Merry Christmas, Happy New Year! Say it in Mexican, say it with tamales—four kinds of tamales, kit-packed, yours for gift-giving, to keep handy for those special occasions.
The tamale, did you know, is American in origin, the favorite food of the Aztecs? Long ago it went marching with Montezuma's troops, a sort of a K ration convenient to carry, something to eat hot or cold.
Tamales now, as then, vary in size and in content, but one general procedure is followed for all. A clean corn husk is opened and spread with a layer of soft-cooked masa, a mash made from corn and resembling corn bread. Over this goes a layer of chicken or beef or mashed dried fruits, and the husk is rolled. The husk performs the same function as a wax paper sandwich bag, enclosing and protecting the rolled sandwich.
The tamales gift kit brings beef, chicken, and a sweet fruit tamale, also one hotly spiced tamalette, to serve with the drinks. The most popular of all is the one with a filling of beef highly spiced with cumin and pepper. This cumin, long a favorite with the Indians of Mexico, made it possible in olden times for the warriors to carry their favorite food on the hunt or to war without spoilage, the cumin acting as a preservative.
The masa is made of grains of corn soaked in lime water and ground to a pulp without removing “the eye.” that dark fleck in the meal which distinguishes it from hominy or grits. It's the eye that is the heart of the corn.
Ears of corn have great variety in color, which accounts for the different colors of the masa. Example: If the ear has purplish grains, a blue masa results, but the food value is the same.
Meat and vegetable fillings are standard for tamales but at a fiesta, a sweet kind called Tamale Dulce is an important addition. Although any fruit and sometimes nuts are used in this, it is most often made with a filling of raisins ground to a paste, served with a light syrup as a sauce. A delicate sweet for teatime, with hot cocoa or coffee.
Jean Shelton, packer of the tamale foursome, gave us these tamale facts and has suggested ways to use the various types. The chicken and beef are to be eaten any time for a snack or a main course, heated and served with a hot chili sauce. Mexicans love them broken into bits and scrambled with eggs for breakfast or for a late supper, and at breakfast the meat-filled tamale is often toasted or pan-fried.
In California, the word tamale most often means a large roll, fruit-filled, Mrs. Shelton said, while Texans think of tamale chiefly as the meat kind. Historically. a tamale is all the kinds described above plus that twentieth-century number, the cocktail-sized tamale, this about half as long as the regular. packed with a very mild chili sauce. Oven-heat these and serve with shucks opened and toothpicks handy for the pickup; a spicy addition to a cocktail menu. And there you have it. one can each of beef tamales, chicken tamales, cocktailers, and Tamale Dulce, price ＄3.25 postpaid. Address J. J. Shelton, 1901 North Harwood, Dallas, Texas.
A gourmet's heaven in a box! Pastries of twelve kinds, Continental in origin but out of the South, from Mobile, Alabama, and having about them the lavish richness that belongs so definitely to the Southern kitchen of tradition.
Knife in hand, cut off a nip from each little charmer and make the taste test. First the chocolate petit four, a round sweet about three inches wide, layered with chocolate butter cream, covered with thick fondant icing, a slice of almond the top decoration. The raspberry petit four is similar. One pastry is the grillage petit four, with butter cream filling and caramel fondant covering. The little cake we like especially has a filling of lemon cream, made with egg and fresh lemon juice, lemon-iced. Next, two éclairs, thumb-sized, with caramel mocha and chocolate butter cream fillings, frosted accordingly.
Paris tart is new to us, made from almond cake in which finely ground nuts take the place of flour. The heart of this one is a chocolate truffle, the whole coated with chocolate. The raspberry tart is made from pecan cake, with pure raspberry filling. One called Chinese tart is of almond dough, with cherry filling. Hungarian pecan marble has a pecan filling moist with rum, encased in a thin glazed pastry crust. Pecan square is made of crisp short butter dough, with pecan filling. Our favorite is the Oriental date, a whole soft date enveloped in macaroon paste, covered with thinly sliced almonds overlapping to give the effect of an armadillo's shell.
The standard box of these European pastries contains twenty-four pieces, two of each kind, ＄3.95 the price, including postage and special delivery. A big money's worth, since half the pastries are large enough to serve as a dinner dessert. The same assortment in miniature is available on special order.
Order from The Pastry Shop. 210 St. Francis Street, Mobile, Alabama.
