Recipe: New Orleans Syrup

By Liz Williams

This drink is lighter than eggnog and just as festive.

New Orleans Syrup

1 cup cane syrup

½ to 1 cup brandy or rum  (Depends on how thin you want your syrup.)

Rind of one orange cut in a spiral from the orange

20 to 30 cloves

Warm the syrup in a microwave safe pitcher in the microwave for 30 seconds on high.  Remove from the microwave and stir in the spirits.  Stud the orange peel with the cloves.  Place the orange peel into a bottle.  Pour in the syrup/spirits mixture.  Cork or screw on the lid of the bottle.  Let sit in a dark place for a week before using.

New Orleans Royale

Add a tablespoon of syrup to a glass of white wine or champagne as a festive treat.

Letter from the Editor: December 2009

Dear Friends,

The whirlwind of the winter holidays has arrived!  There has been, will be, and is so much going on at the museum that it is difficult to fit it all into this letter and I hope you will visit our website, www.southernfood.org for a more complete picture.  In short…

We have finished painting the Multi-Purpose Room, thanks to a group of student volunteers.  We were honored that the Lee Brothers made time to visit (and join!) the museum while they were in town signing their new book, Simple, Fresh, Southern.  Scholar Anthony Stanonis visited from Ireland and lectured here.  Chef David Guas held his book release party and signing at the museum and we have included photos from the event in this month’s newsletter.

Anthony Stanonis (left) and David Beriss at SoFAB

With December roaring along, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum is celebrating the season with holiday gift passes and memberships, and events.  For a limited time, the memberships will include a special gift.  This Friday, Peggy Scott Laborde and John Magill sign Christmas in New Orleans. They will also talk about New Orleans Réveillon Dinners.  This Saturday will feature a Caribbean cooking demonstration, a perfect class to attend with your children.

Looking ahead, Chef Jeff Tunks will hold a fundraiser at his DC restaurant, Acadiana.  The fundraiser will coincide with DC Mardi Gras and will be held on January 24, 2009.  We hope you will join us for grillades and grits, Eggs Sardou, blood orange mimosas, and much more, if you are in the DC area.  More information can be found here.    The Southern Food and Beverage Museum will also be in Charleston, West Virginia at the Cast Iron Cook-off.  Two of our board members will be participating in the event (Anne Hart competing, Dickie Brennan judging).  Come out and help us support Board Member Anne Hart as she competes!

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum wishes you all the best during the winter holidays.  We hope to see you at the museum soon.

Best Wishes,

Stephanie Jane Carter

Our Favorite Things: December 2009

We’ve asked SoFAB staff and friends to share some of their favorite things this holiday season.

Liz Williams, SoFAB Director

Liz Williams, SoFAB Director

1.  Favorite gift in the SoFAB Store: My favorite thing changes a lot, but I think that this month I like the glittered dried okra and the glass fruit.

2.  Best culinary books: I like our books, Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours and Room in the Bowl, but I also really like The Epicurean Collector and Eating Architecture.

3.  Favorite kitchen products: I love different flavors of oil, olive oil, sesame oil, pecan oil.  I recently discovered coffee oil.  Coffee Oil…Where to Buy

4.  Favorite holiday tradition: Sitting around the table talking after a big meal with many generations together.

5. What else? I love color in the kitchen – bright green, red, yellow.  I also like copper.  I like it bright and shiny and I like it as it ages and turns brown and even little oxidized greenish parts.

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Stephanie J. Carter, Editor + Dir. of Communications

1.  Favorite thing in the SoFAB Store: This holiday season has been a very busy one.  For that reason, I’ve been doing much of my shopping online.  I’m a fan of the SoFAB online store for holiday purchases.  My favorite thing in it is the PJ’s New Orleans Roast Coffee.  A great stocking stuffer, it offers instant gratification for the groggy on Christmas morning.  Anyone who has been to New Orleans is familiar with PJ’s Coffee.  I love it.  We also sell it in the physical store.

