Beef Tea

No one – as far as I know – has written a cookbook with the title Appropriate Dishes for Mourning or What to Eat When You Absolutely Have No Appetite, or Happy Meals to Eat When Feeling F’ing Miserable. Imagine the covers draped in crepe or widow’s weeds. These wouldn’t sell, would they? Or perhaps we know enough to bring over the obligatory casserole without having to consult a niche cookbook? People have, however, written recipes, articles, and essays re: feeding the invalid.

Let’s allow heartbroken-ness into the Invalid Category, shall we? Though we might not be in our beds awaiting our gaily decorated trays, we metaphorically are in those beds, and not getting up any time soon.

Seems that most of the experts think we ought to be eating Beef Tea. Eliza Acton (1799-1859), in her Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), has a recipe for “Extract of Beef, or, very strong Plain Beef Gravy Soup (Baron Liebig’s Recipe)[1]: “Take a pound of good, juicy beef (rumpsteak is best for the purpose), from which all the skin and fat that can possibly be separated from it, has been cut away. Chop it up small like sausage meat; then mix it thoroughly with an exact pint of cold water, and place it on the side of the stove to heat very slowly indeed; and give it an occasional stir.” You then cook it for 2-3 hours before allowing it to simmer, then you let it boil for 15 minutes. You add salt when it comes to a boil but, she cautions, “[it] is the only seasoning required.” She then elaborates: “To make light beef tea or broth, merely increase the proportion of water to a pint and a half or a quart, but in all else proceed as above.”[2] Her proportions: 1 lb. beef, 1½ pints or 1 quart of water.

Mrs. Beeton’s Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book has a special section devoted to Invalids. Isabella Mary Beeton was roughly a contemporary of Miss Acton (1835-65): her Book of Household Management came out in 1861. Judging by these books, you can see why the British were an Empire.

Mrs. Beeton advises that all kitchen utensils be “scrupulously clean … For invalids, never make a large quantity of one thing, as they seldom require much at a time … Always have something in readiness; a little beef tea, nicely made and nicely skimmed, a few spoonfuls of jelly, &c.,& c., that it may be administered as soon as the invalid wishes for it.”[3] She also advises that the tray toting the food is clean, that the “spoons, tumblers, cups and saucers, &c. be very clean and bright.” Suggested dishes, besides beef tea? Gruel, milk kept on ice so as not to sour, roast mutton, chickens, rabbits, calves’ feet or head, game, fish, mutton chops. She also cautions: “Never serve beef tea or broth with the smallest particle of fat or grease on the surface. It is better to, after making either of these, to allow them to get perfectly cold, when all the fat may be removed; then warm up as much as may be required. Two or three pieces of clean whity-brown paper laid on the broth will absorb any greasy particles that may be floating at the top, as the grease will cling to the paper.” She must think making beef tea a no-brainer, as she doesn’t give a recipe for it. Instead, she offers up “Invalid’s Cutlet” (mutton, in this case), “Invalid’s Jelly” (made from 12 mutton shanks), and Lemonade for Invalids.

Agnes Jekyll (1861-1937) has an essay called “Tray Food,” which begins: “Ill-health may be said to resemble greatness in that some are born with it, some achieve it, and some have it thrust upon them.”[4] She tends to go on a bit about the esthetics of trays (referring to them as “exasperating”). She calls for attractive trays “in various sizes and japanned in cheerful colors.” What’s on them? Eggs and fish au gratin, or mushrooms, vegetables, or cooked fruit. She suggests putting a bunch of violets on the tray, or primroses, a single rose, a spray of lemon verbena. She doesn’t suggest imbibing beef tea, but a layer thick of chestnut puree “with a couple of stoned and heated black plums at each corner. On this lay several delicately-cut slices of pheasant or turkey roasted or braised, a little good gravy poured very hot over it.” That sounds like a lot of work, and a perfect dish for a cold November day.

