Peppered Chicken

Stick man hungry. Stick man want chicken. Stick man not sure how to procure chicken. Stick man think. Stick man put on thinking pants. Stick man getting thinner by the minute. Stick man put on belt to prevent pants from falling down. Stick man spies shotgun, has brain-wave. Stick man hunts chicken. Stick man sees chicken dressed in best crown minding chicken’s own business. Stick man don’t care. Stick man hungry. Stick man takes aim, shoots own-business-minding chicken in face. Stick man happy with himself. Stick man plucks, guts, and cuts up chicken. Stick man invites five stick friends over for dinner. Meanwhile, chicken community hold meeting, plot revenge. Chickens wait until sun goes down, pour gasoline around stick man’s house. Next day, nothing left but stick man’s belt.

Recipes from the East, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1955

Also from this book: Boobies

Walkie-Talkies

Here in America, we usually buy our chickens denuded of feathers, head, feet, and guts. Many people are too young to have ever had to catch and pluck their poultry.

But chicken feet are a delicacy in many parts of the world.

Looks like chicken feet

 In China, for example, they are called “phoenix claws,” which sounds more exotic than “chicken feet.”

Looks like chicken feet also

In South Africa they are called “walkie-talkies,” because they are served with head, heart, intestines and giblets.

Looks like chicken feet too

In the Philippines, they are called “adidas,” after the running shoes.

The Thrift Cook Book, Marion Harris Neil, 1919

Also from this book: Getting Ahead, Vegetarian Meat, Burnt Flour Soup

You’ve Been Served!

The instructions you find in recipes vary greatly according to the simplicity of the recipe, the era in which the recipe was written, and the personal style of the author. Sometimes, very detailed or complex instructions can completely overshadow the  recipe itself, a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. At other times, the instructions do not provide enough information for an inexperienced cook to know what to do.

Some instructions feel redundant or overly obvious: turn oven on seems rather a necessary step if you want to cook anything in it.

The earliest written recipes in English — those dating from the 1600s, say — tend to assume that anyone reading them would already know how and why certain steps are done, so they don’t bother with the finer details, or exact amounts, or even very specific ingredients.

But one thing they all appear to include is the instruction which comes at the end: serve it up. Is this necessary or just a sort of a semantic signal that the recipe has come to an end?

This recipe for chicken in a clay pot is very old indeed: people have been cooking fowl this way for as long as we know. The modern ingredients had their ancient substitutes. The method would have been the same then as now, except the sealed pot was placed in the coals and not an oven.

The detail that links it most surely to the past, however, is that final, simple injunction: “Serve.”

The command to serve the food you’ve cooked means that the cook must also be hostess and waitress (or host and waiter). It presumes that there is a family to be served, and it makes the meal ceremonial. To serve yourself indicates a breakdown in that chain of food preparation that leaves the diner in a tricky position: how much to serve, and what parts to serve.

To serve enables the cook to build a dish and destroy it. To serve — in any capacity — has traditionally meant to subject oneself to a greater authority. One serves one’s master. The words “service” and “slave” both come from the same root. To be served a legal notice dates from the early 15^th century, and suggests, like other forms of servitude, that the one being served is under an obligation to accept the service.

To deserve is to assume the right to be served. If it all goes wrong, well, it serves you right.

Creative Low Cholesterol and Low Carbohydrate Cooking, Ottenheimer Publishers, Inc., 1980

Also from this book: Fried Bread

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

To escape this lady.

Curiously, the lady presumably about to enjoy her chicken dinner is celebrating her butchery with a chicken.

Any recipe that begins with “cut off head if not already done” is going to shape up to be a good one.

For a set of instructions that makes a pun of the word “draw,” however, they would best be delivered with actual illustrations.

Cutco Cook Book, Margaret Mitchell, 1956

 Also from this book: Euphemistically Speaking...

Mystery Meal

“It’s all very well filling your cupboards with cans,” Mabel complained, “but they all look exactly the same when the labels come off.”

Mabel and Dorothy were standing in the kitchen contemplating a table piled high with silver cans, all pulled from Mabel’s shelves after the flood. The colorful paper descriptions of what had been inside were reduced to mush and swept out with the last of the water, and Mabel, in her hurry to rescue everything she could save from her pantry, had pushed the cans hither and thither, so that now she was at a loss.

