Sip and Sing Along!

I’m not from a horsy family so I didn’t watch the Kentucky Derby as a child.

This annual ritual began for me in graduate school. Each year my friend Dan Streible gave a Derby party at which guests wore colorful hats (well, this guest did, anyway), sipped mint juleps, and sang “My Old Kentucky Home” along with the folks at Churchill Downs.

We also watched the horse race.

Dan is a darling person and a terrific scholar. He was also smart enough to marry my friend Teri the Renaissance Woman. I think of him every time I watch the Kentucky Derby, sip a mint julep, or sing “My Old Kentucky Home.”

Dan at his recent Orphan Film Symposium, obviously getting ready to sing "My Old Kentucky Home"

(Courtesy of the Orphanistas)

Like other tunes by Stephen Foster such as “Hard Times” and “Old Black Joe,” the state song of Kentucky is nostalgically sentimental and easy to sing.

The act of crooning it and watching the VERY brief horse race (which often seems shorter than the song) always starts May off with a bang for me.

The song is traditionally played at the Derby by the University of Louisville Marching Band.

I was lucky enough to find a recording of the band at the Kentucky Derby Information site (which also provides a little history of the relationship between the song and the race, as well as a look at some outstanding Derby hats and of course a few recipes!).

I used it as background for our sing-along. Click on the song title below to start the recording and then minimize your audio player so you can read the lyrics and sing with me. That way you’ll be in good voice for the Derby tomorrow.

I’m still working on the recording technology; my loud voice may sound a little fuzzy and faint. I think I messed up a couple of notes and lyrics. And frankly if I’d been in charge of the band I would have asked the musicians to play the song a little faster and a little higher.

If you drink a couple of mint juleps before listening, none of those things should bother you, however.

Here we go……

My Old Kentucky Home

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home.
‘Tis summer, the people are gay.
The corn top’s ripe, and the meadow’s in the bloom
While the birds make music all the day.

The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy, and bright.
By’n by hard times comes a knockin’ at the door.
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

Weep no more, my lady. Oh! Weep no more today.
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
For the old Kentucky home, far away.

Dan’s Mint Juleps

I asked Dan for his julep recipe and then immediately changed it just a little bit by adding mint directly to the simple syrup to make the concoction more minty.

He was vague about amounts of syrup and bourbon. Basically, you should make this drink to your taste! Here I’m giving you the proportions my family uses, along with his instructions, slightly modified.

Ingredients:

for the simple syrup:

2 large sprigs very fresh spearmint, slightly crushed
1 cup sugar
1 cup boiling water

for each julep:

lots of shaved, finely crushed, or snow ice
(You can see from the picture above that I wasn’t the most thorough crusher in the world, but luckily the glasses still ended up frosty as we sipped!)
about 1 ounce simple syrup
about 2 ounces Kentucky bourbon whiskey
(Dan says, “There is no such thing as Tennessee bourbon. Don’t make the mistake of using sour-mash whiskey.”)
2 sprigs very fresh spearmint

Instructions:

The day before the Derby (that’s today!) prepare the simple syrup. Combine the mint with the sugar, and pour the boiling water on top. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Cool and refrigerate overnight.

The next day make the julep.

Pack a julep glass with ice. (No julep glass or cup? Use a highball glass if you must.)

Drizzle simple syrup over the ice. Top off the glass with more ice if needed.

Pour the bourbon over the sweetened ice until the glass is nearly full.

Add sprigs of very fresh spearmint. Stir slowly. Sip slowly, with a straw or not. Be sure to get a snootful of mint as you sip. The longer the bourbon blends with the mint oils the better.

Do not drive or operate heavy machinery.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email.

Cookie Emergency

Uh oh!

I realized a couple of days ago that the month was fast a-waning and I hadn’t yet published a “Twelve Cookies of Christmas” recipe for April.

So I had to make cookies. Naturally, my family was devastated. Nevertheless, we valiantly forced ourselves to eat them.

I recently ordered some cinnamon mini-chips from King Arthur Flour for making scones (that recipe will be posted next week). I threw some into a basic cookie recipe.

The resulting treats were lovely. The chips are so tiny that the cinnamon flavor is a bit subtle—but I love subtle! Next time I may try them in oatmeal cookies.

This version would make a tasty addition to any May Basket you might be planning to deliver to a special someone on Saturday!

Cinnamon Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour (I used half all-purpose and half white whole wheat)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup cinnamon mini-chips

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together the butter and the sugars. Beat in the egg and mix thoroughly.

Beat in the baking soda and salt; then stir in the flour, followed by the vanilla and the chips.

Drop teaspoons of dough onto an ungreased (or parchment covered) cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the cookies brown around the edges.

Makes about 20 cookies. This recipe may be doubled.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email.

Bewitched, Freud, & Caesar Salad

Ask a historian for a catchphrase about American television in the 1960s, and you’ll probably hear the words “vast wasteland.”

The phrase was coined in 1961 by Newton Minow, John F. Kennedy’s appointee as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Minow suggested that broadcasters sit down and watch their own programs.

“I can assure you,” he intoned, “that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials–many screaming, cajoling, offending….”

(This link will take you to the text and a recording of the speech.)

In general, critics and historians have concurred with Minow’s assessment of television in the 1960s, contrasting that decade with the 1950s in particular.

In the early ‘50s, American TV was finding its way. Weekly filmed programs vied for air space with spectacular events designed to sell television sets, personality-based shows inherited from radio, and the live dramas that epitomized the medium’s golden age.

Television wasn’t always good, but it was varied and often thought provoking.

By 1960, economic and regulatory pressures had streamlined the industry. The three networks, or companies affiliated with them, were the main source of programming.

That programming tended to consist of inexpensive, filmed shows designed to attract the most viewers and offend the fewest.

