Beef Loaf My Way

November 8, 2007

The Gold Cookbook

Louis de Gouy

1947

First of all, before I begin my review of this recipe, I have to reference one of my favorite movies – The Wedding Singer with Adam Sandler. Specifically, the scene where Sandler finds out what Drew Barrymore’s married name is going to be: “You mean you’re going to be Julia GUL-IA?!!!” Now take a look at the cookbook author’s name. Louis de Gouy which in the French pronunciation would be louey gooey. Is that not the greatest thing ever?

It is not clear to me who Louis de Gouy was, or where he worked. According to the introduction de Gouy learned his trade from his father who was the Esquire of Cuisine at the Court of Austria and Belgium, but there is no further background information. Oscar of the Waldorf (who was maitre d’ there and famous for creating Veal Oscar as well as the Waldorf Salad) wrote the introduction and notes that he has known de Gouy for over 40 years.  Armed with this fact, I’m going to take a leap and assume that at least for part of that 40 years de Gouy was Executive Chef at the Waldorf. This seems logical in light of the time period when a very chic hotel would certainly have a traditional French-born chef in charge.

The book is the definitive American answer to Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire. It is a completely codified, utterly thorough, 1032-page tome containing 2198 recipes. de Gouy covers everything from variety meats to nuts, carving sets to pressure cookers. And to boot, he is totally literate which is shocking given that in order to have amassed this kind of knowledge he would have had to work in the kitchen and do nothing else for at least fifty years. The book is filled with bits of poetry, quotes from ancient texts and Latin phrases. It is the work collected over a lifetime by a man who was intensely passionate about his profession. If you go to France you will find Escoffier’s book in every single professional kitchen (warning: overstatement), and I am amazed that American chefs don’t treasure this book in the same way.

I chose the Beef Loaf mainly for its ringing endorsement:

“If you relish meat in meat loaf, with appropriate vegetable concomitants – and have the courage to fly in the face of convention – try a meat and vegetable loaf…the result may be presented even at a formal luncheon or dinner.”

Well ok then! I was also impressed by the sheer number of ingredients in addition to meat: minced onions, chopped tomatoes, chopped string beans, chopped celery, chopped mushrooms, grated carrots, minced parsley, crushed garlic, chopped chives, salt, pepper, thyme, dry mustard, Pique Seasoning, soy sauce, milk, and eggs. Then you line the whole thing with bacon. No joke. Although I did abide by the given amounts, I took exception with the preparation. De Gouy instructs us to add the vegetables and seasonings at different times, mixing them into the meat with each addition. I don’t like to over-mix that way so I combined the vegetables and seasonings first, added the meat, and mixed lightly once. Also, because de Gouy notes that you can use any kind of meat for this preparation I used two pounds of ground sirloin and one pound of ground pork.  The onions and tomatoes are sauteed together first but the mushrooms, which are also cooked first, are sauteed separately. I have no idea why it’s all cooked separately but to cut down on washing I just used the same pan. I don’t know what Pique Seasoning is, so I skipped it but subsequent research turned up something that sounds a little like Worcestershire.  Oh well. As I piled the prep bowl high with non-meat items I kept thinking the same thought: This is never, ever going to work.  This is never going to become a loaf that holds together.  It will fall apart as soon as I take it out of the pan and then it will fall apart when I cut it.  Especially because after two hours of cooking in a bain marie you’re supposed to flip it over and broil it to crisp the bacon.  In the back of my mind I was rooting for this recipe to fail.

But lo and behold the loaf stayed whole.  I flipped it out, crisped the bacon, and it was fine!  More than fine, it was stunning and smelled like nothing but yummy bacon.  I let it cool about 15 minutes, sliced it and was amazed at the look of the thing: lovely ground beef speckled with green from the string beans, white from the onions, and red from the tomatoes.  De Gouy recommends making a flour gravy from the drippings but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, it would have been made with 100% bacon fat and the thought made me a little ill.  But it was just delicious on its own and everyone loved it.

