Chocolate Sauce

You want to  make this ahead of time. It should not be served hot, which would cause the  Barvarian Cream to melt and undo all your fancy work.   It is easy and delicious, what my daughter-in-law calls "lick the pan clean good." The directions are pretty straightforward. Get Baker's Chocolate, not some expensive unknown variety from Whole Foods.

Chocolate Sauce

4 ounces (4 squares)    unsweetened chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream

1. Melt the chocolate with the butter in the top of a double boiler over hot  but not boiling water. Add the syrup, sugar and salt and  blend.
2. Add the milk and cream and cook, stirring, about ten minutes.
Makes about one and one half cups.

Peppermint Stick Barvarian Cream

Moving along with the all pink menu, Barvarian Cream,  Wikipedia tells us, is a dessert that originated in the 18th Century.   It used to be made in the days before refrigeration, by filling a mold with the gelled mixture and plunging the mixture into a bowl of cracked ice to get it to set. Wikipedia tells you hyper fancy cooks out there to decorate it with a "piping of creme chantilly." Well, isn't that nice?
Moving  back to the more prosaic realms of the 21st Century, this is a fantastic dessert, followed by a wonderful chocolate sauce. It does have a couple of tricky bits. One is the direction, "heat ..stirring constantly....until mixture thickens."   Well, I stirred for about 40 minutes with sweat rolling off my face and the mixture was marginally thicker than before, but not extremely thick.Finally, I just said the hell with it and put it in the refrigerator. Bob moved it to the freezer for an hour when it was still jiggling at  6:00  and guests were supposed to come at 6:30.   Information on just how thick the mixture was supposed to  be would have been welcome.  The other tricky bit is to allow enough time for the  whole thing to set.  Really, you are better off  making this the night before your dinner party.
There  is a third tricky  bit in making the all pink menu, namely making sure you have enough gelatin. I forgot to check how many envelopes were in the  box, and then forgot to buy more.  Bob  had to rush out on Saturday afternoon to Safeway to buy another box                                               
The directions say beat the egg yolks, sugar and salt in a saucepan. Don't do that. Beat them in a metal  bowl that will fit in one of your saucepans as a double boiler. It's much  better to cook eggs and milk mixtures  in a double boiler, rather than over direct  heat.

Peppermit Stick Barvarian Cream

1 envelope plus one and one-half teaspoons unflavored gelatin (say two envelopes)
1/3 cup cold water
6 egg  yolks
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup finely crushed peppermind sticks or  candies (about six medium sixe candy canes; crushing can  be done easily in an electric blender. (Alternatively, put the candies in a plastic bag and beat them with a hammer.))
3/4    teaspoon peppermint essance ( you can buy this at Williams Sonoma.)
red food coloring
1 1/2 cups heavy cream, whipped
Peppermint candies for garnish

1. Soak the gelatin in the water.
2. Beat the eggs, sugar and salt in a saucepan (See note.) until well blended. In another saucepan heat the milk and crushed peppermint candies until almost  boiling, stirring to dissolve the candy.
3. Gradually  beat the hot milk into the egg  yolk mixture. Heat over hot water or over low direct heatr, stirring continuously  until the mixture t hickens. Do not allow to  boil.
4. Stir in the softened gelatin and stir to dissolve. Set the mixture aside to cool. Stir in the peppermint essence     and the red food coloring., remembering that the cream will tone down the shade. (My Bavarian Cream was kind of a violent, Pepto-Bismole pink.)
5. Fold in the cream gently but thoroughly and pour into a six-cup mold. Chill four hours or overnight.  Unmold and decorate with  the candies and serve with chocolate sauce.
Makes  10 servings.

                
                                                      

