Meats – Page 27 – Courage in the Kitchen

When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Division of Residence Halls provided housing and dining facilities to thousands of students. I think that anyone who attended UW-Madison in the early 1960’s would agree that the division generally did a pretty good job.

We had maid service once a week to ensure that we slept on clean sheets in rooms that had been swept, dusted and put in some sort of order. I lived in Tripp Hall, along Lake Mendota, directly across the street from Van Hise Hall as the refectory or cafeteria was then named.

The main floor held the kitchen, a private dining room that would seat twenty-five or thirty people and the main dining area with a cafeteria line. On the lower level was the physical plant and a restaurant, the Pine Room. Van Hise served two men’s dormitories, Tripp Hall (where I lived) and Adams Hall, and one women’s dormitory, Slichter Hall. Each hall was was divided into houses or floors with resident counselors who in that long-ago sexist time were all called house fellows.

Van Hise served nearly a thousand students twenty meals a week. Sunday evenings, we were on our own. The Brat House on State Street and Corcoran’s on University Avenue were two of my favorite destinations for Sunday suppers, but friends and I also patronized the Pine Room and the Student Union with occasional forays to more distant supper clubs and restaurants.

House fellow meal passes were valid for twenty-one meals a week, so they did not have to fend for themselves on Sunday evenings. Nor did they have to get up before 9 o’clock Saturday mornings for breakfast in the Van Hise dining room. Their passes entitled them to anything they wanted at the Student Union or the Pine Room.

Since I worked in the Pine Room to help pay for my education, I first saw Jerri, who was a house fellow at Slichter, on one of those Saturday mornings when she and her friends came in after a late night of making sure that the girls were safely back in their rooms. I did not know her name, of course. She was just one of those house fellows who ordered large glasses of apricot nectar to go with their eggs and bacon or sausage (or both!). House fellows could sign for anything they wanted for Saturday breakfast or Sunday supper. One of the men’s house fellows, as I recall, used to have three beef tenderloin sandwiches for his main course every Sunday.

In her second year, Jerri was invited to be the Assistant Head Resident at Elizabeth Waters Hall, probably the finest women’s dormitory on campus. I was very familiar with that hall, since it was famous for having an excellent chef. Residence Halls had a policy that allowed any resident to invite another resident of the opposite sex to Sunday dinner at no charge.

The guest registered ahead of time, so the Van Hise meal ticket, for instance, could be validated for a meal at Elizabeth Waters or vice versa. Menus were posted weekly in every hall, so if a girl read that her hall would be serving something that she did not like on Sunday, she could shop around for a boy whose hall was serving something more to her taste. It was a wonderful system that improved one’s diet and social life.

I was introduced to Jerri by one of the house fellows in Adams Hall after she had moved to Elizabeth Waters. Assistant Head Residents could have guests as well, and so began a wonderful friendship that has lasted for nearly fifty years of wedded bliss.

Unlike the men who simply ate the food set before them, the women of Elizabeth Waters compiled a cookbook of their favorite recipes supplied by their chef who sized them for family meals.

Liz Specials cover I still like the cover.

As you can see, the cookbook has been consulted many times over the years. It contains several recipes that we still use regularly. The recipe for Manhattan Meat Rolls, which were also served at Van Hise, is one I remember fondly. Here is how to make them.

INGREDIENTS:

For the meat filling and sauce:
1 1/2 lbs. lean ground beef
2 cans condensed tomato soup
3 T all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T chopped fresh parsley
1/2 tsp. herbes de Provence (or 1/8 tsp. each marjoram, rosemary, thyme, and oregano)
Dash of freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp. beef bouillon

For the biscuit dough:
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 T baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 T sugar
1 cup shortening
Milk to moisten the dry ingredients

PROCEDURE:

Brown the meat in a skillet and drain any extra grease from the pan. Stir in one can of the tomato soup and cook until the soup is blended with the meat. Add the flour and salt and mix well. Continue cooking for about two minutes, stirring continuously. Remove the skillet from the heat and allow the meat filling to cool while you make the dough.

Blend the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Using forks or a pastry blender, cut the shortening into the dry ingredients as if making biscuits. Add enough milk to produce a soft dough. Knead the dough five or six strokes on a floured surface, then divide it in half. Roll each half to a scant half inch thick.

Grease enough baking sheets for two dozen rolls and preheat the oven to 400º.

