Give Your Friends a Break with Breakfasts
When next about to ask your favorite friends for dinner, hesitate and listen instead to the extra enthusiastic acceptance that follows an invitation to Sunday breakfast en negligé. Somewhere between ten and eleven is a good hour to set, as it gives everyone, including the hostess, time for a weekend sleep yet doesn’t interfere with possible afternoon engagements. Out-of-towners and those unfortunate folk who must live in hotels particularly appreciate a glimpse of family life on a Sunday and if you order their home-town paper delivered with your own, their gratitude for such thoughtfulness is likely to be overwhelming. And be sure to be lavish with the coffee for that wonderful relaxed moment when, replete with food, surrounded by a fog of cigarette smoke, and snowed under by the comic and sport sections, everyone wants the second or third cup that there isn’t time to sip leisurely on a hurried weekday morning.
Start off with lots of ice-cold fruit or vegetable juice, not neglecting such delicacies as peaches or strawberries when they are in season, and for a small number it’s fun and easy to have next a big choice of the cold cereals that come so tidily packaged in individual boxes. On a cold winter morning watch your guests make a sheepish but willing “just this once” exception in favor of fattening hot oatmeal.
The conventional eggs and bacon with toast are always acceptable but let’s have a little more heartwarming main course to celebrate the day when no one has to hurry off to train or office. Perhaps SAUSAGE, in links or cakes, fried for 10 minutes over a hot fire and then drained of the grease and given 20 minutes in a 375° oven, or SCRAPPLE, now that the famous Philadelphia dish has wandered from its native heath in cans. The traditional and only way to achieve a perfect result with this no longer local food is to start thick slices cooking in a cold pan over a medium heat. Fry each side 10 or 15 minutes until a crisp rich brown, let no foreign coating of flour, batter or crumbs sully its original purity, and turn each piece only once. Follow these directions closely and William Penn’s reproachful ghost will never haunt you.
Renowned in song and story as scrapple is, when the City of Brotherly Love really relaxes on a Sunday morning the table is more than likely to groan under a great dish of steaming KIDNEY STEW, rightly considered a very different article indeed from the dull “stewed kidney” that other districts offer. One of my ancient cookbooks speaks of always demanding a “nice, fresh beef kidney” for this, leaving the cook with the idea that an impertinent but kindly bull should be just around the corner, ready for the sacrifice, but a local butcher is sure to provide you satisfactorily with the 1 large or 2 small ones you need for four people, without your having to delve into the original owner’s disposition or home life. Use a pot of ample size, cover the meat with cold water, and bring slowly to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes. Drain off the water and wash the pot and the kidney, too. Cover the kidney again with cold water, add 1 chopped onion, 2 tablespoons of chopped celery or celery tops, and a sprig of parsley. Let it simmer until the kidney is so tender that a fork will pierce it easily; about 6 hours, or overnight, if you have a controllable stove, is better. Long slow cooking does it and it must be kept below boiling. As you remove it from the stove add 1 teaspoon of salt, and let it cool in the water in which it was cooked. When ready to proceed remove the fat and strain and reserve the water. Chip the kidney into pieces about the size of a thick five-cent piece and, if you have done a good job of simmering it slowly, there should be very little tough core to discard. Melt 3 tablespoons of kidney fat or butter in a saucepan, add 2 tablespoons of flour, and when it bubbles add slowly 3 cups of the water in which the kidney was boiled. Let this simmer 10 minutes, then add the kidney and 2 chopped hard-boiled eggs. After another 10 minutes simmering, if the gravy does not seem quite thick enough, add a bit of cornstarch dissolved in cold water, a very little at a time. Taste it for salt, add more if needed, with a dash of cayenne and black pepper. Just before serving stir in 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and 1 tablespoon of sherry, and have both these condiments and cayenne pepper too, on the table. Prepared as above, this is guaranteed to make any exiled Friend burst into nostalgic tears, and I know one homesick lad who attempted its manufacture on a collapsible stove in a foreign pension!