Dorothy picked one up and held it to her ear, shaking it slightly. “Sounds like it could be peaches,” she said. “Or maybe peas.” She put it down. “Or spaghetti.”

Mabel leaned against the counter and sighed. All the advertising she’d seen in the woman’s magazines had made much of the indestructibility of cans, and how they could bring endless variety to your diet. They were a boon for women like her. She’d never been much of a cook, and relished the chance to do away with the “bothersome preparation” that took up so much of her time. She liked to think she was being modern.

“It’ll have to be mystery meals from now on,” she said. “Bob won’t like it one bit.”

“How about we open a can and see?” suggested Dorothy. “I’m famished after all that cleaning.”

“You pick,” said Mabel. “Pick something good. Pick something tasty.”

Dorothy looked at the cans, stacked like a gleaming metal sandcastle, and reached out for one on the second layer. She withdrew it carefully, and replaced it with one from the top. “Here,” she said. “Please let it be fruit salad.”

Mabel opened the can and tipped its contents out onto a plate. It made a sucking sound. A cylindrical golden blob sat there, shapes buried within its mysterious jelly. She leaned forward to sniff it. It wobbled slightly. “Chicken,” she said.

The two women stood there and looked at it mournfully in the waning light. What was there to say? Mabel pulled the two handles of the can opener open and shut, open and shut, then placed it on the counter next to the jellified poultry.

Dorothy pursed her lips and lifted her eyebrows. Time passed. No words were necessary. They just knew.

All Trussed Up And Nowhere To Go

John and Louise are a young newlywed couple embarking on their first dinner party. Understandably, Louise is a bit nervous, as the guest list includes two couples from John’s office. She’s never met them before and wants to make a good impression. John is confident that all will go well; his wife is well-equipped with all the dishes, bowls and cooking implements a bride could wish for, and he has a well-stocked bar.

The chicken looks splendid, if a bit glossy — and if John can’t ever recall seeing evidence of the trussing marking lines upon the bird, then he chalks it up to Louise’s relative inexperience. He stands there at the head of his own table for the first time, holding the carving set in his sweaty hands, joking with the men.

But when he looks down to start the grisly business before him, he is struck with uncertainty. Where should he begin? Where are the breasts? He realizes he has never carved a chicken before — he’s never carved anything. He has no idea where to plunge the fork or where to attack with the knife. All his wife’s hard work could be for naught and he could look a fool. It all looks the same to him beneath that bumpy, greasy skin.

In order to reduce his hesitation and the insecurity he feels it will display, he starts in at one end, where the stuffing pokes out. A slice peels away quite easily — a slice of stuffing, that is — and he becomes engrossed in making fine, even cuts . This is going to be a piece of cake, he thinks.

But it is not a cake, it’s a chicken filled with obstacles — cartilage and bone — the sweet meat curves around. He does not notice that everyone has gone quiet, too polite to utter a word about the difficulties he will encounter not just any second now, but in his whole entire life.

Low-Cost Main Dishes, Family Circle, 1978

Also from this book: Floundering, What The Dickens?, Adventures in Salad

A Cautionary Tale

Kenny's Drumsticks

Some people are walking public service announcements for the dangers of ill-advised plastic surgery. Kenny Rogers is one such person.

Consider young Kenny: a singing Grizzly Adams, cuddly and hairy, full of the promise of rural romance.

Kenny reached his zenith as a superstar in the late 1970s / early 1980s, when he delivered succulent duets and heart-rending ballads attired in his trademark white suit and trimmed white beard.

Looks like a normal dude, right? Everything’s where it’ supposed to be.

But then something terrible happened to Kenny’s face. Parts were pulled about, something weird was done around his eyes — and now he looks like a mannequin that makes children cry. The permanently shocked expression he now wears mirrors the face people wear when they see him.

Kenny might have spent some of his millions on plastic surgery, but never fear; he won’t run out of cash anytime soon. What Kenny might have lacked in sense when it came to his face, he made up for in his diverse portfolio of investments, most notably in lending his name to the “mid-casual restaurant” Kenny Rogers Roasters, which could once be found in strip malls across the US, but not any more.

