Mushroom au Gratin: or, Making French recipes look a lot more American

We at A Book of Cookrye, like many people, sometimes are a lot more tired than a recipe will allow. Faced with something that involves three pots over burners of three different temperatures while we slice and mince enough ingredients to feed five, we will sometimes enthusiastically make something else. Sometimes we dearly love making recipes that are an unnecessarily elaborate construction, other times we simply want dinner to be magically ready.
And it turns out that people around the world agree with us! Let's briefly consider France, a country which culinary experts revere so much I'm sure some of them would pay to journey there and eat the trash in the streets. How else could a tourist's driving guide become a Most Sacred Text? Because it's French, of course! Actually, we're not really discussing France, the country in Europe where French people live. We're discussing American food snobs' idea of France- the country where the food is classy, the presentation is flawless, the kitchen may as well be a temple for all the rituals involved, and every recipe is a labor-intensive, pain-in-the-ass tribute to gastronomy. In this weird imaginary France that the snobs rhapsodize about, you're not allowed to cook unless you already have thirty years of experience and can carve a bell pepper into a naked lady with big bazongas while blindfolded.
Anyway, this deeply-cherished idea of France, which may not actually exist on their side of the Atlantic, doesn't actually line up with reality we find in recipes published in France (with the internet, primary sources are a cinch!). As a case in point, let's flip through the France chapter of today's book of choice!

Pan Am Airways' The Complete Around-the-World Cookbook, Myra Waldo, 1957

Mushroom-Beef Gratin 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 onion, chopped 2 tbsp chopped parsley 1 tbsp basil 1 tsp salt 1 tsp pepper ¼c wine vinegar 1½ pounds sliced mushrooms 1½ pounds ground beef 2 tbsp butter ½ c breadcrumbs 1 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese Select a pan that can go both in the oven and on the stove. Mix the garlic, onion, seasonings, vinegar, and mushrooms. Set aside. Brown and drain the beef. Saute the mushrooms in a little of the beef fat until done. Taste and check seasonings. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Top with cheese, and dot with butter. Place until broiler until browned. Adapted from Pan-American World Airways' The Complete Around-the-World Cookbook, Myra Waldo, 1957

As a reminder, the introduction tells us that recipes in this book "came from all possible sources, including hotels, restaurants, local gourmet groups, and private citizens." So this isn't one of those 1950's "international" cookbooks that tried tell you that adding soy sauce made your fish stick casserole into something authentically Chinese.
We were drawn to this recipe for two reasons. One, ever since we finally had mushrooms that were not boiled until slimy and bitter, we have discovered that they are delicious. Two, it appears to only involve one pan!

You didn't think we'd only use one garlic clove, did you?

The best thing about this recipe is just how fast we had it ready for the stove. It looks like we're going to have a lot of leftovers, but keep in mind how much mushrooms shrink when you cook them.

We're used to French recipes having a list of four ingredients and then nine paragraphs telling you what to do to them, so "mix everything and then get it over a burner" was a refreshing change.

Well, we thought it was ready for the stove, but it turns out we didn't read the recipe very well.

I don't know if the three hour marinating time was supposed to draw out juices or something, but we had planned to have dinner ready in the short time it took to get these things cooked and then browned on top.
However, before you gasp in French at me for failing to marinate the produce, we did let them stew in their own vinegar for at least a little bit. You see, we wanted to make a complete dinner in a single pan. We therefore converted this vegetable side dish into a delightful dinner by bringing a little bit of America over to the recipes of France. Which means the mushrooms got a little bit of marinating time while we dealt with... this!

Pictured: America!

Is there anything more aggressively all-American than dumping a big log of ground beef into something and being like "Yeah, this is a dinner now"?

All right, let's leave our dead cow detour and get back to the original recipe. We probably should have removed the beef and set it aside. It would have allowed for proper sauteeing. However, we didn't want to have to wash yet another bowl. You may notice that we have even made sure to use a pan without plastic handles so that we can do the stovetop stuff and bake it in the same vessel.

