cook­ing from a legend

--March 26th, 2007--

It’s prov­ing daunting.

I’m really try­ing hard these days to plow through the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of Gladys Taber recipes, to choose the absolute best in all the myr­iad cat­e­gories, to test, update pos­si­bly, and sur­round with some mean­ing­ful ver­biage. She cooked so much! And I have to say, as I’ve said before, that many of the recipes are dated to the point of being fun to read, as per­haps fic­tion, but not some­thing you would ever want to cook. The dire words “dried” and “chipped” often appear in a sin­gle sen­tence, some­times fol­lowed even more depress­ingly by “beef.” And the things that appeared in tins in the 1940s, to fol­low the unsus­pect­ing cook home from the super­mar­ket and take up res­i­dence on her pantry shelves, there to sit men­ac­ingly until used in some way on her inno­cent fam­ily. Canned sausages! Canned oys­ters! The things she thought to grind up, mix with gela­tine and sour cream, and bake into one sort of “loaf” or another. Every­thing designed for min­i­mum cost and max­i­mum fill­ing­ness. And ways to use left­overs that nearly always involve a can of cream of mush­room soup. Plus turkey with spaghetti! What? And I adore any recipe that includes the word “mock.”

And some of the read­ing is enjoy­able purely on a vocab­u­lary level. It took me a moment to real­ize that “edible-podded peas” were not some­thing from Star Trek, but rather what was called in my child­hood “peapods” (appear­ing only at the Hong Kong Chi­nese restau­rant, never at home), and are now called “snow­peas” in Amer­ica and “mange tout” in England.

What really shines through the writ­ing, under­neath the recipes, is her bound­less hos­pi­tal­ity. How many dishes had to be invented from what she had on hand because some­one dropped in unan­nounced and fully expected to be fed? And she did. “Baked Noo­dle Ring,” “Cheese Dreams” and “Mrs. Bewlay’s Rhubarb Crusty.” Some­how I think the sub­sti­tu­tion of the word “crum­ble” for “crusty” would bet­ter con­vey a thing to eat than, say, a med­ical condition.

Oh, and if you feel in need of a laugh, here is a com­pletely hilar­i­ous web­site con­tain­ing Weight Watch­ers food pho­tographs from the 1960s, dishes like “Fluffy Mack­erel Pud­ding,” with cap­tions like “Once upon a time the world was young and the words “mack­erel” and “pud­ding” existed far, far away from one another. One day, that all changed. And then, who­ever was respon­si­ble some­how thought the word fluffy would help…” Reminds me of the cook­book pub­lished by the asso­ci­a­tion at the lake where we had a sum­mer house. I am absolutely pos­i­tive there was a dish called “Twinkie Tuna Seven-up Bake.” Really!

In any case, last night found me star­ing at a con­tainer of chicken liv­ers I bought in a moment of weak­ness at the farmer’s mar­ket on Sun­day. Organic, free-range, you name it. About a half pound, I think. What to do? Then into my mind snaked the mem­ory of a Christ­mas Eve party at Red Gate Farm sev­eral years ago to which I invited Anne and David of Stillmeadow (Gladys Taber’s beloved farm­house), our farmer friends Rol­lie and Judy, and both our sets of par­ents hap­pened to be vis­it­ing. My mother-in-law and I spent the after­noon con­coct­ing var­i­ous party foods from the Stillmeadow Cook­book, includ­ing a lovely cucum­ber dip, and… chicken liver pate! My clever mummy made hand-calligraphied menu cards for the table, and with many, many can­dles lit and glasses of wine poured, the fun began. And the pate was so good. I really felt Gladys’ spirit would have been pleased, to see us all enjoy­ing the Con­necti­cut win­ter with a nice neigh­borly party, and with her food to bring us together.

So I made the pate again last night, while John read his news­pa­per in the kitchen to keep me com­pany, and Avery labo­ri­ously glued rhine­stones on her skates to cel­e­brate Level 10. A cosy evening together, and the taste of Madeira-laced chicken liv­ers in but­ter did not dis­ap­point. Give it a try.

Gladys Taber’s Chicken Liver Pate
(serves many at a party, on toast)

1/2 lb fresh chicken liv­ers
1 medium white onion, sliced
4 tbsps but­ter
about 1/2 cup Madeira wine
salt and pep­per to taste

In two sep­a­rate skil­lets, divide the but­ter and melt gen­tly. Saute the onion in one skil­let and the liver in another, tak­ing care not to brown either skil­let. Just sweat them gen­tly. After about five min­utes, they will be cooked through and can be com­bined in your food proces­sor. Add the Madeira and whizz until as smooth as pos­si­ble. Add more Madeira if the tex­ture is too thick. Salt and pep­per to taste, and then if you insist on a purely smooth pate, you can run the mix­ture through a sieve. Enjoy this afford­able and gen­er­ous post-War treat.

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