Controversy and ethnicity, which had characterized much of 1950s live drama, were weeded out. To a great extent, the decade of the 1960s was indeed one of blandness and inanity in television programming.

Why, then, are programs of the 1960s still popular? Today cable networks recycle such perennial favorites as Gilligan’s Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Bewitched. Most continue to attract new fans.

The secret of their longevity and vitality lies in the slippery nature of censorship.

Freud argued that whatever we repress in our personalities returns in disguised form to haunt us.

Similarly, controversy erased from the plots of popular television programs of the 1960s returned to them in symbolic form.

Network programmers anxious to placate advertisers avoided airing programs dealing, for example, with race relations or with the rumblings of feminism.

These themes resurfaced in disguise.

Programs like The Addams Family, The Munsters, and My Favorite Martian represented exercises in dealing with the “other” in mainstream American culture. If we couldn’t have black, Hispanic, or gay others, we could have oddballs and aliens.

The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres dealt with the ever present split between rural and urban America, the contrast between the agrarian ideal and commercial values.

Similarly, a feminist undercurrent flowed through Bewitched (1964-1972). This series presented weekly stories in which female power was constantly but impermanently quashed by an insecure patriarch.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. (although luckily I have one) to perceive the show’s implicit argument that women should be freed from household drudgery and allowed to explore their powers.

It is unlikely that the program’s producers were aware of making that argument, which sprang from a sort of collective American unconscious.

In this series, benign witch Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery) dwells in the suburbs of Connecticut with her mortal advertising-executive husband, Darrin (Dick York, replaced in 1969 by Dick Sargent).

The fundamental rule of their marriage is that Samantha, who could clean the house and cook a banquet in five seconds just by twitching her nose, is not allowed to use her powers of witchcraft but must spend each day doing housework.

Samantha tries valiantly and cheerfully to live up to her side of this bargain. Of course something always gets in the way of her vow to be witchcraft free; otherwise, there would be no story. Often, the something that gets in her way is one of her relatives—primarily her mother Endora, played with glamorous panache by Agnes Moorehead.

This mother-in-law to end all mothers-in-law cannot fathom her daughter’s choice of a husband, an attitude with which the program invites viewers to sympathize.

Samantha is beautiful, intelligent, fun, and generous. The best one can say of the nebbishy Darrin is that he works hard at his job and never looks at another woman.

Luckily for the storyline, Samantha ends up twitching her nose to resolve the conflict in almost every episode, although she is always careful to allow Darrin to continue to delude himself that he is in charge of his home, his marriage, and his career.

The program thus both pays tribute to the power of the housewife of the era, who was proverbially smart enough not to let her husband know just how smart she was, and exposes the system that kept her from stretching her wings.

The popularity of Bewitched goes beyond its unconscious feminist message, of course. The show survived because of its engaging star, talented writers, and excellent supporting cast.

Recurring guest stars included the great Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans as Samantha’s father, Montgomery herself as Samantha’s semi-identical cousin Serena, and Paul Lynde as the young witch’s Uncle Arthur.

In the episode that spurred this post, “Samantha’s Caesar Salad,” Tony-award winning actress Alice Ghostly took center stage as Samantha’s hapless maid, Esmeralda.

The episode dates from the program’s sixth season. Darrin has finally relented and allowed Samantha to employ household help since she is pregnant with the couple’s second child.

Endora has recommended Esmeralda, a timid witch whose powers are erratic.

When Samantha leaves Esmeralda in the kitchen with the ingredients for a Caesar salad the maid decides to take a short cut. The ensuing spell accidentally brings Julius Caesar into the Stevens home—and he is in no mood to return to ancient Rome.

Samantha’s surprise at this turn of events is a tribute to Elizabeth Montgomery’s acting skill, particularly since Uncle Arthur had pulled a similar stunt with pastry and Napoleon Bonaparte just the year before in the episode “Samantha’s French Pastry.”

Although my Napoleons are worthy of an emperor they’re horrendously fattening. For the moment I’m sticking to Caesar salad.

Bonus appetitus, as Julius himself might have said. (He might not have. My Latin is a little rusty!)

Samantha’s Caesar Salad

I’ve always loved Caesar salad, although I tend not to make it often. It’s a fair amount of work, and then there’s the vexing question of the egg yolks: is it okay to serve them raw (or almost raw; you’ll see from the recipe that they get cooked a little and also whisked with lemon juice to help fight bacteria)?

If you’re really worried about the egg yolks you may omit them and make a simple vinaigrette—but they do add depth to the salad.

Caesar salads were beloved in the 20th century by many chefs because they are best assembled at the table, preferably with panache.

Whenever I see one being put together I think of the wonderful Jules Munshin in the film Easter Parade. His “Salad François” isn’t quite a Caesar, but it shares many of the same elements, plus a little Munshin ham.

Ingredients:

for the croutons:

2 cups cubed French or Italian bread (slightly stale bread is best, but use what you have!)
a splash or two of extra-virgin olive oil
a dash of sea salt

for the dressing and salad:

1 large head romaine lettuce
2 cloves garlic, slightly crushed
2 eggs, as fresh as possible (pasteurized are best, but I can never find them)
4 anchovies, cut into small pieces
1 splash Worcestershire sauce
1 pinch salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 small handfuls freshly grated Parmesan cheese
lots of freshly ground pepper

Instructions:

First, make the croutons. (This may be done the day before you make the salad.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium cast-iron skillet (8 to 10 inches) place just enough oil to cover the bottom. Toss in the bread cubes. Splash in a tiny bit more oil, and stir to coat the cubes as well as you can.

Bake the oiled croutons until they turn golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes, tossing them every 5 minutes or so. Remove the croutons from the oven, toss on the salt, and allow them to cool completely.