We omitted the butter because we figured the residual beef grease was enough. Besides, if we called it graisse de boeuf instead of beef dippings, people would pay extra for the chance to eat greasy un-drained tacos.

Once you decide you like mushrooms, it gets annoying how much they shrink when you cook them. This thing I just learned to like turns into tiny nuggets of nearly nothing! We started out with so much mushroom that we had to very carefully try not to knock them out of the pan every time we stirred. As the mushrooms started to cook, the vinegar made itself known. The steam coming off the pan got sharper and more acidic, eventually scouring my nose. Most people might dislike that, but I appreciate a good nasal scrubbing in the middle of allergy season.

Once we get some breadcrumbs on this, it's dinner.

This was a faster recipe than I expected. Like, even if you decide to add meat to it, you can have it ready to bake in like 30 minutes. This really goes against what every snob in America thinks France should be. Rather than a double-sided page of instructions, all we had was a short paragraph telling us to push things around in a pan over a hot burner and then bake it. Speaking of baking, let's get the topping of this on it!

It's interesting that here in America, when we hear of "[insert food here] Au Gratin," it's usually sliced potatoes under a thick blanket of cheddar cheese. Which is of course delicious (especially if you spread the potatoes out thin so there's a lot of cheese to go with each helping). This looked like a sandbox. The recipe does use some cheese, though not nearly as much as an American might. We're using these vaguely European-looking cheese wedges which we had to cut up for ourselves. It was cheaper than the tubs of shredded Parmesan, and we refused to consider that synthetic stuff that comes in plastic shakers.

Lest you think this is a diet-friendly recipe with only one tablespoon of cheese on it, we're also supposed to put this lump of butter on.

And here it is, ready to bake! I refused to get out and subsequently wash a cheese grater just for one tablespoon of the stuff, so I just had at it with the knife that already needed washing after doing the onions. As a result, our casserole is now topped with an adorable festival of yellow cubes.

I didn't think the broiler was the best way to cook it. It was definitely faster than baking, but I thought it'd have been nicer if the browning had gone a bit deeper. But I can see why twice-cooked mushrooms may not be appealing to many. Maybe if one moved the oven rack a bit farther down and reduces the broiler heat, the results would improve.

But it looked decent, and smelled really good. All was promising until we inserted a serving spoon and lifted out a scoop of dinner.

We wanted to make casserole, not soup! If we do this again, we'll stir extra breadcrumbs into the actual mess in the pan. After absorbing all the pan juices, they'd probably taste divine intermingled with all the beef and mushrooms.

It looks like cafeteria slop, but it's pretty good! I thought all that vinegar would make it taste like we just dumped salad dressing in there, but it complements everything really well. In the unlikely event of leftovers, it reheats very well.

Raisin Cake from Paraguay: or, It's like mincemeat but not quite

It's not beginning to look like Christmas, the season is reaching its big climax! This looks like it's been a very traditional Christmas here in America. The first fake pine went out in the stores somewhere around September as has been done since the early 1900s, along with the usual articles bemoaning that Christmas starts in September. We had the usual spate of people screeching about The War On Christmas, as we have every year since I can remember. And of course, the radio has been playing the same short playlist of Christmas music (we had to switch radio stations after being subjected to one to many repetitions of El Burrito de Belén), causing us to wonder if anyone has ever produced a recording of "Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let It Begin with Me" not sung by charmingly tuneless children.
We at A Book of Cookrye have been avoiding a lot of it, as we do these days. We realized a few years ago that a lot of our resentment of Christmas was that it felt like an obligation. Eventually, we realized that actually we don't have to buy stuff for people. We don't have to listen to 5 singers try to come up with their creative spin on Jingle Bells- this isn't North Korea, we can turn the radio off. And we don't have to draw up a list of people to whom we are contractually obliged to give presents. And most importantly, we don't have to nail a massive smile on our face in the name of Christmas cheer. We reserve the same right to be openly tired at Christmas as we do the rest of the year. Having realized that we don't have to do all those things leaves us with a lovely day to bring out all of the really fun recipes, see our family, and if we happened to see something we thought someone would like, give it to them.
Which brings us to, very cautiously, busting out a Christmas recipe.