CODFISH CAKES shouldn’t belong only on a Boston breakfast table and now that it is no longer necessary to soak, shred and pick the fish ourselves they are a joy to make. For four people, run cold water through 1 cup of already shredded, packaged fish that has been placed in a fine sieve, and press very dry. Add to this 1 well-beaten egg and beat together. Beat in 2 cups of hot mashed or riced potatoes and ⅛ teaspoon of black pepper, and let it cool a little before you form it into round flat cakes or balls. The balls will have to be fried in deep hot fat but the cakes do very well cooked in ½ inch of grease in a skillet on a medium fire. Bacon fat is good for this and so are bacon strips as a garnish. Spicy homemade tomato catsup (page 129) and doughnuts (page 144) should accompany this for real New Englanders, but let’s pass up the Northern cold breakfast pie.
Boiled rock fish (page 78) is another different breakfast dish, and CREAMED FINNAN HADDIE too rarely makes a morning appearance in this part of the English-speaking world. For four, cover a 2½-pound piece of finnan haddie with half-and-half milk and water, bring to a slow boil, and simmer for 25 minutes. Drain and place on a hot platter, cover it with 2 cups of white sauce (page 94), and sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Pan-broiled shad roe and crisp strips of bacon wreathed with shining green watercress and red radishes and accompanied by fried tomatoes make a spring breakfast straight from heaven. Expensive, too, as most heavenly things are. Imagine my indignation when two visiting Californians announced that they considered the delicate fish eggs an overrated Eastern specialty. California, there they went! The tomatoes are on page 86, and SHAD ROE for four calls for 1 or 2 sets of roe gently poached for 15 minutes in salted water to cover. Add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to keep the roe light-colored and firm. Drain the fragile things carefully. Fry 6 pieces of bacon and reserve. Have the bacon grease hot and carefully ease in the roe, for it’s vicious stuff when cooking and hisses and spits like a snake. Cook 10 minutes on each side on a medium hot stove, then onto a warm platter with the bacon, to acquire its garland of green and red. Don’t forget, when fresh or canned roe means just a pain in the pocketbook, that the fried tomatoes and bacon make a fine breakfast in their own right.
My father-in-law, a famous amateur chef, used to like to prepare CREAMED DRIED BEEF and hot cakes for his Sunday breakfast. For four these were his directions for what he called “frizzled beef.” Shred ¼ pound of dried beef. Melt ¼ cup of butter with ½ cup of water and a scrape of onion in a skillet, add the beef and stir over a medium hot fire. When the water cooks away and the meat starts to brown and “frizzle,” which means “curl” in these degenerate days of perfect permanent waves, scrape it to the side of the pan and in the empty space shake 1½ tablespoons of flour. Slowly stir in 2 cups of cream or top milk, and simmer 5 minutes longer.
These main dishes, although complete in themselves, do yearn for waffles or hot cakes as side partners, especially on a Sunday, and that lack is easiest supplied by using one of the bought “mixes” which are simple to make and foolproof when the directions are followed. Waffles can be cooked and served at the table, thanks to Mr. Edison, but unfortunately most people consider three or four hot cakes just a single helping and the electric griddle, fitted with a belt conveyor, that will produce them in that profusion hasn’t appeared yet. My eldest grandson always speaks of my “joimping up and down” on winter Sundays to keep the buckwheat cakes flowing from stove to table, and true it is that to be served in bulk and peace, pancakes should have an assistant in the kitchen. Looking forward to that happy day, let’s have a recipe or two. These should feed four but the amounts are not guaranteed against appetites.
For real old-fashioned BUCKWHEAT CAKES put 1 cup of warm water in a wide-mouthed 2 or 3-quart pitcher. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar, 2 tablespoons of white or yellow cornmeal, 1 tablespoon of white flour, and ½ teaspoon of salt. Beat in 2 or 2½ cups of buckwheat flour to make a thick batter. Dissolve ¼ of a yeast cake in ½ cup of lukewarm water, add to the batter, give it one final beating, cover the pitcher, and let stand overnight in a warm place. Next morning dissolve 1 tablespoon of New Orleans molasses and ½ teaspoon of baking soda in ¾ cup of boiling water. Beat it in and add a little more water if necessary to make a thin batter. Grease your hot griddle with a bit of salt pork rind or bacon and bake the cakes. This was my grandmother’s recipe and like all old ones was originally even vaguer as to proportions than as given here. Even now it is impossible to allow for the variations in flour, but one try will convince you how simple, easy and cheap, too, the cakes are to make.
