charcuterie@quiche.ca

Depending on how you hold the book, it's Quiche and Souffle or Souffle and Quiche. Either way it's a two-in-one cookbook authored by Paul Meyer who splendidly offers instructions for "Frankfurter Quiche" and for "Frank & Bean Quiche". For the latter:

Open 1 small can of baked beans, place the beans in a strainer and rinse away all the sauce. Dry the beans on paper toweling. Place a layer of thinly sliced frankfurters in the prepared shell. Place the beans on the frankfurters and top with another layer of frankfurter slices.

self.made@sesame.sauce.ca

In a section on basic seasoning, Gary Lee The Chinese Vegetarian Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1972) provides instructions on how to flavour oil with sesame.

Sesame oil is for garnishing. If you cannot find it in your stores you can make your own easily, for a little will go a long way in garnishing. Brown a cup of sesame seeds in a dry skillet or toast them in the oven. Try medium heat for browning or 300 degrees in the oven. When you catch the smell of lightly burning it is time to stop. Put the seeds and one cup of oil in the blender and run at high speed for one minute. Strain, and the oil will bear the aroma of sesame. The strength of the aroma and taste will depend upon the degree of toasting — the longer the toasting the stronger the flavor. Not only are you able to satisfy your own taste but you now have a by-product of sesame paste which you can use in cold mixing — or try as peanut butter.

eggplant@fried.ca

Hester Harris Cast Iron Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1969) provides a recipe for fried eggplant. The vegetable is sliced and then the slice are dipped in milk and seasoned corn meal before being fried until golden brown.

class.diet@quality.ca

When in Rome...

Reay Tannahill. Food in History in the "Imperial Rome" chapter reports:

The basic diet of the Roman poor consisted of grain-pastes or coarse bread bristling with chaff, and a polenta-like porridge made from millet.

The source is Carcopino, Jerome. Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire (London, 1941; rpt 1967)

mousse@avocado.ca

Maxine Atwater The Natural Foods Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1972) provides a recipe for Guacamole to be presented as a molded salad. The cook is given a choice of gelling agents: agar agar or gelatin. The recipe could easily be adapted to the production of a mousse.

By the way, the paper upon which this book is printed is most remarkable. It is like a textured blotter paper and it is light brown, unbleached. Characteristics meant to suggest a "natural" product.

pears@wine.poached.ca

Beverly Cox and Dale Whitesell in Classic Italian Cooking for the Vegetarian Gourmet (1984) offer a recipe for Pears Poached in Red Wine and the following advice

As they poach, the pears take on the ruby red color of the wine. Ripe pears are the most flavorful, but if the pears are a little hard, increase the cooking time.

olive@eyes.ca

A clipping tipped into an Italian cookbook ...
Madeleine Greey in the Foodsmarts column under the rubric of "An olive guide" in the Toronto Star of Sunday March 8, 1998 writes

The martini craze has put olives back on the map. Usually only brine-cured green olives are plunged into this alcoholic creation. Some martini lovers shun the pimento-stuffed variety, saying a drink should never stare back at you!

molded@custard.ca

Colin Spencer in the egg section of Gourmet Cooking for Vegetarians (1978) features a number of recipes for timbales. These are prefaced with this marvellous description that is tantalizing:

No vegetarian book that I know of mentions timbales, but they are very good, either hot or cold, and can be flavoured in many ways. Essentially, a timbale is a kind of egg custard which is turned out of the dish and cut like a cake. It is light and delicate, and simple to make.

asparagus@gratin.ca

Simca's Cuisine by Simone "Simca" Beck is organized by menus. One to the spring menus offers a dish of asparagus purée with cheese. The purée is cooked in butter and thickened with flour before being placed in a baking dish and covered with breadcrumbs and grated cheese. Here are the instructions for the thickening of the pur&eactue;e:

Melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a skillet, add the asparagus pur&eacatue;e, and cook over medium heat, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with the flour [1 1/2 tablespoon], and cook, still stirring, for about 2 minutes longer. Gradually stir in the cream and season very highly with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

pie@filling.layers.ca

Robin Howe in Russian Cooking remarks that the main differences between a Russian and British pie are the shape and the filling. "A typical Russian filling would be: 1 layer of boiled rice, or kasha, 1 layer of meat, or fish, 1 layer of hard-boiled eggs" I suspect that one could substitute texturized vegetable protein for the the meat.

cocoa@sans.milk.ca

Revisiting Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter's Found Meals of the Lost Generation and the chapter on James Joyce which ends with a recipe for cocoa, I am here recording my preference for cocoa without the addition of milk but with hot water and a generous spoonful of honey. Nicely bittersweet.