Salmon Mousse a la Craig Clalrborne

There's no point in trumpeting the all pink meal if you don't put in all the recipes. What would Martha Stewart say? So, here is a recipe not in the NYTHC, but  be reassured that it did come from the New York Times family of cookbooks namely the New York Times Cookbook, which as  Craig Clairborne's biographer says, revolutionized  cooking in 1961. I do know it revolutionized cooking in our house, as my  mother enthusiastically embarked on serving its recipes first at her parties and later to us.
My mother always had a big summer lawn party on our big summer lawn.  The women wore long, pastel colored skirts and the men  wore light blue or navy blue blazers. My sister and I got to pass (and eat) the hors oeuvres.                         
 It was a buffet, which my father didn't care for. He and some other gentleman would plop down at one end of the dining room table, which was laden for the  buffet and have his dinner there. He did not like eating off his lap, and didn't see why he should have to do it in his own house.
My mother always served the same thing at her party, beef  bourguignon, rice  and sometimes cold salmon   but after Craig entered our  house, salmon mousse, served in a fish  mold. My mother loved the mousses. We ate salmon mousse, turkey mousse and chicken mousse. When I got my own apartment,  and my own copy of Craig Clairborne, salmon mousse was one of the first things I made, and the page is decorated with 40 year old spots to prove it.
So after leafing through the Southern section of the cookbook on Saturday morning, a day that was proving to be every bit as hot as the week that came  before it, I couldn't find a fish recipe that didn't involve turning on the oven.  So I thought of salmon  mousse. The only tricky thing here is to not chill the base with the gelatin,   mayonnaise, etc too long. It's not supposed to set. However, you can do what my clever husband did, and set it in a pan of hot water and melt it a bit before you add the salmon.

Salmon Mousse

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
 1 tablespoon grated onion
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
 1/4 teaspoon paprika
 1 teaspoon salt
 2 cups canned salmon, drained and finely chopped
1 tablespoon chopped capers   1/2 cup heavy cream
3 cups cottage cheese (this is to fill in the  bottom of the fish mold. If  you don't have a fish mold, you can omit the cottage cheese. )

1. Soften the gelatin in the cold water, add the boiling water and stir until the gelatin has dissolved. Cool.
2. Add the mayonnaise, lemon juice, onion, Tabasco, paprika, and salt and mix well. Chill to the consistency of unbeaten egg white.(Note: This is not very long.)
3. Add the salmon and capers and beat well. Whip the cream, fold into the salmon mixture and turn into a two-quart oiled fish mold. Add the cheese to fill the mold. Chill until set.
4. Unmold on a serving platter and garnish with watercress, lemon slices and salmon roe. Makes 8 servings.
                                                                                                                                  

Strawberry Cooler

Strawberry Cooler was the first course of the all pink meal. Now, I did  not intend for color to  be a theme. If the meal had any theme it would have been cold food. Since the temperature has been hovering around 100 degrees for the last couple of days, and the air conditioner, God  bless it, can only lower the temperature about 20 degrees, the last thing I wanted to do was turn on the oven.
I  love cold soup. My mother used to run all the leftover vegetables lurking in the refrigerator through the blender with a cup of milk and serve it for lunch on  hot days. If one is lacking in energy on a hot day, as so often happens, you can even run a can of Campbell's cream of chicken soup and a cup of milk through the blender, add a little curry powder and bingo, there's your first course.
I was actually going to make Strawberry Cooler for us, but then Bob suggested inviting Jackie and Bill, our friends from the frame shop, over before I went to Massachusetts. So it was a  no-brainer. It is very easy to make, and even forgiving of wandering attention.  I had gotten to the  part where you cook it. The directions are quite specific. "Heat, stirring, u ntil mixture comes to a  boil, then cook one minute."
At that point the phone rang. It was Son, calling to discuss the logistics for Bob's birthday when we have our traditional  sail on the Chesapeake Bay. The conversation went from there to baseball, where we discussed Nationals' star pitcher Stephen Strasburg's problems with pitching on hot days  and who was hitting and who was not.  By the time I got off the phone, the soup had cooked for considerably more than a minute. I gasped with horror  as I smelled it on the stove and rushed to take it off the heat.  Fortunately when we ate it Saturday night, it was fine. So, while I don't reccomend leaving it on the stove and forgetting about it,  it does not seem to do the  soup any harm.
Everyone seemed to love it. Bob set out heavily gold rimmed  bouillion cups that made a lovely contrast  between the  dark red of the soup and the gold on the rim. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it.  It is kind of sweet. You might reduce the sugar and see how that works.                    

Strawberry Cooler

4 cups strawberries
1 cup orange juice
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoo n lemon juice
1 cup  buttermilk
sesame wafers  (   I dispensed with the sesame wafers.)

1. Reserve several berries for garnish; place remainder in an electric blender with the orange juice.
2. Blend until s mooth and strain into a saucepan. Mix the cornstarch with a little of t he strained mixture and add to remaining mixture in the pan. Heat, stirring, until mixture comes to a boil, then cook one minute.
3. REmove from heat and add the sugar, lemon juice and buttermilk. Chill thoroughly  . Serve in chilled bowls, garnished with reser ved strawberries and wafers. Makes four to six servings.
                  