Veal with Apples

October 30

Late 1960’s/Early 1970’s

This dish is from my childhood but reappeared in my life right after I had Nicky. My mother brought it to us for dinner and I absolutely devoured it in some kind of crazy-sleep-deprived-post-partum frenzy. As soon as I found the key ingredient (a can of Comstock apples) at my local supermarket, I started making it myself. My mother believes that the recipe came from my grandparent’s country club and that when she and my dad ate it there for the first time my mother was so impressed that my grandfather marched into the kitchen and asked the chef for the recipe. Because my grandfather was still living in the story, and because I definitely recall eating it as a young child, my mom and I determined that she probably got the recipe no later than 1973.  It is a phenomenal amalgam of five simple ingredients: veal cutlets, onions, Comstock apples, cider vinegar and brown sugar.  The veal is dredged in flour, browned and set aside.  The onions are chopped and sauteed, the can of apples is added along with the vinegar and sugar and allowed to cook long enough to dissolve the sugar.  Then you layer the veal with the apple mixture and bake it, covered, for 30 minutes.  Bits of the veal coating fall into the apples and what stays stuck to the meat really absorbs the flavors.  I always request that the butcher not make the cutlets too thin, I don’t mind if they’re chewy and I don’t like to loose the veal-y-ness.  It’s sweet/sour/chewy perfection.  Comstock, for those that don’t know, is a brand that makes pie fillings (apple, blueberry, peach…) but for whatever reason, it’s is not widely available.  Because the apples are already sweetened, I reduce the amount of brown sugar by half, although I’m guessing my mother did not.  I served it with a bitter green salad and in the past have also made a blue cheese souffle which works well.  Note: this dish ain’t nothing to look at – very beige on beige – so I guess if I were really motivated I could mince chives for the top.  I just love it so much I don’t even care what it looks like.

Roast Duck with Sage Stuffing

October 24, 2007

Picture Cook Book

The Editors of Life

1958, Revised 1968

Picture Cook Book is my acorn, my first vintage cookbook, the one that got planted and grew into an enormous vintage cookbook oak tree. I think I bought it at a church book fair in Connecticut in the late 1990’s and like all first loves, I fell hard for this one and still love it the best. It’s an over-sized volume that is filled with amazing photos, excellent writing, extremely well-researched recipes, and of course, loads of era-appropriate but politically incorrect references. In the “Regional Favorites” photo there is a proud cigar store Indian along with beans cooked by “Boston housewives”. There is a chapter called “Man’s Job: Steak”.  Oh how I love this book.

The recipes definitely fall into the “we assume you can cook” category and contain little detail or elaboration. I was in the mood for duck and after the burger fiasco this summer I really wanted to use an old book. Oddly, this recipe is not in the chapter on game, but rather in the chapter on herbs. The ingredients are few and simple: two teaspoons chopped sage (dry? fresh?), a five-pound oven-ready duck, 4 apples chopped (peeled? green? red? large dice? small dice?), three onions chopped (big onions? small?), 3 cups course bread crumbs (dry? fresh?), 1/4 cup sour cream, salt and pepper. First you saute the duck heart, gizzard and liver, remove them from the pan and saute the onions and apples (I used medium onions to be safe and firm Fuji apples which I peeled and diced small). Taking a cue from the Savory Stews cookbook, I decided to saute everything in the fat that I had removed from the duck which worked out amazingly well because the stuffing ended up with lots of yummy duck skin cracklings. When the apple/onions are soft you add them to the gizzards and bread crumbs (I used dried) and sage. I didn’t think two teaspoons of sage was enough for the quantity of stuffing so I upped it to four. The sour cream bound the mixture and the result was so intense and delicious I really had to hold myself back from eating it before I stuffed the duck.

