First Foray in 50's Dining

Well, I did it! I successfully made my very first 50's family dinner. I used a cookbook that Amy Vanderbilt specifically refers to in her book on gracious living. It's called Thoughts for Food and was authored by a group of women known only as "The Chicago Hostesses." The book's subtitle is: "A menu book and a cook book for those who like exceptional cooking." The book is divided into several sections including luncheons, family dinners, buffets, and many others. I suppose if it's good enough for Amy, it's good enough for us! And so I entered my first cooking experiment of the 1950's.

I pretty much randomly flipped to a page in the "Family Dinner" section of the cookbook and thought I would make whatever menu I landed on there. Tonight, we feasted on:

Ragout of Beef
Noodle Ring
Peas and Carrots
Pickled Tomatoes
Palatschinken (don't ask me to say it!)
Coffee

I'm going to include the recipe for the Ragout of Beef, in case anyone else out there is daring and would like to try what my husband and I both agreed was the best part of the meal.

Ragout of Beef

4 lbs. beef, cut into 2-inch cubes
1/2 cup dried mushrooms
2 large onions
1/2 cup poultry fat or butter
2 bay leaves
2 sliced bermuda onions
1 green pepper, chopped
2 tomatoes, peeled and sliced
1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, grated
salt
pepper
paprika
flour
1/2 teaspoon kitchen bouquet

Soak dried mushrooms overnight. Brown onions in fat. Add meat, dried mushrooms, and the water in which they were soaked, and bay leaves. Cover and simmer for an hour. Add remaining vegetables, season and simmer until the meat is tender. Thicken gravy with flour blended with water and kitchen bouquet.

And that's all, folks. But notice with me the complete lack of explicit instructions. How much paprika? How much flour? What exactly is a kitchen bouquet?! I'm used to today's recipes, where each and every tiny detail is spelled out clearly for me. Here, I'm told simply to "add the water in which the mushrooms were soaked" - but it never says exactly how much water to soak them in in the first place...what if I make it too soupy? Or too thick? I can honestly say I've never eaten ragout of beef before, so I have no idea what it's supposed to look or taste like. I filled a small bowl with water, soaked the mushrooms, poured it all in, and thought...I truly have no idea what I'm doing here.

I will spare you all the details on what it took to prepare a 5 course dinner after an 8 and a half hour work day and a 45 minute commute. Not to mention feeding my baby and getting him ready for bed when I got home. Dinner was on the table at 8:00. We normally eat around 6:30. I called my mom halfway through making it and wondered aloud how the heck women in the 50's managed all this. And she hit me with it: " They didn't work!!" Duh. Hopefully this is the last week I will have to wonder such things.

The highlights of the dinner preparation were: my feet actually hurting from being on them all day and then cooking for 2 hours, reading and re-reading the recipes for each menu item and wondering if I have a Master's degree, shouldn't I be able to do this with a bit more ease?, and turning the noodle ring into a "noodle loaf" because my kitchen is not stocked with a "ring mold." I knew the lady we registered for wedding gifts with at Crate and Barrel was forgetting something!

Some quotes from my husband as we dined:

"I'm a little concerned that these 50's dinners are going to have a high cost to enjoyment ratio."

(It's true, all of these recipes made an enormous amount of food. I did not make 4 lbs. of beef for the two of us - I used 1.30 lbs. but still there will be ragout leftovers for days).

"This noodle thing is terrible."

I think that one's my personal favorite. I was not at all offended because I a) asked for his completely honest opinion, b) I was not the noodle loaf/ring's biggest fan either and c) if it was me coming up with a way to serve noodles, I can pretty much guarantee neither ring nor loaf would be involved.

It was definitely an interesting meal, and just fun to experiment. My poor husband asked at the end of the meal, "So, how often are we going to be dining from the 50's?" Only time will tell.