If you don’t plan to use them immediately, store them in a plastic bag or a tin until you need them.

For the salad wash and trim the romaine. You should have pieces that are easy to eat but still substantial looking.

Rub the garlic pieces on the inside of a wooden salad bowl to spread their oil; then discard the garlic.

Bring the eggs to room temperature by placing them in warm water for a few minutes. Drain them, and pour boiling water over them. Allow the eggs to sit for 1 minute; then drain them again and immediately bathe them in cold water to cool them off. This is called coddling the eggs lightly.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites, and discard the whites. Set the yolks aside briefly.

Place the anchovies in the salad bowl and mash them with a fork or a pestle. Use a fork to whisk in the egg yolks, followed by the lemon juice and the Worcestershire sauce. Continue to whisk for 2 to 3 minutes; then add the salt.

Add the oil, a few drops at a time, whisking constantly, followed by the first handful of cheese.

Toss in the lettuce leaves, and top them with the pepper and the rest of the cheese. Add the croutons, toss, and serve.

Serves 4.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email.

Herbed Cherry Tomato Salad

My last few posts (and consequently meals) have been rather heavy so I’m in the mood to post a couple of salads, beginning TODAY.

I can hardly wait for local tomatoes to come into season. (Soon! Soon!). Grocery-store cherry tomatoes may not be able to compete once that season starts, but in the meantime they offer little bursts of flavor as well as gorgeous color.

This simple Greek-inspired combination uses them to excellent effect.

Ingredients:

for the dressing:

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
3 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano (If you are lucky enough to have fresh oregano, put 1 teaspoon of it into the salad instead.)

for the salad:

1 pint ripe cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1/4 cup chopped pitted Greek olives
1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion
1 small cucumber, chopped into tiny chunks
crumbled feta cheese to taste
1 tablespoon (or more) fresh chopped parsley
1 tablespoon (or more) fresh chopped basil

Instructions:

In a small jar combine the dressing ingredients.

Drain the tomatoes, which tend to be a bit wet, particularly when cut in half. In a bowl combine the tomatoes with the remaining salad ingredients. Toss with dressing. Serve immediately.

Serves 4 as a side salad or 2 as a main dish.

Upside Down

Here's our cake. Don't you love my sister's new cake plate (from Williams-Sonoma)?

Yesterday was National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day.

I’m not a slave to food holidays. So many of them were created by commercial interests. (I can find no evidence that Mr. Dole invented this one, and yet I can’t help but wonder…….)

Nevertheless, pineapple upside-down cake has long been a favorite of mine.

It’s a dessert with many associations. The pineapple itself has long symbolized hospitality and elegance.

To me fresh pineapple is a magical fruit—a perfect blend of sweetness and acidity. I know the pineapple we get in the northeast can’t compare with its cousins in their native climes. Nevertheless, if left to ripen for a few days a fresh pineapple can give us Yankees the illusion of living in a tropical paradise.

I generally eat the fruit plain—but I’ve been known to put it in fruit salad or salsa.

Pineapple upside-down cake is a simple comfort food I remember with joy from my childhood.

Even made with canned pineapple it delights eaters. When I worked as a demo cook at Bloomingdale’s I kept canned pineapple on hand for days on which I was uninspired. A quick batch of upside-down cake made even the most fussy of customers happy.

The cake is even better when made with fresh pineapple. To tell you the truth, the flavor isn’t terribly different. By the time you bake fresh pineapple pieces they taste a lot like canned ones. Nevertheless, I love having more substantial chunks in the cake than one can achieve with canned pineapple.

I think it would taste even better with a little rum added along with the vanilla, but I couldn’t find rum in the house so I don’t know for sure.

If you’re interested in the history of pineapple upside-down cake, take a look at the Food Timeline’s copious notes on this item, which include vintage recipes.

If you’re interested in making your family happy, bake this cake!

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Ingredients:

for the upside-down topping:

1/2 stick butter (1/4 cup)
3/4 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown as that is what I had, but light brown might look prettier)
2 cups pineapple, cut into chunks

for the cake:

1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 pinch salt
1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

First make the topping (which goes on the bottom!).

Melt the butter in a skillet—a 9- or 10-inch cast-iron skillet, if possible. Stir in the brown sugar and cook, stirring, until it melts and bubbles—3 to 4 minutes.

If you’re using the cast-iron skillet you may continue with the recipe at this stage and cook the cake in the skillet. If not, transfer the brown-sugar mixture into a 9-inch round cake pan. Spread it through the bottom of the pan. Arrange the pineapple pieces on top as artistically as you can.

In a separate bowl cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the baking powder and salt.

Add the flour and milk alternately, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir in the vanilla.

Spoon the batter over the pineapple in the cake pan or skillet, and place the pan in the oven. Bake until the cake tests done (in about 40 minutes).

Let the cake stand for 10 minutes; then invert it onto a serving plate. You may need help with this if you use the cast-iron skillet as it feels a bit heavy during the inverting process.

This cake is best served slightly warm with or without a little whipped cream.

Serves 6 to 8.

Colonial Williamsburg created this lovely pineapple wreath.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email.

Southwestern Cheese Fondue

My family members and I are currently stoveless. My sister-in-law Leigh recently ordered a high-end gas range, which arrived a week and a half ago.

Unfortunately, the price tag on the new toy from Viking isn’t merely financial. The stove is eating into Leigh’s time and patience as well her pocketbook. It is apparently designed ONLY to go into a spanking new kitchen, not to fit neatly into an existing kitchen.

Leigh has had to hire not only a plumber to put in a gas line (which she expected) but a handyman to design a pipe for the exhaust system, an electrician to put in new wires, and a carpenter to fit the stove into the wall.

