Salad dressings flock to town from the inns of the countryside. Some sell through the stores, others go traveling by mail. One we are proud to recommend is a dressing, tangy and different, from the Old Riverton Inn, Riverton, Connecticut, where salad-bowl service is a day-by-day feature. It's just help yourself. Now try the orange-tinted dressing, a real palate-thriller. The dressing is on the thick side, made with pure olive oil, with a wine vinegar, with fresh lemon juice, and garden-fresh tomatoes, a broad hint of garlic. It does its best with the greens. Add a bit of finely cut onion and coarsely ground pepper and serve with the avocado. It teams nicely with shrimp or other sea food. Fold it spoonful by spoonful into whipped cream for blush-pink dressing to bedeck a fruit salad.
Guests of the inn have been buying the dressing for several years now, a few jars at a time, some ordering by mail. A courtesy service, this wrapping up bottles, a service which all on its own grew into a business. Now this paprika-colored dressing is packed commercially but still made in small batches, selling in New York City at B. Altman, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, and Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, the 16-ounce bottle ＄1.25, or order by mail direct from the Riverton kitchen.
Another salad dressing going places by mail is the Cay-Lime, more like a sauce than a French dressing. It's a stuff thicker than thin, sweeter than tart, soul mate to fruit. We would like the sauce as a base for a barbecue dressing to be stepped up with pepper. The vegetable oil, heavy in oil, is slightly sharpened and flavored with the juice of the little Key limes. Ketchup in the mix, a few drops of Worcestershire, a good pinch of sugar, a medley of spices. Order from Campbell-Burns, Inc., Dept. G9, Kennebunkport, Maine, three 8-ounce bottles shipped prepaid, ＄1.65; no C.O.D.'s, please.
Yale Barn down on the farm near Canaan, Connecticut, serves the best food in “that neck of the woods.” Folks drive for miles for their Farm Supper Thursday evenings; the promise—all you can eat for a flat ＄2. Braised oxtails in Burgundy sauce, for one thing. Another, the sweet-sour beef made with the tips cut from sirloin steaks, and don't miss the lobster cakes buried under shrimp sauce. Other nights than Thursday the meals cost more, but never too much, not for food that good.
The restaurant is a remodeled barn divided into a main dining room of native pine, a bamboo room in a tropical setting, a patio enclosed by a green hedge with pond and splashing water wheel for hot days. Right this way to the balcony, the gourmet's paradise, where rare foods are gathered from all over the world. Rarest of the lot originated in the Yale Barn kitchen, a salad dressing superb, postpaid ＄1.50 a pint. The dressing is made with corn oil, with tomato, with vinegar, with herbs and spices no end; a haunting suggestion of garlic. Light tomato in color, sharp, but not too sharp to be pleasing on fruit.
Another mail-order item is the orange jelly—deep amber the color—made with orange concentrate. A firm jelly, tender and not overly sweet, the 12-ounce jar, 50 cents. While you are ordering, might as well get the old-hickory-smoked slat of the smoked ham flavor for ＄1. Send check or money order, no C.O.D.'s, if you please. Address the Yale Barn, Canaan, Connecticut.
Linzer Torte in the tender-bud stage, fresh from the oven of a Viennese kitchen, goes traveling by mail, traveling in a round tin sprigged with rosebuds, a cake to serve ten, price ＄2.50 postpaid. This has a rich cookie type of dough, born of ground almonds, of flour, egg yolks, and sugar, a wee pinch of cocoa, a trickle of brandly, the rind of a lemon, cinnamon and cloves for the spicing. The thickly rolled pastry is fitted into a straight-sided pie pan, then the filling added, a pure raspberry jam. Dough strips form a latticework topping. Now into a hot oven, maybe five minutes, quickly to brown; then the heat is reduced and the pastry slowly dried. The rich, tender crust is just sturdy enough to carry the weight of the jam.
Viennese cookies are made also by the same clever cook to sell boxed by the pound, 74 small morsels of sweetness, ＄2.75 postpaid. Lift the box lid, those thin squares with scalloped edges are the spiced wafers, rich little nothings that leave the prick of spice on the tongue—cinnamon, cardamom, coriander. Spice cookies are baked in nut molds, the exact size of English walnuts, and brushed lightly with white icing. Butter cookies are leaf-shaped, also cut in clover-leaf pattern, these tickled with egg yolk to give a golden hue. Tiny sticks made of dates, raisins, nuts all finely ground, highly spiced with cinnamon and ginger, are rolled in powdered sugar, wrapped in silver foil.