maple@hermits.ca

If you can obtain a supply of maple sugar, you might try Maple Hermits from the recipes collected by Helen and Scott Nearing in The Maple Sugar Book, Together with Remarks on Pioneering as a Way of Living in the Twentieth Century. The recipe calls for a 3/4 cup of maple sugar beaten into a half cup of butter that has been creamed. Along with the maple sugar one beats in 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and a half teaspoon of soda dissolved in a tablespoon of water. To this mixture "Add 1 well-beaten egg. Then add 2 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon soda, and 1/2 cupful currents. Roll out an inch thick and cut in squares. Bake in a hot oven 12 minutes."

found.meals@appealing.menus.ca

Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter supplies recipes and anecdotes from 1920s Paris in Found Meals of the Lost Generation. On the menu for the Salon of Gertrude Stein are

Lapsang Souchong Tea
Nameless Cookies
Visitandines
Black Current Liqueur

The Visitandines recipe is derived from The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. They are describe thus by Ms. Rodriguez-Hunter:

Visitandines were first prepared for the Stein/Toklas household by an early femme de ménage, Léonie, who claimed the name derived from the cakes' original inventors, the Visitation order of nuns.

They are glazed with apricot jam.

rice@diversity.ca

In the rice chapter from Much Depends on Dinner Margaret Visser reports:

Many scientists are now saying that hybrid rice, grown uniformly on millions of hectares, presents too great a risk from pest hordes; a wide variety of rice-types should be grown in order to keep depredations down. The rice farmers of Thailand, for instance, have grown modern hybrids only in the dry season on 10 per cent of their planted land; hundreds of traditional varieties were raised in the rainy season on most of the fields. As a result Thailand has suffered no major epidemics during the past twenty years, and has also managed to maintain its position as part of what is called "the rice-bowl of Asia."

whey@lemonade.ca

Storey/Garden Way Publishing Bulletin A-57 Making Cheese, Butter, and Yogurt (1980) by Phyllis Hobson has a recipe for lemonade made with whey which is given reluctantly.

Whey has some protein and B vitamins but is inferior to milk in both taste and nutrition. My own preference is to feed whey to pets and livestock. Some people use it in soups, stews, and as a milk substitute in baking. It is my feeling that whey adds an undesirable yeasty flavor. [There follow two recipes] you might try, if you find you hate to throw whey away.

cilantro@preference.ca

Dorothy Childs Hogner in A Fresh Herb Platter (1961) expresses a dislike for the leaf of coriander:

The fruit (seeds) of coriander resemble peppercorns. They are one of the ingredients used in making curry. The seeds germinate well. Coriander is easy to raise and not given to disease or bugginess, perhaps because of the extreme, shall we say "fragrance" of the leaves? On a hot, humid day they literally stink. Because of this, we never thought of using any part of coriander, except the seeds, in the kitchen. [Ms. Hogner does document the use of the leaves in Spanish and in Chinese salad making but she remains steadfast in her distaste] [...] We tried it. We shall stick with the common parsley, thank you, for to our palates, as much as we like the seeds, the leaves of coriander taste just like they smell.

There is a recipe for corn in the jacket served with an herb butter that incorporates thyme, upon which Ms. Hogner comments "The smoked-corn-and-herb flavor is a perfect combination."

caesar.salad@coddled.egg.ca

A most interesting way of preparing Caesar salad. Joel Rapp Mother Earth's Vegetarian Feasts charmingly illustrated by Marvin Rubin provides a recipe for Caesar salad that incorporates a coddled egg in the dressing.

[...] (For effect, this dressing can be prepared at table.) Break coddled egg onto top of lettuce, add Parmesan cheese and croutons, and toss until egg is fairly well absorbed and leaves are coated with egg-cheese mixture. Add dressing, toss thoroughly, and serve.

celery.root@marinated.ca

The decorations by Barry Zind to The Garden of Eternal Swallows: A Natural Foods Cookbook (1980) by Karen Elizabeth Gordon are exquisite. They match beautifully the charmingly named recipes. Take for example, "Uprooted" which features celery root and the following instructions for variations: "Or marinate the cooked celery root in oil, lemon juice, and parsley for several hours or overnight, and eat cold on a bed of lettuce, with tabouli, olives, and other solemnities. Or mash and spread on warm pita bread."

mushroom@pate.ca

Tucked into Cooking your own Mushrooms by Jo Mueller is a newspaper clipping of a recipe for mushroom pate by Nettie Cronish from her cookbook Nettie's Vegetarian Kitchen. The recipe adds finely ground almonds or sunflower seeds to a mixture of cooked mushrooms and onions.

watermelon@pickle.ca

The recipe for watermelon rind pickles A Good Heart and A Light Hand: Ruth L. Gaskins' Collection of traditional Negro Recipes (1968) begins with the following instructions

Trim the dark green and the pink flesh off of the watermelon rinds. Cut the remaining rind into small even cubes.

empty@pie.ca

Ralph E. Barker in Small Fruits (1954) writes about how to grow and train various plants. He also at times offers a paean:

Like many of us, you may associate blackberries and dewberries with your childhood. Perhaps you can remember getting your mother's consent to let you scamper off with the other kids to the wild briar patch along the creek on the promise that you'd bring home enough berries for a pie — and of coming back after sundown, your hands scratched like a tom cat's ears, your clothing in shreds, your syrup bucket pitifully empty, your face stained a deep purple, and your stomach gorgeously full!

textures@soup.ca

Vegetables (Chronicle Books, 1985) by the illustration and writing team of Delphine Hirasuna, Kit Hinrichs, Tom Tracy and Diane J. Hirasuna has a brief introduction to the soup section which reads:

The liquid nature of soup forces our attention on flavors, without the imposing distraction of textures. Soups allow us to discover the pungent essence of endive, the sweetness of carrots, and the starchy quality of peas.

