the good old days

This was the worst thing I’ve made in a while. (Not as bad as Jellied Frankfurters, but then what could possibly be as bad as Jellied Frankfurters?) Today’s fable has many morals, and I’ll walk you through each one of them. Consider it a rough draft for the home economics book I could write someday.

1. When you want to cook, have a recipe.
Unless you’re Masahari Morimoto, it’s risky to just throw things together and expect them to taste good. It can work for stir fried vegetables, but not for baked goods.

2. Having a recipe in the house isn’t enough. Know where your recipe is and look at it before you start
Unsurprisingly, this is where my problems started. I knew I had a lemon meringue pie recipe on an old Jello advertisement I’d previously used for a retro recipe.

I also knew I had some lemon gelatin. So, I started making the lemon gelatin.

3. When you have found your recipe, and when you realize you haven’t been following it at all, and in fact it’s not a recipe but an instruction to look somewhere else that doesn’t exist, don’t start combining other recipes.
When I decided to actually look at the recipe, I panicked. There wasn’t a recipe there at all, just this annoying little note:

Directions on the box?!?

At this point, I realized (a) I should have been using Jello Pudding, not Jello Gelatin and (b) Jello Pudding does not print lemon meringue pie recipes on its Lemon Jello Pudding boxes any longer. Arrrrrgh.

So I had no recipe. Thanks to Google, I managed to find one that called for lemon Jello combined with Cool Whip, and then made another critical mistake…

4. “Whipped topping” and “cream cheese” are not the same thing.
While it’s possible to combine cream cheese and gelatin (I’ve seen it done and it’s quite tasty), it’s almost impossible to do so by hand with cold cream cheese.

Before:

After (in crust):

See the little white bits? That’s teeny chunks of cream cheese which weren’t properly blended. Whisking by hand just won’t work for this.

I tried to repair my mixer (which won’t turn off and smells of burnt wiring, ever since it sucked up Election Cake batter), and Buzz and I each wasted a good half hour trying to remove this one stupid two-inch-long bolt that was holding the damn thing together. All the others came out fine, but THAT one had to strip. And if you can’t get into a mixer, you can’t clean out the gunked-up motor, so you can’t keep it from wildly sparking and potentially electrocuting you while mixing.

5. You won’t get nice stiff peaks in your egg whites if you whisk by hand.
Same problem as with the lemon filling… not enough mixing power without my mixer, although I came close before my arm fell off. The peaks were present, but wimpy rather than stiff. My pie topping desperately needed Viagra. (Meringue lasting more than four hours… ?)

Without those spiky little peaks, you don’t get the same light browning and drying-out that makes for a really tasty meringue.

6. Meringue is not spelled with a “Q”
I don’t know why, but I have a constant compulsion to type MERINQUE. No wonder my blog only rates at a junior high school level.

It isn’t the worst pie I’ve ever had, but it’s down there. The filling was bland, the meringue was insipid, the overall experience was thoroughly pointless. It was a refresher course in culinary stupidity, though, as well as a compelling argument to buy a new mixer

This week is the South Carolina State Fair, and since for once we’re actually living in a state capitol, Buzz and I took the kids. And it was great. We saw some really cool pheasants, lots of dairy cows, horse slalom (I don’t know the correct term for this, but it’s riding a horse as fast as possible weaving through some poles), very neat crafts and artwork, and of course the obligatory midway rides, games, and carnival food.

One of the first booths by the entrance had the infamous Deep Fried Candy. Snickers, Oreos, Reeses Cups, Cookie Dough, even Pepsi (I’m surprised it wasn’t Coke, since this is The South) — all battered and deep fried. So Buzz bought us some deep fried chocolate chip cookie dough.

