Those molded salads from the Sixties

I’ve been reading Helen Corbitt cookbooks lately and am struck by the contrast between what she cooked at Neiman’s in the Sixties and our dietary tastes today. (For those that don't know, Corbitt ran the Neiman Marcus kitchens from 1955 to 1969 and left an indelible and delicious stamp on them.) Her appetizers recipes are heavy with oysters—I don’t know anyone who serves oysters in the home these days. If you eat them—and that’s a big if—they are restaurant fare. Lots of cream and butter, but none of the Middle Eastern influence we see today and very little Asian.

But what strikes me most is her several recipes for molded salads and even entrees. Molded sounds better than gelatin, but whatever you call them, we rarely serve them today. I grew up eating a salad of grated carrot, canned pineapple, and maybe nuts—not sure—in orange Jello. When I was raising kids, I frequently made a jellied gazpacho, using tomato juice or beef bouillon as the base. Corbitt offers recipes for fruit salads, chicken mousse, ham mousse, cranberry mold, etc. The only one I don’t think I’d try is prune—and I like prunes. She also has advice on layering, etc.—some fruits sink, some float, and your salad will be prettier is you know which does what. She cautions never use fresh pineapple in a jellied salad--the jelly won't stiffen.

One molded chicken dish that I loved came from an older friend, now gone, who sort of adopted me. We met because my then-husband and I looked at a house that we could no more afford than the man in the moon. She was the real estate agent, and, long story short, we rented a house owned by one of her sons and got to know her and her younger son. For years, on the birthday of one of my children, Carolyn Burk would call to let me know she was thinking of me.

She taught me to make chicken loaf. It’s a great summer dish, the purest chicken flavor I’ve ever tasted. I never can remember which one in my family likes it, but I well know that my older daughter despises it as “too gelatinous.” Being chicken, it doesn’t keep too many days but freezes well. Once you defrost, you have to eat within a day or two, so I often slice leftovers and freeze separately.

I never had written directions for this, so here goes, from the top of my head. You need,

One old hen

One sleeve saltine crackers

Salt and pepper

Maybe a bit of chicken bouillon

Maybe a bit of Knox gelatin

Boil that old hen until it’s tender. You might add a bouillon cube or tsp. of condensed flavoring (Better Than Bouillon) to give more flavor to your broth.

Reserve the broth. Skin and bone the chicken and dice the meat finely. Carolyn used to do it with scissors (if I remember correctly, she had her husband trained to do it with scissors too). That’s too labor intensive. I do small batches in the food processor at chop setting, turning it off and on. You don’t want to mince or fine grind it; you want small pieces.

Do use the food processor to make crumbs of the crackers. Mix with chicken. Salt and pepper to taste, remembering that the saltines already are salted. Stir in just enough broth to bind the mixture together. Do NOT let it get mushy.

This is the tricky part. Carolyn never added gelatin; my mom, who became a fan of the recipe, did. When she stirred in the broth, she added an envelope of gelatin dissolved in some of the broth. You don’t want to make it too “gelatinous”—Megan’s word—but you want it to hold together. I usually add the gelatin.

Pack this into a loaf pan and cover with plastic wrap. Set a second pan on top and weigh it down with a couple of canned goods. Refrigerate overnight.

Next day carefully run a table knife around edges to loosen the loaf. Put a plate on top of it and gently turn upside down. If you’re lucky, the loaf will slide out; you may have to prod with that knife but be gentle and careful.

Makes a lovely summer platter with tomato wedges, hard-boiled or deviled eggs, lettuce, maybe diced scallions. Pass mayonnaise or perhaps your favorite blue cheese dressing—or even tonnato sauce. (See Gourmet on a Hot Plate for tonnato sauce.)

And don’t be too quick to dismiss molded salads and even entrees.

The easiest pasta—or is it?

One of the earliest versions of mac and cheese was a thirteenth-century dish known as “de lasanis”—pasta with cheese. Today, Italians call it cacio e pepe—literally cheese and pepper. It has four ingredients—cheese, butter, pepper and pasta. Not even any garlic. You make it in your skillet, so it’s a quick preparation that doesn’t leave you with the kitchen full of dirty dishes some pasta dishes require. Anthony Bourdain once said cacio e pepe “could be the greatest thing in the history of the world.”

So what’s difficult about this? Getting that sauce right so that it’s velvety and smooth and coats every strand of pasta. Get it wrong, and you have pasta floating in cheese clumps in a thin and greasy sauce. It’s happened to me more times than I care to count. It’s a question of getting the pasta water and butter to blend together smoothly.

I’ve read that some chefs say the trick is in the flick of the wrist, learning to toss the pasta in the skillet at just the right angle. Others claim it’s the ingredients—you must use fresh cracked pepper. It’s not just a flavor accent in this dish. It is the flavor. And not any cheese will do—fresh, finely ground pecorino (a sharper Italian cheese than Parmesan). Grated cheese won’t work as well, because the pieces won’t melt and adhere to the pasta as well. Use your microoplane to achieve a texture on the cheese that will blend well.

Every chef makes cacio e pepe differently, and there are plenty of directions on the internet. But here’s a version I’ve had some luck with.

