More from Ike the Cook

January 31, 2017

Can’t help it; in these fraught times, the notion of a President and General who loved to cook is so appealing that I keep going back to the book.  Here’s the President, at Camp David, making breakfast for the staff.

Ike obviously liked cooking for crowds; the following recipe feeds sixty. I love the straightforward quality of the ingredients; note that it calls for a roux made with marrow bone fat.

Turns out that Ike didn’t just cook; he was also a rancher and gardener.  Here’s Mamie in the corn.

A few more of Ike’s no-nonsense recipes:

Ike in an Apron: The President Who Cooked

January 30, 2017

My family were never friends of Ike; we were Adlai people all the way.  Still, from where we now sit, the man looks like a saint.  Turns out he did more than issue a warning about the military-industrial complex; in a time when real men wore no aprons, Ike did all the family cooking. He’s looking better all the time!

This is from Ike The Cook. I found a copy on my bookshelf, but if you want one, you can find it here.

Here’s Ike and Mamie on their wedding day – a surprising picture since you’re used to seeing them only as grandparents.  Who knew they were both so beautiful!

Here are a few of Ike’s favorite recipes:

And because I can’t resist, here’s Ike in his apron.

Here’s Hope: Happy Year of the Rooster

January 28, 2017

Just listened to an interview with Cecilia Chiang on NPR, offering some optimistic news. At 97, Cecilia sees the move from the Year of the Monkey – nothing’s worse than that troublesome trickster – to the Year of the Rooster.  “The rooster wakes you up,” she said, “and that’s a hopeful sign.”

Cecilia is never wrong.  Twenty-eight years ago, when I was nine months pregnant, she insisted that should the baby fail to arrive by the end of the month I must have him induced. “You want a dragon baby,” she insisted. “Very important.”

The baby obliged, showing up in the nick of time. To this day Cecilia calls him “Little Dragon.”

If you want to celebrate Chinese New Year and a better future, here are Cecilia’s recipes for a few classic recipes:

lion’s head

steamed fish and dumplings.

Feeling more ambitious?  Here’s a recipe from Taiwanese cooking celebrity Pei Mei’s  1969 cookbook.  

And while thinking of Cecilia, I was reminded of another nonagenerian San Francisco Chinese food celebrity, Henry Chung.  His tiny Hunan Restaurant introduced many of us to the fiery food of the region. Here’s his easier idea for duck.

Curry Powder Past

January 19, 2017

Looking for old Chinese-language Chinese food cookbooks I came across Chong Jan & Co’s Chinese Cookbook: A High Class Cook Book in English and Chinese. As I flipped through the pages – amazingly, available  online through Harvard – I expected to find imperial cuisine of the Manchu emperor variety, or recipes in the tradition of chop suey – a dish that was surely ubiquitous in 1913 San Francisco.

But what I found was quite different. Recipes for forcemeats, hard sauces, fricassees. Instructions ridding those pesky English currant stains from linen tablecloths. This is a housekeeping manual for Chinese-speaking servants and while there is no mention of Chinese cuisine in the entire book, there is a chicken curry. And a mulligatawny soup:

With barley!

The first commercial curry powder, should you care to know, was also a product of Anglo attempts to reproduce Indian flavors at home.  It was available for sale at a “perfumery” in England in 1784. Here’s the ad that announced this new elixir in the Morning Post: 

Among a few specious claims, I like this one best. Curry powder, supposedly, “contributes most of any food to an increase of the human race.”