On Brockway, or How To Judge A Book By Its Cover

The first thing you notice is the spine. There you are, just browsing the bookshelves of your favorite local secondhand book store, glossing over a lot of the same old same old when out jumps that spine.

fig. a: spine

The font's so trippy that you can barely make out the title, Come Cook With Me--kind of pathetic, really, but there's something about that font + that title that demands a closer look. So you pull the book off the shelf and you rest your eyes on this:

fig. b: front cover

Sweet Jesus! It's obviously a Yellow Submarine-era edition,* somehow simultaneously nostalgic and psychedelic, and just check out that name: Maurice Brockway. Amazing! Mau-rice Brockway. Moe Brockway. What a name! And an "introduction by Pauline Trigère," too... Who knew? You flip to the inside flap of the dust jacket and find the following:

...Can you make Cioppino? or Hootsla? or Bauletto con Funghi or a really good fish chowder? Have you ever tried Frizzled Liver, Bagna Cauda or Apple Crow's Nest? [yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, and no]

This is not only a first-rate cookbook but a charming night-table narrative as well. [perfect!] For Mr. Brockway's gastronomical adventures are told with a fervor of joie de cuisine that makes reading about them a treat.

Introduction by Pauline Trigère, well-known fashion designer. [but of course!]

-----------------

Maurice Brockway grew up in upstate New York in a small American town a few miles from the Canadian border [!], in a rambling white house where cooking and eating were given their proper reverence. [as it should be] After college (Ithaca) and a few years in the business world of New York City [yes, I've heard of it], he bought an old inn in Stamford, Connecticut, and operated it as Brockton Manor for several years during the 1940's. [awesome!]

Then he was appointed assistant banquet manager of the Hotel Plaza in New York, and later became director of sales and catering manager of the Ambassador Hotel, staying on when it became the Sheraton-East.

He has a talent for being able to "cook by ear," [hmm...] and can duplicate any dish he has eaten anywhere in the world. This lifelong interest in food is reflected in the nostalgic quality of this narrative about the pleasures of cooking and eating. [I hear you]

You've already decided you absolutely must accept Maurice's invitation to go and cook with him, when you suddenly flip the book over to check out the back and find this:

fig. c: back cover

The glasses, the tux, the pose, the phone: talk about debonair! If you're still not sure if this is a great photograph [it is], just check out the name of the photographer: Irwin Dribben. I mean, how can you possibly go wrong with a photographer who has a name like that?

So you march right up to the front counter and you buy your copy of Come Cook With Me and, later that night, you discover that your instincts were correct. Not only is it a "charming night-table narrative," but your first read-through seems to confirm that Come Cook With Me actually is "a first-rate cookbook."

And, sure enough, the next day, experiment #1 with Maurice Brockway's Come Cook With Me is a hit.

With numerous tempting recipes to choose from, Michelle opted for a recipe listed simply as Orange-Grapefruit Pie a) because it was Citrus Week 2008 and b) because Maurice claimed that "once you serve it you will probably be known as 'Miss Citrus Pie' of your community," and she was eager to hold that title.

Citrus Pie

1 large grapefruit, peeled and cut into small pieces
4 navel oranges, peeled and sectioned
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
3 tbsp minute tapioca
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1 pie crust recipe

Mix grapefruit and orange section with other ingredients and let stand while preparing the pie crust. Pour the mixture into the unbaked crust and cover with a top crust. Bake in a 9-inch pan in a 450º F oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 400º F for another 20 minutes. Let cool, then place it in the refrigerator to chill it further because Maurice says, "I prefer this citrus pie when it is served ice cold," and who are we to argue?

That citrus pie was good. Maybe a little too good. We weren't really sure how or why, but for some reason that three-citrus-medley resulted in a flavor with bright floral overtones. Remarkable. In any case, Michelle isn't known as Miss Citrus Pie in our community yet because no one else got the opportunity to sample her Grapefruit-Orange-Lemon Pie. In less than 24 hours we'd reduced it to one single, solitary piece

fig. d: the remains of the pie

and that piece disappeared moments after this photograph was taken.

aj

*Come Cook With Me actually predates Yellow Submarine by a year.

