Blustering, warm-hearted November is a superior month in which to be thankful. Exultantly she gives of her wealth, of apple cider, pumpkin pies, the golden squash, the roasting fowls, the cranberry jelly.
Thanksgiving is the great day, the dinner its mainspring. Turkey from the Pilgrims down to now has been the Thanksgiving feast bird. Stuff it with an old-time sage and onion dressing or one herb-scented; stuff his highness with oysters. New as the month is a ready-to-serve oyster stuffing to turn from a can, nothing to add, nothing to mix. Give the dressing a few fluffs with a fork and the 14-ounce tin will fill a 6-pound roasting chicken, the contents of two tins will fill a 12-pound turkey. Add one additional tin for each additional six pounds of gobbler.
The dressing is savory of oysters; it is light, it is moist; made like any oyster dressing with bread crumbs and butter, there are good-sized slices of oysters used generously. The onions are golden-fried in bacon drippings and ham fat; sage the main seasoning, with curry and pepper to bite at the mouth. The dressing can be used to enrich the flavor of a stuffed pork chop, as a stuffing for fish, or for plain pan-baking. Add lemon juice, cover with bacon strips, and bake in a casserole in a moderate oven for 30 minutes. When mixed with beaten egg the dressing may be used for savory forcemeat balls for a clear broth or to fry in deep fat and serve with cocktails.
The dressing is made by the Espy family which since 1854 have been producing premium oysters from the cool salt waters of Oysterville, Washington, on the deep edge of the Pacific. Another one of their treats to which we have previously written words and music is the smoked oyster slices. If you should ever find any smoked oyster tasting better, will you let us know, please? The oyster stuffing is selling at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, Hicks, 660 Fifth Avenue, and Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, the price around 75 cents for 14 ounces.
Thanksgiving turns thoughts to the foods stemming from old-fashioned kitchens. Such a one is apple essence, a dark-brown spread typical of the Pennsylvania Dutch apple butter known fifty years ago. The essence is made with freshly milled cider with the finest of apples. One cooking requires twenty-seven gallons of fresh cider pressed from ten bushels of apples. Four bushels of apples are sliced, these cooked with skin and seeds, then strained to make a purée which is added to the boiled cider; one bushel of apples is needed to make a gallon of spread.
Making a fourteen-gallon batch of the essence is a day-long job. By six in the morning a wood fire is roaring under the old-fashioned thirty-gallon kettle in which the cider is waiting. This is boiled down to half its original quantity, then the applesauce added and for six hours the mixture is stirred, and constantly, by means of an old-time wooden paddle with a ten-foot handle. After that the sugar is added, for this the dark-brown, a half pound per gallon. Then the sampling begins to determine the proper consistency. By late afternoon the essence is finished and packed into glass jars to keep indefinitely, if given the chance. The essence has a tart, spicy flavor, yet sweet enough too, made so by the natural sweetness of the cider. The price is ＄1 a quart; 55 cents a pint. Buy four or more quarts and the price is 90 cents each, postage prepaid to the third zone. Make checks payable to Paul K. Keene, Walnut Acres, Penns Creek, Pennsylvania.
The Apple Essence makers, Paul and Betty Keene, operate a diversified farm, selling their produce by the long arm of Uncle Sam's mailman. Here's their latest price list, in 5-pound packages: yellow corn meal, 80 cents; whole yellow soy beans, 75 cents; whole wheat, 75 cents; whole-wheat cereal, 80 cents; whole-wheat flour, 85 cents.
Those who like the English conserve such as Tip Tree and Frank Cooper turn out, will be glad to know of two items from the home kitchen of Skatacook Farm, Pine Plains, Dutchess County, New York. One is the citrus conserve made of grapefruit, oranges, lemons, apples, and red or purple grapes and aimed to be as imitative as possible of the Tip Tree products. The fruits are cooked down together, then run through a Foley food mill to take out skin, seeds, and cores. Sugar is added to the purée and this cooked to the sheeting stage. The result is a red-brown stuff, stiff enough to stand alone, no juices weeping out. The tang of citrus is there, but much more, a “Rare Recipe” as the trademark implies.
The plum and grape conserve is made with blue plums and Concord grapes, or sometimes fox grapes are used, these growing in the woods around Skatacook. Grapes and plums are cooked to soften, then run through the food mill and black currants added, and the mixture cooked down with sugar. Those plump currants are little matters to surprise the tongue. This conserve is remindful of Frank Cooper's Damson cheese, remember it, imported in the years before the war?
These products are handled in Pough-keepsie by the fancy grocers, Mack and Fry, in New York City by the Women's Exchange, 541 Madison Avenue, Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, William Poll's Delicatessen, 1120 Lexington Avenue.
Beats all how Poll's little store gets everything good, and right off the bat.
Mayonnaise, 8-ounce jar, 45 cents; French dressing, 8 ounces, 59 cents; citrus fruit conserve, 8 ounces, 69 cents; plum and grape conserve, 8 ounces, 69 cents.
