celery.apples@waldorf.ca

It's a "tart combination of apple and celery" and "[t]his famous salad was created at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York." And so we are informed by the intro the recipe in Reader's Digest Creative Cooking (1977). The recipe calls for letting the salad stand for at least 30 minutes. Accompanying the recipe is an illustration of a serving suggestion: "Line a serving bowl with the clean and chilled lettuce leaves, pile the salad into the center, and garnish with the apple slices." The apple a slices are fanned out around the perimeter of the piled salad. Simple and attractive.

eggs@princesse.ca

The great two volume of the revised edition (1965) of The Gourment Cookbook contains instructions for gently making scrambled eggs over low heat. A variation is called "Scrambled Eggs Princesse" and consists of garnishing the scrambled eggs with asparagus tips and slices of truffle.

drawn@butter.ca

For the longest time I thought drawn butter was the equivalent of clarified butter. I was enlightened by reading the sauces section of The New York Times Cook Book by Craig Claiborne. There I learnt that it is a sauce thickened with flour and finished with lemon juice. Also learnt of a variation — egg sauce (two coarsely chopped hard-cooked eggs to drawn butter).

mushrooms.potatoes@genoese.ca

A cookbook without author attribution, Potatoes: Mashed and More does credit home economist Dagmar Vesley and provides instructions on how to prepare a Ligurian recipe in which "the potatoes absorb the flavour of the mushrooms, making it seem as if there are more mushrooms than there actually are." The secret is to use dried mushrooms.

Soak the dried mushrooms in a bowl containing the hot water for 30 minutes. Drain off and strain the liquid through muslin or a filter paper. Simmer the rehydrated mushrooms in the strained soaking liquid until the liquid has evaporated. Toss with the fresh mushrooms, potatoes, garlic, basil and salt and pepper.

The mixture is baked, with a turn of the ingredients halfway through, until the potatoes are tender.

yeast@ingredients.ca

A bit of description about a very important ingredient in making leavened flatbreads... In reading it, one can relish the mix of gastronomy and science.

Yeast is a wonderfully mysterious thing. The yeast we rely upon for baking leavens our bread and lends its appetizing smell and taste. As a single-celled fungus, yeast works in bread by feeding first upon the sugars in the dough, and later upon the maltose produced as starch granules are broken down by malt enzymes. As the yeast metabolizes the sugars, it produces carbon dioxide and alcohol, a process in bread making referred to as fermentation.

From Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Flatbreads and Flavors: A Baker's Atlas.

apple.sauce@2butter.ca

Mary T. Goodwin and Gerry Pollen in Creative Food Experiences for Children (Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1974) set out two learning objectives for a lesson focusing on apples.

The children will observe the changes made by grinding apples to make raw applesauce.

The children will observe how heat changes apples by making cooked applesauce.

Reminds me of the slow patient stirring of gently bubbling applesauce to make apple butter.

rouille@sweet.potato.ca

What would a vegetarian find of worthy interest in Jennifer McLagan's Bones: Recipes, History and Lore? She has a vegan recipe for rouille. And what is its function? Let's let her explain:

In France, fish soups are often served with the traditional accompaniments of croutons, grated cheese, and rouille, garlic-and-red-pepper-flavored mayonnaise. Not a big fan of flavored mayonnaise in my soup, I've replaced it with a garlicky sweet potato puree. This delivers the garlic hit as it melts into the soup and thickens it slightly.