One sweet irreproachable is made of ground hazelnuts blended with egg whites, with sugar, the juice of fresh lemon, and syrup for sweetening and to keep the cake moist. This is slowly baked and quickly gone once you take the first bite. In the cookie box are miniature Linzer Torten about the size of a half dollar; there are chocolate macaroons made with finely ground almonds, sweetened with honey, sparked with cinnamon. Crescents are the richest bites in the box, made of two-thirds pulverized pecans and one-third hazelnuts, creamed with butter and sugar, then the slow bake.
A third product in the line is home-made caramels of pale honey color, ＄2 a pound postpaid. A crêpe-stain luxury for the tongue, made as they are with heavy cream, with sweet butter. To order, address Crown's. Post Office Box 312, Demarest, New Jersey.
A toast spread, super glamorous, combines sugar and fresh creamery butter, choice Saigon cinnamon and finely cut toasted peanuts, a smooth dark stuff guaranteed to create lovely curves on a size 14 chassis. We forget such mundane matters in view of bonny eating. Spread the butter on toast. If wafts spicy goodness. Have it on toasted homemade bread of mealy savor. Taste of the wheat roasted sweet and crisp and deep brown. It runs to hide in bread pickets. The buttery spread melts into lazy little puddles. You sigh blissfully, “Another slice of toast, please!” The 10-ounce jar 55 cents postpaid from Hoenshel Fine Foods, Inc., Sandusky, Ohio, Carried also by B. Altman, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, New York City.
Cook at home in Chinese. The cook's kit of Chinese groceries with Chef Henry Low's cookbook of three hundred authentic Chinese recipes is offered to women with a flair for the Oriental. No ordinary groceries these. Open that square tin of queer brownish paste, like baked beans mashed, whipped, and packed in red sauce. Chinese cheese and not a cheese either, because it is made without milk. It's the soy bean curd aged in Chinese wine, unappetizing in appearance—but take a wee bite. A flavor indescribable as that of the olive. Is it smoky? Is it salty? A richness pervades as in a nut paste. This cheese would be a smacking good thing spread over crackers; a coaxer to thirst at a cocktail bout. But that's not its purpose. The Chinese serve their cheese as a main course to be eaten with the hot rice.
Next out a Cellophane bag of salted back beans demanded so frequently in Chinese recipes. Bamboo shoots are tin-packed, and the Chinese water chestnuts look like lily bulbs, crisp as raw potato, neatly peeled, packed in their own cooking water. LaChoy has supplied the big tin of bean sprouts and the tin of thin noodle bits, crisply fried to dark brown. The thick dark soy sauce is a new one to us, about the consistency of molasses, smooth and viscous, less salty than the soy sauce that usually goes to the table. The big dried mushrooms came straight out of China. What's that tall jar of white powder labeled Mei Jing? A glutamate seasoner used by chefs in the Orient to point up flavors in foods.
A booklet invites you to Lum Fong's New York restaurant of superb cuisine typical of that in a Chinese inn in the city of Canton. Given are six of the best liked recipes on the Lum Fong mean Pull out Henry Low's cookbook, here's one to enjoy over the years; sells for ＄2.50 in the bookstores. The author has had a half century of cooking experience, with ten years as chef at the Port Arthur, a restaurant in New York's China-town. A book easy to follow with the majority of ingredients obtainable at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, New York City, the shop offering the kit which sells for ＄11.50. Other items to be had on order are a choice of rare Chinese herbs and seasoners—wai san, gag, gee, iso kuor, to mention a few. And lotus seeds are there, and Chinese almonds which, in case you don't know, are dried apricot kernels. Chestnut flour, too, to use for breading the egg rolls to give extra crispness. When you cook in Chinese, it pays to use Chinese ingredients, as so many of these items have no American counterpart, and if omitted or substituted for, the finished dish lacks are authentic touch.
