Recently in Recipe Category

More than one friend has alerted me to weird banana recipes lately. This of course led me to dig out all of the banana cookbooks I could find in the Kirschner Collection. Actually, these are promotional pamphlets more than actual books, and they are chock full of just these sorts of recipes (Ham Banana Rolls With Cheese Sauce!). This got me wondering about why these sorts of pamphlets proliferated when they did, which led to more research on the history of bananas in the U.S., which led to finding Peter Chapman's Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World. I recommend it if you want to know more about the seedy underbelly of the banana industry. And just who is this United Fruit Company? Well, now we know them as Chiquita. Most (but not all) of these pamphlets were published by United Fruit/Chiquita. With that in mind, I'd like to take you on a visual tour of some of my favorite moments in banana propaganda. [Full disclosure: I am a banana fiend.]

As a final bonus for a friend on Twitter, I leave you with a recipe. You must take a photo and report back if you ever make and eat this.

Banana Sardine Boats
From This Way to the Banana Salad Bazaar (1940)

Ingredients
1 ripe banana
2 sardines
1/4 lemon
Salad greens

Peel and cut banana crosswise into halves and place on salad plate. Cut a groove lengthwise along the top of each half. Fit a whole sardine into each groove so it will stand upright. Garnish with lemon and crisp greens.
Serve with mayonnaise.

In case you missed it, yesterday was Pi Day in honor of that famous irrational number 3.14152965... The staff of Magrath Library celebrated with a pi(e) potluck (highly recommended, even for the non-mathematically-inclined). I took this opportunity to try out a recipe from the Kirschner Collection that is unlike any pie I've ever made before. Mrs. Foster's Lime Pie from Maida Heatter's New Book of Great Desserts is a light, airy, frozen pie that would just be perfect on a hot summer day (which incidentally, is exactly what I'm dreaming of right now). Topped with some whipped cream, it was a big hit at the potluck.

Mrs. Foster's Lime Pie
From Maida Heatter's New Book of Great Desserts(1982)

Crumb Crust

1 1/4 cups graham-cracker crumbs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Adjust a rack one-third up from the bottom of the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a bowl, mix the crumbs with the sugar. Then add the butter and stir with a rubber spatula until the butter is evenly distributed; the mixture will not hold together.
Turn the mixture into a 9-inch ovenproof glass pie plate. With your fingertips loosely distribute the crumbs evenly over the bottom and sides of the plate. Then press firmly, first on the sides and then on the bottom, to form a compact crust.
Bake for 10 minutes and then cool to room temperature. While the crust cools, prepare the filling.

Filling

5 eggs (graded large), separated
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup fresh lime juice (grate the rind of 2 limes before squeezing, to use below)
Finely grated rind of 2 limes
1/8 teaspoon salt

Adjust rack one-third up and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In the small bowl of an electric mixer, be the yolks with 1/2 cup of the sugar, reserving remaining 1/4 cup of sugar, at high speed for 5 minutes until the mixture is very pale and thick.
On low speed gradually add the lime juice, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula and beating only until mixed.
Remove from the mixer and stir in the grated rind.
Turn the mixture into the top of a large double boiler over shallow hot water on moderate heat (the water should simmer gently). Cook, scraping the sides and bottom constantly for 6 or 7 minutes or until the mixture thickens enough to coat a wooden spoon. When it is just done, a candy thermometer will register 175 to 180 degrees.
Remove the top of the double boiler immediately and pour the mixture into a large mixing bowl. Stir occasionally until it cools.
In the large bowl of an electric mixer, add the salt to the egg whites and beat until they hold a soft shape. Reduce the speed to moderate and gradually add the reserved 1/4 cup of sugar. Increase the speed again and continue to beat until the mixture holds a definite point, but not until it is actually stiff or dry.
Gradually, in three additions, fold the yolk mixture into the whites, handling very little and very carefully. It is not necessary to fold the first and second additions thoroughly.
Turn the mixture into the crust. It will look like there is too much filling, but it is all right, just mound it high. (It will be about 4 inches high in the middle.)
Bake for 15 minutes until the top is lightly browned.
Cool on a rack to room temperature. (The pie will shrink slightly as it cools -- O.K.) Then freeze the pie. When it is frozen, cover it with plastic wrap. The pie may be kept frozen for up to 3 weeks. Serve it frozen with whipped cream.

It is the end of February -- the time of year when Minnesotans' thoughts turn longingly to seeds, gardens, and produce. I was in just this sort of funk coupled with an itch to bake something when I came across Janet Ballantyne's Desserts from the Garden in the Kirschner Collection. This book has recipes from the expected (strawberry tart), to the very unique and intriguing (green tomato chocolate cake). I decided to try out the carrot chocolate chip bars since I had nearly everything on hand. They're a very dense, not-too-sweet bar and the carrot gives just a hint of what lies ahead.