Apple-Blueberry Conserve

Conserve is jam, for those who were wondering. This is a fast, easy jam that does not require sealing,  always a plus. It, unlike most of the forms of  marmalade I have enountered, also does not require boiling for  hours and hours to thicken. When it says boil for twenty minutes, it means boil for twenty minutes, or maybe twenty-five.
In the high and faroff times when everyone was a locavor, this recipe must  have used year old apples, since  blueberries ripen in July or maybe August in Maine, and apples don't ripen until September. I used Granny Smith apples.
This recipe also has the benefit of not making too much  jam. Even before I embarked on the blog, I used to make various condiments from the Miscellaneous section. The problem was, the jars would hang around for years. I threw about five pints of Fuling Mill Farm Chili Sauce from 2005 away a couple of years ago.  My system for getting rid of the output must have gotten better. I went through the closet  where we keep the canning jars and discovered only one jar of what I suspect is Lemon-Peach-Ginger Conserve, from 2011. The beet-cabbage pickle from 2010 was all gone. Part of the problem is, I no longer eat  bread, and since I do the shopping, Bob doesn't eat it either.  
But if you haven't joined the half the eaters in the US who have decided they are glueten intolerant,  slather this stuff on  your  bread. My understanding is the hipsters are all about homemade jam. What better jam to make than something that A. doesn't take too long, and B. doesn't make too much?

 Apple-Blueberry Conserve

4 cups chopped, cored, peeled tart apples (about 4 medium size apples)
4 cups blueberries stemmed and washed
6 cups sugar
1/2 cup raisins
1/4  cup lemon juice
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1. Combine all the ingredients except the pecans in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil slowly. (Note: you may, as I did, wonder how solids with only 1/4 cup  l iquid can be brought to a boil. Well,  blueberries are mostly liquid and you will have a boilable substance within a minute or so.), stirring occasionally  until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Cook rapidly until thick, about twenty minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Add the pecans during the last few minutes of cooking. Pour the  boiling hot conserve into hot sterilized half-pint canning jars. Adjust the caps. Cpp; amd store in a cool, dark,  dry place. Makes 7 half  pints.

Clam Salad

Clam Salad!! I have finally had an opportunity to serve clam salad.  And, as I envisioned, it was at a picnic. Liz and Bill, some old friends, invited us to a Fourth of July celebration in Washington Grove, a quirky little town hidden deep in the Montgomery County, Maryland suburbs. When Liz called me, the first words out of my mouth were, "Can I bring clam salad?" "Sure," she said. Liz is easy.
I almost didn't get to make the clam salad, due to a dire natural disaster, viz. a thunderstorm with a fancy name that came through on Friday night and knocked over 10 percent of the trees in the Washington Metropolitan area. Result, no lights and citizens inveigling against Pepco, our electric utility. Plus, it's hot. I mean really hot. Wake up in the middle of the night with your body slick with sweat hot. After three nights of cold showers at 2 am and days spent sitting in a  chair because that was all I had energy for, the lights came on Monday night. We had gone to the movies (because they have air conditioning)  and as I pulled up in front of our house,  Bob started yelling.
"What?" I said, in alarm.
"The lights are on!" he shouted.
"Yeah team!" I yelled.
So, Tuesday, after a better night's sleep, I rediscovered my energy. I washed the dishes, which were piling up in the sink, went to the fish store and Safeway, and got to work. Clam salad is suspended in aspic. You have to make each layer and wait for it to gell. It's a real "Day before" dish. It's not difficult.
As to the result. The dish, as are many dishes from the 50s, is bland. If I were to make it again, I  would put in more salt, and maybe Tabasco sauce. The guests who tried it were enthusiastic.   A young man from Baltimore County said it was delicious. Other people did not try it, and that was fine.
Clam salad is visually striking. It is arranged in layers, clams in aspic, cottage cheese tinted pink with catchup, and a green top of chopped parsley. This dish uses a lot of parsley. In case you want to make it, and are wondering what to use, I used my pate pan, which is a narrow enamel loaf pan that was used, once or twice in the dark ages of cooking to bake pate. You could use a regular loaf pan.
Anyhow, clam salad has been cooked and served,  and did not fall into the category of can't do this, like the recipe for dandelion flowers which tells you not to wash them . Come on. We live in a city. Any dandelions that might be picked also probably came in contact with a dog. We are not doing that one.

