Rose M. Vergano, a packer of Italian antipasto items, got the idea this year of putting the sea urchin caviar into jars for year-round use and introducing it to gourmets. The item has been selling since early summer through Italian stores, now the Atlantic and Pacific supermarkets and Gimbel's are stocking the novelty in New York City. Distribution this early autumn will extend to the West Coast in A&P stores, but ask, too, in local delicacy shops.
No seasoning is required, according to the Italians. But, we say, add a tear of the lemon, a dash of Worcestershire, a pinch of horseradish, a dip of grated onion. Pass the hot buttered Melba and you have something grand.
This Rose Vergano is a daring young woman. Four years ago, while still in her twenties, she gave up a ten-year career as an expert seamstress with a leading New York dress designer to start a food factory, the Esperia Packing Company. Her idea was to pack antipasto items in the Italian manner. She Started with eel, then came the spearing, those elfin fish one eats head, tail, insides, and all. Next Rose packed tiny mushrooms in olive oil and in sauce; followed an antipasto composed of cauliflower, celery, carrot, mushroom, capers, olives, and peppers. She added jardineria piperoncini Toscanini, these the tiny peppers imported from Italy in bulk to repack in gallon lots for restaurants and shops.
Something else her firm features is the Spanish roasted pimiento which she buys in brine, then prepares in gallons and jars for the trade. Her antipasto of chopped olive is her most successful venture: olives combined with peppers and capers in a sauce of vinegar and oil seasoned with orégano.
Home-packed, fresh pork sausage in cans comes from Innisfree Farm, Limeton, Virginia, home of pork products styled for gourmets. This business is a partnership uniting Morton Gill Clark and his wife, Anne Maxwell Clark, with Alvin R. L. Dohme and his mother, Mrs. Paula C. Dohme. The Dohmes are Baltimuorians from way back with a collection of over ten thousand colonial recipes. The Clarks are ex-New Yorkers who learned their culinary art by world travel and a long stay at the Cordon Bleu in Paris. This couple are firm believers in the French “loving touch” that brings a dish to perfection. From the breeding of the hog to the finished package, the products are under close supervision. No hogs are purchased in the open market; all are farm-bred, all are fed a special ration devised for extra leanness rather than extra fatness, all raised under exacting conditions to give a product distinctive and uniform.
The hams are hickory-smoked and cured by an old Southern recipe from the Shenandoah Valley which calls for two months, smoking, then a dry cure in salt and pepper with fresh herbs, and a final aging for one year. The hams are shipped with complete cooking directions and go accompanied by the herbs and spices called for in the recipe, price ＄1.25 a pound. 12 to 15 pounds.
Two pâlés are offered, one called rillettes, a glorified potted meat made of pork reduced to a spreading consistency and flavored with herbs and spices, a recipe from France where for generations rillettes have been a prized delicacy; ＄1 for a jar of 10 ounces. This is to be used as a spread on toast fingers, as an hors-d'oeuvre and a lip-smacking canapé, rolled in pastry, quickly baked.
The pâté de foie is another, made of pork livers, studded with truffles, smooth and uniform as a mousse, wisely seasoned, 10 ounces for ＄1.75.
There is a bacon, hickory-smoked, sliced very thinly, selling for 85 cents a pound, the minimum order three pounds. Ever taste pannbas? That's something different, a mixture of corn meal with pork stock, rather like scrapple, but considerably lighter. Great stuff for breakfast along with fried eggs; a pound tin is 45 cents.
Here's ham sauce for your must-buy list, sweet-sour, built on a wine base with numerous spices. Use it as a baste for ham, or serve it with ham hot or cold; 90 cents for a pound.
To order these items, address Innis-free Farm Company, Limeton, Virginia. Orders east of the Mississippi are shipped postage prepaid; west of the big river add 25 cents for one pound or under and 10 cents for each additional pound.
Victor Chevalier's Red Wine Herb Vinegar comes to the gourmet's kitchen. A vinegar superb when teamed with a fine olive oil in a French dressing. It speaks out with a sharp accent in a vinaigrette sauce. One of the makers, Clifford Franklin Leet of Elmira, New York, an attorney-at-law, gave us a brief background of the product. John S. Riggs, his law firm partner, came by the recipe while he was stationed in California and brought it home as a treasure, remembering how often he and his friend Leet had talked of developing a small food-manufacturing business.
This recipe formed the basis for the venture. A good red wine vinegar was obtained from a winery in the Keuka Lake region of New York State. With the assistance and counsel of Victor Chevalier, the vinegar was pur through an aging process, then infused with the herbs. The resulting product is it clear Burgundy red. its flavor quite tart, with delightful herb fragrance.
The new vinegar sells by mail, full pints ＄1.25. Address: House of Chevalier, 102 Gorton Boulevard, Elmira, N. Y.
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