Carrot Chocolate Chip Bars
From Desserts from the Garden by Janet Ballantyne, 1983

Ingredients
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups grated raw carrots
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°
Cream together the peanut butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix well with the peanut butter mixture. Stir in the carrots and the chocolate chips. Butter a 9" x 13" pan. Spread the batter evenly in the pan. Bake for 40 minutes, cool completely, and cut in squares.

Today I have cookies on the brain, and now this means I must make a field trip to Wilson Library on the West Bank Campus to find a microfilm reel of the December, 1976 issue of Redbook. Why? Because today while I was pillaging the cookie section of the Kirschner Collection, I came across Redbook's Get-Ready-for-Christmas Cookie & Candy Cookbook. This "book" is really just a pamphlet with some recipes -- it's a teaser for the December, 1976 issue of Redbook, which featured a visit to Minneapolis and St. Paul for the holidays, as well as recipes from our best Minnesota bakers. I would love to see all the recipes (hence the microfilm), but this pamphlet is a nice start. There are a couple recipes in it from Anne Dimock, who I'm guessing is the same Anne Dimock that wrote Humble Pie in 2005. If any of you out there who participated in this issue, I'd love to hear from you. In the mean time, here's a recipe:

Anne Dimock's Bondkakor (Swedish Country Lasses)
From Redbook's Get-Ready-for-Christmas Cookie & Candy Cookbook, 1976

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup chopped almonds
2/3 cup lightly salted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon dark molasses

Mix flour with baking powder and almonds. In a large mixing bowl beat butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time and then add the molasses. Stir in flour mixture about 1/2 cup at a time. Divide dough into thirds and with lightly floured hands roll each piece into a cylinder about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in wax paper and freeze until firm. 1 hour or more. Heat oven to 375°F. Cut cylinders of dough into 1/4-inch-thick slices and place 1/4 inch apart on greased baking sheets. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until firm and edges are golden. Remove from oven and transfer cookies to wire rack to cool.

We're a week from Thanksgiving, so here I am with Turkey Tips from the Kirschner Collection! This year, since we also just finished up a presidential election, I'm giving you tips from the Presidential Cook Book (1910) which was adapted from The White House Cook Book. As you can see, the cover of this cookbook features a picture of a turkey ... and a hatchet-wielding chef (no pardon for you, Turkey!) Now, on to the tips:

On Carving:

When carving use a chair slightly higher than the ordinary size, as it gives a better purchase on the meat, and appears more graceful than when standing, as is often quite necessary when carving a turkey... More depends on skill than strength. The platter should be placed opposite, and sufficiently near to give perfect command of the article to be carved, the knife of medium size, sharp with a keen edge. Commence by cutting the slices thin, laying them carefully to one side of the platter, then afterwards placing the desired amount on each guest's plate, to be served in turn by the servant.

When serving fowls, or meat, accompanied with stuffing, the guests should be asked if they would have a portion, as it is not every one to whom the flavor of stuffing is agreeable; in filling their plates, avoid heaping one thing upon another, as it makes a bad appearance.

Gravies should be sent to the table very hot, and in helping one to gravy or melted butter, place it on a vacant side of the plate; no pour it over their meat, fish or fowl, that they may use only as much as they like.

Turkey Scallop
From the Presidential Cook Book (1910) by Fanny Lemira Fillette & Hugo Ziemann

Pick the meat from the bones of cold turkey and chop it fine. Put a layer of bread crumbs on the bottom of a buttered dish, moisten them with a little milk, then put in a layer of turkey with some of the filling, and cut small pieces of butter over the top; sprinkle with pepper and salt; then another layer of bread-crumbs, and so on until the dish is nearly full; add a little hot water to the gravy left from the turkey and pour over it; then take two eggs, two tablespoonfuls of milk, one of melted butter, a little salt and cracker-crumbs as much as will make it thick enough to spread on with a knife; put bits of butter over it, and cover with a plate. Bake three quarters of an hour. Ten minutes before serving, remove the plate and let it brown.

