Monthly Cooking Thread - October 2018

I recently discovered Raclette – which term can refer to a type of cheese, a kind of dinner party, or a unique table-top grill. As a dish, Raclette is similar to Fondue, and evolved from the practice of Swiss cowherds taking cheese with them as they tended their herds in the mountains, and melting the cheese over campfires to eat on bread. Traditional accompaniments are potatoes, gherkins, pickled onions, and various cured meats.

It looks like a fun way to entertain in that it’s a dish or dinner where everyone is involved in choosing and cooking their own portion; but it’s less messy than fondue, and offers more variety in terms of ingredients and ways to cook them. You can grill or warm over various meats and vegetables on the top of the grill, while melting portions of cheese in the little pans underneath. And if you don't want to make a meal of it, I'm thinking it could be a nice break-the-ice hors d'oeuvre with drinks, to get a dinner or cocktail party started.

Raclette cheese can be be purchased online; but it can be difficult to source locally in many areas of the US. I believe it will become more available, but in the meantime you can substitute Gruyere, Emmental, Fontina or Appenzeller.

Raclette machines come in various shapes and sizes; I think I’m in the market for one, and if anyone has one they like, let me know!

Here are reviews of some of the other brands; the Boska Holland ‘mini’ looks great if you just want to try it out, or want one just for your small family:

I also discovered ‘Texas Tornado Cake’, from Phyllis Stokes of ‘Southern Frugal’; it’s a cake with fruit cocktail, brown sugar, nuts and coconut; a little more complicated than the average ‘dump’ cake, but looks really wonderful. There are lots of variations on this cake, including one using canned pineapple instead of the fruit cocktail. Phyllis includes links to the recipes she used/adapted:

I’ve been an avid birdwatcher all my life, and while searching for something bird-related I happened to find the YouTube channel of Maurice Baker, a gentleman in Shropshire, England who photographs the feathered life in his garden. He has many informative and beautiful videos about birds, but also many of Nature and wildlife in general, with outstanding photography accompanied by restful, ambient music:

(Disclaimer: I am not associated/compensated in any way with regard to the promotion of the various appliances and other items - or the websites - that I write about on this thread. They are simply things that I’ve personally found interesting and want to share.)

WIKI——The first recorded reference to the dish was “Welsh rabbit” in 1725, but the origin of the term is unknown.[5]

There is some suggestion that Welsh Rabbit derives from a South Wales Valleys staple, in which a generous lump of cheese is placed into a mixture of beaten eggs and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper, and baked in the oven until the egg mixture has firmed and the cheese has melted. Onion may be added and the mixture would be eaten with bread and butter and occasionally with the vinegar from pickled beetroot.[16][17]

Welsh
The word Welsh may have been adopted because it carries a now-archaic sense in English to mean “foreign, non-native” - an etymological phenomenon seen in its ultimate ancestor, the Proto-Germanic walhaz (”foreigner”) and many of its descendants like the dated sense of German welsch (Romance-speaker).[18] It is also possible that the dish was attributed to the Welsh because they were considered particularly fond of cheese, as evidenced by Andrew Boorde in his Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1542), when he wrote “I am a Welshman, I do love cause boby, good roasted cheese.”[19] In Boorde’s account, “cause boby” is the Welsh caws pobi, meaning “baked cheese”, but whether it implies a recipe like Welsh rarebit is a matter of speculation.

Rarebit
Jielbeaumadier welsh 2010.jpg
The word rarebit is a corruption of rabbit, “Welsh rabbit” being first recorded in 1725 and the variant “Welsh rarebit” being first recorded in 1785 by Francis Grose. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Welsh rarebit’ is an “etymologizing alteration. There is no evidence of the independent use of rarebit”. The word rarebit has no other use than in Welsh rabbit.[5][20]

“Eighteenth-century English cookbooks reveal that it was then considered to be a luscious supper or tavern dish, based on the fine cheddar-type cheeses and the wheat bread [...] . Surprisingly, it seems there was not only a Welsh Rabbit, but also an English Rabbit, an Irish and a Scotch Rabbit, but nary a rarebit.”[21]

Michael Quinion writes: “Welsh rabbit is basically cheese on toast (the word is not ‘rarebit’ by the way, that’s the result of false etymology; ‘rabbit’ is here being used in the same way as ‘turtle’ in ‘mock-turtle soup’, which has never been near a turtle, or ‘duck’ in ‘Bombay duck’, which was actually a dried fish called bummalo)”.[22]

The entry in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage is “Welsh rabbit, Welsh rarebit” and states: “When Francis Grose defined Welsh rabbit in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785, he mistakenly indicated that rabbit was a corruption of rarebit. It is not certain that this erroneous idea originated with Grose....”[23]

In his 1926 edition of the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the grammarian H. W. Fowler states a forthright view: “Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong.”[24]

The scandalous history behind Kushner’s ritzy Midtown building / By Steve Cuozzo, NY Post, April 18, 2017

SNIP......smoke and a scandalous history have long shared satanically addressed, money-hemorrhaging 666 Fifth Ave.The building’s owner, Kushner Companies, was until a few months ago headed by the family of President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, now his top adviser. To bail itself out of the jam at deep-in-the-red 666, the Kushner company needs a partner to kick in $2 billion and add about 40 floors, turning it into a 1,400-foot-tall cloudbuster designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid.

After proudly rising amid the 20th-century Manhattan skyline, and changing hands three times, 666 Fifth Ave. has become a devil’s bargain for Kushner.In the late 1950s, Tishman Realty and Construction wanted its new 666 Fifth Ave. to stand out from the herd of flat-topped new skyscrapers. It dressed the facade up in aluminum panels — a result “more dull than glittery,” architectural historian Carter B. Horsley wrote.