The Joy of Cooking (1931 edition) advises 1 pound of round steak, placed in a quart mason jar with 1 c. cold water and ½ t. salt, then again placed in a pot with water to cover, bringing it to a slow boil and allowing it to cook for an hour; take out the jar, cool on a rack, strain.[5]

And then there’s the lovely, wonderful late Laurie Colwin, and her beyond-marvelous essay “Nursery Food.”[6] I would copy the entire essay, but it would take too long, and I could probably be sued for copyright infringement. But yesterday, reading it aloud to the Scallion, we both burst out into much-needed laughter. It starts like this: “A long time ago it occurred to me that when people are tired and hungry, which in adult life is much of the time, they do not want to be confronted by an intellectually challenging meal: they want to be consoled … Once upon a time when I was in mourning for my father I was taken home by my best friend who sat me in a chair, gave me a copy of Vogue and told me not to move until called .. When I got to the table I realized that this angelic pal had made shepherd’s pie. I did not know that shepherd’s pie was just what I wanted, but it was just what I wanted.”

She writes that she has stretched the notion of Nursery Food like Silly Putty, and includes fried chicken, lamb stew, macaroni and cheese, meatballs, baked beans, lentil soup, chili, baked stuffed potatoes, and lasagna under this rubric. But the best part is this: “The ultimate nursery food is beef tea; I have not had it since I was a child, and although I could easily have brewed myself a batch, I never have yet. I am afraid that my childhood will overwhelm me with the first sip or that I will be compelled to sit down at once and write a novel in many volumes.”

And here’s how her mother made it: one pound of ”absolutely fatless silver tip of beef … on a doubled sheet of butcher paper or a wood board cut into tiny dice. Place it and any juices the meat has yielded in the top of a double boiler and gently cook, covered, over simmering water for several hours. Do not use salt or pepper. Simply leave the meat alone to give off its juices. After several hours you will be left with pure essence of beef, perfectly digestible and nourishing. Strain into a warm bowl … The meat itself is useless, a mere net of fibers, and should be given to the dog.” (Fortunately, we still have a few living with us.)

It’s also occurred to me that Beef Tea might provide us a key ingredient for Bullshots; ah, bliss.

Guess what’s for dinner?

Read this three years ago, and remembered it, of course right around now. Do check out Arthur Phillips’s heartbreakingly beautiful “My Dog Days” in the June 10, 2007 New York Times. Expect tears. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/0

[1] Baron Justus Liebig, born Darmstadt 13 May 1803, was an “eminent chemist,” according to his 19 April 1873 obituary in the New York Times: “… by the aid of a traveling stipend allowed him by the Grand Duke he removed to Paris, where he remained from 1822 to 1824 … Baron Liebig was the author of numerous works, in which his researches are set forth with great minuteness … In his Familiar Letters he developed his views on chemistry, and its relations to commerce, physiology, and vegetation.” And, perhaps, beef tea.
[2] The Best of Eliza Acton, ed. Elizabeth Ray, New York, 1968.
[3] Mrs. Beeton’s Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book, New York, 1984.
[4] Agnes Jekyll, Kitchen Essays, New York, 2001. Originally it appeared in 1922.
[5] No recipe appears for it in the penultimate version of Joy; seems rather likely that it’s not in the most recent tweaking, either.
[6] From Home Cooking, New York, 1988. It is still very much in print, and any serious cook/reader should have it on her shelf.

A Waldo-less World

Waldo died late on Friday, August 13th. We last saw him on Monday; following the advice of most dog experts, we made our holiday exit as unobtrusively as possible. My last image of Waldo is him sitting in the nook of one of his couches, tiny black and white splendor poised against the red sitting room walls, his head cocked, alert. Four days later he was dead.

The local vet theorized that he’d been poisoned, and reckoned that Waldo had ingested said some 10 to 15 days before he died. Slow-acting, it ate his red blood cells.