Anyone of Scandinavian origin will bless you for a Christmas pudding from Sophie Madsen—fish pudding, not plum! Her puddings take wing to embassy kitchens, to Hollywood, to Palm Beach. To her plain-as-plate, starch white shop at 1183 Third Avenue, New York, come the great, the near-great, the just-you-and-me folks—anyone who loves a fish pudding done Norwegian style. Sonja Henie buys her fish puddings there. Trygve Lie stops in often or sends his chauffeur for a featherlight mold and a quart of rich sauce.
Long years ago Sophie Madsen came to America from Norway to study for the opera. She ran short of money and began to make fish puddings as she had learned to make them from a caterer in her home city. The puddings sold to her friends but only on order. Divine puddings, “light as a cloud.” they said, and a business soon grew.
This fish pudding is a sort of souffle that stands tall and light. Fresh fish are bought daily, haddock when available at the right price. The fish are boned, seasoned, put through an electric grinder, not once but several times. Light cream is added, a little at a time. When creamed to a feathery consistency, the mixture is poured in buttered pans, casseroles, or molds and set in water to bake for maybe an hour. Then the eye beholds the delicate texture of the pure white pudding, its top browned to the color of ripening wheat.
A very fine lobster cream sauce with sherry can be had along with the pudding; smooth and rich this sauce, delicately seasoned; the lobster is tender, and the quantity generous. There is also a shrimp sauce, a sherry sauce, and a plain white sauce. A quart will serve eight and the prices vary. Lobster is ＄3 to ＄4 according to the amount of lobster desired. The plain white sauce is ＄2, the sherry ＄2.25. When the puddings travel by air, the shipping charge is extra.
There is a new herbal vinegar called “1750, ” first made in France at the Manoir in Normandy two hundred years back. Madame Trinité originated the formula, the ritual of its making starling on a June morning when Madame, up with the sun, went into her garden to gather herbs and rose petals for a potpourri. Burying her nose in the basket of fragrance, she came upon the idea of combining rose petals with herbs in the apple vinegar for which the Manoir was famous. The result of her brewing was a vinegar of delicacy and freshness which endeared it to the connoisseurs of her day.
Lucy Illyne, French by birth, Russian by marriage, great-granddaughter of the vinegar maker, inherited this Norman French recipe and has made the vinegar in her kitchen all the years since. When she and her husband escaped out of Russia during the first World War, one of the few things Lucy carried along was Great-grandma's vinegar recipe.
This vinegar was a home produce until a few months ago when Julie C. Pruyn, a decorator and friend of Lucy Illyne, suggested they make the brew to sell through the shops. The contribution of the recipe was Lucy's part. It was Miss Pruyn who took the formula to a small factory in Long Island City where it was perfected for commercial production. She herself designed the bottle and trademark, using a drawing of a porte-boubeur, a good-luck charm,
The formula for “1750” is a secret. but this much can be told. The base is Wayne County cider vinegar aged in wood for four years and blended with eight different herbs. Miss Pruyn isn't saying whether she uses rose petals in the blend or a rose essence, but very much in evidence is the flower-like bouquet. Attached to each bottle is a small booklet giving recipes for using the 1750 Herbal Vinegar in hollandaise and béarnaise sauces, in French dressing, and in a meat loaf.
Shops in New York with “1750” on hand are: Woman's Exchange. 541 Madison Avenue; B. Altman Company; and Charles & Company, 340 Madison Avenue. In Brooklyn, Abraham and Straus, 420 Fulton Street. In Boston, S. S. Pierce and George Ellis. Also noted in the Woman's Exchange in Greenwich. Connecticut, in Rye and Scarsdale, New York; at Miss Haver's in Lexington. Kentucky; Hopper McGaw, Baltimore; Olson's Foods, Wilmington; Barn Book Shop, East Hampton. Long Island; and the East Hampton's Woman's Exchange. The price is around ＄1 for 16 ounces.
Smoked pheasant has been added to the Forst line of Catskill Mountain Smokehouse delicacies from upstate. The birds are picked young, selected from game farms where they are carefully fed and fattened. The Forsts attend to the curing with spices and herbs, to the slow smoking and cooking over apple wood embers. A brace of pheasant serves five to six people and will make a feast long remembered. Price ＄12 the brace; order direct from Forsts, Kingston, New York.
