Charles and Constance Stearns, proprietors of the Bird and Bottle Inn of Garrison, New York, mecca of the menu for gourmets in the know, are packing five specialties of their kitchen for mail-order delivery anywhere in the United States. A sampling kit introduces the line, selling for $7, postage included. Let's see what we get—four kinds of soup, two of black bean, two of Louisiana shrimp, a jar of dilled olives, one of Swedish lingenberry preserves, and a box of the richest, tangiest, meltingest cheese sticks that ever fluttered away on the tongue.
The black-bean brew is a thick smooth puree of black turtle beans, chocolate-brown in color, made herbal with thyme, bay leaves, and parsley. Green peppers in the blend, and onions, garlic, and cloves. To whip-snap the taste, mustard has been added and hot Tabasco. No sherry in this, that's for you to add just before serving.
Shrimp soup Louisiana is a shrimp and vegetable chowder, tomato the base, combined with shrimp stock, deftly blended with onions, peppers, garlic, and bay; Tabasco peppers for pep.
Lingenberry sauce as served at the Stearns table with game and roast poultry has a stiff jolt of apple brandy added just before passing. About 1 ½ ounces is right to give the get-up-and-go to a 10-ounce jar of the sauce. Glorious as a filling for a thin rolled dessert pancake, served piping hot. And over ice cream—wonderful!
The dilled olives, firm of flesh, yet tender, are prepared with fresh dill, garlic, Tabasco pepper. One olive gives an extra something to a dry Martini.
Careful there, while you eat those flat, hand-rolled pastry sticks, golden of cheese. A careless breath will float them off in a flutter of flakes. In the mouth the sticks crash into a thousand crumbs each butter-rich with Canadian Cheddar—a perfect accompaniment for drinks, soups, and salads.
A homemade ham sauce—a tasty job—is selling mail order direct from the turkey farm of Arthur Vinton, radio actor of Rock Tavern, New York, the price $1 per pint postpaid. Baste this elixir over a tough old hen, rubber tires, anything, and you can eat it with gusto. But best of all over ham. Remove the rind, score the ham in diamonds, insert whole cloves half an inch apart. Baste frequently with the sauce. Result—a ham golden-brown as October painting the maples. The sauce mixings are a beautiful abstraction called Early American, made with tamarind, anchovies, wine vinegar, soy oil, tomatoes, garlic, shallots, onions, and spices. The recipe came from Mrs. Vinton's grandfather, Dr. James Stuart of Louisville, Kentucky, who moved there in 1850 from the “Old Virginie” ham country.
Ginger-hot wafers, each the size of a quarter, are at home in a gold and red tin from the Charlotte Charles kitchen, Evanston, Illinois, ready and eager to be passed with the tea, the wine. The recipe reads as for any good ginger cookie, made with fresh eggs, creamery butter, sweetened with honey, but a difference—the ginger used is the crystalized, this finely chopped and long soaked in brandy, to give the quick nip and that lingering bite. Hot from the oven, the wafers are sprinkled with sugar, become crisp as they cool, and crisp they remain. Around 130 in the 12-ounce box, price $1.89 at B. Altman, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, at Maison Glass, 15 East 47th Street, and Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, New York. Also in delicacy shops in other cities, coast-to-coast distribution.
Alpine wine sticks are a new idea with us but centuries old on the Continent, another recipe of the Charlotte Charles French collection handed down in the family of Count Antoine Drouot, the great French general of Napoleon's army. These come in stick form, stubby as thumbs, brushed lightly with frosting made of a dough similar to Nuremberg Lebkuchen. What's in the mixture? Flour, sugar, eggs, chocolate, almonds, apricots, the complete family of peels, all ground together, then steeped in brandy and rum and made spicy as Christmas, yet not the least heavy. These sticks will keep a couple of years if stored in their tin. Eventually they harden, but a few days in a stone crock and they limber up again. In France, the harder the sticks the better the going, since they are dunked into wine. Pound tins are $1.95, at the same stores as the Charlotte Charles ginger-hots.
The fruited yogurt of France is being made in New York, selling in health shops, chain stores, and delicatessens. It's Dannon's regular yogurt made festive with two ounces of strawberry preserves parked in the jar bottom. Chill well and stir, and this snowy-white milk food streaks strawberry pink. Eat with a spoon, this dessert with the consistency of a junket. Or stir briskly, now a few shakes and you have a smooth drink. The price is 21 cents for a half-pint jar of the fruited, 18 cents for the regular. Those who have wanted to use yogurt for health's sake—but somehow didn't fancy its tart taste—can enjoy it now if they order the strawberry flavor.
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