This intro doesn't claim that soups are without texture. And indeed the four soup recipes that follow (endive featuring walnut size balls of vegetable bound with egg and cheese; mustard green soup with slices of ginger root; a pureed watercress soup with potatoes and garlic and a wintermelon soup) of course contain textures. Whether they distract or not depends upon the tasting...

vermicelli@fried.ca

Vatcharin Bhumichitr Thai Vegetarian Cooking has a recipe for fried vermicelli with eggs. Important to note that the vermicelli is soaked and drained before frying. If you have tried frying vermicelli that has not been soaked you will recall that the noodles puff up.

peanut@sauce.ca

Christine McFadden in New Vegetarian Food pairs a quinoa pilau with peanut sauce. The peanut sauce is a two step procedure. Chopped nuts are added to a mixture of fried onion, bell pepper, garlic and tomatoes, this is then liquidized in a blender. The liquidized ingredients are then returned to heat with milk and allowed to simmer uncovered. For an unctuous vegan version, one could substitute coconut milk for the milk.

baked@potatoes.ca

I used to prick potatoes before placing them in the oven to bake. After reading the entry in the Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, I have changed my habits.

[...] The present rage for wrapping potatoes in foil will not allow them to become flaky as too much moisture is retained. [...] Bake the potates for 40 minutes to 1 hour depending on their size. When potatoes are 1/2 done, pull out rack, quickly puncture skin once with fork, permitting steam to escape. Return to oven and finish baking.

sour.cream@rice.ca

"Rice with Ripe Olives and Dill" in the Rice & Pasta section of The Spice Islands Cookbook (1961) by the Spice Islands Home Economics Staff [Recipe development by Louise Driggs] features sour cream. The reader is instructed to "Fluff with a fork and add olives, sour cream, and Dill Weed" and decorated the dish with slivered almonds.

frozen.dough@convenience.ca

Jean Hewitt's International Meatless Cookbook (1980) which by the way contains an extensive section on poultry provides the following tip for Pissaladiere (French Pizza)

Frozen bread dough eliminates a lot of work when making this French variation of a pizza.

endive@braised.ca

Clarissa Dickson Wright in Food: A 20th-century Anthology under the heading "Endives" collects a passage from Simon Hopkinson Roast Chicken and Other Stories which concludes with this description:

The Normandie's braised endives were cooked in plenty of butter, which was heated until light brown before the endives were added, gently coloured, seasoned and finished with lemon juice. They were then covered, and cooked in a moderate oven for a couple of hours. The resultant vegetable was golden brown, almost gooey, and had an aroma that was very agreeable.

wine.reduction@sauce.ca

Elizabeth David has a chapter in French country cooking devoted to "Wine in the Kitchen" where she insists that the wine is to be cooked.

The fundamental fact to remember about the use of wine in cooking is the the wine is cooked. In the process the alcohol is volatilized and what remains is the wonderful flavour which perfumes the dish and fills the kitchen with an aroma of delicious things to come. In any dish which does not require long cooking the wine should be reduced to about half the quantity originally poured in the pan, by the process of very fast boiling. In certain soups, for instance, when the vegetables have been browned and the herbs and spices added, a glass of wine is poured in, the flame turned up, and the wine allowed to bubble fiercely for two or three minutes; when it starts to look a little syrupy on the bottom of the pan, add the water or stock; this process makes all the difference to the flavour and immediately gives the soup body and colour.

pheasant@well.hung.ca

In Food: An Oxford Anthology editor Brigid Allen has collected a number of exquisite passages of which the following is an excerpt by Jean Rennie who worked at a time when it was "[t]he belief that game should be well hung to the point of rottenness" which Allen indicates "is no longer the article of faith that it was before the days of universal refrigeration."

Certainly I had seen maggots before, had even enjoyed throwing them on the hot stove and watching them wiggle before they were swept into the flames.

But this teeming, crawly heap of obscene life was something I'd never seen before, or since.

[...]

He [the chef] raised his eyebrows and his eyes twinkled.

He picked up his sharp little knife and rubbed it on the steel which he wore at his side from his belt, as he walked in front of me to the scullery where the horrible things lay.

[...]

With about two slashes on each bird, he cut away the breasts, cleanly and decisively.

"There," he said, as he threw the bodies on my paper, "put them out — I've got all I want," and away he went, with the four little pheasant breasts in his hand.