The only directions for cooking the duck itself are “set it on a rack and roast in a slow oven (325) or until done.” This seemed a little long for me so I shortened the roasting to two hours and then turned the broiler on for 15 minutes to crisp the skin. It was phenomenal, and what really made me smile was that the stuffing only has FOUR ingredients. Whereas most people (myself included) will admit that a stuffed turkey is all about the stuffing, this recipe was all about letting the duck shine. The kids loved it (they got the legs) and later that night Doug declared it the best thing I had made so far. Although in an attempt to cut the fattiness of the bird, we drank an awful lot of wine.

End note: I noticed that the copy editor of Picture Cook Book is John Thorne.  Could it be?

Pot-Roasted Veal Swiss-Style

October 20, 2007

The Good Cook Techniques and Recipes/Beef & Veal

The Editors of Time-Life Books

1978

I bought this book, along with the Poultry volume, at a yard sale for a grand total of two dollars. Although the book is not particularly old (30 years) there is still something gloriously dated about its cover which is why I was attracted to it: it shows a standing roast of beef being carved. The meat is rare, the juice is dripping onto the cutting board, and it is blanketed in a thick gorgeous layer of fat. You would NEVER see such a thing on a new cookbook. No one shows fat any more and it’s such a pity, because it makes whatever is underneath all the more tasty. So that’s why I bought this book, and then tracked down the rest of the series on Ebay (there are 17 in all). Interesting to note that Richard Olney is the chief series consultant.

The title is true to its word, each book explores its topic in depth with multiple technical photos and a big compilation of recipes in the back (culled from other sources). The chapters are divided into specific cooking techniques – Roasting, Broiling and Grilling, Frying, Braising, Poaching, A Medley of Methods – and each chapter offers variations. The thing that gives me the biggest kick about this book and this series in general is that each chapter heading has a sub-heading and each variation a different sub-heading. Example: Broiling and Grilling/Methods that call for tender cuts or Braising/Using moisture to meld flavors. Just imagine the difficulty you would have coming up with hundreds of sub-heads! I have this vision of a crazy editor standing over everyone screaming “Give me more sub-heads, and make them pithy!”

The recipe I used comes from a book called The Robert Carrier Cookery Course by Robert Carrier and was published in 1974. In it, you slice a veal roast in six places, not all the way through, and lay a slice of proscuitto and a slice of gruyere in each cut. The roast is re-tied with strips of fatback, browned, and then braised in white wine with carrots and onions. Following the French method, the braising vegs are discarded and the roast is served with sauteed mushrooms and caramelized baby onions. The sauce is reduced, cream is added and you’re there. I made the mistake here of thinking that if I pureed the braising vegs into the sauce it would thicken without the need for heavy cream (2/3 cup!!), but I was wrong. The purreed sauce just ended up lumpy and in need of cream anyway. Otherwise the roast was splendid. The cheese melts into the meat, the proscuitto gives the bland veal a little salty kick, and the sweet onions are the perfect accompaniment. I served it with a green salad and Doug and the kids gobbled it up.

Chicken Stewed in Orange Sauce

October 19, 2007

Savory Stews

Mary Savage

1969

Doug and I each have menu trigger words.  Doug’s trigger words are “Crispy” and “Bacon”; If anything on the menu contains either of those words in the description he will be drawn to it.  If the item contains both of those words he will order it automatically, even if it’s dessert.  My trigger words are “marrow” and “pudding”.  If all my teeth fell out tomorrow I would have no sustenance issues.  I love soft foods, I love braised foods and truth be told, I would eat all my food in pudding form if I could.  For this reason guests at my house can always count on pudding for dessert.  Serving pudding also camouflages the fact that I am a god-awful baker. Justification: cooking is from the heart, baking is pharmacology and I am not a pharmacist.  Anyway, I was feeling frustrated by the current mid-October heat wave and being gypped out of my lovely, mushy, Fall stews, when I decided that weather be damned, I was going to stew something.

I have no idea how this cookbook came to be in my collection, but it is certainly fortuitous.  It’s well-written and well-researched and has a bunch of interesting recipes including one for Covered Wagon Stew with Marrow Dumplings.  Zing!  Ms. Savage utilizes an unusual cooking method in many of the recipes which I love: she cuts off some of the fat of whatever meat she’s using and uses it for browning.  It’s genius!