According to Sam, Waldo’s aunt, he was perfectly fine on Thursday night. On Friday morning, he refused food (only the second time in his too-short life), which triggered alarm signals. To the vet he went, where he was put on an IV hookup, released, with a possible blood transfusion perhaps the next day. He died later that night; Sam buried him in the dog cemetery, near a cypress, and some of the sheep (of which there are presently fifty plus in the land around us) came to pay their last respects. Waldo had only just met them the week before, so it was very kind of them to honor him so.

He entered our lives purely by fluke.

We weren’t meant to have another dog. Tillie had died only eight months before, and we still mourned (nearly six years later, we still do). But a dear friend was looking for a pup, and I went along.

They were a scrappy lot, those five puppies, all black and white, their on-site mother Leila, amiable, blonde, tiny, with a rodent-like face. Love at first sight with those puppies.

Brought the Scallion back to check out the litter, and Waldo-to-Be immediately began gnawing on the Scallion’s shoes. We were sold (and he was free).

He came to live with us in July 2005. He was so tiny that he could neatly fit into our kitchen scales and he didn’t weigh more than 2.5 kilograms (five pounds). He was small, irascible. He grew a little, but he remained small, and he only became more irascible.

He was too small to jump on the bed which, at that point in time in his puppyhood, was a major life goal. We always gave in and lifted him up. The beginning of a most bad habit, as he slept every night on the bed with us, usually under the covers, sometimes stretched out alongside one of us. Always ready to alert us with a growl if we were invading his space beside us. Some mornings we’d wake up and his head would be on the pillow, between us.

Waldo had many names, but the one that stuck was bestowed upon him by Osvaldo, Argentinian by birth, Italian by here’s where I live, who, upon seeing this small critter, said, “Oh, Waldito!” Waldo also sometimes went by the aliases Shrimpy McPup, Lord Dainty Paw. R. W. Yapp (his hip-hop name) and, most importantly, the Squiggler. Because squiggle is what he did.

Imagine a Slinky, but a horizontal one. Add four paws and a tail. Walk into our apartment any time and watch him squiggle (or, at least, before August 13th). He squiggled out of happiness, a constant S curve in motion. He also (annoyingly to everyone except us, I suspect) had to stand on his hind legs to greet you. Bad Dog Behavior, but we didn’t discourage it.

He had other annoying habits: he yapped. He yapped from joy, he yapped from frustration, he yapped at ambulance sirens, he yapped at insects, he yapped at other dogs (of course), he sometimes yapped at air. (Or so it seemed.) He also scratched incessantly at doors. If he was in, he wanted to be out. If he was out, he wanted to be in.

He loved ladies’ lingerie. An unwitting turn in a friend’s fuschsia thong (which he’d found on the floor, and slipped into as if it were a cross between a turban and a tutu) led us to the theory that he had been a drag queen in San Francisco in a previous life. Chums Jonathan and James, upon hearing of Waldo’s death, wrote: “thinking of you and of Waldito dancing at a bath house in the clouds.” We hope he is.

Waldo’s antics convulsed us with laughter. of an evening when things were too quiet. He loved to chase his tail. He could stand on his hind legs for seemingly infinite amounts of time if an insect was involved. He was, as they say in these parts, molto sportivo: he played basketball, some tennis, and volleyball (he loved to hear the air oozing out of the ball).

He loved to hump Lulu. Visualize this: a pre-pubescent Chinese female Olympic gymnast humping a large NBA player desultorily lying on his stomach, not giving a rat’s a** about the details. Waldo, of course, the gymnast; Lulu, Shaquille O’Neal or his equivalent.

If you live with non-human animals, especially ones who share the same space as you, going away/taking a vacation is never easy. We have taken few; when we go, Zoe’s Person steps in and watches them.