Some of them have come, some of them are still expected, and some of them are going to have to come back. Meanwhile, the stove sits in the middle of the kitchen annoying everyone, particularly the cats.

Miss Modigliani is NOT amused.

Actually, my mother isn’t annoyed—but then she has memory issues. Whenever she spots the stove she just compliments Leigh on how beautifully clean it is.

With no working burners or oven we’re taking advantage every other cooking appliance in and out of the house—the grill, the microwave, the slow cooker.

Yesterday evening the fondue pot enjoyed its moment in the sun. Happily, our fondue pot is electric so all the heating (not just warming) could be done at the table.

My brother was lobbying for a traditional Swiss fondue with Gruyère and Emmantaler, particularly since my most recent fondue was also nontraditional.

Most people credit the Swiss with inventing fondue to get them through winter months full of stale bread and cheese, and I do love classic fondue.

I found cilantro and a jalapeño pepper in the house, however, so my brother had to eat yet another non-fondue fondue. He managed very nicely.

The flavorings here are really a guideline. If you want more pepper, as I say below, use more (or use the seeds!). If you don’t want to taste the cumin, omit it. If you have small children in the house you may want to skip the cilantro—or let adults put it on their own portions.

Enjoy……

The Fondue

Ingredients:

2 to 3 cloves garlic, slightly crushed
1 pound shredded cheese—mixed Monterey Jack and sharp cheddar
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup Mexican beer
2 plum tomatoes, diced
1 can (4 ounces) mild green chiles
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced (more if you like spice)
1 tablespoon lime juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
3 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
1 medium baguette, cut into bite-sized pieces
carrot and celery sticks

Instructions:

Rub the inside of a fondue pot with the garlic; then discard the cloves.

In a bowl toss together the cheese and the flour.

Bring the beer to a boil in the fondue pot. Add the tomatoes, the chiles, the pepper, the lime juice, and the spices—but not the cilantro.

Reduce the heat and stir in the cheese/flour mixture. Continue to stir until the cheese has melted. Stir in the cilantro.

Dip the bread and vegetable pieces into your fondue. Serves 4.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email.

Aint' Dat Sumpthin'!

Spencer Williams Jr. as Andy Brown (Courtesy of Time/Life)

Thanks to Netflix I have recently been watching the television version of the classic radio program Amos ‘n’ Andy. This TV series lasted from 1951 to 1953 and stirred up considerable controversy.

It continues to raise questions about how African Americans (or indeed any ethnic group) should be portrayed on television.

Amos ‘n’ Andy had debuted on radio in 1928. The show was actually a remake of a program called Sam ‘n’ Henry, which went on the air in 1926.

Both radio shows were the brainchildren of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, white men who had met in 1920 while working for a traveling minstrel show.

Sam and Henry were working-class black men who, like many African Americans of the era, moved from the rural South to a northern city (in this case Chicago) to look for work.

When they were revamped as Amos and Andy for a rival station (the program quickly achieved network status), the protagonists had similar characters and backgrounds.

Amos Jones was hardworking and sincere. Andy Brown was good natured but lazy and easily led astray by a con artist or a beautiful woman. Neither was overly smart. The program regularly featured such mangled verbal expressions as “I’se regusted” and “Ain’t dat sumpthin’.”

In the late 1920s Amos ‘n’ Andy became hugely popular. It started out as a nightly ten-minute program performed Gosden and Correll alone. Other actors were added as the years went by. By the 1940s, the program ran once a week for half an hour and followed a typical situation-comedy format.

In addition to the title characters regulars included George Stevens, the Kingfish of Amos and Andy’s lodge, the Mystic Knights of the Sea; Kingfish’s shrewish wife Sapphire and Sapphire’s Mama; and a shady lawyer named Algonquin J. Calhoun.

Several characters were portrayed by black actors, although Correll continued to voice the part of Andy, and Gosden played both Amos and Kingfish.

When the program moved to CBS television in 1951 black actors were hired for all the major roles. Those roles continued to conform to a large extent to the characters created by Gosden and Correll.

This signed postcard of Gosden and Correll was recently for sale on ebay.

Andy had not changed greatly over the years, but Amos had become a wise, steady family man; he therefore narrated the television programs but didn’t participate much in the comedy. Center stage was enjoyed by the wily Kingfish.

Almost immediately the program attracted criticism. The NAACP in particular saw it as demeaning to African Americans and tried to organize a boycott.

The boycott didn’t succeed. Melvin Patrick Ely noted in his 1991 book The Adventures of Amos ‘n’ Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon (from which I gleaned much of the information in this essay) that many black Americans either enjoyed the program or deemed a comedy show the least of their worries in a still largely segregated society.

Nevertheless, the series remained a thorn in the side of CBS and was canceled at the end of its second season, although it lingered in syndication. The controversy made the networks reluctant to feature an all-black cast for years to come.

As I watched several episodes of the program recently I was pleasantly surprised.

Some of the storylines get a little tedious. One wonders how Andy can fall for Kingfish’s schemes week after week. Generally, however, the plots are clever and the acting first rate.

Tim Moore as Kingfish (Courtesy of Time/Life)

The first thing that struck me about the series was how colorblind it appeared to my 21st-century eye. Amos, Andy, and their friends lived in an almost all-black community (supposedly Harlem) where race was never mentioned.

Andy and Kingfish drew criticism, perhaps justly, for perpetuating the image of the unemployed African American, and Lawyer Calhoun came in for particular scorn as just about the only black attorney visible on television.

Scores of bit players belied stereotypes, however, by speaking in standard English and giving Americans their first televised view of African Americans who weren’t servants or Pullman porters.

Amos, Andy, and Kingfish encountered professionals in all walks of life—realtors, police officers, storekeepers, and bankers—who just happened to be black.