Now, I’m a fan of cookie dough. The yield of a “makes 60 cookies” recipe will, for me, probably be 20% less. (I blame the economy.) However, I only like cold cookie dough. At room temperature, it starts to taste a little less appealing, and you might as well just bake it. And now I know that if it’s hot… if it’s been, let’s say, deep fried… it’s disgusting. I’ll eat pretty much anything, but I didn’t want another one of those.

What struck me as particularly odd about it was that it had dusting of powdered sugar. When you’ve just invented deep fried cookie dough, it takes a particularly dedicated sweet tooth to say, “This would be totally awesome if it just had more sugar on top!” Maybe there’s a demented dentist out there creating this crap.

And the scariest part of the experience? Six hours later we were leaving the fair. I thought to myself, Gosh, I’d like some more deep fried cookie dough. And then I thought, Um, WHAT? That was horrible, I don’t want more! My stupid side replied, Ahhh, c’mon! It’ll taste good this time. Mmmm, cookie dough!

I didn’t get more.

Photo borrowed from the Food Network, which has a recipe if you’re crazy enough to want this when the fair isn’t in town.

Before we delve into this week’s recipe, I’d like to share something that’s been bugging me for a few days. Now, I’m sure you’re reading this thanks to phonics, that wonderful system by which a word like “antidisestablishmentarianism” can be broken down into reasonable sections, and thereby pronounced. Unfortunately, phonics fails me when I have to use Knox Gelatine in a recipe. It’s that pesky “e” at the end of the word. It makes a long-I, which says EYE, instead of a short-I, which says EEE. So, a word spelled G-E-L-A-T-I-N-E is technically correctly pronounced “jell-a-tyne.” Without an “e”, it would be “jell-a-tin.”

So when I see Gelatine, I hear “gelatin” in my head because that’s a much more familiar pronunciation (even Firefox spellcheck is refusing to acknowledge gelatine as valid). But I see the “e” at the end and an annoying little voice shouts, “Jell-a-TYNE! Um… jell-a-teen?” This results in a temporarily distraction from my normal sensible approach to food, and I end up cooking something like Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters.

(I actually found this after first landing on the terrifying Corned Tongue in Aspic. I will not buy tongue. It’s not gonna happen. Look elsewhere for sheer masochism. I don’t even know where to buy tongue, and I am not going to find out.)

JELLIED BOUILLON WITH FRANKFURTERS
Use beef stock; place frankfurters upright; hard-cooked eggs, sliced; diced celery. Frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic.

From 500 Snacks: Bright Ideas for Entertaining (1941), Culinary Arts Institute

Glamour indeed. I challenge anyone to come up with a sentence using both “frankfurters” and “glamour” — and I won’t accept “Frankfurters are not usually associated with glamour.”

Anyway, Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters appeared quite simple, like any good ingredient-centric recipe. I decided to jazz it up a little bit by making the frankfurters more visually appealing. (I had to do something — my hot dogs were too tall to fit in my bundt pan.) You can’t do much with diced celery, jellied bullion, or sliced eggs — but hot dogs, those turn into adorable little octopi.

Cut the bottom of the hot dog into 8 eighths, cook, and voila, curly little legs. You can even carve teeny smiles and eyes into them. Guaranteed to make preschoolers happy.

Once the eggs and celery were cut up and my hot dogs were octopussed, they all went into the bundt pan

and got covered with gelatined broth. (Ewwwww.)

Then it sat in the fridge for two hours. Reeeeally easy. Even popping it out of the mold was easy. But that’s when I started to have some misgivings. Some of the bouillon I’d used to make broth hadn’t dissolved, so there was some grit on top of the molded ring. You also couldn’t see anything besides the hard-boiled egg slices. The aspic was not “gleaming” so much as “very muddy”.

The pretty celery leaf garnish didn’t help. It tasted worse than it looked. Much worse.

While hot dogs, celery, and egg are tasty on their own, or even together, they are NOT tasty when coated in salty beef jelly. In fact, they are downright disgusting. Even hours after dinner, my stomach was angrily reminding me that I was a horrible person for expecting it to digest this foul mush. Utterly revolting.

