Kitchen Memories

On of my favorite places on earth is Petershams Nursery.   It is outside of London. One takes a bus out to Richmond, then walks till the nursery sign painted on the side of a building becomes visible.  Follow the arrow down the alleyway and then walk toward an open field.  Their is a wide drive filled with various farm vehicles and finally the gates open to Petershams.  Inside are glass housed filled with plants, and enormous garden center with the glorious and the mundane.  In the very back is an old greenhouse and when the sun hits the glass panes, there old loamy funk of a greenhouse seeps in. 

In that old greenhouse are tables and chairs and some really wonderful food.  The chef who got the ball rolling at Petershams was Skye Gyngell.  At the beginning, she brought her own pots and pans every day.  Soon a tiny kitchen was added in an old brick room behind the greenhouse and before long, the nursery was a dinning destination.  Alas, with all this fame came what every chef wants, a Micheline star, but the star proved to be the demise of Gyngell.   Some diners felt the star meant valet parking, white tablecloths and well, a floor.   Sadly, she left and new chef came.


Back in London, n the same vein of glorious simple cooking, Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray presided over The River Cafe, another food destination and starting point for many an illustrious English cooking career.  Which brings us to today's cookbook, Kitchen Memories, by Lucy Boyd.  Lucy Boyd is Rose Gray's daughter.  After spending many years in the kitchen at The River Cafe, and many more at home cooking with her mother and family, Boyd went on to become the gardener at Petershams Nursery, growing the vegetables that graced Skye Gyngell's menus.   If Gyngell wanted to try something, Boyd grew it for her.  This wasn't farm-to-table eating this was literally table-IN-the farm eating and it couldn't be better.

It is clear that Boyd did not fall far from the tree.  Her recipes are inviting, simple and about all else delicious.   This simple chicken dish will leave you wanting more.
 

Lemony Chicken with Fresh Coriander

20g fresh root ginger, peeled and chopped into small chunks
3 cloves of garlic, peeled ¼ tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
1 medium-size chicken, jointed into its various parts (the butcher will do this for you)
3 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1½ lemons
1 fresh green chilli, stalk removed, then finely chopped (deseed if you prefer it less hot)
1 small bunch of fresh coriander, leaves picked from their stems, washed, dried and finely chopped
sea salt and black pepper

Put the ginger in the food processor with two to three tablespoons of water and blend to a paste.

Put the garlic, turmeric, coriander, cumin and cayenne pepper in a pestle and mortar and pound together.

Season the chicken pieces well all over with salt and pepper.

Heat a drizzle of the olive oil in a shallow, heavy-based pan, add the chicken pieces and brown them on all sides -- it may be easier to brown them in batches if your pan is too small to to fit them without overlapping.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken to a bowl.

Put the garlic and spice mixture into the still-hot pan (you may need to add a little more oil) and stir to release their flavours. Add the ginger and chopped chilli and stir-fry for a minute or so. Add the chicken pieces and any juices that have been released, then add 8 tablespoons of water and the lemon juice. Stir, then turn up the heat and bring to a boil, cover with a tight-fitting lid and turn the heat right down to a gentle simmer.  Cook for 15 minutes until the chicken is tender and cooked through. Remove the lid and scatter the chopped coriander over the top. Serve with spiced basmati rice. 

You may not have a gardener or a greenhouse, but get yourself a nice pot of coriander (or cilantro as we Yanks call it) and set it in the window.  Then you will be ready for this lemony chicken.

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Cross Creek Cookery

Cross Creek Cookery is one of my favorite cookbooks.  It is that great combination of recipes and stories about them.  It was written by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.  She complied it shortly after writing a novel of the same name.  In fact, like many a Southern cookbooks, most of the recipes in Cross Creek Cookery actually belong to Idella Parker, who was Rawlings maid for ten years.  Parker wrote of their time together in a memoir entitled, Idella: Marjorie Rawlings Perfect Maid.   I believe she still lives in Florida and is 98 year-old, now.

Miss Idella at the stove.

Rawlings bought a 72-acre orange grove in a little Florida town named Cross Creek.   Since she was a child, Rawlings had wanted to be a writer.  She became acquainted with the legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins.  She sent him several historical novels and chatty letters about life in Cross Creek.  Perkins finally told her that her novels sucked but the stories about Cross Creek were wonderful and advised her to white about where she was.

She headed Perkins' advice.  Her most famous novel, The Yearling, grew out of a tale about a boy, his father and a young deer he raised.  It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.  Not everyone in Florida liked the way they were portrayed by Rawlings.  One woman threatened to horse whip Rawlings until she was dead and another sued her for libel.