I don’t know what I expected from the show. It was not this sense of being comfortable in one’s own ethnicity.

My favorite episode so far, “The Happy Stevens,” focuses on two of the strongest actors of the ensemble, rich-voiced Tim Moore as Kingfish and the graceful yet strong Ernestine Wade as his wife Sapphire.

The two are addicted to a radio program in which a white husband and wife engage in highfalutin “chit chat” about elegant doings in New York society. When Kingfish and Sapphire quarrel, they go to the radio studio to ask the couple’s advice—only to find that their idols are even more quarrelsome than they.

The Happy Harringtons get into such a knock-down-drag-out fight, in fact, that Kingfish and Sapphire are conscripted to do that morning’s radio program in their stead.

It’s a perfect domestic situation-comedy plot, cleverly written and acted. And it has very little to do with race.

I don’t want to dismiss the criticism of Amos ‘n’ Andy or to discount the NAACP’s position. It’s very possible that I didn’t see the racist stereotypes in the program because I wasn’t brought up on those stereotypes.

Other writers have traced the resemblance between characters in Amos ‘n’ Andy and standard figures in the minstrel tradition.

It’s hard not to note that Freeman Gosden’s first theatrical engagement was at a fundraiser for the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

And certainly Gosden’s reference in the clip below to Spencer Williams, who played Andy, as a “boy” sticks in one’s craw.

And yet ….

Henry Louis Gates Jr. may have best summed up the mixed message of Amos ‘n’ Andy in a 1989 New York Times essay.

“The performance of those great black actors … transformed racist stereotypes into authentic black humor,” Gates wrote. “The dilemma of ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy,’ however, was that these were the only images of blacks that Americans could see on TV.”

Sapphire’s Black-Eyed Peas

My dish today was inspired by a two-part episode of Amos ‘n’ Andy called “Getting Mama Married,” in which Sapphire’s Mama moves in with the her daughter and Kingfish. One of the ways in which the two women make Kingfish miserable is by criticizing his manners as he tries to pass peas at the dinner table.

The peas in question look much more substantial than standard green peas so I am inferring that Sapphire made a pot of black-eyed peas. Here is a recipe she might have used.

Ingredients:

1 pound dried black-eyed peas
a small amount of extra virgin olive oil or bacon fat for sautéing
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 10-to-14 ounce can tomatoes with green chiles
2 ham hocks or 1 good-sized pig’s knuckle
extra smoked sausage, chopped and lightly sautéed (optional)
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
2 teaspoons chili powder
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Wash and sort the peas, and soak them in cold water. Ideally, they should soak overnight, but if a couple of hours will do if you’re in a rush! Drain them when they have finished soaking.

In a 4-quart Dutch oven heat the oil or bacon fat, and use it to sauté the onion, garlic, and celery over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the beans, tomatoes, pork, stock, water, and seasonings.

Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring to make sure it is well blended. Skim off as much of the bean scum as you can.

Reduce the heat, cover the pot, and simmer the mixture for at 1 to 1-1/2 to 2 hours, or until the peas are tender. (The best way to determine this is to taste them!)

Remove the ham hock or knuckle. Tear its meat into shreds and add the meat to the pot of peas, discarding the fat and bone.

Serve with rice. This is best served the day after it is made. Serves 8 to 10 generously.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email.

Cryin' Pepper Fruit Salad

I love fresh fruit. It’s sweet. It’s colorful. It’s refreshing. And you can do just about anything with it.

I have to admit I would never have thought of putting pepper on it until I met Mary Cantu.

Smart, energetic, and fun, Mary is the co-chair of the Mount Holyoke Club of San Antonio. The club imported me for a cooking session last June, and Mary couldn’t have been a better hostess.

Knowing the way to a food writer’s heart, she took me out to a memorable lunch followed by a whirlwind trip to Central Market.

When I wrote about the strawberry lemonade at Central Market I said that if the store had existed when I was in graduate school in Texas I probably would never have left the state—and I stand by my words.

It’s an exciting grocery store, one that takes pride in offering a variety of fresh foods and letting the shopper know where those foods were grown and raised.

Coming from New England, where fresh produce was only just starting to appear in farmstands, I was completely bowled over by the gorgeous ripe blueberries, corn, and peaches on the shelves there.

As we were touring San Antonio Mary described one of her favorite desserts. In both Texas and California, she told me, restaurants and farmers-market vendors are now increasingly serving fruit salad with a hint of spice instead of sugar.

Mary was kind enough to send me a pepper blend specially created for fruit salad. Unfortunately, I’m out of it and don’t know where to get more—so I am currently resorting to cayenne. She also sent me a recipe, which I have lost.

Luckily, the basic components of this salad are pretty simple–fresh fruit, lime, and a hint of pepper.

Be very careful! The first time I tried the cayenne I put in too much. My nephew Michael immediately dubbed the result “cryin’ pepper salad.” If you add pepper sparingly, however, the salad may well inspire you to dance around the kitchen.

Ingredients:

6 cups chopped fresh fruit (preferably not berries; I used pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon, and mango)
the juice of 1 large lime
cayenne pepper to taste (begin with a tiny pinch)
a pinch of sea salt (optional)

Instructions:

In a large bowl stir together the fruit and lime juice. Add a pinch of cayenne and taste the mixture. Add a little more cayenne if you think the fruit can handle it.

At the last minute stir in the salt. (I think it makes the salad a little sweeter.)

Serves 6.

Paying Tribute to the Green Goddess

George Arliss in full rajah regalia (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

I’ve been posting recipes for heavy dishes lately so I’m in the mood for a little salad! This dressing comes courtesy of a fellow blogger and film lover, Donna Hill.