The laurel leaf to Louis Sherry's for their new coffee blended of Guatemala's famous Antigua with other expensive top-grade types from the Central American countries. Most coffees are made to a price, not Louis Sherry's. This was blended to give an ideal brew with the utmost in mellowness, in richness of flavor, without regard to cost. The result is one of the highest-priced coffees in the world, 85 cents a pound, vacuum-tin packed. Order from the Louis Sherry Shop, 769 Fifth Avenue; for mail orders add postage to price.
Pull a pair of soft-shelled crabs from a can. Cleaned they are and ready to batter-dip and drop into hot fat. They look tiny because their legs are folded under neat as you please. But out of the fat pot and all aglisten in their crisp overcoats, one crab serves one portion. That is, if you have an onion handy to make fried onion rings using the left-over batter. But two crabs are not a bite too much for excellent eating, sweet as the fresh ones which travel out of Crisfield, Maryland, crab capital of the world.
That's a good batter recipe given on the can label. The coating puffs in the fat and is almost as flaky as pastry. The product sells for around ＄1. Expensive, but so are the soft shells in the market today, running around ＄2.98 for a dozen of mediums. With the canned specimens there is no cleaning to do, no cutting off the crab's face, a job women abhor.
The crabs are the newest Vieux Carré product selling in New York City at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, and Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street.
Vieux Carré Canning Company of New Orleans is located in the old French Quarter and has been in Eastern markets with its excellent fish products since 1932. The firm was started by the “Dour Scotchman,” a little man four feet nine inches not given to smiling but demanding his factory be kept “medicinally clean.” The recipes for the foods he packed were begged, bought, and borrowed from the best restaurant chefs around the old city. The original line included such typically New Orleans items as shrimp, crab, and okra gumbo, turtle soup, Southern style oyster soup, New Orleans crawfish bisque, bisque of shrimp, and a bouillabaisse.
In 1940 the little Scotchman died, and the family have since sold the business and formulae to a group of New Orleans advertising and promotion men. The new owners continue the line exactly as in the beginning but have added a few items. Smoked oysters are one of their recent additions, and excellent. Serve them hot or cold on small squares of toast. Top of the heap in the pâté kingdom are pâtés of smoked shrimp and one of shrimp au naturel. The shrimp is finely ground, then seasoned. These pâtés may be used as they are but we like them stretched by mixing with cheese, with hard-cooked eggs, with mayonnaise, and such.
It's not a minute too early to be thinking of Christmas gift packages, and the Shagroy Farm has five selections ready and is taking orders now. The least expensive gift, at ＄5.00, is a pair of smoked turkey drumsticks with second joints wrapped in colorful cornucopias and packed in a gift carton. A second choice, at ＄7.50, is an assortment of 12 tins of the Shagroy smoked and canned products, gift-packaged.
A smoked turkey breast, minimum weight 2 pounds, packed in a sugar scoop sells for ＄13.75. This pine scoop is a handsome thing to use for nuts, potato chips, candies and such on the buffet table. A gift at ＄17.50 offers a whole smoked turkey, minimum weight 8 pounds, packaged in an oblong mixing bowl, 9 by 16 inches.
The works, the utter, in magnificent eating costs ＄25. What goes? A whole turkey, minimum weight 10 pounds, a pint of the farm's Christmas cranberry relish, the whole wrapped in a red-and-white picnic cloth and packed in a covered, two-handle picnic hamper.
And say, did you ever eat a squab turkey? Neither did we until this summer. It's some experience. The squabs come from the same turkey farm and are especially bred and finished for the table at eight weeks. The babies weigh only 1 ½ pounds each, after they are drawn and head, feet, wings, and skin removed. These gourmet platter pieces are frozen to arrive at your door ready for the oven. A brace (two birds) serves four, and they sell by the brace only, price ＄5.50.
Address your orders to Mrs. Agnes Hose, Shagroy Farm, Millerton, New York. Prices as listed include shipping charges.
A fruit and nut bread is sent to market, can-packed, by Horlamus Food Products of Miami, Florida. This firm—remember?—is the maker of that allergy bread 100 per cent rye, also can-packed, which was praised in a previous issue. This new product, however, hasn't a thing to do with an allergy, it's for good eating only. The bread is made of whole wheat and wheat flour with milk and eggs, sweetened with cane sugar, made fruity with tender currants and raisins, made crunchy with pecans. It's a moist loaf of the steamed type, light and of good flavor. A neat slicer. Very pretty these leaf-thin rings for the afternoon sweet sandwich. The bread is handled by Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, the twelve-ounce loaf 75 cents. Or it can be ordered direct, six tins at a time, from the Horlamus kitchen.