It was just wrong. It should be sent to the Fail Blog. It was so bad I gave my child a piece of cake instead to try to make up for this heap of crap. If I cooked like this regularly, it would be grounds for divorce — if the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, this dish is a shortcut to a restraining order.

But on the plus side, the preschooler was very pleased with the octopi, and the dog thought he had gone to heaven when he got the vast quantities of leftovers. And it was a hell of a good laugh.

At first I was going to blog about this retro recipe simply by pointing out that I would never try canned meat. Then I decided I was being elitist. What’s wrong with canned meat? (Besides the fact that it’s canned meat. I couldn’t come up with anything more rational than that.That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong; the cooking was one of those weird experiences where I was not sure whether I might be killing my family.)

I did, however, insist that we use the best canned meat possible (which is NOT necessarily the “fine pork shoulder meat”). Turns out that was SPAM Turkey, or, as I’d rather call it, SPURKEY.

I am quite pleased with the instructions on the back of the SPURKEY can. They aren’t treating this like some gourmet delicacy which can be used in so many delectable ways. It’s just SPURKEY. You shlorp it out of the can onto a plate, cut it up, and cook it. SPURKEY-licious!

It actually isn’t all that bad. It tastes like very mediocre sausage: extremely salty and a bit dull. My one-year-old son thought it was thoroughly awesome, and sucked down a whole SPURKEYburger before I’d gotten through a third of mine. The preschooler thought it was “pretty good”. I thought it was OK. Buzz thought it was revolting, despite it being served with a fine white wine. (Now, canned beef, you’d want to serve that with a dry red.)

I wouldn’t make this for anybody older than 10. It’s great for toddlers (since it’s flakeboard-made-of-meat, SPURKEY falls apart at the slightest touch, making it extremely chewable), or I guess anybody on a budget who doesn’t really care what they’re eating. I also don’t recommend making them open-face, unless you’re on a very tight budget and can only afford half a bun.

On another note, I was curious about George Rector; while many food companies would create Home Economics experts (e.g. Betty Crocker), they usually didn’t have male spokespeople. It turns out Mr. Rector was indeed a real live human being, although the most thorough piece of information I could find was his obituary.

Died. George Rector, 69, last of the restaurateur Rectors of Manhattan’s lobster-&-champagne era; of a heart ailment; in Manhattan. Apple-cheeked, white-haired George carried on when father Charles died in 1914, but bowed out when Prohibition closed his last café in 1923; thereafter he nourished the Rector legend and himself by diligent publicity work, lecturing and writing, wound up as food consultant for a Chicago meat packer. — Time Magazine, December 8 1947

There’s something sad about a restaurant owner who ends up with a legacy of canned meat recipes.

During my random search for retro recipes to inflict on the kids treat my family to, Lidian of Kitchen Retro posted one that looked like a real fiasco winner:

The name promised a fast, exotically foreign, zippy and fun dish.

Then I read the ingredients.

1/4 cup bacon drippings [This is where I should have just stopped.]
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1/2 medium green pepper, diced
1-1/2 cups Minute Rice (TM)
1-3/4 cups hot water
2 cans Hunts Tomato Sauce (TM)
1 teaspoon salt….Dash of pepper
1 teaspoon prepared mustard (optional)

The teaspoon of mustard is optional, just in case you might find this too spicy! Urgh… But, through a lack of common sense and self-preservation, I felt committed.

I tend to violate these brand-created recipes at will, sticking to the “spirit” while adjusting the ingredients. If there is any way to make this even vaguely edible, I’ll be attempting it. For example, Minute Rice is stupid. If you can’t boil rice in water, you shouldn’t be trying anything harder than peanut butter sandwiches. Similarly, I’m not using 1/4 cup of bacon drippings (shouldn’t I be recycling this for bombs, anyway?) because that’s disgusting. I decided to live dangerously and use a heaping teaspoon of mustard.

