in from Switzerland, from France, the price around ＄2.95. Seen at Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street; Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue; Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue—but everywhere! Maybe you would like to try a sampling prepared as Joseph Donan does it. Joseph Donan is chef for Mrs. H. McK. Twombly of New York City, and his way with any dish is considered pretty important.
Here's the Donan treatment as tol in his own words:“Open the cans, an if the juice has a pleasant taste, reserve the whole. Cook together for ten minutes one teaspoon of finely chopped shallots and garlic (two-thirds of shallots to one-third garlic), a cup of white wine for each two dozen snails; a snails, juice and all. Season with a little salt and pepper, and simmer covere until very tender and the juice nearly dry. Cool. Blend well one-half cup butter with one-half teaspoon each freshly chopped parsley, fresh lemon juice, an the cooking juice of the snails. Add a tablespoon of fresh bread crumbs. Taste to correct seasoning. Place the snails in their shells, close these with the butter,and sprinkle over them a little fresh bread crumbs. Bake in a hot oven ten to fifteen minutes. Serve piping hot."
We think of corn parchies as new with our generation, but the Indians carried parched corn when they went on the warpath. Old frontiersmen from the Connecticut River to the Mississippi carried parched corn as “K”ration. And no doubt on occasion they washe it down with hot buttered rum or whisky fresh from the still. A. Schur in New York's Washington Market has parchies, the eight-ounce jars 45 cents. Or order them from the Country Store, 1 Monument Street, Concord, Massachusetts, ＄1.30 for twenty-four ounces, postpaid east of the Mississippi.
Those who know good English herring will delight in the fact that the Tyne brand has returned for the first time in six years. Perry H. Chipurnoi is the importer. Only a token shipment thus far is to be seen in the New York shops of Hicks and Sons, 660 Fifth Avenue and 30 West 57th Street, Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, and Gimbel's, Broadway at 33rd Street.
Spice Rounds, a Christmas delicacy of Nashville, Tennessee, have gone into year-round production and are selling by mail. The rounds are made of tender beef, cured by a father-to-son recipe handed down three generations.
Nashville residents have long considered the rounds an ideal Christmas gift for friends in other cities. That's how a famous general in the Orient, a president of the United States, an opera star, and many other V. I. P.'s have foun out about this succulent meat. Out-of-town guests served the treat invariably ask,“How can we buy?”So many have asked, begged, and implored that the maker is offering the rounds by mail order, both cooked and uncooked.
Cooking the rounds isn't a hard job, and the price-saving is considerable. Place the round in a large kettle with enough cold water to cover. Let it stan for 1 hour. Drain and rinse. Tie it in cheesecloth and put in a cooking pot with enough fresh water to cover. A 1 cup of sugar and boil until the meat is done, allowing 15 minutes for each pound of meat. Add just enough water to keep the meat completely covere during the cooking period. When done, remove from the heat and leave the meat in the water until it is cold.
Want to buy one? Sizes run from seven to thirty pounds, cooked ＄1.50 a pound, uncooked 70 cents a pound, express collect. Send your orders to Alex Warner & Sons, 36 City Market, Nashville 3, Tennessee.
Beaten-biscuit queen Mary B. Merritt is coming out with new products. Pastry shells, for one thing, to carry fillings of fruit or gelatin mixtures, fragile, tender, six to a package, 36 cents, selling at R. H. Macy, Broadway at 34th Street. A few minutes of oven-crisping and these taste like the freshly baked.
It was in William Poll's Delicatessen, 1120 Lexington Avenue, that we saw Mrs. Merritt's newest idea, cheese morsels supreme, 56 one-inch squares, packed 28 to a layer, selling for ＄1 a box. These are a rich pastry, blende with aged Cheddar, made snappy with red pepper and a slight flavoring of garlic. Ask for these items in your local delicacy shops, carried wherever Mary Merritt's beaten biscuits are sold, in some 6,000 stores across the continent.
Hail Hayden's Hollandaise, back to cheer up the broccoli, to welcome fat spears of garden-fresh asparagus. It's a sauce with a velvety singing tone for the tongue. Ready to serve as it turns from the jar, it doesn't curdle on heating. Made with butter, fragrant of timothy and alfalfa, made of eggs, so fresh that they say the hens were still cackling when the eggs were broken to beat into the sauce. And lemons fresh from the groves, of course. Butter and eggs are decidedly perishable, so keep the hollandaise in the refrigerator.
Don't throw away the leftover portions. The sauce can be tightly recapped, put back in the refrigerator, and reheated—no waste. Sherry, lemon juice, onion juice, any seasonings can be adde to taste. The six-ounce jar sells for 58 cents at Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street.
Looking for a good tea? There is one to buy mail order from the tea-blending expert, Henry F. Semke, which is a full-bodied, brisk China congou, selling at ＄3.50 a pound, including postage. The tea brews a deep amber. It has a certain sting in its flavor but a softness in the mouth, on the flowery side in its fragrance. It's a tea for breakfast as well as for the tea table.
Henry F. Semke and his dad were in the warehouse business specializing in tea. When the building was sold, there was no place to move to so the father retired. Son Henry took his business home to the front parlor in his Cape Cod farmhouse at 236 Atlantic Avenue, Oceanside, New York. There he starte a mail-order business featuring poun shipments of the finest China congou.
Orders are sent out within twenty-four hours of receipt. Each shipment is followed by a personal letter. If anyone isn't happy with his tea, Mr. Semke offers to advise him on a choice. Semke knows tea as his father before him knew it for fifty years. During the war the Government called upon young Semke to make trips to various ports to supervise the discharge and storage of the tea coming from India and Ceylon. Semke says he eats, sleeps, and dreams tea. He drinks it too, a pound lasts him and his wife not more than three weeks.
If it's a gift you have in mind, the tea can be ordered in a Mexican, hand-blown, covered glass jar, about eight inches high, fluted and swirled, the color dark amethyst. The two-in-one gift is priced at ＄5.50, including postage. It travels gift-wrapped.