In this case, Zoe’s Person was not around, though Zoe was (the rest of her family was in the United States). Fortuitously, two young friends wanted to come to Italy, and we told them if they would watch sometimes four dogs, they could stay in our place, drive our car, have all sorts of adventures. Unfortunately, they started having all sorts of adventures on their first day on the job, and then again on the third day, which meant that they weren’t around much the last three days of Waldo’s life. Waldo was a lap dog, a heat-seeking missile, and it’s a tragedy that his last days on the planet were largely lapless.[1]

We feel beyond lousy that we weren’t there when he died. Beyond lousy that Waldo’s Aunt had to bear the burden of watching him get deathly sick, watch him die, and then bury him.

Waldo spared us the agonizing luxury of watching him get old.

Had we been around him, would we – who knew him best – have noticed sooner that something was seriously amiss?

What do you do if you have animals who live with you? Hard to take three of them with you on vacation. Never go away? Stay at home watching the Discovery Channel, wine glass in hand, while listening to U2 sing “Even Better than the Real Thing?”

Waldo taught us much. He made us laugh again after Tillie died. Most important, he taught us how to greet the day. For him, each morning was a new adventure, his theme song Pink’s “Let’s Get this Party Started.” Daybreak or bird-chirping time (depending upon the season, sometimes one happened before the other) alerted him to the fact that it was Time to Get Up. His tail would beat out, metronomically, a rather mechanical line (think of Meg White’s drumming), and he would put his face in ours. He almost always won out, which is why we were often up at 6 a.m. when we had no other reason to be. No matter that this day would start exactly like any other: walk in the woods with Lulu, Harry, and the Scallion; breakfast, nap, pee break, pee break, perhaps a leap over the wall separating the terrace from the garden, a reconnoitering of the garden’s contents i.e. Waldo’s Domain (in fact, the last time I yelled at him was because I caught him peeing on the tomatoes), a long walk in the woods, dinner, pee break, bed – this didn’t bother him at all. In fact, he was thrilled.

Oh, to have so much enthusiasm every morning.

He blessed our lives for five years, and I thought about this while we were far away. David Bowie’s “Five Years” ran through my head, and though he certainly wasn’t singing about a dog, the last lines resonate:

“We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes/We’ve got five years, what a surprise/We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot/We’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got.”

Our hearts hurt a lot. And screw the experts: kiss your dogs every time you go out the door.

Waldo (c. May 30, 2005 – August 13, 2010). May you dance with the great Overdog into eternity.
[1] According to all reports, the dog sitters toed the line thereafter.

Ritual Dishes

We have them in the United States: stuff to eat at certain times (4th of July hot dogs and hamburgers, Thanksgiving turkey, ham or lamb on Easter, a great steak house to mark any celebration) and we have them here in Italy, too (fish-filled Christmas Eves, fava beans and pecorino on Pasquetta (Easter Monday), eating mostly fish on Fridays; though the ban on eating bi- and quadruped flesh on Fridays has long been lifted by the Roman Catholic church, habits die hard in this country, and Italians lean towards fish on Fridays in restaurants and at home). (They might not fill the churches on Sundays, but they cling to this tradition.)

The Scallion and I have ritual dishes based on no religious traditions and no calendar days. Ours are based on the following: 1) they’re a pain in the neck to make, hence we make ‘em once a year and 2) they’re seasonal and 3) they’re celebratory and 4) they just plain taste good.
So 5) we make them when lots of friends are around.

One such ritual dish is okrochka, a chilled Russian yogurt-milk based soup. It teems with cucumbers, fennel, and pickles; and then you can add shrimp and/or chicken and/or wurstel and/or veal (according to Marina, dear Russian chum and Designated Okrochka Expert).

Wiki, Italian version, says that the soup is either Ukrainian or Russian (imagine my dismay when a Polish acquaintance grudgingly told me that pierogies might, in fact, be Ukrainian and not Polish at all). The name comes from “krosit” meaning to cut things in little pieces.
It contains mostly raw vegetables, cucumbers and winter onions (strange that, as it’s a summer dish), boiled potatoes, prosciutto with kvas, and it’s usually served with sour cream. Totally clueless what made the broth for the soup … sour cream?