Ingredients

1 lb. fresh linguine or spaghetti

½ c. butter

1 oz. finely ground Pecorino cheese

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Notes on the ingredients: use a European-style butter. It has been churned longer, sometimes allowed to ferment just a bit, and—this is important—has a higher fat content. I prefer Kerry Gold.

As for linguine, unless  you have the seasoned palate of a trained chef, dried will probably be just fine. If you make your own pasta, more power to you—the dish will be better. But in spite of experiments with one of my sons, I have never mastered making fresh pasta. It’s a lot of work.

I sometimes use spinach linguine for a nice variation in flavor, but I’m sure Italian chefs would recoil in horror.

Directions:

Cook pasta. Some chefs says to cook no more than two servings at a time, so the pasta and sauce have enough space to blend in the skillet. If you follow this, cut this recipe in half.

Melt half the butter in a large, heavy skillet. Use tongs to transfer the pasta to the skillet. Stir to coat.

Add 1 cup pasta water. Add remaining butter. Shake and stir until water reduces and forms a creamy sauce. Remove from heat.

Stir in cheese and pepper.

An added flourish if you’re feeling rich: top it with 2 oz. sliced truffles.

The nice thing about this is that, except for the truffles, you probably have everything on hand. And it sure beats elbow macaroni with powdered or processed cheese for the sauce.

Next week: Green noodles. Somewhat like cacio e pepe but with more ingredients. The vegetarian dish  has a history in my family and has long been a favorite.

Burgers with a twist

After several days of picking my way around red and green chili in New Mexico, I was ready for some down-home Texas food. But I was also a bit unprepared for a last-minute request for dinner for four. Burgers were the answer—but with a twist. I had that pound of ground lamb in the freezer.

Lamb can be controversial—some people dislike it, their dislike verging on hate, and some love it. I fall into the latter category, grew up eating leg of lamb dinners and savoring cold lamb sandwiches the next day. Lamb burgers sounded just right to me.

I had a recipe but not all the ingredients, so I adjusted it (who, me? Tinker with a recipe? Of course I did1).

For lamb burgers:

½ c. seasoned panko (I would have preferred plain, but this used up on leftover item in the freezer

1 large shallot, finely chopped

1 large clove garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp. dried oregano

¾ tsp. salt

½ tsp. finely ground pepper (I do not like fresh ground, because I don’t like to bite into a large piece of pepper)

1 lb. ground lamb

Mix thoroughly by hand and shape into four patties. I pan fried these instead of grilling. Since lamb is greasy, I did not add oil to the skillet. But what was important—I got the skillet hot before I added the patties. This gave them a nice crust. On my hot plate I used the medium setting and cooked until patties were medium, neither rare nor well done.

Serve with or without buns. Offer toppings of lettuce, tomato, red onion, feta, and tzatziki sauce. My cookbook, Gourmet on a Hot Plate, has a tzatziki sauce recipe, but I even simplified that.

Easy tzatziki sauce:

1 cup plain Greek yogurt

1 large garlic clove, finely chopped

Half a cucumber, peeled, seeded, and grated

1 tsp. dried dill weed

½ tsp. lemon juice

Mix it all together.

As I suspected, grandson Jacob did not like the meat—he’s not a big meat eater. I was glad I had asked him to cut his burger in half before he ate. I had the other half for lunch the next day. These burgers got a five-star rating from the adults in the family, and I have voed to keep ground lamb in my freezer all the time.

Summer Soup—again

           

The Fourth of July has thrown my schedule all off, so here it is Saturday night, and I’m just posting last Thursday’s Gourmet on a Hot Plate blog. Hope you had a pleasant Forth—Sophie and I spent it quietly at home. She is terribly spooked by thunder but not so much so by fireworks. Still, I hated to leave her home alone—and truth be told I didn’t have any better invitations.

So I stayed home and fixed myself summer soup and a big salad. I know I just posted about a wonderful cold soup I’d newly discovered, but this time it is an old favorite that I rejuvenated. I love a good thick split pea soup in the winter, but I also love a lighter spring pea soup once the weather turns warm. I cut the original recipe down to serve two—which gave me a hearty soup supper for two nights.

Spring pea soup

½ white onion, diced fine

1 clove garlic, diced

1 small stalk celery

¼ tsp. Celery salt

A pinch or more of dried thyme, according to taste.

1 small to medium potato, peeled and cubed

1/2 package frozen petit peas

2 cups chicken broth

Sauté onion, garlic, and celery, celery salt, and thyme in a bit of olive oil until vegetables soften but are not browned. Add potato and peas to skillet and cover mixture with chicken broth. Simmer until potato is soft. Remove from heat, and let it cool a bit.

Puree mixture. You can either do this is a small food processor or in with an immersion blender. Mixture should not be thick—if it is, it will stick and clog the immersion blender (trust me, I found out the hard way). Simply add more broth. When mixture is fairly smooth—a few whole peas just add interest—season with salt and pepper

Serve chilled with a dollop of good Greek yogurt in the middle. Also garnish with finely chopped parsley or sliced scallions if you wish.