Paraguayan Raisin Cake    Torta de Pasa 1 tbsp cornstarch ½ c water ¾ c white sugar 1¼ c raisins ½ c chopped nuts* ½ c butter ½ c dark brown sugar 2 eggs 2 c flour 1½ tsp baking soda 1½ tsp cream of tartar ½ c milk 1 tsp vanilla Heat oven to 375°. Grease a round or square pan. Stir together the cornstarch and water until smooth (it's easiest to do this in a measuring cup.) Put in a saucepan with the water, ½ c white sugar, raisins, and nuts. Cook over low heat until thick, about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. Cream the butter, brown sugar, and remaining white sugar. Thoroughly beat in the eggs and vanilla, then stir in the baking soda and cream of tartar until all is mixed. Add the flour in three additions, alternating with the milk in two and starting with the flour. Pour half the batter into the pan. Spread the raisins over it. Spoon the remaining batter all over the top, then spread it to cover. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. *We recommend hazelnuts. Pan-American Airways' Complete Round-The-World Cookbook, Myra Waldo, 1954

This comes to us from Paraguay's chapter in The Complete Round-the World Cookbook. We at A Book of Cookrye, knowing nothing about Paraguayan food, don't know whether it really is something one would find on a lot of tables in Paraguay (or would have found in the 50's when this book was published) or if the recipe was heavily altered for American audiences. We actually lean toward the former since a lot of our friends have flipped through their home countries' sections while saying things like "yep, my Mom makes something like that... yep, we eat that all the time..."
You may think a 1950's book of international recipes is suspect, but even the recipes from India apparently are correct. I was very astonished when I was making a lentil curry (the main ingredients were lentils, onions, and boiled eggs, so it appealed to my grocery budget) and one of my friends from India came into the kitchen, saw me standing over the pot, and in astonishment asked "Where'd you learn to make that?"

The only other time we do the cornstarch-and-water bit is when we're making pie filling.

This cake isn't listed as a Christmas recipe, but it seems like something we in America would bring out at this time of year. Which brings us to the reason why I earlier said I cautiously bring it out. You see, in my house, my dislike of forced Christmas cheer and the attendant saccharine rituals has made it difficult to admit there's anything about Christmas I actually like. If I were to say I liked a Christmas song, then every time it came on the radio someone in the house would turn the volume as high as it goes while saying "LOOK IT'S THAT SONG YOU LIKE DON'T COMPLAIN YOU SAID YOU LIKE IT".

This picture is dedicated to all my friends who have so extensively reminded me that raisins masquerading as chocolate chips scarred them for life.

Those of you who find raisins to be one of the evil things in the world should take some comfort in knowing that despite hating nuts in cakes (they always seem to go weirdly soft in baking and... ew), we added all of these.

Although if we at A Book of Cookrye were to be thoroughly honest, the main reason we consider this to be a Christmas recipe is that as soon as the raisins cooked a bit, they made the same squelching sound as the mincemeat Fanny Cradock was slapping onto everything in her TV show.

Even by 1970's UK standards, Fanny Cradock was a surreal experience, thankfully preserved on Youtube. You owe it to yourself.

I must admit I watch Fanny Cradock specials with fascination. She was the biggest TV chef in the entire UK, and they couldn't come up with a sink with running water? And what's with scaring her poor assistant into silence and then making her wear a shroud so that there's only one "attractive" woman on the set? (Although we give her credit for things like applying egg wash to the tops of her pies with her fingers because otherwise you'd have to come up with a brush and then wash it.) But, the point is, be sure to see part 2 where she puts mincemeat into a half-cooked omelet  and covers it in powdered sugar. Consider the videos to be A Book of Cookrye's Christmas gift to those who love the more bizarre aspects of the past.

FEAR THE RAISIN-NUT MINCEMEAT.

And so, we at A Book of Cookrye set the raisin-nut stuff on the marvelous ventilated cooling rack.

This is so wonderful to have near the kitchen. Whenever I have my own place I'm rigging a grate to a fan so I needn't do without.