We have several editions of that venerable tome, The White House Cook Book here in the Kirschner Collection. With the election looming, I've had presidential recipes on the brain (well, along with a lot of other much more stressful issues -- let's just say I've had my own Abigael Evans moments this season.) This week I attended a potluck in which everyone was asked to bring a dish that was a favorite of a US president. Fortunately, there are multiple websites dedicated to this topic, so the hardest part was selecting a dish. I chose red flannel hash in honor of William McKinley because he lived in Canton, Ohio which is near to my home town. The 1900 edition of the White House Cook Book was published during McKinley's presidency and includes a picture of his wife, Ida Saxton McKinley, in the front. The McKinleys are said to have greatly enjoyed eggs and starchy foods (mmm), but on special occasions such as their anniversary, they ate hot lobster salad. There is not a recipe for hot lobster salad in the cookbook, but there are two lobster salad recipes. Here is one of them:

Lobster Salad No. 1
From The White House Cook Book by Hugo Ziemann and Fanny Lemira Gillette, 1900

Prepare a sauce with the coral of a fine, new lobster, boiled fresh for about half and hour. Pound and rub it smooth, and mix very gradually with a dressing made from the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, a tablespoonful of made mustard, three of salad oil, two of vinegar, one of white powdered sugar, a small teaspoonful of salt, as much black pepper, a pinch of cayenne and yolks of two fresh eggs. Next fill your salad bowl with some shred lettuce, the better part of two leaving the small curled centre to garnish your dish with. Mingle with this the flesh of your lobster, torn, broken or cut into bits seasoned with salt and pepper and a small portion of the dressing. Pour over the whole the rest of the dressing; put your lettuce-hearts down the centre and arrange upon the sides slices of hard-boiled eggs.

Note: Our copies of The White House Cook Book are getting quite brittle. If you are interested in trying out more of the recipes, this entire book has been digitized and is full-text searchable at the Internet Archive. Hooray for the public domain!

It's full-on autumn here and that means it is time for soup! Aside from the weather, I am choosing to share a recipe from Evelyn Gendel's Soup! this week for a number of reasons:

1. The cover is bright orange and reminds me of the Open Access Week paraphernalia we've been handing out at the Libraries all week. In fact, I could very much use some soup after handing out OA Week brochures outside this afternoon.


2. You may have noticed a child's handwriting on the front. This book apparently belonged to Jimmy (not Lisa). I'm a sucker for personal artifacts (some might say defacements) like that.


3. This particular recipe calls for winter squash which is abundant right now. In fact, you can buy pie pumpkins right here on the St. Paul campus from the Soils Club.

Soupe au Pistou*
From Soup! by Evelyn Gendel (1967)

Ingredients:
3 medium potatoes
1/2 pound string beans
1 pound broad beans (or fresh lima beans)
1/4 pound slice winter squash
6 cups water (about)
salt
1/2 cup vermicelli, in pieces
3 cloves garlic
1 small bunch fresh basil
1 medium-small tomato
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon grated mild cheese

Peel and dice the potatoes, break string beans into pieces, shell broad beans (or lima beans), peel and seed the slice of winter squash. Put all into a big soup pot with slightly salted water, bring to a boil and simmer, covered until soft -- a good hour. Add some thick vermicelli and continue cooking until vermicelli are soft (5-7 minutes). Add more water if soup gets too thick.

Meanwhile, pee the garlic, strip basil leaves off stems (discard stems), peel and seed the tomato. Put garlic, basil leaves and tomato into a mortar or heavy bowl and pound and rub them to a paste. Then slowly stir in olive oil, drop by drop, as if for a mayonnaise. Thicken with the grated cheese.

As soon as the soup is ready, put this pistou into a soup tureen, pour the boiling soup over it, and serve at once.

* Pistou (like Italian pesto) is the word for pestle, and for what the mortar and pestle produce.

Do you dream of wandering through a forest where bowls of ice cream sprout up from the ground, and metallic mountains glimmer in the distance? If so, you should try some White Mountain ice cream. The White Mountain Freezer Co. of Nashua, N.H. published Frozen Dainties in the early 1900's to promote their ice cream freezer. The writers of this pamphlet take their ice cream very seriously, as well as their sherbets, water ices, and frozen beverages. They also make sure to put in a plug for their ice cream and/or freezer on every page, such as "The White Mountain Freezer is one of the great conveniences of advanced civilization and has come to be a necessity in the modern home" and "Nothing so refreshing to brain and brawn of the business man, the farmer, the mechanic, the working man, as White Mountain Ice-Cream." Here is there recipe for plain ice-cream, although I can't promise that it will be true White Mountain Ice-Cream if you can't get your hands on one of these crank freezers:

Plain Ice-Cream
From Frozen Dainties by The White Mountain Freezer Co., 19--

Ingredients
1 Pt. Milk
1 Cup Sugar
2 Scant Tablespoonfuls Flour
1 Pt. Cream
2 Eggs
1 Saltspoonful Salt [note: I believe 1 saltspoonful = 1/4 tsp]
2 Tablespoonfuls Flavoring

Boil the milk and cream, reserving a quarter of a cup of milk. Mix the sugar, flour and salt thoroughly. Beat the eggs till light, add the cold milk and the sugar mixture, and when well mixed add the boiling milk. Turn back into the double boiler and cook twenty minutes. Stir constantly till smooth, and after that occasionally. Strain through a gravy strainer, add more sugar if needed, and when cold, add the flavoring. Freeze as usual. This is a good foundation for an inexpensive ice cream, and if a larger quantity be desired, more cream and sugar may be added with the flavoring. If the milk be boiling when the flour is added, and cooked thoroughly, there will be no taste of the flour. If you have no cream, use all milk, four eggs, and add one rounding tablespoonful of butter when you take the thickened milk from the fire.