2. Favorite culinary book: I love vintage culinary books.  I have one called the Complete Cookbook for Men, which says that women cannot cook because of an issue with their fingers.  It goes on to say that for the same reason they cannot play the piano or paint either.  Food photography has changed a lot over the years.  A 1980s James Beard Outoor Cooking book seems to embrace the idea that every piece of meat looks better with a fork in it.  When that theme became redundant, the photographer decided to stick a SWORD in a piece of meet.  And the reader is just wondering, Why is their a large sword through that piece of meat?  Obviously, the photographer exhausted this theme.  There is a photo that deviates and it is the funniest – a meal set up outside on a table.  In the background, a naked woman streaks through the forest.  Why, I have no idea.

I love community cookbooks from the 1960s and 70s.  Peppered with tips on how to balance a checkbook and open a bank account, they reflect the changes that were going on in society.  The role of women was changing.

A book that influenced me greatly when I was training to become a chef was Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page’s Culinary Artistry. It focuses on how flavors go together, spanning many different cuisines.  A cook can read it and be surprised at how flavors go together.  The authors explore the concept of food/cooking as art, coming to the conclusion that the culinary arts fits into this definition:  “Making or doing things, using unusual perception, that display form and beauty.”  The book reminds us that cooking is a craft, an art, a luxury, and a necessity.  I believe that it is important to learn the fundamentals really well, before you do anything else.  We cannot break things apart in interesting and palatable ways, before we understand how to put them together.  Another book I love is On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, which explores the science of cooking.  By understand why things work, we can fix them when they don’t.  My favorite new book of the year is John Besh’s My New Orleans.  This book has wonderful recipes, fantastic design, and beautiful photographs.  The first page or so over Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume has my favorite description of beets.

3.  Things in my kitchen that I cannot live without: My  steel by Dickoron.  If you get the Dickoron, use it often and you may never need to sharpen any other way.   I’ve seen cooks get made fun of in the professional kitchen for cutting slowly.  They would have been almost as fast and accurate as everyone else if they had just sharpened their knives.  Besides, a wound heals more quickly if you cut yourself with a sharp knife.  Here are the links to the one that I own…The Dickoron Sapphire Cut Round Steel http://knifemerchant.com/product.asp?productID=1400

4.  Favorite holiday food: I worked as a chef in Austria, where the holiday season is magical.  Because of that, I make spätzle each year.  Sitting outside, around a fire, with a mug of mulled wine and a warm plate of cheese spätzle – perfect.

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Kelsey Parris, Vista Americorp Technology Coordinator

My favorite things… since a lot of my favorite things involve food and kitchens, this is a fairly easy topic to pursue.

1.  Favorite Thing in the SoFAB Store: I love our museum store, and I think my favorite item might be the rum cake, closely followed by the ceramic coasters depicting familiar New Orleans restaurant scenes.

2.  Best Culinary Books: This is a revelation to me, but I think my favorite culinary related books right now might be Hemingway’s classics. I’ve just discovered the amount of detail that he puts into every drink and every mouthful of food that his characters consume. Thanks to the Museum of the American Cocktail for that lecture!

3.  Kitchen Tool I cannot live without: As for kitchen tools, I love wooden spoons. I think they are the best invention ever and I rarely use anything else to stir in my kitchen.

4.  Holiday Tradition and Food: My favorite holiday food and tradition go hand in hand–every Christmas my family lazily strolls into the living room and kitchen, we make mimosas and stoke the fire, then we begin to make breakfast. We call it Lord Beaverbrook after a hotel in Canada that made it for us, and it’s been a family staple ever since. You need toasted English muffins, steamed asparagus, smoked salmon, poached eggs, and a hollandaise sauce. Assemble with muffin on the bottom, asparagus and smoked salmon topped with the eggs, and a generous dousing of hollandaise to complete it. With a mimosa, it’s the best breakfast in the world!

5.  My dream kitchen: I’ll need a goodgas stove, like the one my dad has–an industrial grade stainless steal monster.  I’ll have a lot of space and big butcher blocks and paintings of food with cheery colors to keep the kitchen happy. Add a window with lots of sunlight and a great landscape, maybe with a couple of herbs growing on the ledge, and that’s my dream kitchen. If only someone will give me that for Christmas!