A pleasure always to step into Henri's to pick and choose among his sophisticated delicacies. The glaéed nuts and fruits, for one thing, are a specialty, and Henri the only confiseur in New York who turns out such artistry. The glacé is cleat as glass and as shining. You see exactly what you are eating, be it fruit jelly or paste, a nougatine, a date, a prune, a pecan, a cashew, a cherry—truly beautiful; ＄3 a pound in 1-to 5 pound boxes, plus postage.
Other things to consider ate cocktail truffle balls, almond paste, bonbons, the special French dragées, Jordan almonds —all ＄3 a pound. Postage charges east of the Mississippi are 50 cents fot a ＄6 order, 60 cents for ＄10, ＄1 for ＄15, ＄1.25 for ＄20; west of the fiver, 70 cents, 90 cents, ＄1.25, ＄1.75, respectively. Address: Hents, Confistur. 15 East Fifty-second Street, New York.
One of the world's finest coffee combinations is Mocha and Java, and one of the best blendings we have sampled of this combination is packed by the James O'Connor Coffee Company, 1043 South Twelfth, St. Louis 4, Missouri. You must buy three 1-pound vacuum tins at a time, the price ＄3.50, and once you sample, you will be ordering in no less than case lots! The three tins are packaged in a tall acetate tube— looking very festive, with the scarlet cans showing.
Specify the grind preferred, pulverized, dripolator, or percolator. The coffee brews a rich, dark color, on the heavy side, yet gentle on the palate. The beans are bought green and blended, aged by what the firm calls its special process, and then roasted. It's the sort of inspiring drink one expects when Mocha and Java get together in the cup.
Here's a different stocking gift for that good cook on your Christmas list. Accent, the 99 per cent pure monosodium glutamate, has been learned with pepper and salt in a trio set of shakers for the kitchen work table. These are squat little jars with big bottoms, easy to grasp, made of clear glass, the name of each seasoner inscribed in red lettering to match the colorful red caps of plastic which fit over the shakers to keep the contents dust-free. The three shakers rest in a plastic rack that can be set flat on the table or stove or will hang from the wall.
The cost is ＄1.65, selling in grocery stores nationally. In New York at Hammacher Schlemmer. 145 East 57th Street; Maison Glass, 15 Fast 47th Street; Bazar Fraucais, 666 Sixth Avenue; Lewis and Conger, Sixth Avenue and 45th Street; and B. Altman Bloomingdales, Gimhel's, and Wanamaker's; and at Abraham and Straus in Brooklyn.
The name is “Seafood Delight for Christmas Giving,” an assortment of six kinds of canned fish from the Northwest, two tins of each; including Alaska red sockeye salmon, tangy smoked Willapa Bay oysters cut into convenient mouthsized pieces, snow-white Albacore tuna from the north Pacific, minced white razor clams from Oregon beaches, the large legs and white meat of the fabulous Dungeness crab taken at the mouth of the Columbia River. The sixth item, one very new, is a smoked cod roe pâté prepared from cod roe, cod liver, tomato. and spices.
We ordered the pack to give it a taste test and were pleased with the eating. The price is ＄7.50 by check or money order. Include your card to be mailed with the box if it goes as a present. Address: Hudson House, Dept. 1G, 325 S. E. Water Avenue, Portland 14, Oregon.
Sperb is the name of a new line of liquid herbs and liquid spices, packed in dropper-top bottles, easy to handle and exquisite to taste. It takes ten to fifteen drops or one-fourth teaspoon to flavor a dish in quantity to serve four. If a delicate flavoring is desired, start with five drops, then taste and add more as desired. These seasoners impart flavor quickly and needn't be cooked into the food but can be added to soups, sauces, and vegetables before serving or even at the table.
Here is concentrated flavor and aroma, all without bulk. The spices in the liquid line are anise, celery, cinnamon, allspice, clove, and nutmeg—these for cakes, cookies, biscuits, puddings, custards, and sauces. The herbs which have been liquefied are marjoram, mint, rosemary, tarragon, thyme, and garlic.
Sets of six in your choice of either spices or herbs come in a handy lazy Susan rack for ＄2.95, or both sets for ＄5.75. Enclose check or money order, postage prepaid. Address Favorite Flavors Division, Department G8, Ketels hagen. Inc., 420 Lexington Avenue, New York 17. Sold retail in Marshall Field's in Chicago, Hudson's in Detroit, Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.