My SOUR MILK HOT CAKES are almost as delicate as French crêpes. Separate 2 eggs, beat the whites stiff, and continue with the same beater on the yolks until they are thick. Sift 1½ cups of flour with 1 tablespoon of white or yellow cornmeal, 1 tablespoon of sugar, ½ teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of baking soda, and ½ teaspoon of baking powder. Add alternately to the yolks with 2 cups of sour thick milk. (If necessary measure this out 24 hours ahead and let it get well curdled in a warm place, or use buttermilk instead.) Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and stir in 2 tablespoons of cooking oil, and bake on a hot, lightly greased griddle, turning only once.
SOUR MILK WAFFLES have a flavor that no bought mix has ever achieved. Beat the whites of 3 eggs stiff, then tackle their yolks. Sift 2 cups of flour twice with 1 teaspoon of baking soda, ½ teaspoon of salt, and 3 teaspoons of sugar. Add alternately to the yolks with 2 cups of sour milk or buttermilk. Fold in the egg whites and 5 tablespoons of cooking oil. The waffle iron should need no greasing.
When once impressed with the ease with which company for breakfast can be handled, don’t be surprised to find yourself issuing invitations for a large buffet affair on Sunday morning. This is even more fun when planned to follow a special occasion like a wedding, dance or someone else’s (not your) large party the day before, for from boarding school days on humanity seems to love to get together the next morning for a thorough rehash of the last night’s happenings. A menu of kidney stew, scrambled eggs, waffles and coffee automatically suggests itself as delicious and capable of being prepared ahead. Set the table and have the stew made the night before, and even the waffle batter can be mixed without soda and baking powder and covered in the icebox ready for the addition of the leavening before cooking. If you use a mix for this have the eggs and milk that it calls for already measured. Then tuck yourself in for a peaceful night’s sleep. Next morning make the eggs at the table over an electric stove or that almost forgotten but still useful adjunct of the 1900s, a chafing dish. Give the waffle iron into the care of one of the culinary experts who always yearn to assist the hostess, bring in pitchers of iced tomato juice, plenty of hot coffee, and the party is on!
My friend Mrs. Yellott is famed far beyond her native Baltimore for her magnificent Maryland Hunt Cup breakfasts held the morning after that great horse race. The throng of guests can choose between the delights of fried tomatoes, kidney stew, eggs and bacon, broiled sweetbreads, and even homemade sausage with waffles, besides their fruit juice and coffee, and her menu is a bit overwhelming for any but a born cook with capable aid. But her welcoming snifter of Champagne is worth copying at a simpler breakfast party and with good domestic wine needn’t add much to the expense. Try the whole menu sometime for a special occasion when you want to splurge, and have the green and gold bottles in an ice-filled bucket, ready to greet nightworn eyes.
The younger fry, debutante age and up (heaven forbid that I should trespass in those forgotten, horror-filled lands of real “children’s parties”), love a breakfast, too. The food needn’t be so elaborate, but lots of waffles, from two irons if possible, two or three sweet spreads, creamed dried beef, and not so much coffee as their elders—they don’t need it, bless ’em—will produce screams of delight, especially if each one is given a heavy china “dog wagon” coffee mug, painted with their respective names, initials, or some personal joke. Use a quick drying enamel for the art work. Add a Victrola with some new jazz records and you have a shindig that will last well into the afternoon. And if then you roll in a small keg of iced beer and produce the same cups (washed) for that, while passing wooden bowls of pretzels and popcorn, well, you’re a member of the gang for life! And don’t say I didn’t warn you!