Donna recently discussed the history of eating at the movies (with great photos and video clips!) on her blog, Strictly Vintage Hollywood. She concluded with a recipe for Green Goddess salad dressing, created at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in 1923.

The herbally tinted salad dressing honored a hotel guest, the actor George Arliss. Arliss was then starring in a popular play titled The Green Goddess. He would go on to appear in both silent and sound film versions of the story.

The Green Goddess is a hoary chestnut full of imperialist ideas. Arliss played the Rajah of Rukh, a fictitious and stereotypical oriental potentate.

Shrewd but selfish and vindictive, the rajah threatens to execute a party of Englishmen who accidentally land in his kingdom—and tries to force the wife of one of the men to become his paramour.

When he is foiled by British aircraft flying to the rescue, the rajah proclaims sadly but proudly, “Barbarous Asia bows to civilized Europe.”

The play and film’s depiction of “Barbarous Asia” is appalling even by that day’s standards, but it is interesting as a period piece. A historian of colonialism could certainly make hay out of the stereotypes.

And Arliss came across as both elegant and funny in his wickedness—much more appealing and effective, in fact, than he was in the picture for which he won the Academy Award for best actor, Disraeli.

Neither film version of The Green Goddess is available on home video at present. Happily, the Alice Joyce Website offers stunning stills of the 1923 silent production. (Joyce played the object of the Rajah’s lust in both 1923 and 1930).

Turner Classic Movies occasionally shows the 1930 sound version and offers a couple of clips for viewing on its web site.

While you’re watching them, do try the dressing. If you’ve never had Green Goddess Dressing, imagine a cross between Caesar and ranch dressings. (I love both.) It’s smooth, flavorful, and tangy, and the herbs give it lovely green flecks. Thank you, Donna!

Green Goddess Dressing

Ingredients:

1 clove garlic
4 anchovy fillets
1 scallion, chopped
1 generous tablespoon chopped parsley
1 generous tablespoon chopped chives
1 generous tablespoon tarragon or basil
the juice of 1 lemon
2 cups of mayonnaise (homemade is best, but commercial—even low fat—is fine; just avoid fat free)
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Place the garlic and anchovy fillets in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until minced. Add the herbs and lemon juice, and process again; then add the mayonnaise, salt, and pepper, and process again until smooth.

Taste for seasoning and adjust seasonings accordingly.

Serve over a split romaine heart. (Actually, I just shredded some romaine, which worked beautifully.) Garnish with a sprig of fresh basil or tarragon if you wish.

Makes about 2 cups of dressing.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email.

Saint Sara’s Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Left to right: Sara, Tinky, and Alice (yes, I am really that much of a shrimp!)

This Tex-Mex dish is more Tex than Mex, but non-purists will enjoy its bubbly warmth. The recipe comes from my dear friend Sara Stone in Waco, Texas, possible the nicest person in the whole world.

Here’s just one of Sara’s kind deeds: when I was trying to finish my doctoral dissertation, she invited me to stay in her house for the month or so we thought it would take to do the final rewrites.

It took me A YEAR to finish up the darn thing.

Sara never once complained about the messy cooking or the show tunes or the diet-coke cans or the vintage TV programs or the piles of paper or the general Tinkyness of her apparently permanent houseguest.

She even managed to laugh when an experimental cake exploded in her oven on the hottest day of the year. (I can almost still smell the fumes as I type this.)

That’s not just being a nice person. That’s being a saint.

This casserole is a little like her—colorful and comforting. I think it might have a sense of humor, too.

I was lucky enough to see Sara last spring when the Mount Holyoke Club of San Antonio flew me to Texas to cook with them.

Playing with the Mount Holyoke crowd was fun and enlightening. Texas has tons more fresh produce in early June than Massachusetts, and the alums and their husbands certainly knew what to do with it.

After I left San Antonio I enjoyed a wonderful weekend with Sara and another friend and former roommate, the brilliant and funny Alice from Dallas. Husbands and kids rounded out the crowd. (Both Sara and Alice were smart enough to marry people I like.)

Need I add that the food at our reunion was fabulous?

I made Sara’s casserole recently because I get a kick out of being reminded of her—and because my family loves it.

Here is her recipe. It serves a crowd.


The Casserole

Ingredients:

1 2-to-3 pound chicken
vegetables as needed for making broth
salt and pepper to taste
1 medium onion, chopped
2 to 3 tablespoons butter
1 can (about 10 ounces) cream of chicken soup
1 can (about 10 ounces) cream of mushroom soup
1 small (4 ounces) can green chiles, chopped
about 8 corn tortillas, ripped into pieces (about 3 to 4 per tortilla)
1 pound store (Cheddar or similar) cheese, grated

Instructions:

First, cook the chicken. Bring it to a boil in a pan of water with vegetables appropriate for making a rich broth (onion, garlic, celery, perhaps a carrot or two—and some parsley if you have it in the house), plus salt and pepper; then turn it down and simmer it until it is tender and the broth is flavorful. This will take about 2 hours. Stir occasionally during this process, and don’t forget to add more water if you need it.

Drain the chicken, saving the broth, and set it aside to cool briefly. Strain out 1 cup of the broth. The remainder of the broth may be used for cooking or sipping at your leisure. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, strip the meat from the bones and shred it.

When you are ready to proceed with the casserole, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brown the onion in the butter. Combine the soups, broth, onion pieces, and green chiles in a saucepan. Add the pieces of chicken and heat well.

In a baking dish, place a layer of broken tortillas, a layer of chicken sauce, and a layer of cheese. Repeat until the casserole is filled. Repeat this layering process. Bake the casserole until it is bubbly around the edges, about 30 minutes.

Serves 10 to 12.

