Peeling a chestnut is a task women hate. It makes the arm ache; one may slice off a finger. Any way you do it, chestnut peeling is tedious. Now chestnuts come prepeeled, precooked, in 18-ounce jars, packed in the lightly salted water in which they are cooked. The chestnuts are whole—no broken specimens in our sample, at least—and perfectly peeled, not a fleck of skin left. This new product for the American cook who has no patience with tedium is the idea of B. V. Ossola, vice-president of the J. Ossola importing Company of New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Miami.
B. V. stands for Betty Victoria, who for ten years has done a man's job as executive manager and buyer for her father's importing firm, bringing in Italian products and Spanish delectables. Father, that's J. Ossola, has trained Betty to carry on his business, and no man-child could do the job better, he boasts.
This week, Betty came calling with a satchel of samples. She asked for a can opener and a bowl and zipped out the chestnuts, 32 the jar-count, these to purée and serve as a vegetable, to use in soup or as a stuffing for turkey.
Another remarkable product made by the Ossola firm is the olive condite. This is a combination of pitted, crushed olives, packed with slices of sweet pimiento and capers in a mixture of olive oil with vinegar, salted slightly, and orégano added for the final taste touch. Turn over a bowl of greens, then toss, no salad dressing needed. Or the mixture may be used as an antipasto or relish.
The 13-ounce, bell-shaped jar is 42 to 45 cents, selling in delicacy shops in Boston, Providence, Albany, New York, Washington, D. C., Baltimore, Charleston, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, and many other cities.
From that beef-loving town of Kansas City comes a barbecue sauce, the Hot-N-Tot, made by the E. H. Wright Company and made, we suspect, with a touch of erupting volcano. It's not only molten hot but has a new flavor with a different tang resulting from the blending of many spices.
Same firm offers a bottle of smoke. Yes, smoke condensed from choice hardwood and put into liquid form, nothing added. The principal use of this product for many years was by farmers for smoking hams and bacon. But with the popularity of the backyard barbecue and of oven-barbecued food, people everywhere are buying smoke to dash over meat. It's easy to use and inexpensive.
Suppose ribs are the meat for your barbecue. Apply a coat of liquid smoke to both sides of the slabs and allow to dry for 20 minutes. Salt and pepper and prepare in any way you please. If a stronger smoke taste is desired, give the meat a second coat during the cooking. Liquid smoke may be brushed over any meats going to the broiler, and that woodsy, outdoor smoke taste is there to pamper the palate. A swish of smoke over a hamburger, and you have an epicurean delight fresh from the barbecue pit.
The Wright products are distributed throughout the United States and to many foreign countries, sold in all better food stores. Liquid smoke sells rather generally through the drug stores of the country—this practice resulting from the days when drug companies sold farmers the necessary mixtures for home-curing their own butchered meats.
Bring gold to the summer breakfast. Bring a marmalade whose spirit is the bitter orange, deep amber stuff, tasting of the slow-cooked citrus, a sparkle here of the assertive lemon, but well tempered by the sweetness of the sugar. Extravagant in its goodness, surely a marmalade that will make a name for itself, labeled Mendip Cottage, out of Old England by way of a New England kitchen in Hamilton, Massachusetts. The makers are Michael Wynne-Willson, an ex-RAF fighter-pilot, and his American wife Jackie, a Smith College graduate.
This couple had no intention of going into the marmalade business until just a year ago when, as Michael said frankly, “We were busted.” Friends came to call, and Jackie served tea and toast and passed the marmalade she had made by her mother-in-law's recipe. Guests mightily admired the amber spread and several asked Jackie to make a few jars for sale. The Wynne-Willsons took a chance and invested in citrus.
The marmalade sold and resold. The fruit is cut in large pieces, cooked tender, set in thick jelly. Made simply of sugar, oranges, and lemons, but somehow it's different, a homemade spread, English to the last bitter shred.
This spring, Mendip Cottage introduced a new product, a butterscotch sauce—golden and velvet-smooth, tasting of butter, made with heavy cream, corn syrup, sugar, vanilla.
Marmalade and butterscotch sauce each sells for around 65 cents for the 11-ounce jar, handled in New York City by the Woman's Exchange, 541 Madison Avenue, and at the Mary Elizabeth Tea Room, 8 East 37th Street. Also at the Woman's Exchange, Stamford, Connecticut, and at the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union and the Farm and Garden Shop, both in Boston. Johnny Appleseed's Country Store in Concord, Massachusetts, and the Country Store in Ipswich, Massachusetts, also have the products. More shops will be added soon. Buy the marmalade and sauce by mail order, if you wish: three jars for ＄1.95, six for ＄3.70, 12 for ＄6.90, postage prepaid. Address: Mendip Cottage, Ltd., Hamilton, Massachusetts.
Solomon sang of “a feast of fat things.'' We recommend a king salmon fresh from the Northwest. Clare Allen selects the choicest of kings, red salmon gleaming and silver-sided, caught in the deep, cold waters of the North Pacific. The fish is packed in ice and sent by fast express, price ＄10. These big beauties are for those special occasions when you plan for twelve to fifteen guests and want one fish to feed the multitude. You won't know the weight exactly, but 10 pounds is promised as the minimum. Address Clare Allen's King Salmon, P. O. Box 287, Seattle 11, Washington.
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