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Joe Sunseri, SoFAB Business Mgr and Archivest

1.   Favorite thing in the SoFAB store: Definately the deck of cards with a recipe on each card. Since I won’t cook anyway, I can at least play cards in the kitchen while I wait for my food to be delivered.

2.  Favorite Kitchen Appliance: I have always had a fascination with blenders such as the Waring Retro blenders – http://www.amazon.com/Waring-RB70-Blender-48-Ounce-Stainless/dp/B000AYDQDO . Who would have thought that the $25,000 Big Band leader Fred Waring invested in Freddy Osios’ idea in the 1930s would still be a staple in the kitchen almost 80 years later? While Jonas Salk used the “Waring Blender” to mix his polio vaccines in the 1950s, I discovered a couple of decades later how to make the perfect Grasshopper- courtesy of the blender.

3.  Favorite Holiday Food: The rum cakes from the Pirates Alley Trading Company are great. They weigh about 3 lbs each and 2lbs of that is rum. Its like you can squeeze the cake and get out enough rum for a couple of rum & cokes.  4.  Favorite Holiday Tradition: My favorite Christmas tradition is the Kristkindlmarkt or Weihnachtsmarkt that appear in German and Austrian cities around December 6th through Christmas. While these markets have traditional German items like German nutcrackers, angelic figurines, shaved wood tree ornaments and cuckoo clocks, you can also find foods such as lebkuchen and other German treats. At these markets one can stroll through the artisans’ stands sipping Gluhwein (a hot spiced wine) in the damp, cold German night air. Of course, in New Orleans, my new holiday tradition has been stumbling on Frenchmen Street on a damp, cold December evening, my beer sloshing all over in one hand with a limp taco from a nearby taco truck in the other while people try to bang out Silent Night on the drum cart.

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Chris Smith (behind those books, somewhere), Director of Collections

1.  Favorite thing(s) in the SoFAB store: I really the painted oysters. I cannot imagine the patience and skill it takes to create intricate designs on such a small surface.

2.  On your bookshelf? I like cookbooks, but I really love books that describe culinary history or current events in the culinary industry. I loved Julie and Julia, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, The United States of Arugula, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I have a book devoted to the culinary history of France, and another devoted to the culinary history of Italy and I am looking forward to those. This is how I learn about food.

3.  Favorite kitchen tool? My omelette pan is a cherished possession. I have a lot of little tools with handles that I really like, but the crock that holds all of them is a a favorite item.

4.  Holiday Food: I am not into Christmas at all. I think that means that I need to create some new holiday traditions. I think lasagna or pot roast will become traditions because I love them. Comfort food at Christmas. I love New Year’s – especially the alcohol. I think there’s a reason why a major drinking holiday comes right after a major family holiday.

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Allyson Corr, SoFAB Member and Veterinarian

1.  Favorite thing in the SoFAB store: Lacquered gumbo and other replicas of Southern delicacies.

2.  Favorite Culinary books: F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook and my three-decade collection of Vegetarian Times magazine

3.  Favorite kitchen tool: Koziol pasta server (pictured)- he also operates my kitchen fan and lighting.  My hanging Mexican clay pots- a gift from a friend with unlimited potential uses, which I prefer to simply admire dangling against the brick wall of my kitchen.

4.  Favorite holiday food:
* Appetizer- baked brie (no puff pastry) with mango chutney, rosemary and green apples.
* Main course- Seitan Bourginone or Vegetable torte (with puff pastry and layered mushrooms, spinach/feta and sweet potato).
* Side- Mashed potatoes, however they’re served.  And brussels sprouts.
* Dessert- pie.
* Drink= Mom’s eggnog or mulled wine.

