Food Bloggers For Dinner Meme
Julie of Kitchenography tapped me with following meme last week:
This meme was created by Angelika of The Flying Apple. The question she poses is: Which Menu Would You Serve Blogging Friends For A Welcome Dinner Upon Their First Visit to Your Home? And asks us to “describe a sort of signature menu revealing much of your personal cooking style and culinary preferences.”
My “personal cooking style and culinary preferences”? Criminy. My style and preference can pretty much be summed up thusly: get everyone fed without going broke and without making us obese. If it looks good too, that’s swell.
But, I had some time to think this one over while I was sick, and couple of nights ago, I was in bed, leafing through one of my favorite old cookbooks, The New York Times Cook Book (1961). I was really just waiting for for either my reading material or the generious dose of NyQuil I’d slugged back to put me to sleep, and then in the book’s preface, I found this passage:
There probably never has been such an absorbing interest in fine cuisine in the home as there is in this decade. While it is true that scarcely a day passes in which some manufacturer or another does not introduce a new “instant” product, it is also true that world travel on a scale unsurpassed in history is making the American palate more sophisticated. Thanks to modern appliances, the amount of time spent in the kitchen for the average homemaker has decreased considerably over the past few years. On the other hand, more and more men, women and children seem to discover the pleasures of the table.
As I continued on through the recipes, I started to wonder: does fine cuisine continue to be fine cuisine when no one makes it anymore? did we stop serving things like tomato aspic because they fell out of fashion or because no one really liked them to begin with?
Then I started thinking, if retrophilia coupled with sociological curiosity can be considered my style and preferences, then I would pull together a menu something like this:
the aforementioned Tomato Aspic
Consommé au Vin
Chicken Vol-au-Vents with Almonds
Garfield Potatoes
Algonquin Salad
Nesselrode Pie
Of course, this menu could prove to be an unmitgated disaster. [I mean, tomato aspic is like, tomato Jell-O, am I right? How good could that be?] But seeing as this whole event is taking place in some mythical alternate universe, then I say all the food will be great and the dinner table discussion will start out highbrow (i.e. “do you think it’s due to being forced to eat it as a child that causes a food to fall out of favor?”) and then gradually devolve as the night — and wine — wears on (i.e. “dude, seriously? Rachael Ray?”) as all good dinner party conversations should.
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October 28th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I think that would make an excellent dinner party menu. Fun but probably delicious, plus you’d be able to answer the tomato aspic question for yourself. I have never had tomato aspic and your point about tomato jello is well taken but on the other hand it did seem to be a very popular thing for a great while. There might be something to it. Or maybe it would just end up to be “dude, seriously? tomato aspic?”
By the way, what is in Garfield Potatoes and Algonquin Salad. Google was of no help to me on this.
October 28th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
My menu of food oddities was pulled almost entirely from this cruise ship’s dinner menu from 1962. Garfield potatoes, as far as I could find out, were “cut into cubes and sprinkled with diced ham and chopped parsley,” but I couldn’t dig up more than that. All I found as far as Algonquin Salad is a seemingly modern interpretation: “a medley of greens, cucumber, tomato, onion, feta cheese, balsamic vinaigrette.”
But, being the research nerd I am, I would like nothing more than to put in some good old-fashioned library time and look these things up, kind of like History Detectives but with with food…
Oh, man. Food Detectives would be so cool.
October 31st, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Garfield Potatoes…
Kristen said…
“cut into cubes and sprinkled with diced ham and chopped parsley,â€
Well, where the ham comes from I dont know. According to the Cunard Cook Book, the description is extremely simple. They can be described as “square chips”. Cut potatoes into small cubes and deep fry as with chipped potatoes.
My recollection of them being served on board the RMS Caronia (1964-1966) was that seemed a bit browner than ordinary chips or fries. I think the success or otherwise is both in the variety of potato used and the fat in which they were fried. Certainly, oil was not used for frying, not when there was a ready supply of beef lard from the sides roasted almost daily. There was parsley, but it was only used in sprigs as a garnish.
By the way, the cube size would be a good 3/8ths of an inch thick. Don’t
think of cubing ready cut American fries, they would be much too fine, will cook much too quickly and be a total nightmare to fish out of the fryer!
Sorry, I can’t help with the salad, but at some point I’m hoping to make a start on translating the menus found on the Caronia Timeline into full recipes.
Cunard Cook Book by Carol Wright published by J.M Dent in 1969
ISBN 460 03875 3
…copies occasionally come up for sale on eBay and can sometimes be found on abebooks.com, though usually with a heftyish price tag.
October 31st, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Fascinating!
Come back and let me know when you translate (or even just describe in more detail) some of the menus you have posted on the Caronia Timeline.
November 1st, 2006 at 2:51 am
Well, I guess I needed an incentive, so here is a
Recipe for Tomatoes in Aspic Hope this link works, will leave you to edit it as needs be. Enjoy…!
November 1st, 2006 at 4:41 am
Well, I guess I needed an incentive to get me started, so the link in my name goes to the recipe for Tomatoes in Aspic. Enjoy!