The office floors filled up. Alitalia’s elegant ticket office and showroom came to epitomize the era of glamorous air travel.

But what really put 666 Fifth on the map was Top of the Sixes, a 41st-floor restaurant with fabulous views. It featured “Cocktails in the Clouds” for a then-pricey $1.25 and food of which one critic snarked, “Beef stroganoff was a Swiss steak on noodles reminiscent of a hundred airline meals.” In his 2007 memoir, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort recalled lunching at Top of the Sixes with a pal from LF Rothschild, downstairs. “It was where Masters of the Universe could get blitzed on martinis and exchange war stories,” Belfort wrote, as depicted in the 2013 movie.

Tishman Realty sold the tower to Japan’s Sumitomo for $500 million in 1987. The new landlord installed the Grand Havana Room after Top of the Sixes couldn’t afford a new lease. The club was born one day in the 1990s, when investor Stan Shuster was having lunch with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles. As they puffed away outdoors, a woman nearby growled, “Stop smoking cigars,” Shuster told the online magazine Cigars Connect. He vowed to launch places where smokers would feel happy.

The cooing-couples scene at the top of 666 gave way to bicoastal, boldface intrigue. At a 1997 pre-opening bash, the Times caught “Tom Selleck sharing a smoke with Gregory Hines, Laurence Fishburne puffing away with Stephen Baldwin, and Carol Alt lighting an Arturo Fuente for Jennifer Tilly.” In later years, Sharpton would head for a leather armchair in a secluded corner and schmooze with Michael Jordan, Jay Z and city power players like Rudy Giuliani and John Catsimatidis.

Sumitomo unloaded 666 Fifth in 1998 at a loss to Tishman Speyer — a different company than the original owner — for $518 million, less than what it had spent to buy and upgrade the building. Tishman Speyer in turn put it on the block in the early ’00s and made a fortune. The top bidder was Kushner Companies, a firm founded by Charles Kushner, Jared’s father. It had holdings around the US but not a Manhattan “trophy.” The company’s quest for such a property was clouded by one of the more lurid scandals in real estate annals.

Charles Kushner learned that his sister Esther’s husband, William Schulder, was cooperating with feds who were investigating him for illegal campaign contributions and tax evasion. For revenge, Charles hired a hooker to seduce Schulder, videotape their sex romp and send the tape to Esther.

The scheme, as described in a July 2004 indictment of Charles Kushner, “read like pulp fiction,” The Post reported. Charles paid the “very attractive, high-end call girl for an elite escort service” $10,000 to lure Schulder to a Bridgewater, NJ, motel after she pretended to need a ride when her car broke down.

Esther turned the tape over to the feds. In a letter to his sister that was among 165 submitted to a judge requesting leniency for his crimes, Charles begged, “I only ask that you forgive me for resorting to such despicable behavior;. I was wrong and I committed a terrible sin.”

He pleaded guilty in 2005 to making illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. He served 14 months of a two-year sentence in a federal prison. Before he was released in August 2006, he turned his company’s operations over to Jared, then all of 25.

With Jared at the helm, Kushner Companies paid Tishman Speyer a staggering $1.8 billion, using mostly borrowed money, for 666 Fifth. It was nearly twice as much on a per-square-foot basis as any previous Manhattan building sale. The deal closed on Jared’s birthday, Jan. 10, 2007.

Kushner’s “trophy” couldn’t take in enough rent to cover the debt. By 2009 it was making just 69 cents on rent for every $1 it owed. It’s deeper underwater today, even though Kushner earlier sold its precious store space for $525 million to a partnership in 2008 and a 49 percent stake in the office portion to Vornado in 2011. Thirty percent of its aging offices are vacant, partly because Kushner has kept them off the market to prepare for redevelopment. A $1.2 billion mortgage is due in two years.

Smoke and a scandalous history have long shared satanically addressed, money-hemorrhaging 666 Fifth Ave.
Rather than simply modernize the tower as many landlords have done, Jared dreamed up the idea to replace 666 Fifth with a super-tall skyscraper containing luxury condos, a hotel and a shopping atrium. It would even get a new address — 660 Fifth. It would need a staggering investment by new partners: $2.5 billion up front, plus an unheard-of $4.1 billion construction loan. A partner would have to buy out Vornado, the stores and the Grand Havana Room.

Jared sold his shares in 666 Fifth to a family trust earlier this year. It was to avoid conflict-of-interest issues over his White House role. He now has “no role” in the company, his rep says.

To update the update on my new American Test Kitchen cookbook. The more I read, the more problems arise.

There are several recipes that follow each other and are the same - only one recipe will have the meat and sauce recipes combined but the next recipe will have the same recipe but will list the sauce below that meat recipe. Sorry, ATK, it’s the same recipe. I don’t fool that easily.

What’s most annoying is none of the sauce recipes list “pan drippings” in the ingredient list. All ingredients should be listed.

When sauces are separtate, I want them listed in a separate sauce section with a note on the recipe to look for xyz sauce on page xyz. I don’t want to, nor have the time, to flip back and forth through the index and/or whole book for sauces. Or even hope they bothered to list it in the index. The book is just too jumbled and makes no sense.

And get someone besides millennials to write the recipes. These kiddies rely too much on their computers. “To” is not the same as “too” or “two”.

It’s not worth the effort to try to return it. With my luck they will either lose it or some such and then I’ll be out the $$ and the book.

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