The Chicken in Orange Sauce is less a stew than a braise.  The chicken is dredged in flour, browned and then partially submerged in orange juice and Grand Marnier for a 45 minute simmer.  The fat that is left in the pot after browning is used to make a roux which thickens the cooking sauce (also flavored with cinnamon, cloves and a dash of Tabasco).  I only changed one thing in the preparation, which calls for 1/2 cup of raisins and 1/2 cup of chopped almonds to be cooked in the sauce.  I added the raisins only and then toasted the almonds to use for garnish.  Who likes soggy almonds?   I served the chicken with buttered bulgur and it was truly delicious.

Pheasant Baked in Cream Menu

October 9, 2007

Betty Crocker’s Dinners for Two Cookbook

1958

Pheasan Baked in Cream

Wild Rice

Sauteed Tomatoes

Orange-Bermuda Onion salad with Garlic French Dressing

Caraway Bread Sticks

Caramel Custard

“Oh lord. Oh lord why am I attempting this menu in the middle of the week when I have no babysitter?”  Those were my thoughts as I prepared the above dinner, which actually came about because of stew.   I was dying to make stew. I love stew in the fall, I even have a cookbook from the 1960’s that’s all about stews that I could use.  The problem is that even though we’re in October, we are not having stew weather.  Yesterday it got up to almost 90 degrees.  So as a consolation I decided to do something seasonal that was NOT a stew, and BC’s Dinners for Two had a whole “Seasonal Specials: Fall” section. So there I was, preparing a gazillion-course meal that included bread sticks from scratch on a school night with no childcare.

It’s difficult to start writing about this menu because so much of it was new and interesting for me.  I guess the bread sticks top the list.  These are yeast-based bread sticks that you begin several hours before dinner, let rest, roll out and let rise.  Other than the timing issue though, they were really easy to make and we LOVED them.  Lots of ideas running through my head about how to flavor them next time: garlic, fennel, bacon.  The basic recipe is simple and versatile and would lend itself easily to mixing and matching.

The sauteed tomatoes are really tomato slices dipped in egg and cracker crumbs and browned quickly  in butter.  I used saltines which worked out super well.  The crumbs brown quickly in the butter so the tomatoes stay firm during cooking while the outside gets crisp and buttery.  They were delicious with the onion and orange salad that had been dressed with the garlic French dressing.  What BC calls French dressing, I’ve noted before, is a well-proportioned vinaigrette with both lemon juice and vinegar.

The wild rice is cooked in the most unusual manner: you poor boiling water over the bowl of rice, let it sit twenty minutes, then drain and repeat two more times.  Because I had forgotten to cover it the first two times, we didn’t end up eating the rice with the meal, but it wasn’t missed much.  I ate it with the leftovers.

The pheasant recipe is simple but absolutely delicious.  Cut the pheasant in pieces, brown in fat, pour cream over, sprinkle with chopped onion, minced garlic, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.  During cooking the cream combines with the run-off fat from the Pheasant and becomes custard-like.  The recipe calls for an accompanying cream gravy but it was totally unnecessary given the consistency of the cream at the end of the cooking.  One thing I love about this menu is the intro:

“Have the hunter pluck, draw, clean and cut up the pheasant.  Refrigerate 2 or 3 days before cooking.”

There was no farm-raised game in the 1950’s, game was game, shot by hunters and allowed to rest to relax the muscle.  It was much tougher (and probably tastier) than the wussy game we have today.  For this reason I shortened the cooking time from two hours to one.  As I was separating the little bird from its backbone it occurred to me that this was a sad and wasteful act, so I cooked the backbone (and the liver) in the cream with the other pieces.  Ultimately, I think this probably added a lot of flavor to the sauce, it was excellent.
The caramel custards were perfect and I learned a valuable lesson by making them:  even if your caramel is clumpy and gross when you scrape it agonizingly into the bottom of the individual bowls, after they bake under the custards they liquify into a lovely sauce. Who knew?