I adore this recipe for Mother's Jellied Chicken.   It fits perfectly into the Molly Hollifield Jones Dinner we wrote about at Lucindaville.  Harry Lowe and I always laugh, however, as we are pretty sure Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' mama never made this dish nor did Rawlings.  That job usually fell to Miss Idella.

Mother’s Jellied Chicken

Boil a whole, dressed chicken, about three and one-half pounds, in enough water to cover, until very tender.  Remove the chicken and boil the liquor down to one quart.  Cut the meat in small pieces, cutting across the grain to give square or rectangular pieces rather than shredded fragments.  Discard any portions of the skin that may be too coarse.  Season the meat lightly with salt and pepper.  To the quart of hot stock, add two tablespoons of gelatin soaked in two tablespoons of cold water, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, and more salt to taste.  Strain the stock over the chicken, mix lightly but thoroughly, and put into a fancy mould or into a long deep rectangular loaf tin.  Cool, and chill in ice box until set.  Serve on lettuce with mayonnaise on the side.  Serves eight generously.

In her rich commentary, Rawlings goes on to further describe the dish stating:

The secret of the goodness of this jellied chicken is its very simplicity.  I have had jellied chicken fixed up with an assortment of celery, cucumber, carrots, hard-boiled eggs and green peppers and pimentos and what-not.  All these alien and dressy ingredients destroy the melting flavor.

 My recommendation is to serve it up with a little horseradish sauce, to give it a kick.  


UPDATE:  Check out our mould of Queen Elizabeth in Mother's Jellied Chicken.

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150 Alabama First Lady's Cookbook

We don't go in much for old spiral-bound cookbooks, but when one spends a lot of time studying Southern cooking, they are hard to escape. 150 Alabama First Lady's Cookbook was assembled by then Governor Albert P. Brewers wife, Mrs. Albert P. Brewer. (Rumor has it her Christian name was "Martha" but there is no sign of that in this cookbook.) The cookbook was compiled for the Alabama Sesquicentennial in 1969. It is just jam packed with recipes, quite a large number of them involving "canned" ingredients like mushroom soup, mushrooms and lots of Jello. There is the ever present lemon Jello and tomato juice aspic, cheese straws, and Red Velvet Cake.





We have Mrs. Hardenburgh's $1000 Prize Recipe for Chicken which might have been awarded this vast sum because she actually used fresh herbs in the chicken... also canned mushrooms and canned cream of mushroom soup, but fresh basil and rosemary just the same.



So here is a recipe for Party Chicken. It would seem that "party chicken" was quite a popular dish as two, count them, TWO Mrs. offered up this recipe.

Party Chicken



4 whole chicken breasts, split, skinned and boned

8 slices of bacon

1 4-ounce package of chipped beef

1 can mushroom soup

1 cup sour cream



Wrap each breast in strip of bacon, cover bottom of flat, greased baking dish with chipped beef. Arrange chicken on chipped beef. Mix undiluted soup and sour cream and pour over chicken. Cove and refrigerate. Bake uncovered in a very low (275) oven for 3 hours.

I have spent a lot of time in Alabama and I have never been served chipped beef on chicken. Especially after it has been cooked for three hours. I just don't believe there is enough canned soup and sour cream to keep chicken breasts from totally drying out after three hours.



I suggest serving the Party Chicken with Company Beans.

Company Beans



2 packages French cut green beans, frozen

2 packages baby lima beans, frozen

2 packages English peas, frozen



Cook each according to instruction on the package.



Mix the following sauce, and keep at room temperature:



2 cups mayonnaise

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Dash of Tabasco sauce

1 medium sized onion, minced

4 hard-boiled eggs, minced

Salt and pepper to taste.



Drain liquid from hot vegetables, put into serving dish, and top with sauce.

Again, I lived in Alabama for years and never, never, EVER had a frozen green bean nor a green pea. (OK, we did often have canned English Peas.)



So my little Southern Belles, go forward and party.

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Down The Kitchen Sink

Last year Lucindaville (and Cookbook Of The Day) offered up a Famous Food Friday about Beverley Nichols and we are doing it again.



When last we were cooking with Beverely Nichols, we were pondering his "found" cookbook, In an Eighteenth Century Kitchen. This was the cookbook Nichols wrote about in A Thatched Roof. After his success with Down The Garden Path, the first and probably best known, or should I say, remembered of Nichols' books, he chose to undertake a similar culinary adventure which would become Down the Kitchen Sink. Nichols knew as little about cooking and he once did about gardening and I am sure he thought if could master gardening, why not cooking.