As always, we turn to Elizabeth David in these cases, who loftily informs us that she used to eat this soup at the Russian Club in Athens during World War II (did Rick’s Café serve food? Unclear). She ate it with kwass, and yogurt was served on the side.

Reactions to this soup were mixed, at best. Practically no one had seconds, except for us, and the Scallion’s Mother (who's English). One Italian painstakingly searched his way through the milky mire figuring out what he wanted to eat and didn’t. Another Italian – whose aversion to cucumbers I’d forgotten – minced her way through the soup, a real challenge when you’re vegetarian and are presented with only fennel and pickle swimming in a sea of dairy.

Since Italians almost always “take” seconds, and none of them did, we can chalk this up as a Never Again Experience. (Marina loved it.)(Let me reiterate. She is Russian, and knows.)

Not a disaster, but close. Fortunately, the starters of sorrel eggs (yup, it’s still growing), bruschetta, and anchovy/caper spread on toast ensured that no one starved , and the gruyere-laden curly endive/escarole salad (with optional pancetta on the side) helped ease any lingering hunger pains.

Fortunately, Poldo (idol of last post) met Harry, and we were all able to enjoy what, according to some, were dear friends meeting for the first time: for others, dog porn show; take your pick. Their antics took the sting out of the Really Don’t Much Want to Eat this Soup.

Do you need a Northern soul to enjoy this dish? Is it too wacky for Mediterranean tastes? Who in blazes knows? All I know is that it will remain a Ritual Dish, but perhaps only for family. Oh, and that one Russian chum of ours.

I very much enjoy this soup, which is why I give you this recipe, loosely based and almost-plagiarizingly so from my hero Elizabeth David. It tastes beyond brilliant on a hot summer day. It’s pretty and its checkerboard aspect, floating tiny bits of pink and green, might bring to mind Domenico Veneziano’s St. Lucy Altarpiece at the Uffizi, though I’m sure none of those ascetics (Francis, John the Baptist, and St. Lucy included in said) had much appetite.

(Jury’s out on St. Zanobius; Queen of Kansas? Your thoughts most welcome.)

Okrochka

4 c. diced fresh cucumber
3 c. diced wϋrstel (mild flavored, poach, then dice)
1 lb. chicken breast, poached with a bay leaf, half a carrot, thick onion slice, 3-5 peppercorns, generous pinch of kosher salt, thick slice of lemon, 3 garlic gloves, handful of parsley), then cut into dice around the same size as the wϋrstel)
1 lb. shrimp, preferably poached in an Old Bay Seasoning/vinegar mix, chilled, then peeled and deveined, chopped in pieces about the same size at the two above
1 c. chopped leeks, the part that bridges the area between green and white
1 c. diced fennel
1 c. diced pickles (kosher dills would impart a wondrous texture to this soup)
2 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 pt. low-fat plain yogurt
4 c. low-fat milk
Salt and ground white pepper, to taste
Handful of fresh dill, chopped

Throw all ingredients up to the yogurt and milk into a big glass bowl. Separately mix the yogurt and milk, and then pour over the vegetables. Chill for at least an hour, and then serve.

Ostensibly serves 8.

Elizabeth David’s recipe comes from A Book of Mediterranean Food (London, 1950). She would probably sneer at the very idea of using low-fat yogurt and skim or 2% milk; she would probably also raise an arched, perfectly-formed eyebrow at my inclusion of all the animal products she suggests. She would also be quite disappointed, I think, that it wasn’t served with kwass.

(Photo of Two Stooges thanks once again to Alli S.)

We are off to northern climes on Monday; this will be my last post; blog will re-appear at the end of August. Buona vacanza!