Around the Table: Photos of the DamGoodSweet Signing + Party with David Guas

On December 6, 2009, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum was honored to host the book release party and first signing of Chef David Guas’ Dam Good Sweet: Recipes to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth, New Orleans Style. For more information for events at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, visit our website, http://www.southernfood.org. Visit the events page and sign up for our newsletter.

Little boxes of sweet treats and a bar full of Cava await guests

Guests Check out the New Book; (l to r) Virginia Medinilla, A. Murat Eren, Duygu Ozpolat Eren

Cane Syrup Snaps

Cava, Nectar Soda, and Coffee Accompany the Desserts; (in this photo) SoFAB Board Member Butler Burdine

Chocolate Pralines

Guests Arrived Early to Get Their Books Signed

David Guas (left) and SoFAB Director Liz Williams

Guests Enjoying DamGoodSweets

Simone Rathle (left)

Mini Red Velvet Cake Cupcakes

Liz Williams (left) and Examiner.com writer Anne Mirin Berry

Guests at the DamGoodSweet Release and Signing Party

Collections Update: The Big Grey Tower

by Chris Smith, Director of Collections, SoFAB

The newest exhibit at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum features a tower of recipes donated by a couple with a penchant for collecting and cataloguing recipes.
The tower, which stands almost six feet tall, features 22 grey drawers, or 11 drawers stacked side by side. The recipes are catalogued by food group. For example, Drawer 1 is dedicated to “chip dips and party goodies.” Drawer 10 focuses on shrimp. Drawer 14 is devoted to ethnic Italian, Slovak and Greek dishes.

The recipe horde is the gift of Rick and Monica Defenbaugh, formerly of Metairie, La., but now residents of a retirement community in Georgetown, Texas. They donated the tower when they made the move to Texas in the summer of 2009.

The collection represents a lifetime of culinary curiosity for the Defenbaughs and their daughters.

Both Rick and Monica were born in the mid-1940s, grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s, and had mothers they described as excellent cooks, though they didn’t teach either of them how to cook when they were young. Rick and Monica began their culinary adventures as young adults during their first marriages.

Monica grew up in West Virginia. She learned to cook primarily from her grandmothers, first generation immigrants – one from Romania and one from Czechoslovakia. Her mother influenced her too, although later.

Rick grew up in the American heartland, but worked as a waiter at the Texan Restaurant in Bryan, Texas, where he observed a professional restaurant kitchen in action. It was there that he developed an appreciation for good food that was well served.

Both moved to New Orleans where they would meet in 1975, and then marry in 1978. That’s when their adventures in cooking began.

“When we combined households (and recipe files), we shared the cooking duties,” the pair wrote in a letter to the museum describing the collection. “We strongly believe in a sit-down ‘family meal’ most evenings and required each of our two daughters (one from each of our first marriages), during their formative years, to cook the family meal once a week. As a result, both learned to cook, and had mastered a few well-rehearsed recipes when they left home for college.”

Family members routinely clipped recipes from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, magazines and cookbooks. Through the years, the collection of 4×6 recipe cards grew large enough to occupy several grey metal index card cabinets.

“Often, we stamped each recipe card with a rubber stamp to identify the magazine or cookbook that was the source of that particular recipe. Whenever we cooked a recipe for the first time, we marked the top edge of that recipe card with a red marker, to easily distinguish the previously prepared recipes from the ‘not-yet-cooked’ ones.”

The large recipe file allowed them to accumulate recipes they wanted to prepare in a convenient and organized manner, and to compare multiple recipes for the same or similar dishes. By comparing the ingredients and procedures from several recipes of the same dish, it became clear to the Defenbaughs which ingredients were key, which were optional or of lesser importance, and which procedures were simpler or efficient or suitable for their kitchen.

In 1993, the Defenbaughs began typing recipes into the computer to document favorite, routinely cooked, or family heirloom recipes. They printed the recipes and organized them into binders. In 16 years, the “Rick and Monica Cookbook” has morphed into 10 large ring binder notebooks and includes more than 1,000 recipes.