Kenny Rogers Roasters (KRR) didn’t simply die when American stopped eating there. It just moved locations — to the far east, in fact. KRR is a hugely popular chain across Indonesia, where today the Chinese Year of the Dragon is celebrated with a special dish called “Dynasty Chicken.” It’s THE place to go in Kuala Lumpur.

Despite its success, Kenny hasn’t always been his own best PR machine, saying on record he doesn’t really like the chicken served there, preferring greasy burgers instead. He’s also claimed to regret his new face but feels it will settle over time.

The moral of the story here is one should not try to look like a spring chicken when you are past your prime. When you age, you should look like a chicken that’s been roasted on a spit. Slowly, with lots of marinade.

Here's a recipe for Kenny Rogers Roasters Chicken.

Recipe courtesy of http://www.easybreezyrecipes.com/kenny-rogers-roasters-restaurant-recipes.html. The author suggests you prepare it for a "hot date" with "someone you met on a romantic dating site."

What The Dickens?

To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

Thereafter my life was one of hardship and misery, characterized by the deaths of all the women I ever loved or who loved me, and the abandonment and imprisonment of anyone who could be said to be a father figure. I was beaten, starved, and sent to work on cruel gulags full of child wretches similar to myself, unwanted by society except as beasts of burden. I wore rags, slept on the dirt floor, shivered in winter, ate scraps I wrestled from the greedy clutches of rats, and bore the scars from such a number of flea bites as cannot be counted. I fairly crawled with lice and weeping sores, my young teeth either knocked out or blackened, snot and tears having carved permanent rivulets down my face. I reeked of urine and cabbage, a stench my vocabulary is not broad enough to describe.

Nevertheless I was once served this splendid pie made from the leftover bits from a Sunday chicken along with some vegetables that had been stolen from the kitchen of a banker, whose cook had carelessly left the door open. She was duly whipped and let go on the spot. As you can see, it is baked in a crude pastry shell fashioned by a one-armed prostitute who took pity on me. It was the first meal I had ever been served.

I am sad to report that it lacked the toothsome mélange of flavor I expected, having heard on the street so much about this fabled dish. The crust was a tad too thick and undercooked in places, and the peas and carrots were singularly unimaginative additions. As for the sauce, it suffered an excess of salt, and I detected beneath its floury notes a surfeit of nutmeg to balance the heavy-handed use of marjoram. Not to bemoan a point, or be too critical of my erstwhile savior’s meager resources, but I feel compelled to add that the choice of metal dish in which this delicacy was baked and served set entirely the wrong tone for the tenor of the occasion.

In short, it was the most disappointing event of my life to date. I may never recover from the shock to my sensibilities this pie occasioned, and find that I am now forced to re-evaluate my whole misguided and sentimental appreciation for the cooking of what can only be described as the urban peasantry of Victorian England.

Dear Reader: do not make the mistake I have made. If someone offers you this pie, refuse gently but firmly, and return to take comfort in your stale crust of bread.

Low-Cost Main Dishes, Family Circle, 1978

           
Also from this book: Floundering, All Trussed Up And Nowhere To Go, Adventures in Salad

Cock Ale

 There are many kinds of beer. Some beers are dark and rich, bitter and frothy. Others are light and sparkly. Still others are golden and mellow. Some are strongly reminiscent of the ingredients used to make them; hops, wheat, barley, malt. Nowadays one can find a cornucopia of beers, ales, stouts, bitters and lagers brewed by giant corporations and tiny independent breweries, but not many of them taste like chicken.

300 years ago, it was a different story — back then, people liked their beer to impart a strong flavor of mangy rooster. According to John Nott, this concoction is “good against a consumption, and to restore decayed nature.” It worked by encouraging phlegm, so that the afflicted could expectorate more productively and was very popular during the 17^th century.

If this appeals to you because you are hacking up a lung with tuberculosis or your nature is decayed, here’s how to make it.

Gather up yourself a really old and irritable rooster and, avoiding scratches, push him into a vat of boiling water, just till he is dead, but not cooked too much. Flay him of his skin and feathers, then break off his feet and gut him. Take a large stone and smash him to bits to break all his bones. By this point he will be a bloody, greasy mess. Get a big canvas bag, and put into it the half-cooked, eviscerated bird, two quarts of fortified wine, three pounds of stoned raisins, some mace, and a few cloves. Leave it a while to ripen. After this, dump the entire bag into your giant vat containing ten gallons of ale. Leave this for a week to nine days to further develop its flavor, then bottle it up. Don’t drink it right away.