Because we at A Book of Cookrye feel like giving at this time of year, this is our gift to everyone who was traumatized by the raisins. Behold, for we have made delicious, brown sugar-y cake batter!

We have never managed to get past here without eating at least a little bit of it.

The cake was a couple of shakers away from being a very rich spice cake. It was marvelously thick when we spread it in the pan, and tasted amazing.

And now comes the part where we upgrade (or downgrade, depending on your opinion of the title ingredient) this from an ordinary cake to a raisin cake!

Look at those softly glistening raisins. Don't they look good enough to eat?

We thought the batter would be hard to spread on top of the raisins without just mixing it all together and spearing it about with the spoon. But the raisin mincemeat got very firm once it cooled down and the batter just sat right on top and and spread very easily.

Cakes here at A Book of Cookrye involve a lot of batter splats. Sometimes they end up in the pan.

By "the batter spread very easily", we of course mean it sort of mixed with the raisins but mostly stayed on top of everything. We at A Book of Cookrye were slightly annoyed, but decided that we'd be better off being like the princess in Frigid and letting it go.

The cake smelled so wonderful in the kitchen right up to when we joined some people watching Rick and Morty. Television may not be ruining our lives, but it did unfortunately have some negative effects on our baking.

Nothing wrong with a well-done cake.

However, this cake was more than easily fixed.

Put some icing on it and you'd never know.

And this is why we said this is a Christmas cake. It's good, but you will definitely be full after you eat it. If you have this after dinner, you'll be sated for hours. It's absolutely delicious, and just the sort of thing you'd serve after a big dinner this time of year.

Payasam: or, A Book of Cookrye abuses pasta and ruins Indian desserts

Today, we at A Book of Cookrye present an adventure in cooking!

The Complete Around-the-World Cookbook, Pan-Am Airways, 1954

We could have looked this up and seen what it looks like successfully executed. Really, we could have. However, we wanted the slightly masochistic fun of going at a recipe the likes of which we've never seen before with absolutely nothing to guide us.

That's a lot of butter.

And by nothing to guide us, we really mean nothing to guide us. A lot of people in our building with whom we share a kitchen are from India, and they make a lot of food from home, but we've never seen them make any Indian desserts.

When the raisins turned into little raisin balloons as the butter started to look burnt, we asked for the first time a question that came up a lot while making this.

All right, the pan-fried raisins were weird, and they may have absorbed enough butter to reconstitute into grapes, but here's where we really ran into problems.

Break in half? We should have broken it into thirds!

Does this look fully cooked to you? The pot had dried up by this point.

Nothing like a pot of half-cooked spaghetti and nearly-burnt milk!

We'll let Lucy and Ethel speak on our behalf.

Furthermore, the noodles stayed crunchy well after we added about twice as much water as originally went into the pot.

Even if the pasta had cooled, we were having problems with our hard raisins and burnt nuts. Once the raisins had cooled, they shattered if you tried to spear them with a fork. The whole mess ended up in the trash.

I sauteed them for five minutes, does this look right?

Ever wanted to eat a bird's nest?

If you want to try this yourself in half the time, partially cook some spaghetti and toss it in condensed milk. It was nearly really good, but still terrible. However, what should one of our neighbors offer to share with us but this exact dessert!

It's like rice pudding but with pasta.

I think we can look at our attempt and say...

Piroshki: or, Trying to make liver edible

We at A Book of Cookrye have been pondering the fact that we cannot afford meat as often as we would like. We have also been flipping through a book that we've had sitting around for a while...

Exciting title page, isn't it?

Pan-Am published a cookbook of recipes sorted by country of origin in 1954. They had their various employees gather recipes from the countries they sent planes to. We had a copy in our house for years (along with various Pan-Am things since my grandfather worked for them), but the book disappeared at some point. Fortunately, it's fairly cheap online, hence the copy we have now.
You may think this is one of those posts where we say "Oh-ho-ho, look at those silly 1950s people and their sad and bland attempts at foreign foods!", but lot of my friends from outside the US have flipped through their home countries' sections and apparently the recipes are pretty accurate. Which makes sense- if you're going to sell an international cookbook to people who can afford to actually go to the countries, they're going to know how the food is supposed to taste. You can't try to sell them cookbooks that tell you to make Japanese food with a packet of onion soup mix.