Messy but yummy!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email

Oops! (Cream Cheese Frosting)

Leigh and Michael love to make cream-cheese frosting.

In my last post, a recipe for carrot cake, I suggested that readers top the cake with cream-cheese frosting. In the middle of the night I realized that although I have mentioned cream-cheese frosting several times on this blog I have never actually shared a recipe for it.

Ouch.

Here is a list of other cakes for which I recommended this icing. I obviously like it A LOT.

Wacky Cake
Cider Cake
Messy But Good Birthday Cake (a.k.a. Apple Chocolate Cake)
Zucchini Cake

I apologize! Here, belatedly, is my basic formula for cream-cheese frosting. As you can see, it couldn’t be easier! Please let me know if you find any other omissions in my writing………

Maija considers her decorations on a frosted cake.

Cream-Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

1 8-ounce brick cream cheese at room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter at room temperature
confectioner’s sugar to taste (start with about 2 cups)
2 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions:

Cream together the cream cheese and butter; then stir in the 2 cups of confectioner’s sugar and add more until the flavor seems right to you.

Don’t add too much sugar; the delight of this icing is the ever so slightly tart, creamy taste of the cheese.

Beat in the vanilla, and spread the icing over your cake. Frosts 1 9-by-13 pan or 1 10-inch bundt pan.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email

Hippity Hoppity Carrot Cake

I know I ran on and on and on in my last post so this one is going to be short and sweet. I’m busy getting ready for Easter so short and sweet will suit me just fine.

This cake is both tasty and easy. Leave a piece out for the Easter Bunny, and you’ll find plenty of treats on Easter morning! When I made it recently, I used smaller egg-shaped pans and reduced the cooking time. In any size pan you'll have a nice Easter treat.

If you don’t feel like cake, try one of my recipes from last year, Easter Bread or (my personal favorite) Chocolate Peanut Butter Easter Eggs.

Happy Easter to all....

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) sweet butter at room temperature
1/2 cup canola oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
3 cups grated carrots (about 1 pound)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9-by-13-inch pan. Combine the flour, salt, cinnamon, and soda. In a separate bowl, combine butter, the oil, and the sugar; then add the eggs, flour mixture, and carrots. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake springs back to the touch. Cool the cake for 20 minutes; then remove it from the pan and cool it completely before icing it with cream-cheese frosting.

Serves 12 to 16.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email

I've Got Some 'Splainin' to Do

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on the set in 1953 (Courtesy of UCLA Library)

Fifty years ago today Americans said goodbye to I Love Lucy.

The program in its half-hour format had actually been off the air for three years in 1960. The original I Love Lucy premiered in 1951 and concluded in 1957.

The production company owned by Lucy’s stars and creators, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, went on to produce several hour-long episodes of the program. Desilu’s Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour aired sporadically between 1957 and 1960. The finale was broadcast on April 1, 1960.

I Love Lucy was no ordinary television show. This popular, groundbreaking program helped establish the technical norms and conventions of the situation comedy.

In addition, it fit into and further refined the subject matter of the sitcom—marriage and family life.

As just about anyone who has ever watched television knows, Lucille Ball played Lucy Ricardo, a madcap housewife who schemes in episode after episode to escape from her apartment and move onto a larger stage—often a literal stage; she has aspirations to a career in show business.

Desi Arnaz played Lucy’s husband Ricky. A Cuban-born bandleader and singer like Arnaz himself, Ricky frequently bursts into Spanish tirades. His main function in the storyline is to depress Lucy’s ambitions and reinstate her in their home.

The love of the program’s title bridges the gap between the motivations of Lucy and Ricky. Many episodes end with a kiss.

In a sense, the series is a televised version of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, illustrating the ways in which women in the 1950s were encouraged by their husbands and by society at large to see the home as their natural domain.

It doesn’t take a Freudian (or a Friedanian) to see symbolism in the giant loaf of bread that pins Lucy to the kitchen wall in the episode “Pioneer Women.”

Of course, the show’s viewers were never meant to see this comedy as a critique of societal norms. The producers and stars saw the war between the sexes as eternal fodder for humor.

I Love Lucy’s presentation of marriage was complicated by the fact that viewers in the 1950s were aware that Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were married in real life. The often told story of their offscreen marriage supported and enriched the story they enacted each week onscreen.

In interview after interview, Ball told the press about the difficulties the two had encountered—their contrasting cultural backgrounds, their conflicting work schedules, their struggle to have children.

She presented I Love Lucy as the salvation of the Arnaz marriage. Ball explained that she worked so hard, played this character, mainly in order to be a good wife.

The ties between the Ricardos and the Arnazes reached their pinnacle in January 1953 when the real Ball and the fictional Lucy gave birth to boys on the same day.

Despite the success of Desilu and I Love Lucy, the Ball-Arnaz marriage foundered as the decade wore on.

The Arnaz family business grew into a giant, and the Arnaz family was together more onscreen than anywhere else. Desi Arnaz drank and carried on with other women. Lucille Ball became bitter. Eventually the program that had cemented the marriage began to show cracks in that cement.

Watching the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, “Lucy Meets the Moustache,” one can see the signs of strain.

Arnaz looks portly and grim. Ball looks stiff and grimmer. They are hardly ever in a shot together, and the male-female sparring appears harsh rather than light hearted.

The program’s guest star, comedian Ernie Kovacs, has very little to do. His wife, actress/comedienne Edie Adams, sings a song that must have rubbed salt into Ball and Arnaz’s marital wounds.

The Alan Brandt/Bob Haymes tune “That’s All” begins “I can only give you love that lasts forever/And a promise to be near each time you call” and ends with the repeated statement “That’s all.” Adams’s understated singing style renders the song particularly poignant.

The kiss that ends “Lucy Meets the Moustache” is combative rather than affectionate.

