One glorious month in the Far West on the hunt for good things to pass on to gourmets. First stop Seattle, to visit Samuel Martin, importer of men's topcoats and Scottish and British woolens, his side line and hobby, game birds. We have told you before about Martin's game products, Wild Life In The Kitchen, selling in delicacy stores from West Coast to East, but this was our first visit to his wild-life bowl, a two-hundred-and-forty-acre bird Eden on Whidbey Island, thirty miles from Seattle. Here he has around nine thousand ring-necked pheasant and wild turkeys eating themselves fat.
Raising pheasant and wild turkey in an atmosphere akin to their natural habitat is the chief factor responsible for the gamy flavor of these birds. Wild things love to roam, and the Martin birds have the range to themselves, eating cafeteria style. Berry- and seed-producing trees and shrubs have been planted to supply the foragers. Leafy green vegetables are grown in abundance from garden seeds plumed in hit-or-miss fashion over the fields. Wild birds don't like to cat from grain troughs, so gamekeeper Martin has attached an endgate seeder to a tractor. which flings the grain in a great arc.
Mr. Martin spends three days a week at the farm, but it's Elmer Tasche and his wife, formerly of South Dakota, who keep the place running. The game products, packed by a local cannery, include cooked whole pheasant in tall lithographed tins and pâtés made of pheasant meat and smoked wild turkey meat combined with the giblets. There are such rare foods as wild turkey à la King, pheasant à la Newberg with sherry wine, and a pheasant broth with wild rice. This Christmas a new pack will be offered direct from the farm, an eviscerated hen and cock in full plumage, fresh-frozen, packed with real wild huckleberries. Price ＄12 with traveling expenses prepaid. Ask for Wild Life In The Kitchen products in the delicacy stores of your city or write direct to Samuel Martin, 605 Union Street, Seattle, Washington.
Fresh salmon is Seattle's big dish among sea foods—that and the Dungeness crab. Along the Puget Sound water front is the fish-market area where we found numerous shops offering to ship home a fresh salmon. These big fish are ice-bedded in wooden boxes, sent express to every state in the Union. Our companion on this water-front jaunt, a native of the city and one who knows her way around, suggested the Pacific Fish Company, 819 Alaskan Way, Seattle 8, Washington, as a reliable house. Here you can order a whole salmon, express prepaid, around 10 pounds in weight, for about ＄10. Giant Dungeness crabs are sent express, 6 big ones ＄4, plus the express charges.
Papaya research chemist J. H. Newmark of Miami has come up with a “bag” way to use papaya as a meat tenderizer. The fruit is dehydrated and packed into a tea type of envelope so the cook can make her own tenderizer by a mere addition of water. One little envelope in a cup of water makes enough tenderizer to prepare forty pounds of meat at a cost of less than a penny a pound. Distribution to stores will start this autumn. Meanwhile, if anyone is interested, Mr. Newmark will mail two envelopes of the dehydrated enzyme, price postpaid ＄1. Address the Papaya Research Laboratory, 4895 S. W. Eighth Street, Miami. Florida.
There's still gold in “them hills” —but in California we discovered a different sort, a golden olive oil, sold mail order by olive-rancher Strafford Wentworth.
He flew his four-seater Stinson down to Bakersfield to pick us up and fly north over valleys and mountains to the back door of the ranch home near Loma Rica. It's the name of this little town he has borrowed as the brand name for his oil.
Young Wentworth, a Harvard graduate, is chairman of the Olive Oil Advisory Board which administers the olive-growers' state program. He is president of the Oroville Wyandotte Irrigation Project, Vice President of Butte County Citrus Association, and Vice Chairman of the olive section of the State Farm Bureau—or, in other words, a responsible young man who can be trusted with your orders. He started in Oroville ten years ago and built up its run-down groves, adding groves from near-by districts until today his two-hundred-and-sixty acres of over a thousand trees average three tons of olives to the acre. These olives are the Mission type, for the most part, with a few manzanillas. The bulk of the harvest is processed by the Lindsay Ripe Olive Company, a local cooperative, but a certain amount each season is made into olive oil for mail-order selling from the Wentworth's home basement. We sampled this fine oil of a pale golden color, made from fresh, sound Mission olives without heat application, without the use of chemicals. This oil squeezed from the olive, will keep fresh and sweet to the last drop in the tin. Prices, delivered, ＄6 a gallon west of the Rockies, ＄7 east, or a case of 12 quarts ＄18 west and ＄20 east. Address Wentworth Orchards, Palermo, California.
At Mecca, California, in the kitchen of the Garden of the Setting Sun, Edna Cost has had her candy expert turning out date-nut pralines in record tonnage to supply numerous stores ordering this novelty confection, introduced early last spring. On the West Coast in California we find the fruited patties selling at Bullock's in Los Angeles and Pasadena, at Laura Carey's in Palm Springs, and at the Kampus Korn Krib in Berkeley. In Seattle the candy is at the Bon Ton; in San Antonio at Joske's; and Mrs. Cast tells us, in New York at B. Altrman, Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, H. Hicks and Son, 30 West 57th Street, and Alice Marks, 9 West 57th Street.