They also put this inside the covers in case you wanted to get someone else to make the food for you.

Today, we're cracking this book open to Russia and attempting...

As aforesaid, we're attempting to get meat without paying full price.

Normally when trying entirely new things, we at A Book of Cookrye are perfectly fine with the possibility that the food might be bad.  However, today's offal adventure had better be good because the people at the meat counter would not open one of their liver trays and repackage a smaller amount for us no matter how nicely we asked. We thought we were making liver rolls, we ended up making a commitment.

You know what, let's leave the livers aside for an indefinite period and work on that pie crust.

It just got a lot harder to justify eating livers with "it's good for you."

According to the introduction to the Russian chapter, Russian food makes extensive use of sour cream for the same reason we have pickles and cheese: a holdover from before we had refrigerators. The point is, we're going to be wrapping livers in butter-sour cream-flour paste.

Put a blob of guacamole at about two o'clock and we can serve this at a Tex-Mex restaurant.

Correction: we're wrapping livers in very sticky sour cream-butter-flour paste.

At present the dough had no hope of rolling out at all. It was a sticky blob. But we put it in the refrigerator anyway. After it had spent hours in the refrigerator thinking about what it had done, it was time to get out that which we dread...

Just kidding- Fanny Cradock taught us that we now like mushrooms. Now we must face that which we dread. At least the livers get drowned in butter first.

You know, it's kind of surprising Russia got a chapter in this book with the Cold War heating up. Furthermore, it's called Russia and not the USSR (incidentally, Ukraine got its own chapter despite not being a country at the time). Furthermore, there's no apology for including those icky commies whatsoever. There's not even any acknowledgement that the US and Russia were, ahem, having difficult diplomatic times.

Either the liver's cooked or it's pre-digested.

The pie crust, in its time spent refrigerating, had gone from a sticky paste to a lump of dough about as hard as a stick of butter. We weren't rolling this out, we were smashing it with a rolling pin.
This is the first time we've ever done a pie crust that didn't involve shortening-- although we've read plenty of cookbooks old enough that butter was your only option. The instructions in those books extensively repeat not to touch it lest your body heat ruin everything. Also, most say that a marble surface is best because it's cold. Also, try to do this when it's cold out.
We always thought that was overkill, but sure enough, this melted back to the sticky paste a few pictures up if we touched it for a second or so. The point is, maybe all those people who want granite counters aren't being trendy. They might be really into making their own puff pastry.

I hope that's ⅛ inch thick.

Even though I'm terrible at it, making pie crust is a lot more fun than it should be. Maybe I just like the fact that rather than trying to make everything stay in bowls and pans without spilling, you do the whole operation, messy flour everywhere and all, directly on the counter.

The liver kept trying to escape.

Incidentally, for those who wish to try this at home, it's a lot easier to make the little liver things stay shut if you dip your finger in water and draw a ring around the edge of the crust circles before you put the filling on it. After all, we don't want the liver escaping, do we?

Having rerolled the dough once to get another batch of tiny circles, the third time around we decided we'd done enough tiny liver pods.

We've got a pan of fourteen Russian-sized liver pods and one American-sized liver thing. They almost look like potstickers, don't they?

Evil potstickers of liver!

While the Russian liver potsticker things baked, we reheated the extra liver-mushroom stuff to see if it's any good on its own. Not every food matches the countertop so well.

You know what? Not bad.

At this point, we at A Book of Cookrye must register surprise: these actually smelled amazing coming out of the oven despite containing what now looked like mysterious black stuff.

Despite containing livers, they were actually very good! So, if you cut liver with mushrooms, douse it in salt and pepper (we used a lot more than the piddly doses given in the recipe) and wrap it in sour cream and butter, you can actually eat the stuff!

Liver pod, anyone?

By the way, if anyone from Russia is reading this, please share how correct you think the recipe is.