It is rumored to be the origin of the word “cocktail,” so next time you order one you might want to be reminded of that.

The Compleat Housewife, Eliza Smith, 1739

The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary, John Nott, 1723

Also from this book: Poxy Lady, A Cure For Cancer, Praise The Laud!, Fertilizer, Chanel No. 2, Very Game, Cheefe

Atomic Chicken

During the Cold War, a generation of children were warned of the terrifying threat of communism with regular nuclear attack drills which dictated that you climb under your desk and put your hands over your head to avoid being evaporated by the blast. This was in the days before video and computer games gave children a better idea about the realities of war, which include being able to eliminate your enemy with powerful hand-held weapons at close range.

But it wasn’t just innocent youngsters who were targeted with fear-mongering propaganda; housewives also needed to be constantly reminded of the threat to their way of life. Take this photograph from a recipe book, for example. Its real purpose isn’t to show a finished dish — it’s a horrifying glimpse into a future drenched with atomic fallout, where whole chickens are reduced to slimy piles of disjointed parts, and creepy plants like this African Violet flourish like mold from every nook and cranny.

The Russians, they were told, couldn’t wait to do this to you, too. Why, no-one has any idea.

Home-Style Cooking, Better Homes and Gardens, 1975

Pacific Rim Job

Captain James Cook once said he wanted to go “farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go,” a sentiment echoed by an adventurer inspired by him, Captain James T. Kirk, whose mission is: “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

In 1779, the former took this ambition a tad too literally and went, indeed, further than it was possible for him to go. Landing for the second time in Hawaii, where he and his crew had been welcomed as strange white gods, he found to his dismay that the season of worshipping great white gods had passed. Thence followed a classic example of what not to do when one finds oneself on hostile territory: when some of the natives stole a boat, he tried to take their king as hostage, and in doing so, made the fatal mistake of turning his back on the angry hoard. He was swiftly bonked on the head, stabbed, disemboweled, burned, and his bones cleaned for use as relics. 

This put an end to his distinguished career as England’s foremost explorer.

Cook initially named Hawaii the Sandwich Islands, after one of his benefactors, the Earl of Sandwich. Perhaps the Hawaiians were piqued to have their glorious island chain named after such a lowly dish. Perhaps they took him at his name. Hereforth some advice: do not name a place after the way you plan to be eaten by the people living there.

Two hundred years later, insult was added to injury when Homes and Gardens published this recipe for the “delectable” Chicken Aloha. It brings together a vicious combination of cubed chicken, celery, peppers, soy sauce, instant bouillon granules and a can of pineapple pie filling, garnished with parsley and kumquats, all served on a bed of crispy Chow Mein with coconut and slivered almonds on the side.

“Aloha” means love and peace, and is often used as a greeting in Hawaii. Cook met his end on Valentine’s Day. A coincidence?

Meals in Minutes, Better Homes and Gardens, 1973


Also from this book: Planned Overs, Ham Sandwich Deluxe

Garbage

"Here Beginnethe A Boke of Kokery . . . "

This makes no sense until you remember that garbage is a term that comes from the seemingly useless remains of a butchered carcass. Folks were poor back in 1450 so your average housewife had to make delicious soups from the scraps one might otherwise throw away.

In case you can’t read the old English too well, here is a translation.

Chicken Soup

Clean the leftover chicken parts (heads, skin, feet, liver, gizzard). Cook in a big pot with beef broth, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, mace, and finely chopped parsley and sage. Soak some bread in the broth, press it through a strainer, and add to the soup, letting it come back to the boil. Add ginger, grape juice, salt, and a little saffron. Serve.

Grape juice was added as a necessary acid. Sometimes sour apple was used instead. Today we use lemon juice, but citrus fruit would not have been readily available. The pepper would be black pepper, since Columbus had not yet breached the New World. Hence it is a cookbook devoid of the solanaceae family (potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines, tobacco). The thickener here is strained bread rather than potato starch. The profusion of strong spices would have gone a long way to mask the flavor. 