In the food departments of your local stores you should be able to locate the fruit Specialties put up by J. M. Allen Company, Rancho Drive, Route 4, Box 345E, San Jose, California: Bright-red cinnamon pears, bright-green mimed pears, sweet pickled cantaloupe and watermelon rings, sweet pickled apricots and pears, stuffed oranges, and old-fashioned orange slices. If your dealer hasn't this line and you would like to sample, write direct to the packer for the ＄5.95 package, postage prepaid. The gift box contains four 17-ounce thin-blown zombie glasses, the safe-edge kind and re-usable, measuring 8 inches tall, filled with your choice of the specialties.
Say “shoe peg” to a Baltimore cook and she says right back. “You mean corn, of course?” And of course you do if you live in the shoe-peg country in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The Amish in the Pennsylvania valleys grow the most acres of this special corn, and a corn like no other. The kernels are peg-shaped, they vary in size, the rows are uneven. The name was given when the corn was first discovered in Maryland in 1890 because the kernels looked like the little white hickory pegs shoemakers used to nail soles onto boots.This corn is produced and canned almost exclusively in Maryland and Pennsylvania but distributed through the East and into the Middle West.
The eating of shoe peg is something, the kernels between the teeth so firm and milk-filled and very sweet. The reason for the extra milk is that the kernels, pointed at the cob end, cut off at the point; the knife doesn't slash into the milk sac as happens with wide kernels set deep to the cob. There isn't a lot of this corn packed, only about two million cases a year packed by fourteen canneries. Never mind the brand names, just ask for shoe peg. In this instance the name of the corn family is played above the name of the packer. And shoe peg canners want it that way. They have founded an association, their purpose to further the world's interest in this gourmet item. The group has agreed that the corn be harvested and packed in a manner to protect its full goodness, and all abide by the rules.
It is not epicurean fanaticism which insists that sweet corn begins to lose its flavor immediately after it is picked. There is a scientific reason back of the statement. The tenderness of corn is due to the low quality of starch in the kernels and the flavor is due to the large amount of sugar while the ears are in the stalk. Enzymatic activity is constantly converting the sugar in the kernels to starch, but at the same time new sugar is constantly coming into the ears from the leaves. When you pull the ear, you do not stop the enzymatic transformation of sugar into starch, and the longer the corn stands around after being pulled, the tougher and starchier it gets and the more flavor it loses.
Shoe-peg packers insist on speed between the field and the can. Any corn that has been off the parent stem more than a few hours has lost caste as a shoe-peg treat.
We aren't saying it's the best corn canned but we are telling you it's a taste experience and if you don't know shoe peg, try to get hold of a tin.
In the fancy-food departments along the West Coast are wonderful marmalades and whole fruit preserves made of fruits of the region, laved in smooth syrups. Numerous ones of these glamor put-ups are available mail order direct from the maker. Edward S. Miller of Ontario, California, is one who has developed an extensive mail-order business with his fruit preserves, marmalades, and chutney. His most appealing pack carries five 10-ounce jars and includes one each of a Natal Plum Jam, Cape Gooseberry Preserve, Calamondin Orange Marmalade. Green Passion Fruit Jam, and Apricot Chutney. Speaking of apricot reminds us that at Hollister, California, we wandered through an apricot orchard in harvest season and picked the tree-ripened fruit from the branch, eating all we could hold. Apricots lay in golden masses at the foot of the trees like pools reflecting the setting sun. By the way, if you want to sample any of the Miller assortments, address Edward S. Miller, West Main Street, Ontario. California.
Something new has happened to that age-old product, root of the ginger. K. P. Kwan, a young Chinese with a B. A. from Ohio Wesleyan and an M. A. from Chicago University, looking around for a business venture, had a bright idea and put it to test. He is preparing the preserved ginger root ready-crushed for the baker, for the ice cream maker, the confectioner, or for use in marmalades.
The new product is 70 per cent ginger, 30 per cent cane syrup—and without fiber. How can that be? The ginger root employed for the product is too young to have started growing its “hairs.” Packed for home cooks in 2-pound 12-ounce jars, ＄2.49 at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, New York.
So easy to use. Dip out a few spoonfuls to pass with the curry, mix it into ice cream, use it to layer a cake, add a dab to fruit salad. It's just this side of hot and of fine, fine grind.
Sea urchin caviar is packed for the first time, and utterly different. A sea urchin, in case you don't know, is that odd little green chestnut-burrlike creature of the sea, which comes to the market in limited quantities between October and April and is seldom seen in fish markets outside Italian districts.
The Italians have for years enjoyed the urchin's sweet roe of the delicate orange tinge. Eaters knife off the burr top, dip into the roe, and spread over fresh crusty bread, washing down bites of this fishy repast with red wine.
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.