All in all, score yet another one for Betty.

Come Over and Bring the Children Brunch

October 6, 2007

The General Foods Kitchens Cookbook

1959

Come over and bring the children brunch

Broiled Grapefruit (with honey for children, with brown sugar and brandy for grownups)

Apple Griddle Cakes with Hot Spiced Syrup

Broiled Sausages

Milk Shakes and Coffee

Oh how I love this cookbook and its theme meals. There I was, having invited my friend GiGi over for a Betty Brunch, paging through my books, trying to find something that wouldn’t repulse her and then, Eureka! The GFK Cookbook came through for me with an entire section of brunch menu ideas. Although GiGi does not have kids, mine were actually going to be involved for this Betty endeavor so I chose the menu that had options for all ages.

Along with coconut, beets, mayonnaise, and anything flavored with lemon, grapefruit is on Doug’s Will Not Eat list. Neither Nicky or Lulu was particularly taken with the idea of the grapefruit either, despite promises of a honey chaser, so GiGi and I enjoyed these together. I love grapefruit in any form, but unfortunately my broiler is not that strong and the poor citrus got a little dessicated before it really caramelized on top. Still, it was very tasty. The coffee was, well, coffee. And the milkshakes which were supposed to be the kids-coffee-substitute, were made from Postum. I had to call my mother to ask what this was and then go to four different supermarkets to find it. Postum is a coffee-flavored instant drink made with wheat and molasses that was/is enjoyed by legions of people (including my grandmother) who didn’t/don’t want to consume caffeine. For the menu, the Postum is whipped up with cold milk, brown sugar and crushed ice (my addition). My kids, in an uncharacteristic show of unity, took one look at their “milkshakes” and screamed. Oh well.

The apple griddle cakes were wonderful and enjoyed by all, as were the broiled breakfast sausages. The hot spiced maple syrup, in which syrup is heated with butter, cinnamon, allspice and mace, had the odd effect of transforming real maple syrup into something that tasted like Mrs. Butterworth’s.

GiGi and I, who see each other far too little, were so busy catching up and gossiping that we barely discussed the meal. But maybe I achieved something here. There was nothing unusual about what we had (except the Postum) so my family, my lovely friend and I enjoyed a meal in which the purpose of the project was transcended. The food was good and the derivation of the recipes was irrelevant.

Lamb Stew Superior to His Mother’s

September 22, 2007

Helen Gurley Brown’s Single Girl’s Cookbook

1969

The Single Girl’s Cookbook is part of that subset of my collection I’ve mentioned before (written by non-chef celebrities) and yes, this is the actual name of the recipe. It is in a chapter called “Landlord Stews”, the basic premise of which is to cook delicious smelling foods in your single-girl rental apartment to get your stingy landlord to fix things and also possibly paint. Um, ok. Real estate in New York was clearly quite different in 1969 than it was in the 1990’s when I was single and cooking for myself. I could have stood naked with a cauldron of fried chicken in the hallway of my shabby apartment building in an effort to get my landlord to rid the place of mice, but he still would have ignored me. Which brings me to my point about this book. Although Gurley Brown is considered to have been a five-star general in the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, liberating women everywhere from stifling domestic frustration, this book feels demeaning. First of all, she admits in the introduction that she is neither single nor a good cook. Second, the writing is painfully daily candy-ish/drag queen-y: “Did you think I was going to give you my recipes and instructions for fabulous feasts? Silly girl! I love you and want the best for you. That’s why I’ve enlisted the help of a really wonderful cook to write this cookbook with me.” I will note here that said wonderful cook is not credited anywhere but this sentence. The revolutionary general goes on to say that one of the best things a girl can do if she wants to learn to cook is to flirt with the butcher:

“Most butchers are darlings. They’ve taken out all their aggressions on the brisket of beef and will be helpful to and enthusiastic over a girl who’s making a real effort to cook something more daring than hot dogs wrapped in bacon. Take this recipe book right along to the market with you as you get your friend to help line you up just the right cut of meat. (He’s a man, isn’t he? It’s no different from asking a broker about bonds.)”