In 2002, the Defenbaughs discovered the internet and went on a recipe-printing binge. They discovered that they could print many more recipes than they could clip and they no longer needed the big recipe card file. They “mothballed” their 4×6 cards and began to store their recipes in their computer. They used the grey filing cabinets as an archive where they could find old favorites and heirloom recipes.

Eventually they decided they needed to find a home for the filing cabinets and the cards inside.

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum accepted the gift in July 2009 and it can be found on display in the Cookbook Corner of the museum.

To learn more about donating objects to the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, please learn more by visiting our site, http://www.southernfood.org

Food in the “News” – Cake Wrecks

Stephanie Jane Carter

In the spirit of our sweet theme this month, it seems impossible to ignore one of our favorite food sites, Cake Wrecks.  Celebrating professional cakes gone horribly wrong, the site was full of new wrecks for Veterans’ Day.  Since we cannot do the site justice (pun intended) here, in the name of “Amercia” (that is not a typo), visit this site.  http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/11/amercian-way.html

Perhaps a few of you remember an issue of SoFAB Monthly last November that poked a little fun at Baskin Robbins’ turkey-shaped cake.  We forgot about it, but Cake Wrecks did not.  They have a photo of the way it was advertised and a photo of the purchased product.  It’s a wreck, but amusing.  http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/11/real-turkey.html

Letter from the Editor: November 2009

I can’t say that visions of sugar plums are dancing in my head quite yet (it is only November) but with Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner, it does seem that desserts are on many people’s minds and plates.  They are certainly permeating our activities at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum lately.  NOLA Pastry, a philanthropic group of professional pastry chefs, has been holding its organizational meetings at SoFAB.  Plans are set for David Guas’ dessert party at SoFAB, celebrating the release of his new book, DamGoodSweet.  The Big Read NOLA, sponsored by the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, just held a cake and pie contest.  Later this month, our Culinary Club for Teens will enjoy a special presentation by Robert Plouffe, the Executive Pastry Chef for the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans.  The human tendency toward sweet tastes began with fruit.  As the sweet satsumas begin to ripen, DISH book club marks the season with a book about citrus, Oranges. Of even bigger note, the book club will now meet in locations around town that seem relevant to the featured book.  This month’s meeting takes place at La Playa with Greg Surrey of Surrey’s Juice Bar.   So, in honor of the sweet season, we celebrate sweet stuff in this issue of the SoFAB Monthly.

 

Send us your favorite family dessert recipe!  stephanie (AT) southernfood (DOT) org

Cheers,

Stephanie Jane Carter, Editor

Sweet Potato Pie and Cake Results

On Saturday, November 7, 2009, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum held its first cooking contest, Their Eyes Were Watching Sweet Potatoes.  Sweet potatoes, often confused with yams, are from the New World, while pies originated in the Old World.  Sweet potatoes were once considered exotic and precious by European royalty and the pies and cakes from this past Saturday would have surely brought them to their knees.
The 2009 winners are…(photos by David Gallent)

Sweet Potato Pie Category

Sweet Potato Pie in a Bread Pudding Style
Wendy Waren and Drue Deshotels
New Orleans, Louisiana

 

 

Sweet Potato Cake Category

Sweet Potato Rum Cake
Gwen Cashio
Destrehan, Louisiana

 

 

Youth Category

Sweet Potato Flan Cake
Seth Osborne, aka “Chef Seth”
Gretna, Louisiana

The judges for the contests were Mary Gallant, representing the Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission; Dale Irwin, Country Roads Magazine; and Betty Ruth Speir, retired physician and cookbook author.

Due to its success, the contest will be conducted again next year, though it will be expanded to accommodate new ideas and strategies.

For more information on events at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, please visit http://www.southernfood.org

Collections Update: Toy Stoves

by Stephanie Jane Carter

Due to the generosity of Ms. Alberta Lewis of Sebastopol Plantation of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum has acquired a second early-1900s cast-iron, child’s stove.  The stove, which bears the name pet on the door, was originally Ms. Lewis’ mother’s toy stove, and then Ms. Lewis’ childhood stove.  It features a four-burner top, chimney, and grate.  Little cast-iron pans and kettles, as well as a lid-lifter, accompany it.  The collection at SoFAB was inspired by a toy stove donated by board member Julia Johnston, also originally her mother’s.