When I was a kid, I was allowed to choose whether to bring a packed lunch or buy my lunch in the school cafeteria. I loved marking up my monthly menu, and developed a strange liking for our school's "parsley potatoes" which were not actually recognizable as potatoes in any way. By the time I was in junior high, though, I took to packing my own lunch every day because the school lunches (the same school lunches -- my school was K-12 in one building) were not at all appetizing, and there were no options for vegetarians. So my lunch was usually dry cereal, a granola bar, and yogurt. Some other usual lunches I remember at the table were a bag of microwave popcorn (that was my sister's favorite lunch); an ice cream bar (on its own); and green hot dogs (I have no idea why they were green, but a friend of mine wrote a song about them.) Sometimes I'm amazed that we all didn't get scurvy.
So, it is with particular interest that I have been reading the news about school lunches over the past few years. I am drawn to the personal stories like the 9 year old girl's blog about her less-than filling school lunches which has become an international lunch blogging phenomenon. Or this video and story about my former coworker Chef Nicole cooking fresh healthy food for students in Portland:

There are also national policy debates raging about school lunches. While thinking about all of this, I came across Marion Cronan's The School Lunch in the Kirschner Collection. Published in 1962, this book gives a historical perspective on how school lunches have changed (or stayed the same) over time. The book is extremely detailed, dealing with policies and nutrition requirements, sanitation and safety, and even personnel. There's a lot that goes into a school lunch! And, of course, there are recipes -- all scaled to make 50 servings. Here is an example of a main dish:

Macaroni Frankfurter Bake
From The School Lunch by Marion Cronan (1962)

Ingredients
3 lbs. elbow macaroni
2/3 c. shortening
6 lbs. frankfurters, sliced
2 c. onion, chopped
3-4 peppers, green, chopped
3 qts. cream of celery soup, condensed
3 qts. water
3 qts. cheese, American, shredded
3 T. mustard, prepared
3 c. bread crumbs, buttered

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water about seven minutes. Drain. Melt shortening in skillet. Add frankfurter, onion, green pepper and brown lightly. Combine celery soup, water, cheese, prepared mustard and blend well. Add to frankfurter mixture and beat thoroughly until cheese melts. Stir in macaroni. Pour into baking pans. Top with buttered crumbs. Bake at 350°F for thirty-five minutes.

Remember when smoking was allowed on airplanes and in hospitals? Remember candy cigarettes? Turns out those weren't the only sugary way to imitate smoking. While culling the Kirschner Collection for recipes to hand out during orientation week, I found a 1976 recipe for "Cookie Cigarettes." These aren't making it into the orientation packet, but I'm sharing here for posterity.

Warning: rich chocolate filling can be addictive.

Cookie Cigarettes
From The Cookie Jar: Cookies From Around the World by Culinary Arts Institute (1976)

For these interesting delicacies (of French derivation), both cookies and filling may be prepared ahead and the cookies filled shortly before serving

Ingredients:
1/4 cup egg whites
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup sifted flour
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Rich Chocolate Filling (below)

1. Beat egg whites until frothy; add confectioners' sugar gradually, beating thoroughly after each addition; beat until stiff peaks are formed.
2. Fold in flour in halves. Blend in cooled butter and extract.
3. Quickly grease a preheated cookie sheet. Bake a trial cookie; if it is too brittle to roll, add a little more cooled melted butter.
4. Drop mixture by heaping teaspoonfuls 4 inches apart onto hot cookie sheet; spread very thinly without making holes; bake only a few cookies at one time (they are difficult to roll when cool).
5. Bake at 400°F 2 to 3 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned.
6. Immediately remove from cookie sheet. Quickly roll each cookie around a pencil-thin wooden rod; place on wire rack. Remove rods when cooled.
7. Store in a tightly covered container.
8. Shortly before serving, using a pastry bag and decorating tube, fill cookies from both ends with Rich Chocolate Filling.
9. Dip in chopped pistachio nuts or chocolate shot.

Rich Chocolate Filling

Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon water
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup butter
1 cup confectioners' sugar

1. Heat chocolate, sugar, water, and salt over boiling water, stirring until mixture is smooth.
2. Blend egg yolks into mixture in double-boiler top and cook 3 to 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in extract; set aside to cool.
3. Cream butter; add confectioners' sugar gradually, beating until fluffy.
4. Add chocolate mixture gradually, beating well; cover and chill.
5. Before using, beat filling with a spoon to soften slightly.