It starts off well — onions, green pepper, and rice look pretty tasty. Then I added the tomato sauce, and it ended up looking like an accident scene out of a Sid Davis driver’s ed film. (Commentary on Kitchen Retro about this ad-recipe concentrated on the unappealing visual — the food photographer should have been fired for making a dish look that bad. In actuality, we should be heaping praise on the poor guy for making it look as good as he did.)

Even with 2 teaspoons of mustard, it’s bland — no surprise, since you’ve ended up with a bowlful of tomato sauce with small bits of other stuff in it occasionally. And it makes a huge bowlful, meaning I have plenty of Spanish Rice Pronto for leftovers. One mitigating factor is that I got to picture 1950’s Housewife being told by her husband that he was bringing home an important client for dinner, and he was from Spain so could she please try to come up with something Spanish? And then this bullshit would be served. EPIC FAIL! HA HA!

From January 1952, originally posted for your enjoyment by Millie Motts *, comes an advertisement-turned-recipe for Jell-O…

Prune Cream Pie. A brand-new pie idea for a happier New Year! Prepare Jell-O Vanilla Pudding and Pie Filling as directed. Before serving, top pie with mixture of 1 cup drained cut stewed prunes and 1 tablespoon grated lemon rind. Spread with whipped cream.

So by “happier”, we can assume they mean… well, “more regular”. Stewed prunes?!? But hey, you can’t make an easier pie than “jell-o in graham crust with fruit and whipped cream on top.” Even having to stew your own prunes and puree them is crazy-easy if you own a food processor. So, Prune Cream Pie it is this week.

It’s insanely easy to make. Even stewing prunes — water, pot, prunes, boil, puree, and voilà you have stewed prunes. (I may be over-experienced, though, because this is how you make pretty much any fruit or vegetable into baby food, and I’ve done that a lot.) Here’s the almost-done pie. I can TOTALLY see why this should be covered with whipped cream — it currently looks like the vanilla pudding is covered with dog food.

Unfortunately, even after covering the prunes with whipped cream, you’ll still get a glimpse of pruney goodness when serving slices. (Maybe offer your family blindfolds instead of napkins.)

It’s SUPPOSED to look like THIS — and even an idealized illustration isn’t much better looking, is it?

While the taste was underwhelming, it’s really the visual unappeal of the pie that makes it a disaster. If you really must have prunes, this is a great way to make them less appetizing. But, if you really must have a fast and easy pie, use a different fruit. Like strawberry or cherry pie filling out of a can… this saves the trouble of stewing prunes, and (more importantly) also means you don’t have to look at stewed prunes!

* Lovely blog — it’s all pictures and is a quick, refreshing inclusion in your daily RSS…

This week, we learned that Avocado Pie can be a simple, brightly-flavored dish that tastes good, or it can be a strange, complicated waste of an avocado. (I’ve also learned that I have a tendency to write “avacado” for no apparent reason.)

I got this recipe from a 1962 Joys of Jello cookbook — via RetroLife.

It was actually edible, but with vast room for improvement — leave out the pointless and lumpy pineapple, mash all the avocado instead of dicing some, and up the avocado content. Considering one of its selling points is “no-bake”, it’s supposed to be quick and simple; folding many ingredients together is a gratuitous hassle.

Another “avocado pie” recipe found through Google:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crust
• 2 avocados - peeled, pitted and pureed
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1 (5 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

DIRECTIONS
1. In a medium mixing bowl combine avocado, lemon juice, and condensed milk. Blend well and pour into graham cracker crust. Chill before serving. Garnish with whipped topping.
–via Allrecipes

Variations include a larger can of milk and sprinkling with walnuts, adding sour cream or cream cheese; nobody else seems to have wanted pineapple, or indeed made this a particularly complicated dish. And all the other variations seem more likely to let the flavor of avocados at least peek through occasionally.