This is, however, Beverely Nichols, so an actual cookbook is not exactly what is presented. Even Nichols admits to this:

"This is supposed to be a cookery v book, but I suspect that it will turn out to be something rather different. True, it contains a number of Gaskin's own recipes, which, after his death, I found interlarded among the pages of the cookery books that he had collected over the years. these were sometimes scribbled over with mysterious comments on the guest who were to partake of them, such as 'No crab for Lady F'. I cannot remember any Lady F in my life, nor why she should have been denied this delicacy."

The "Gaskin" mentioned is Reginald Arthur Gaskin who was Nichols manservant for 40 years. When the writer, P.G. Woodhouse visited Nichols and was served by Gaskin, he remarked that Gaskin was, "the perfect Jeeves." While it is said that Woodhouse based his character on a butler he employed for research, Eugene Robinson, it comes as no surprise that Jeeves' Christian name is revealed in 1971 to be "Reginald" but then... Bertie was based on an earlier character named Reggie Pepper... but I digress....

Beverely Nichols, Reginald Gaskin and Nichols gardener, Oldfield.

You get the idea of Gaskin's demeanor. After forty years, when Gaskin died, Nichols found himself in his kitchen alone searching for something to eat. Nichols takes it upon himself to write a cookery book, but it becomes more of dining book filled with interesting people including but not limited to: Noel Coward, Oliver Messel, and William Randolph Hearst. His stories are wonderfully gossipy filled with dish and food.



Clearly, some of the recipes are unique to Nichols. This unnamed recipe is on Nichols "heard" about. It is by far the strangest recipe, and one you should replicate at your own risk.

Silver Chicken



I had to invent this title for this recipe does no appear in any cookery book which I have yet encountered.



You take the largest capon you can buy. It must be a whooper.



You then rinse 6 or 8 silver spoons or forks in hot water. Only silver will do; silver plate would be worse than useless.



Now, taking a firm grip of the chicken, push the silver up its behind. As if this were not enough humiliation, follow it with two heaped tablespoonful of ground ginger. All this sounds extremely sadistic but it is no more so than keeping the poor thing cramped in a cage for the whole of its unnatural life.



Having maltreated the chicken in this manner, bring a large saucepan of slightly salted water to a boil, put in the chicken, add 6 carrots and 6 medium sized onions, cram on the lid, and boil at the gallop for precisely 5 minutes.



Turn off the gas, lift up the saucepan, transport to the larder, and leave to cool overnight.



On the following morning you must be prepared for a shock. When you lift the chicken out and drain off the water, and remove the spoons and forks, you will find that they have all gone black. Do not be alarmed. A good soaking in any of the modern silver-cleaning preparations will restore them, though this may take rather longer than usual.



A chicken prepared in this manner tastes quite different from any chicken you have ever had before, unless you are at least sixty years old, and can recall the days of your youth, when a chicken really was a chicken, and not a synthetic Robot bird, reared by Robots for the mechanical digestion of other Robots. Apart from the taste, it can be carved in delicate slices, instead of falling to pieces in the manner of the average boiled chicken of today.

I cannot think of a better dinner companion than Beverely Nichols. When you try this recipe, do send us a photo -- or the chicken and the silverware!

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Chicken & Game

Brillat-Savarin once said, "A chicken is a canvas on which the cook can paint." In Chicken & Game by Ninette Lyon, she certainly does paint a nifty chicken. She also manages to to include guinea, squab, turkey and even a rabbit or two in her canvas. Lyon was a French cook who wrote a little book about cooking meat. Meat At Any Price became a huge hit in France. The book won several culinary prizes and the butchers of Les Halles offered Lyon's her weight in meat. Not a bad prize.

Chicken & Game was published in the early 1960's so there is no illustration for the recipes. They are quite straight forward and easy to assemble. Well, the chicken recipes are easy as anyone can find a chicken -- the pheasant and wild boar might be a tad more difficult if you live off the beaten track.

Chicken in the Sunday staple at Doe Run Farm (though we try to keep that a secret from the girls who lay our eggs!). I am a huge fan of giblets. Some of my favorite recipes involve chicken gizzards. Thumbing through Lyon's book, I found several recipes for chicken giblets, but this one included not only gizzards but an often overlooked veggie, salsify. Salsify looks like a big old hairy carrot and tastes mildly of oyster.

Giblets with Salsify

1 tablespoon fat
2 lb giblets
1 onion
1 lb salsify
1 clove garlic 2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 glasses bouillon or water
salt and pepper
parsley
1/2 clove garlic

Heat the fat in a flameproof casserole and brown the giblets, the onions sliced in rings, and the salsify cut in even pieces. Add crushed garlic and flour and brown these too. Season, and stir in the hot liquid. Close the lid, and simmer for 3 hours. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and a trace of garlic.

This is excellent. Trust me on this one. You can feel free to bring this to a potluck and you can rest assured that you will be the only one to bring it to the table.