Lastly, what bothers me about the argument of this book (and I guess Gurley Brown herself) is that although she promoted the idea of single women being able to have it all, there is an underlying message that having a man is still the best of all possible worlds. Two hundred pages of the Single Girl’s Cookbook are devoted to seducing men via food. It’s almost the companion book to Esquire’s Handbook for Hosts. Many mid-century cookbooks describe women’s domestic roles in a way that’s dated but they aren’t trying to be so cutesy about it, nor are they trying to “liberate” women through better cooking skills.

I know she is touted as one of the greatest editors of all times but in her introduction to the lamb stew recipe she uses the words “greasy” and “revolting” as in, ” Lamb stew can be fat, greasy and revolting.” If I hadn’t been so intent on making lamb stew I would have just put the book down right then. It’s actually not a horrible recipe, although you need two days to make it. The first day you brown the lamb pieces, add chicken stock, water and wine, and cook it for a couple of hours at low temp. After it cools you put the whole thing in the fridge to chill until the next day at which point you quickly and easily spoon off the fat which has hardened on top. When you re-heat the lamb for serving you add new potatoes, carrots, white turnips, peas and pearl onions that have been caramelized separately. I followed the directions and list of ingredients to the letter, refusing only to turn all the vegetables in the old-fashioned French style because it’s pointlessly time consuming. The final stew is neither greasy nor revolting, but it isn’t very flavorful either and the cooking broth was way too thin. As to the title, I am confident the stew is superior to Doug’s mother’s, but only because I am 100% sure lamb stew is not even in her repertoire.

A Rant, a Rave and a Recipe

Last week in Pennsylvania I made a recipe for Duck Burgers that was written by Florence Fabricant and printed in The NY Times. Over the years I have had many, many food-related jobs, among them a brief stint as a restaurant publicist that I like to refer to as “The Lowest Point in My Life.” Although I met some of my dearest and most beloved friends at this job, the work itself was wretched. A restaurant publicist is the turkey between two moldy slices of bread: the restaurant chef who always wants you to get him on the cover of GQ no matter how icky his food, fat his physique and weak his ability to form a coherent sentence, and the food writer who has seen it all and been everywhere and therefore treats you – the publicist – like a giant nagging moron. The blistering hot sandwich press that is squeezing the last shreds of your self-respect and dignity is the publicist boss who doesn’t understand why you CAN’T get your fat chef on the cover of GQ accompanied by a brilliant profile by the bitchy journalist that hates you just for calling him. Of all the food writers, Florence Fabricant was in a league of her own as far as sheer nastiness. I lived in fear of calling her, it kept me up at night. We even had one person on our team who was the designated Fabricant-story-pitcher because he had, at one point in the past, briefly been treated with some sort of vague civility by her. So it is with great pleasure now that I totally trash her horrible Duck Burger recipe which not only tasted awful but is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with food in 2007. In my defense, I cut this recipe out because I love burgers and I love duck. I just wish I had stopped to think. Why in the world would you take three gorgeous (and expensive) magret duck breasts and treat them like ground chuck? Why indeed, they tasted neither like duck nor like particularly good burgers. After dinner I went to look in an old Time Life cookbook from 1956 where I found a perfectly simple and lovely recipe for Duck with cherries and all I could think was how much I wanted Florence to rot.

On a happier note, I also brined and roasted a whole turkey breast last week and decided that rather than make the usual white white/chicken stock reduction sauce, I would use the flour/fat recipe from Betty Crocker’s Dinners for Two. Oh my god, what a revelation! It was so rich with turkey flavor I can’t wait to do this for Thanksgiving. A funny side note is that I was telling my friend Courtney (my cooking soul mate) about my new fondness for flour-based sauces and she said in her family they always called it “Goy Gravy.” I don’t know why I think this is so hysterical, but I do.