Clam Salad

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1 cup  boiling water
grated rind and juice of one lemon
1  seven ounce can of chopped clams, drained, and liquor reserved. (That means, keep the juice.)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground  black pepper
1 1/2 cups clam broth or water
1 teaspoon Dijon or Dusseldorf mustard
2 scallions, finely chopped, including green part
6 large stuffed olives, sliced
1 cup cottage cheese
1/3 cup catchup
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1 hard-boiled egg
salad greens

1. Soften the gelatin in cold water. Add the boiling water and stir to dissolve gelatin. Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, reserved clam liquor, pepper and clam broth or water. Stir well.
2. Halve the gelatin mixture between two bowls, Stir the clams, mustard and scallions into one bowl of gelatin mixture.
3. Pour the clam mixture into a one-and-one-half quart mold or oblong baking dish that had  been rinsed with cold water.
4. Chill until the layer just starts to set, then poke the olive slices down around the sides of the mold or dish. Chill until almost firm.
5. Reserve one-quarter cup of the gelatin mixture in the second  bowl. To the remaining, add the cottage cheese, catchup and six tablespoons of the parsley. Spoon the cottage cheese mixture over the setting clam mixture . Chill until firm.
6. Sprinkle the remaining parsley over the top of firm mixture, then arrange the egg slices in an attractive pattern over all. Spoon     reserved gelatin mixture over the coat the egg slices. Chill until firm.
7. Unmold or cut into squares. Serve on salad greens.
Makes 6 to 8 servings.

"Lemmon Syllabub"

  "Syllabub was a popular dessert in seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. It was popular for celebrations, special occasions and holidays due to its festive appearance. Many original recipes survive with various modes of preparation. Generally Syllabub was made with a mixture of whipped cream, whipped egg whites, white wine, sugar, lemon juice and zest of lemon. The quantity of white wine added would determine the consistency qualifying whether the mixture would be a creamy dessert or a popular punch. White wine could be substituted with apple cider or other alcoholic beverages. One could always detect the drinker of the beverage by the thick white mustache left behind."

So speaks a guy named David Quidnunc(Somehow I doubt that's his real  name) on a  website for Samuel Pepys' Diary. Syllabub started out as a drink and gradually evolved into a dessert.  George Washington probably partook of syllabub while lounging on the porch at Mount Vernon at the end of a long day spent supervising his estate.  Close readers of Regency novels will remember their heroes and heroines having syllabub as a refreshment on a warm day. Our friend Tim, who sells antiques  and came to the Sunday night supper whence this was served, has sold syllabub cups.
I  picked it out of the cookbook  because it was quick to make. We are moving into the South here. Most of the dessert recipes that are left in New England are unsuited to hot weather, like plum pudding. The only caveat is syllabub requires the purchase of two off the wall  wines, Madeira, and cream sherry. Let's take cream sherry first. I like sherry. I learned to drink it in Madrid in the bars in the basement of Plaza Mayor when I was 22. A guy I was hanging around with introduced me to tapas bars, where the bartender first laid out a couple of olives in a small saucer. If  you bought another drink and tipped well, he served something more substantial. It actually didn't occur to me that  if  you wanted tapas  you could  buy them directly instead of trying to gauge a proper tip.
 If  one is going to drink sherry, drink it like the Spaniards do, without ice, and dry. That means Amontillado, Fino, or Manzanilla. It doesn't mean cream.  And now, I have a cheap bottle of cream sherry cluttering up my bar along with  half a dozen other bottles of weird, no-longer-drunk liquor.

I also have Madeira. Madeira, if you read the Patrick O'Brien books, was much favored  by seamen during the Napoleonic wars. It comes from the island of Madeira, a regular port of call for ships going either to the Americas or the East. It too was fortified with sugar to prevent it from spoiling on long, hot sea voyages. In fact, today, the winemakers heat the wine to 140 degrees Fahrenheit to replicate the process of tossing for weeks in the hold of a ship ploughing its way to the tropics. I don't think I've ever drunk Madeira, but if I want to, now I can. 

 Anyhow, Syllabub is a quickly made, elegant-looking dessert. Just don't decide to make it on Sunday afternoon when the liquor stores are closed. 

Lemmon Syllabub

Thinly cut peel (lemon colored part only) of one lemon
1 cup cream sherry

1 cup Madeira wine

4 cups heavy cream

1/3 cup lemon juice

1 cup sugar

nutmeg

1. Soak the lemon peel in the sherry and Madeira for at least one hour.

2. Whip the cream until it just begins to hold its shape. Remove the peel and gradually beat into the cream the wine, lemon juice and sugar until thick. Pour into parfait or wine glasses and sprinkle with nutmeg. Serve immediately. Serves eight.