7 is my lucky number

Yesterday, we received a message from Joanna at Nylon Diner informing us that we'd been tagged for a meme. I promptly made my way to Nylon Diner to find out what the details were and I found the following list of instructions:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I decided to go the "random" route, and though the rules don't specify, I kept things food-related. I also made a point of including a recipe. (You know how we do here at AEB.)

Here goes:

1. Many years ago now I spent about a month in Turkey, a trip that culminated in a 1-week stay in Istanbul. I found Istanbul completely enchanting, but the strangest, most fascinating night that I spent there culminated with dinner at a taverna on a bustling little street--not much more than an alleyway, really--known as the Nevizade Sokak. Back then the street was lined on both sides with restaurant after restaurant--all of them open to the elements on this particular night and all of them with seating spilling out onto the street, leaving only a very narrow passageway through which to walk by and pick your particular taverna. I guess we got there early in the evening, as things go along the Nevizade Sokak, because the scene was fairly quiet when we arrived, but as the evening rolled on things changed dramatically and pretty soon we were witness to the greatest floor show I've ever witnessed. You see, not only were the restaurants now full, filling the night air with the roar of true festivity, but the passageway cutting through the middle of the Nevizade Sokak had been transformed into an absolutely ungodly procession of vendors, hawkers, hustlers, confidence men, prostitutes, and, yes, tourists--utterly bewildered tourists.* They seemed to be selling just about everything--from iced almonds to bus tickets to shoeshines--but stranger still, the food vendors seemed to be operating in symbiosis with the restaurants. In other words, the restaurant management didn't appear to have any problems with their patrons ordering food from passing vendors, it seemed to be understood that you might want to round out your meal with a kebab from one passer-by, a piece of loukoum from another.

Anyway, towards the end of our meal I ordered a bottle of mineral water--not from a passing mineral water vendor but from our waiter--and the mineral water that was brought to me, quite by coincidence, was a bottle of Kinik brand mineral water. I kept the bottle cap and this is what it looks like today.

fig. a: Kinik sodasi

2. I once had a collection of t-shirts from restaurants that carried either the name "Anthony's" or "Tony's." Most of them came from the Mid-Atlantic, where I lived at the time and where there happened to be quite a number of "Anthony's" and "Tony's" restaurants, many of which sold t-shirts, for some reason. After a while my friends started helping me out with this quest, and occasionally I'd receive a t-shirt from well outside the Mid-Atlantic. This is the only t-shirt that remains from my namesake collection.**

fig. b: Tony's of Hialeah

3. Back in 1994, I was winding my way along Highway 61, en route from Memphis to New Orleans, when just outside of Vicksburg, MS I came across Margaret's Gro. & Mkt., the most fantastic piece of vernacular architecture I've ever encountered. Margaret's was still a grocery store underneath, and Margaret was still helming the operation, but her friend the Rev. H.D. Dennis had spent the better part of the last 10-15 years transforming her humble roadside store into The House of Prayer, using only salvaged materials. I got a full tour of The House of Prayer and its surrounding campus (including the 50-ft Tower of Prayer) from the Reverend himself.

fig. c: Margaret's Gro. & Mkt. and Bible Class, the Rev. H.D. Dennis, architect

Inside, the shelves at Margaret's were a little bare and the interior wasn't as elaborately festooned as the outside (the House of Prayer was still very much a work in progress), but that was more than made up for by the New Ark of the Covenant the Reverend had built (again, out of recycled materials) in full anticipation of the Second Coming.

4. I have a small collection of 1930s Chinese posters. Most of them have nothing to do with food or drink, but there are exceptions.

fig. d: Gande, Price & Co., Ltd.: Wines, Spirits & Cigars: nice punt!