During the late 19th and early 20th century, stove manufacturers began creating these miniature versions of adult stoves.  They bore names like pet, doll, dainty (an American cast-iron version that was anything but “dainty”), baby, OUR baby, and midget.  Some bore tougher names, names that transcended any drudgery in the kitchen, names like Jupiter, Eagle, and Eclipse. Other name’s were less imaginative, but equally interesting, such as an American cast-iron nickel stove know as Buck’s Junior 2.

The perceived motivation behind the creation of the little stoves is often debated.  Some believe that the heavy little stoves were salesman samples, lugged door to door by men hoping to tempt the lady of the house with an example of the stove she could touch.  While some of the little stoves may have been placed in stores to entice buyers, it seems impractical that many of them were carried door to door.  According to Florence Theriault, author of Toy Stoves, 1850-1950, the saleman sample theory is “largely discredited today, somewhat by applying common sense, and somewhat by a detailed study of those same manufacturers’ catalogs.”  She does say that at least one company, The Home Comfort stove company of St. Louis, did produce miniature stoves as saleman’s samples from 1910-1940.  Whether they were created for adults or children, it is undeniable that part of the motivation in their creation was to entice people to buy that brand of stove.

A childhood love of a specific brand toy stove could grow into an adult trust of that same brand.  The little stoves instilled brand recognition in children early on, in hopes that would be translated to brand loyalty when it was time to purchase a full-size stove.  Of course, children love to emulate their parents, so little stoves provided immense enjoyment for children, and the stove companies made a little extra money.

For many of us, our first attempts into the world of baking and pastry, and all other cooking, were with toy stoves.  Over time models that mimicked coal-burning stoves gave way to lighter, plastic or wood versions.  As my grandmother baked bread in her kitchen in North Carolina, I toiled away on my miniature, pink, plastic stove next to her.  She gave me batter to mix in a little bowl.  When it was done, I poured the gooey substance into a little loaf pan and placed it in my pink plastic oven.  I opened the door and peered in, considering the possibility that my little oven did not actually work.  My grandmother reminded me to be patient and when I turned my back, she would replace my loaf pan of batter with a loaf pan of perfectly warm, sweet cake.  With patience, cakes (and miracles) could happen in a toy stove.

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum looks forward to continuing to expand its collection of children’s cooking-related toys from many eras.  To view SoFAB’s collection policies, click here.  To view SoFAB’s FAQ page regarding collections, click here.  To contact the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, click here.

Book Review: DamGoodSweet

Review by: Liz Williams

DamGoodSweet by David Guas and Raquel Pelzel

$25, The Taunton Press

I am one of those people born without a serious sweet tooth.  I enjoy a sweet treat, but given a choice between another piece of fried chicken or a piece of pie, I will probably choose the chicken.  Given this handicap, a sweets cookbook had better be damn good to get my attention.

Despite a reference to N’Awlins (one of my pet peeves) I was charmed by this personal book.  Guas manages to be traditional,  nostalgic, and modern.  And the book doesn’t dumb down recipes for the home cook.  For example, the éclair recipe instructs the cook to use a pastry bag.  It even allows the cook to use his or her own judgment in filling the éclairs.  I appreciate that.

The instructions are clear, but the writing is sassy and personal.  This is David’s experience of New Orleans, not the generic version.  And when he deviates from tradition, he owns it.

My favorite recipe is the Double Chocolate Bread Pudding with Salted Bourbon Caramel Sauce.  I love the idea of using leftover king cake in a bread pudding – why not?  The caramel sauce is easy to make and delicious.

His king cake recipe is traditional, as is the pecan pie.  His Chocolate Cupped Cakes with Coffee and Chicory are marvelous and modern.  For a person who isn’t naturally a sweets lover, this book is one from which I will actually cook.  Cane Syrup Snaps with hot sauce.  I love it!