Give your cocktail party an extra touch of success, serve Hob-Nob as the appetizer spread. It has the friendly nip of tangy old Cheddar, its flavor uplifted by spices and herbs. In color is burnt orange, the result of mixing Cheddar and tomato paste. Smooth, easy spreading. Spread it over dried beef, roll the thin slices, and secure with toothpicks. Or spade the spread around the edge of a cracker, and fill the center the cream cheese. Use Hob-Nob as a filler for celerv stalks; heap it high on piping her chips of potato. A taste you will remember. Made by Gourmet Kitchens of Baltimore, it is packed in two sizes of containers, 7 ½ ounces, 95 cents, 3 ounces, 49 cents. In New York City at B. Altman, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, at Hick's, 30 West 57th Street. Herbert Strausser, Pennsylvania Station; in Brooklyn at Abraham and Straus, 420 Fulton Street, and Ecklebe and Guyer, 1 DeKalb Avenue.
Bengt Nordquist of the Merchant House of Arvid Nordquist of Stockholm, Sweden, came flying into New York with a suitcase jam-packed with the world-famous Marabou chocolates and sold every last sample to G. F. Heublein and Bro., Inc., who are making deliveries now to leading stores in Manhattan. Early fall the line travels west to Kansas City and Chicago. Never before have the Swedes let the Marabou out of Sweden; they are it themselves. Now in exchange for the needed Yankee dollar the chocolate is coming—a sweet as well known in its field as Orrefors is in glass.
Quite different, these chocolates, from the usual thin-shelled, molded type of the Continent, with the soft, flowy centers. Swedish chocolates, like the Swedes, are sturdy in character. A handsome assortment in the gold box, King Gustav's picture the cover decoration, 18 chocolate varieties. Marzipan is used in numerous combinations running neck and neck with peppermint as the Swedes' most popular flavor. There are fruit-flavored creams, one the gooseberry, its color bright green.
The chocolates are remindful of the old-fashioned chocolate native to American before the European candy-makes invaded the market. The overcoatings rival the Belgian and Dutch types of chocolate—but follow the Swiss at a respectful distance.
On one of our unpredictable market quests around New York City we wandered the length of Pearl Street and into Joseph Victori's at number 164, there to discover “brood of eels” beloved by the Spanish, here out of France. Whether these are baby eels or just any tiny fish, or white bait, perhaps, is but a guess. They look like white threads shiny of olive oil. What to do? Heat with a leaf of bay, a clove of garlic, serve over toast, 69 cents for a tin to provide portions for two. The garniture for this should be fresh parsley briefly fried in deep hot fat. About five seconds in the fat transforms the parsley into shreds crisp as straw, a flavor to roll a Frenchman's eyes in ecstasy.
Coconut slices salt-tined, oven-toasted—that's Cocó-po, the newest snack chip, a Western invention produced by the Spice Islands Company of San Francisco. Strong of coconut flavor. Delicious, delightful, use your own adjectives. The slices, crescent-shaped, are about 2 inches long, ½ inch wide, and thin as a sliver. These are fine to pass as they are with the drinks—milk drinks or alcoholic—or crumbled to sprinkle over a tall frosted cake or a cream pie, Cocó-po can be found at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, New York City, price 69 cents for the 5-ounce tin, or it may be ordered from the Spice Islands Comapny, 70 Pine Street, San Francisco, California, 85 cents postpaid.
Fancy mixing for zestful tippling goes to your boxed, 8 different items, each one top-drawer of its type, the setup as follows: 2-ounce bottle Angostura bitters, 3-ounce jar pitted cocktail olives, 4-ounce jar imported Holland pearl onions, 7-ounce bottle Rose's West India Lime Juice imported from England, ½ pint Giroux Rock Candy Simple Syrup, 8-ounce jar maraschino cherries, 3 ½-ounce bottle Old House Orange Bitters, and what added zest a few drops give to a cocktail! The orange bitters are made by Schieffelin and Company, importers since 1794, the oldest drug house in America. A professional mixing guide goes along for good measure. Barmart, Inc., 62 West 45th Street, New York City. pack the kit, ＄5 postpaid.
England sends her Malden flaked salt for the salt mills. Each flake averages about 1/8 inch long, thin as a leaf. The 10-ounce boxes looking ever so gifty, 25 cents; add postage for mailing. Bellows and Company, 67 East 52nd Street. New York.