5. In August 2005 Michelle and I spent a couple of weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area. One day, while rummaging through the loot at a 20th century collectibles store in the Mission District, we came upon a bag of vintage 1960s pins bearing all kinds of vintage Flower Power sentiments that had recently been unearthed in a local warehouse. I figured this was about as good a souvenir as I was likely to find in San Francisco, so I bought a few of these pins for myself and for friends, including "SAVE WATER SHOWER WITH A FRIEND" and "STAMP OUT REALITY," but my favorite one was this beauty.

fig. e: or else!

I'm especially fond of wearing it when I take Michelle out for lunch.

6. Recently I rediscovered my very first venture in food publishing. It appeared in Sunnyvale United Soccer Club Presents Our Favorite Recipes, eds. Wilcox, Ledford, Shaha, and McLaughlin, and today, a little worse for wear, it looks like this.

fig. f: chocolate mousse recipe

You gotta start somewhere, right? Anyway, I tried it again recently and it works. Thing is, there's an important ingredient missing. I'm sure it was part of the recipe I submitted to the printers (I swear!), but somehow it didn't make it into the published edition. If you can't read my Mom's handwritten annotation, it reads: "1 package of chocolate chips." You don't have to use chocolate chips, of course. Use 12 oz. of any good, dark chocolate. God knows how many people in Sunnyvale attempted to make this chocolate mousse according to the recipe as it appeared. I shudder to think.

Actually, the other thing that's missing is the source (or did the printers leave that out too?) Gourmet? Bon Appétit? Sunset? Nope. If memory serves, the recipe came from that other font of gastronomic expertise, National Geographic World.

7. My maternal grandfather, Freddy--the eldest of 15--was a chef who got his start as a lumberjack camp cook back when he was still a teenager. He eventually moved to Quebec City and there he began to work in the hotel business. He also met my grandmother, Amabilis, there. My grandmother wasn't a cook by trade, but she came from a line of cooks from Havre St-Pierre who'd worked on ships, and she did have a good mind for business. They met in the hotel trade and that's where they remained. They got married, started a family, and in the early '40s when a business opportunity presented itself in Edmundston, NB--then an important regional center at the junction of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Maine, and the so-called "Gateway to the Maritimes"--they relocated. My grandparents owned and operated the New Royal Hotel for roughly 30 years, during which time it was famous across the region for its banquets. This is what it looked like back in its 1960s glory days.

fig. g: New Royal Hotel, Edmundston, NB

One of my favorite photographs of my grandparents is this one, taken not long after they met in Quebec City.

fig. h: Bilis & Freddy

My grandfather is the one in the middle. Not sure who the woman on the right is, but the doll on the left is my grandmother.

My grandfather being a chef, he tended to do most of the cooking in their household. My grandmother didn't make the widest range of dishes, but what she made she made well. For reasons that I've never fully understood, she never used an oven. She made everything on the stovetop. Even her roasted chicken. It took her a while, but she was patient. My Mom swears it's the best chicken she's ever had.

Today, Epiphany, is my grandmother's birthday. She would have been 100.

And now, passing the torch:

1. My Favourite Things
2. Tiny Banquet Committee
3. You Can't Make Everything From Scratch...
4. Bits and Bytes From Elsewhere
5. Saint Sustenance
6. Word Things
7. The Good Stuff

aj

* This scene apparently originated in the nearby Çiçek Pasaji--the famed Flower Passage--which, by the 1960s, had become a vision worthy of Aragon's Le paysan de Paris.

** Truth be told, my favorite of these was a baby blue "Anthony's Chicken & Ribs" t-shirt that I wore for about a decade. For a while I also owned a matching "NO PARKING Anthony's Chicken & Ribs VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED" sign that someone, um, acquired on my behalf. I didn't keep the sign nearly as long as I kept the t-shirt.