Chances are these spices came to England via the Venetians just as the Byzantine Empire was falling apart at the hands of the Ottomans. The chicken fell apart at the hands of just as determined a force: a hungry woman.

Harleian Manuscript 4016, c. 1450

Chicken Indienne

 Only an Anglophone culture could take a curry, entomb it in gelatin, call it a “salad,” and then Frenchify the name to make it sound fancy. Both the Indian people and the French probably have a word for this sort of nonsense, and chances are it’s “Merde.”

Salad Cookbook, The Family Circle, Inc., 1972

Also from this book: What We Talk About When We Talk About Gelatin, Chicken Mousse In Aspic (A Cult Classic), Salmon In A Sauna

Guestworthy

Back in 1958 when men were men and women slaved over large kettles of chickens stewing in broth and making angel food cake from packaged mix and men were inviting their buddies over for poker and women were dashing out to the store in the snow to buy precooked rice and men were sitting by the fire drinking whiskey and women were baking biscuits and mixing glaze and men were swapping notes on that hot young piece who’s dating Fred and women were baking a strawberry sponge cake because it is the middle of winter and men were lighting cigars and scratching their balls and women were breaking asparagus as far down as they could and men were playing poker and women were riffling through the cupboard to find the monosodium glutamate which is behind the jar of beans in which hides the gun and men were bluffing playfully in the den over who has two pair or even one pair and women were dismantling the cooked chicken and men were raising each other and seeing who was going to win Edgar’s watch and women were up to their elbows in chicken grease and draining asparagus and men were trying to remember how much their own watches were worth and women were putting biscuits in the oven and trying to remember where the bullets were kept and men cheered when Louis won Edgar’s watch that had been given to him by his father-in-law and secretly felt shame for Edgar and his father-in-law and themselves and women put the glazed angel food cake in the freezer for another time and men dealt another hand and women wiped the sweat away and took their aprons off and patted their hair and men poured another round and women undid another few buttons and picked up the tray and knocked and the man-of-the-house said here she is at long last I thought you’d never come and women thought he’s right, Goddamit, I never come.

Good Housekeeping’s Company Meals and Buffets, Consolidated Book Publishers, 1958

Chicken Mousse in Aspic (A Cult Classic)

The caption to this charming photograph reads:

"An all-season favorite, Chicken Mousse in Aspic features chicken, ham, whipped cream, liver pate, and mustard for a combination that is sure to please."

This comes from a chapter of Family Circle’s Salad Cookbook entitled “Molded Salad Riches” which was written by gullible people who have of their own free will joined a cult whose discipline is maintained by the forced consumption of massive quantities of LSD-spiked Jello. These are people who have lost touch with reality in a profound way. One can imagine their cult caretaker, himself drugged up to the eyeballs on Quaaludes, unlocking the padlock on the Family Circle fridge, seeing the paltry contents, and undergoing a slow-motion revelation about combining them as a perfect expression of a penance fit for testing the fortitude of the new recruits.

How else can this travesty be explained? What sane mind could possible come up with this introduction: 

"Heap up the goodness and fold or cover with gelatin and you have a molded salad. Lend them all the goodness of a full meal and you have a main-dish molded salad. In these pages you’ll chance upon many main-dish and side-dish molded salads."

It is not so much a culinary suggestion as it is a religious tract meant to invoke both awe and fear in those who recite it in hushed monotone in the “Family Circle” kitchens. Family Circle, my ass. The non-brainwashed mind sees the invitation to “chance upon” many molded salads as a threat, something to be ardently avoided and possibly reported to the authorities, not a promise for further means of devotion.

There is also a troubling amount of detailed instruction in this recipe, especially concerning the production of foil cones. This is a dead giveaway: once the acolytes are proficient at rolling foil cones, it’s just a teensy step away from the hillbilly crack pipe. Mark my words. 

Read the recipe at your own risk.

 Salad Cookbook, The Family Circle, Inc., 1972

Check out the militant-looking Family Circle logo in the corner (Dharma Initiative, anyone?).

Also from this book: What We Talk About When We Talk About Gelatin, Chicken Indienne, Salmon In A Sauna