With all this lovely leftover turkey I decided to re-visit Ladies Who Lunch and found a fabulous recipe for Devonshire Sandwiches. I read in a different book that these originated near Devonshire Street in Pittsburgh so the idea of lunching ladies eating a blue collar sandwich is a wee bit funny. You lay toasted bread in a shallow baking pan (I used fresh Pullman), top it off with sliced turkey, crisp bacon and then a bechamel-cheese sauce which has been made with some of the bacon drippings. The sauce is also flavored with dry mustard and crumbled sage. You brown the lot under the broiler (I decided not to use any additional cheese) and then serve. We all really enjoyed this dish, except for Nicky of course (white bread, white turkey, white cheese sauce, I can’t believe I thought he would even go near it.)

Onion Sandwich and Prone Pleasure

August 14, 2007

The Eating in Bed Cookbook

Barbara Ninde Byfield

1962

Truthfully, until today I was never one hundred percent sure that this was actually a cookbook and not a book of humor with funny drawings. The introduction talks about the “secret, wholesome indulgence to eating in bed which perhaps explains why it has not received the uniformly good press of other things which go on in bed and which are certainly no less an indulgence” and the whole book pretty much continues in this hilarious, slightly snarky, suggestive tone. The chapter headings are “Postures and Procedures”, “Conversationalists”, “Consolers”, “Just Because You Love Yourself”, “Reducing in Bed”, “Eating in the Bathtub”, and “Poleaxers”. The recipes themselves are minimalist and more about the titles such as Meat Bawls in the “Consolers” chapter and Instant Oblivion in “Poleaxers”. The drawings are beautiful and clever and done by Ms Byfield herself: various characters sprawled out on the sheets or in the tub, blissed out and content or a bit mischievous.

Doug often doesn’t get home until long after I’m asleep and as this was shaping up to be one of those sad and lonely nights, I decided to make myself an Onion Sandwich and then Prone Pleasure for dessert, both from the “Just Because You Love Yourself” chapter. I have to say that while I was prepping my bed tray I felt really giddy, at which point I had an epiphany that this was actually a cookbook. This was exciting and it did feel indulgent to be preparing food to eat alone in bed! Especially an onion sandwich which I knew would be fabulous to me but deadly to others. About the onion sandwich, Ms Byfield cautions: “You had jolly well better love yourself before eating onion sandwiches. Afterwards nobody else will.” Who cares? Doug won’t even be home until midnight! Because there are only a few ingredients I went top-of-the-line on all of them: Vidalia onion, French butter with fleur de sel, fresh bread, and crumbled thick-cut Berkshire bacon. The edges of the sandwich, once stuffed, are buttered again and then rolled in chopped parsley (which goes a long way to offsetting the effects of the onion according to Ms Byfield). As I write this I am smiling at the memory of that sandwich and the sheer joy of eating the crunchy, salty, buttery, creation leaning up against my pillows. It was insanely good.

To top it off I made A Prone Pleasure for dessert which is described as a delicacy “suitable for those moods of self-congratulation, self-indulgence, and self-celebration which come upon us all from time to time and for which there is so little adequate outlet in the ordinary rough-and-tumble of everyday life.” Husband not coming home all week? Check. Un-validated mother of two small children? Check. Self celebration sounds about right to me. In this case it came in the form of a bowl of whipped cream into which you fold a jar of apricot baby food (yes!) and then add a dash of lemon juice and orange flower water. Ms Byfield says to “garnish this bit of frippery with the crumbs of in the bottom of a nearly finished box of peanut brittle” but since I don’t have such a box, and I don’t like peanut brittle, I tossed some toasted slivered almonds on top instead. Fantastic! Could anything possibly be more luxurious than eating a bowl of sweet whipped cream and baby food in bed?

There aren’t too many recipes in this book which are super interesting, but when the winter rolls around and Doug hasn’t been home in a week, I am definitely digging it out again.