Spread the meat evenly on the dough and roll the dough into logs. Moisten the outer edge of the dough and seal it to the roll. Shape the logs to the desired roundness. Cut the logs into three quarter inch slices and place the slices one inch apart on the baking sheets. Bake the rolls for about twenty-five minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Make the sauce while the rolls are baking. Wash and finely chop the parsley. Dissolve the bouillon in the water and blend all the ingredients together with the second can of tomato soup in a saucepan over moderate heat. Remove the sauce from the heat when it begins to simmer.

Serve the rolls hot from the oven and allow diners to add sauce if they wish.

Among the many reasons for admiring Julia Child are her sensible observations about the privacy of the kitchen. From her I learned that the broken cake or tart that refused to slip smoothly out of the pan will look fine and taste great once it is frosted or covered with plenty of whipped cream.

When half of something she was flipping in the skillet ended up on the range top, she simply used a spatula to scrape things back into the pan and observed, “Who’s to know?” It was Julia who taught me that things like crepes have both a public and private side.

Most of all I learned that the cook’s job is to make food that looks inviting and tastes good, not to explain exactly what goes into it. For instance, if the chef told you that the eggplant Parmesan on your plate was made with raw cow’s milk you might think twice about eating it, even though he was assuring you that he used genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in the recipe.

Perhaps this explains why there are so many secret recipes: We all have prejudices about food that can interfere with our enjoying some wonderful dishes. Take rutabagas as an example.

It is hard for me to understand how people can reach adulthood without learning to love rutabagas. That’s probably because I grew up in northern Wisconsin, prime country for raising rutabagas. Cumberland, Wisconsin, just an hour’s drive north of New Richmond, celebrates the harvest of this vegetable with a Rutabaga Festival each August. You might want to mark your calendar for the weekend of August 21st this year.

My guess is that someone who grew up in Alabama might wonder why I don’t swoon over boiled peanuts. Or why I don’t dream of rattlesnake steaks broiled over Texas mesquite when I am longing for some comfort food like Mom used to make.

My mother hated all snakes and killed them when she could. She had read the Bible and knew that snakes were her enemy. That probably explains why I don’t miss rattlesnake on a menu. The fact that rattlesnakes are not found very far north in Wisconsin might also be a factor, though I remember her shooting a large pine snake that could have fed the family for a day or two.

On the other hand, rutabagas grow like weeds up here. When my father was a boy, my grandfather planted a couple of acres of rutabagas every year. Grandma Rang cooked them for the family and Grandpa chopped them up and fed them to the cows in winter. Dad said the cows really liked them.

My mother put rutabagas in soups, mashed them with potatoes and boiled them like carrots. I don’t remember rutabaga pie, but it’s possible that she simply didn’t tell us what was in that slice on our plates.

Which brings me back to Smoked Sausage Soup and Julia Child’s admonition, “Who’s to know?” because the secret ingredient in this soup is a rutabaga.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 lb. smoked sausage
1 small rutabaga
2 medium carrots
2 medium potatoes
1/2 small onion
4 beef bouillon cubes
4 1/4 cups cold water, divided
2 tsp. cornstarch
1/8 tsp. brown gravy sauce (optional)
Parsley (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

PROCEDURE:

Peel the rutabaga and potatoes and cut them into about a three-quarter inch dice. Clean and chop the carrots into half-inch pieces. Peel and coarsely chop the onion. You should have about one and one-half cups each of rutabaga and potato and one-half to three-quarter cup each of chopped carrot and onion.

Put the vegetables into a three quart saucepan along with a quart of cold water, four beef bouillon cubes and a dash of freshly ground black pepper. Bring the soup to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer partially covered for about twenty minutes. Cut the sausage crosswise into half inch slices and add them to the soup. While the soup is coming back to a simmer, dissolve the cornstarch in a quarter cup of cold water. Add the cornstarch to the soup and cook for three or four minutes.

If the broth looks too pale, add a few drops of brown gravy sauce at this time.

Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve the soup by itself or with a salad and sandwiches. If you wish, garnish each serving with some chopped parsley.

NOTES: This recipe makes five generous servings, but you can easily increase the recipe. One simple way is to use the whole ring of sausage, an extra cup of water and one more bouillon cube to make eight servings.

When I use thin-skinned potatoes to make this soup, I just scrub them well. If you have someone in your family who you think might object to eating rutabaga, peel the potatoes. That way, if someone asks, “What is this?” you can say, “Maybe a piece of potato?”

Who’s to know?