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Nela’s Cookbook

Another Stolen Post From Famous Food Friday

Famous Food Friday today is featuring Nela Rubinstein. OK, fine, she is not a household name and her fame comes from being married to Maestro Arthur Rubinstein, so maybe we will call today’s endeavor, Near Famous Food Friday. What ever you call it, Nela Rubinstein can cook. I am sure Arthur Rubinstein was no big box of chocolates to cook for or to live with for that matter. (I am always leery of men who refer to themselves as “Maestro”.)

Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, Nela and Arthur Rubinstein

Nela Rubinstein was a friend of the noted hostess and publishing heir, Blanch Knopf. Knopf sent Rubinstein a contract for a cookbook that she refused to sign for 37 years. It was not as easy as pulling out her box of recipes and transcribing them. Growing up with a Lithuanian mother and Polish father, Nela Rubinstein had recipes not only in her native tongues but also in Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English. Measurements ran the gamut from “cup” and “teaspoon” to “garniec” (a kind of bucket) to “une bonne poignée d’ail” (a good fistful of garlic) and she insists on referring to “1/2 cup” as “1 deciliter”. After much transcribing and testing, the recipes ended up in the capable hands of Judith Jones.



Here is a simple fruity chicken dish. Rubinstein tells us that the easy and fragrant dish combines three simple ingredients that improve each other in the cooking – chicken, prunes, and butter.

Chicken with Prunes

1 roasting chicken, about 4 pounds
Salt and pepper to taste
8 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup (1/4 liter) chicken broth or use 1/2 Knorr chicken bouillon cube dissolved in 1 cup water; plus enough additional broth to cover prunes and raisins.
24 dried prunes
1/2 cup (1 deciliter) raisins
Rice


Wash and dry the chicken, and salt and pepper it inside and out. Put a 2-tablespoon lump of butter in the cavity and truss the bird. Place it in a low-sided roasting pan greased with the oil. Add the cup of chicken broth to the roasting pan.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Into a medium bowl pour enough boiling chicken broth to cover the prunes and raisins and let them soak. Roast the chicken for about 45 minutes or until half done, basting it often by rubbing it with the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter, the later spooning pan juices over it. Turn the chicken when basting it, so that it will color evenly.

When the chicken is half done, add the soaked prunes and raisins to the pan with their soaking liquid, basting the bird well and often then and thereafter. When the chicken is done, in about 1 1/2 hours, the pan juices should have the consistency of a light syrup. If they don’t, siphon off the juices and boil them down rapidly.

Carve the chicken and serve it over plain boiled rice surrounded by the prunes and raisins, with the pan juice pored over.

As for cooking she said "I was a frustrated artist and it was my way of creating."

What beautiful creations they are.

Arthur Rubinstein, Nela, and Their Children Eva and Paul, 1942

Moïse Kisling (French and Polish, 1891-1953)

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Clementine Paddleford’s Cook Young Cookbook

Here is another of the great Clementine Paddleford’s cookbooks, Clementine Paddleford’s Cook Young Cookbook. By the time she compiled this book she was falling out of fashion in the culinary world. As the food editor of This Week magazine, however she had access to a vast network of readers.

Felling somewhat dated in her own life, Paddleford writes in her introduction:

"Young is the world. Young is everything – fashion, recreation, reading, travel – and certainly food. High-spirited, high-geared young people are the trail blazers… cooking from “scratch” is no longer the brag thing…Now women put together three meals a day in about 90 minutes. Two decades ago it took five hours."

She wrote those words at the beginning of the “Swinging Sixties” trying to do for food what Marry Quant did for fashion. The experiment was a bit of a failure. While she received over 50,000 recipes from across the country, the book ended up being a glorified community cookbook, full of canned soups and vegetables.

Here is a typical example.

Chicken Pie Casserole

1 can (10 1/2 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted
1 cup milk
2 cans (5 1/2 ounces each) boned chicken or turkey
1 package (12 ounces) corn muffin mix

In a saucepan, blend together the soup and milk. Heat until bubbly. Turn into 9X9X2- inch pan. Add chicken, distributing pieces evenly. Meanwhile, prepare the corn muffin mix according to package directions. Spread over chicken mixture. Bake at 425F. about 20 minutes or until brown. If desired, accompany with hot gravy made by combining and heating 1 can (10 1/2 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup and 1 cup milk.

Not a vegetable in site – not even a canned one! Well, as you can see, this may be a quick recipe, but it is hardly “young” and “trail blazing.“ However, if you are having a nostalgic longing for the 60’s, or if you are looking for a collection of retro recipes with a truly authentic flavor (albeit a canned flavor) then drag out your mini skirt and cook up some of these fine recipes.

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