Five O'clock is a new cocktail cheese spread that tastes just like itself, no resemblance whatever to other cheese spreads on the market. This is no lunch box filler for a sandwich; it's not for tea-time. As its name implies, it's for the five o'clock hour, when there is a cock-tail in hand. It's a spread with a vinegar twang. Cheddar cheese is its backbone, blended with tomato purée, a slight addition of oil, then the high notes in spice. The product sells by mail for ＄1.25 a jar, postpaid. Address your order to Gourmet Kitchens, 903 South Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland. In New York City the newcomer is handled by Bellows', 67 East 52nd Street, and B. Altman & Company, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.
Tato-Bit puffs are weazened chips that, dropped into hot fat, spread and stretch, turning a delicate brown, curling in the fat. Out to drain quickly on absorbent paper; dust well with salt. The chips may be served as a dunking piece in cottage cheese blended with chives. Good with a cocktail, either the spirited kind or the faithful tomato. Tato-Bit puffs sell at B. Altman and Company, Fifth Avenue at 34th, a bag to serve four, 29 cents. Look for the chip in Chicago, that's the home base, Kracketts Company the makers.
Popcorn time, and the newest packaged corn goes to market tasting of smoke. “Smokorn” is packed in half-gallon tins for party occasions, selling for 45 cents at B. Altman's. No better than plain buttered popcorn, but it does create interest and lively comments.
For you who have eaten spaghetti sauce, tomato-thick, oily-rich, herb-scented, garlic-tinctured as it's made in north Italy, here's a treat waiting. Helen Morgan of Babylon, Long Island, is making just such a sauce to sell in the shops. One taste and you are in the Italy you loved, of the olive-clad slopes, of the smiling valleys. You are eating spaghetti in a friendly wayside trattoria.
One difference between Mrs. Morgan's sauce and that of north Italy is that she uses the dried imported mushrooms instead of ground meat. For seventeen years Helen Morgan has made the sauce to dress the spaghetti served at the little dinners given at her studio in the Golden Gardens of Nere. As the wife of a United Press foreign correspondent, she entertained a never-ending procession of her husband's friends. Among the well-known Americans who have enjoyed the hospitality of her table are Sinclair Lewis, Paul Gallico, Mischa Elman, Maurice Sterne, George Biddle, William Allen White.
When the Morgans returned to this country before the war, they continued eating Italian. Mrs. Morgan's young sons continued to like the food of Italy better than that of America. Here, as abroad, friends were enthusiastic about her spaghetti with its rich spicy dressing. Deploring the thin, watery concoctions one so often buys here in lieu of the real thing, Mrs. Morgan decided it might be fun to put an authentic sauce on the market.
Son Thomas, just out of the army, urged Mother to try her luck, offering to give her a year of assistance before starting his own career in the diplomatic service. Thomas does the selling; Mother does the making.
Mrs. Morgan claims patience is the foundation of the recipe, next most important ingredient is the pure Italian olive oil. In this she cooks celery, carrots, and onions for over an hour, then tomato paste is added, and the dried imported mushrooms, the mixed herbs, and the garlic, and the cooking continued another four hours. The sauce requires almost constant stirring to keep it from sticking. Ten pots are kept going at one time in order to turn out 100 nine-ounce jars in a day.
The product is selling at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, Farm and Garden, 30 Rocke-feller Plaza, Kubie's Health Shop, 136 East 57th Street, and B. Altman and Company, Fifth Avenue at 34th, price 75 cents for the nine-ounce jar, enough to serve two. So thick and rich this sauce that many prefer it thinned slightly with hot tomato juice. Examine the jar and you can see the oil floating on the surface. If you can't see that on a sauce, Helen Morgan says, it's not rich enough to bother with.
This is a sauce good on meat, fish, and fowl, on eggplant and eggs, and of course with the pasta. Cook the spaghetti al dente, or just right to bite as the Italians love it. Not too much spaghetti for the amount of sauce, mix well, then sprinkle over a lavish handful of grated Parmesan cheese, and eat to your stomach's content. To further your joy, have within reach a bottle of Chianti. The gods never fared better.
For the first time since 1940 the entire line of the preserved fish delicacies of the Vita Food Products has returned to the groceries. To celebrate the event the company announces a 30-page free booklet giving new ways to serve its many fish specialties which range from herring and sardines to the various types of bloaters and red caviar.
Devil the herring for a luncheon main dish; the booklet tells how: Spread the herring in a glass baking dish, spread with a little mustard, and pour over the remainder of the sauce in which they were packed. Sprinkle with lemon juice, decorate with halves of the Vita brand olives, the ones stuffed with peppers. Place low under the broiler until thoroughly heated; serve with potato chips and cucumber salad.
One section of the book is given to main dishes, one to salads, another to relishes and garnishes; sandwiches and canapés each have a division to themselves.
Tips are here on serving a smörgasbord, how to present an array of hcrs d'oeuvres for a buffet supper. The book uses the regular items of the line but in ways you might never think of trying without reviewing these tip-offs to new pleasures in dining.