Javanese sate spice is going into national distribution, a blend of importe spices with chilis and mustard predominating. It's the spice mixture blende originally for Trader Vic's famous dish called meat on a stick, the recipe on the label. But there are a dozen ways to use sate and the best are included in a two-page folder that goes along with each purchase. We like the blend in gravies, soups, salad dressings, and sauces.
Another item new in the Trader's line is a pomegranate grenadine with the full rich flavor of the fruit and its vibrant tang, the very grenadine used to flavor the rum drinks at the restaurant. Aroun the neck of the bottle hangs a tiny book about the size of a lavaliere giving the mixing directions for the Kailula cocktail, shark's tooth, shingle stain, and the Singapore sling.
“Mai Kai”is a seasoning powder to use in pointing up flavors in soups, gravies, vegetables, sauces. This is similar to the Chinese “Ve Tsin” and the Japanese “Ajinomoto,”both of which were imported here before the war in considerable quantity—a requisite with the chef.
Trader Vic attributes the goodness of his barbecued squabs, chicken, an steak to a splash of the special soya sauce, one highly concentrated, not watered down as some we have tried, around since the war.
The entire Trader Vic line is handle in New York City by B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th, Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, Alan Berry, Ltd., 676 Madison Avenue. Out-of-town outlets are Brady in Buffalo, Strouss-Hirchberg, Akron, J. L. Hudson and Macmillan in Detroit, Marshall Field, Mandel Brothers, and Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago.
Gin and tonic returns. Billy Baxter is the first bottler to introduce a quinine soda made with U. S. P. totaquine, the new approved replacement for the real thing.
It was midway in the war that the Baxter Company came to the end of their quinine, and as the government had stopped sale of the drug to the bottlers, there was no more available. Baxter began a search for a substitute an found it in totaquine, made from the bark of the cinchona tree, the same bark from which quinine is produced. Totaquine contains a large amount of quinine and proves a first-rate alternate with identical taste.
Gin and soda got its start years ago in India when Englishmen on the government administrative staff were required to take quinine daily to aid in withstanding the heat and to ward off fever. The easy way to get the stuff down was to add it to gin, which they dubbed gin and tonic. They came to like the taste and introduced the drink to London. Gin and tonic became the standard drink of those fashionable people who shop on Bond Street.
Now the tipple is celebrated everywhere in the British Empire. Celebrate here too in night clubs, in men's bars, in home bars, it's available at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, ＄2 for one dozen ten-ounce bottles.
Greatest little thirst quencher of the summer is Billy Baxter's ginger beer, ＄2 a dozen, also at Charles and Company. Buy Grandma a case of the sarsaparilla.
Pink pygmies of the shrimp family travel in schools, packed over three hundred to a pint jar. They come from the Palmers' Rockland Plantation, located on Wadmalau Island, twenty-five miles out from Charleston. These shrimp are the home-kitchen product of Eloise Lynah Palmer, and several hundre pounds are prepared daily with the ai of thirty-five workers and the help of son Paul, supervisor of the plantation factory.
Except for the war, these shrimp would stay home. In the old days the Palmers took vacation-time tourists an set a royal table. The sea gave abundantly of shrimp, oysters, terrapin, a variety of salt-water fish. The Island fields were prolific in the growing of fresh fruits and vegetables. Then came gasoline rationing; people stopped touring, stopped taking holidays. Mrs. Palmer had to think fast. Her table was her business, it kept five young Palmers in school. Packing shrimp might solve the problem.
Six jars of the tiny crustaceans calle chicken shrimp were packed in her famous oil dressing and carried into Ohlandt, the leading grocer of Charleston. Those shrimp sold themselves. Ohlandt now orders forty cases at a time.… Shrimp is packed in three sizes —jumbo, medium, and miniature. There is also shrimp paste, a paste with a waiting list. It's gone the minute Mrs. Palmer gets it to town.
Now that Paul Junior is out of college, the business is being expanded, as is the plantation line. Paul operates the shrimp trawl, the catch from one hundred to five hundred pounds daily of the medium and large sizes. Chicken shrimp are caught in small creeks in the summer, fished from rowboats with the use of cast nets.
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