Ball filed for divorce the day after shooting for this episode concluded. She went on to star in several additional situation comedies, in each playing a version of the ditzy Lucy character established in I Love Lucy.

In general Americans moved on with Ball, although her first series remained her most successful one. It has never been out of syndication.

Arnaz produced a few other television shows and acted on occasion. His alcoholism took its toll, however, and he looked and acted old before his time. He died in 1986. Ball followed in 1989.

Both Ball and Arnaz had remarried in the early 1960s. Strangely, however, since their deaths they have been increasingly reunited.

A TV movie in 1991 told their story from their meeting in 1940 until the premiere of I Love Lucy. A televised “home movie” project in 1993 and the 50th anniversary I Love Lucy special in 2001 were put together by their children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Jr.

Those same children—particularly “Little Lucie” as she was called—eventually established the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Ball’s hometown of Jamestown, New York. It includes a museum dedicated to the “First Couple of Comedy” as well as a Desilu Playhouse that displays sets from I Love Lucy.

I’m ambivalent about the presentation of Lucy and Desi as a continuing romantic couple. Positioning them as eternal lovers implies that enduring romance stems mostly from the attraction of opposites. Love is that, but it is much more.

Nevertheless, I grew up watching I Love Lucy while knowing that the two main characters onscreen were married in real life. Like most Americans in the 1950s and today I have absorbed the story, true or not (and I see no reason to believe that it didn’t hold at least some truth), that the Arnazes’ offscreen relationship enhanced the Ricardos’ onscreen marriage.

I’m a sucker in particular for the episode in which Lucy tells Ricky that she is pregnant. In it Ball and Arnaz look young, happy, and vulnerable. It’s hard to believe that all that emotion was just acting.

And it’s even harder not to see their breakup as tragic for them and for American television.

To those of us who watched and watch, one line in Desi Arnaz’s autobiography continues to sound as genuine as an actor’s recollections ever do:

“’I Love Lucy’ was never just a title.”


Desilu Sandwiches

Desi Arnaz was proud of his Cuban heritage so I chose to make a Cuban Sandwich for this post (also known as a Cubano or a Mixto (mixed) Sandwich.

The sandwich originated among cigar workers in Cuba and Florida. In the city of Tampa, where Cuban immigrants were joined by Italians, salami is included in the sandwich. Elsewhere the ingredients are roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, mustard, and butter, all served on Cuban bread.

If you can’t find Cuban bread (I couldn’t when I set out to make this sandwich), use a French or Italian loaf; the bread should be a bit crusty on the outside but soft on the inside. A traditional baguette will be too thin and crispy.

To me the most flavorful ingredient is the pork so I roasted my own pork. Purists would probably bake their own ham with a sweet glaze, but I chose to purchase a high-quality honey ham.

The recipe below substitutes American cheddar for the traditional Swiss cheese in Lucy’s honor to make a Cuban-American sandwich. If you prefer to be authentic and use Swiss cheese, you will still be able to say you honored this actress with the ham!

A Cuban Sandwich is traditionally pressed together with a press called a plancha. If you have a Panini press, use that. My family and I employed a George Foreman grill. If you have no press of any sort, use a griddle to heat your sandwiches, and warm a cast-iron skillet. You may press down on the top of the sandwiches with the bottom of the hot skillet.

The quantities for the sandwich ingredients are really just suggestions. We used a bit less of everything (except the bread!) than I have required here. See what tastes good to you....

For the Pork Roast (cook this the day before you want to make your sandwiches):

Ingredients:

1 small onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
3/4 teaspoon oregano
3/4 teaspoon cumin
1/2 cup key-lime juice
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound pork tenderloin
a small amount of additional extra-virgin olive oil for heating the pork

Instructions:

In a mortar and pestle push together the onion, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano, and cumin. Whisk them into the key-lime juice and set the mixture aside.

In a small saucepan heat the 1/4 cup of olive oil until it shimmers. Whisk in the citrus mixture, and remove the pan from the heat. Allow it to cool to room temperature.

Combine the pork and the marinade in a plastic bag, and allow the pork to marinate for 1 to 2 hours. About 15 minutes before you want to finish the marinating process, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

In an ovenproof skillet heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Remove the pork from the marinade (but save the marinade), and brown it as well as you can on all sides. (This won’t be easy because it has been marinated, but you should be able to get some color.)

Pour the marinade over the pork, and place the skillet in the preheated oven. Roast the pork for 20 minutes. Remove it from the oven, and put an aluminum-foil tent over it. Let it rest for 1/2 hour; then cool it to room temperature and chill it overnight so that it will be easy to slice the next day.

For the Sandwiches:

Ingredients:

enough Cuban bread for 8 sandwiches, cut into 8 pieces about 6-inches long each (I used long Italian rolls) and sliced in half lengthwise
butter as needed
yellow mustard to taste
1 pound roasted pork tenderloin (see above), cut into very thin slices, plus a little of its juice
thinly sliced dill pickles to taste
3/4 pound sliced ham (homemade or good quality)
1/2 pound thinly sliced Wisconsin or Vermont cheddar (for Lucy) or Swiss (for Desi) cheese

Instructions:

Butter both inside sides of the bread, and put mustard on one side. Drizzle a little of the pork juice on one side as well.

Assemble your sandwiches in this order from bottom to top: pickles, pork, ham, cheese. Put the two halves of the sandwiches together.

Heat your pan or grill. Place the sandwiches on it, and press down on them firmly with another surface (the top of your press or another hot pan). Heat until the sandwiches are depressed and the cheese is melted.

Serves 8 generously.


If you enjoyed this post, please consider taking out an email subscription to my blog. Just click on the link below!

Subscribe to In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens by Email