The Critic’s Choice

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Michael Procopio

My 2-for1 Muppet avatar, according to friends

One early summer evening in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles, some friends and I found ourselves sitting around the living room of the apartment I shared with my roommate Craig. The shades of the curved bank of Streamline Moderne windows were pulled down to keep the heat outside in check, but a bottle of tequila was passed around which seemed to stoke our inner fires, causing us all to examine our lives in the deep, meaningful ways that only those just old enough to legally drink can do.

“If you were a muppet,” our friend Halle asked, ” Which muppet would you be?” She then clarified, for some unspecified, fermented agave-driven reason, that said muppets must be chosen from The Muppet Show and not from Sesame Street or Fraggle Rock which, I assume were considered too juvenile an idea to be entertained by such newly-minted adults as ourselves.

Halle chose Scooter, Kermit the Frog’s gofer-cum-stage manager; Craig went for Fozzie Bear, which was appropriate at the time because he was entirely lovable and told corny jokes. Our friend Doug, I believe, was the serious-looking Sam the Eagle; Craig’s girlfriend Shannon, who was not present, was branded Miss Piggy for no discernible porcine reason. When the time finally came for me to choose my muppet avatar, I came up blank.

I thought I might make a good Kermit because I was accustomed to emceeing events, avoided the attention of pursuing females, and was rather inclined to moody self-reflection. However, before I could announce my decision, Craig did the choosing for me:

“Oh, you’re definitely those two old guys who sit up in the balcony criticizing everything.”

“Totally!” Everyone present agreed. We were all from Southern California, so the choice of affirmation was fitting.

Was this what my friends really thought of me? Did I come across as some prematurely-aged curmudgeon, sitting apart from the action– above it all– hailing down criticism? Apparently so.

There was no use getting defensive about it, because I knew Craig had nailed it– and me. Of course, he didn’t even know their names. None of us did at that moment.

Statler and Waldorf– those were the names.  Two for the price of one. And I knew why they were right for me.

Having many friends in the theatre department, I quickly developed a reputation for giving honest appraisals of the acting ability of anyone who dared to asked. And they all asked because actors are, by necessity, masochists. None of them, it should be noted, are acting today. Perhaps if Jack Black, who was starring in a number of one-act plays on campus had come to me, the world of cinema might have been a safer, funnier place without him. But he didn’t, because I did not know him.

Making enemies in the audience.

I had also shared with them an anecdote about the time I had written a short play in high school about two retired theatre critics who described in graphic detail the ways in which they would like to torture bad playwrights. This very much upset everyone present, including Edward Albee, who with barely concealed anger called me up to explain my work. When he realized I wasn’t mocking him, but rather everyone else in the room, he laughed and chatted me up, much to the continued horror of the audience.

It is one of my most cherished memories, however much it branded me for life. But I didn’t much enjoy seeing myself as the guy who could rip anyone or anything apart, just because he could. Or, more correctly, because he needed to posture himself as superior whenever he felt threatened or inferior.

Oh, the joys of adolescence.

Given the fact that Statler and Waldorf reserved some of their most withering heckles for Fozzie Bear, I am now doing a mental search of my years living with Craig and wonder if I was somehow unduly harsh to one the the kindest people on the face of the planet. If I did, he probably wouldn’t tell me– he’s much too nice a guy.

It’s interesting to see how people change over the years. Craig is just as kind as he was twenty years ago, but his humor is deeper and richer than anything Mr. Bear would ever come up with. And– get this– Halle is Executive Vice President of Children’s Entertainment at The Jim Henson Company. True story.

Scooter, indeed.

As for me, I’d like to think that the man I am today is much more diplomatic and secure than the man-boy I was twenty years ago. Though I’ll never totally rid myself of my Statleresque/Waldorfian nature, I have high hopes of greening myself with a dash of Kermit. Or maybe I could add a whiff of Animal, just to keep things exciting.

Just never, ever refer to me as The Swedish Chef or I will rip you to shreds.

The Statler and Waldorf Salad

This is, of course, essentially a classic Waldorf salad. The major difference is that the sweetness of the apple and grapes is counter-attacked by a delightful dose of bitterness from frisée lettuce. If this doesn’t appeal to you, feel free to criticize. I know I would, if I were you.

I had considered adding rotten tomatoes to be thrown directly at the salad, à la messers. S & W but, since this salad is named for them, it hardly made sense, since they would never dream of doing such a thing to themselves.

Serves two prickly people.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup red seedless grapes, halved as though one were about to feed them to a baby one does not wish to make choke.
• 1 sweet-tart apple, cored and chopped, but not peeled. I’m a Northern Californian, so I like Gravenstein.
• 1/2 cup celery, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup toasted walnuts, sliced in half as if performing a radical, emergency lobotomy.
• 4 tablespoons of mayonnaise. I live west of the Rockies, so I cannot use Hellman’s.
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon honey, if there are still enough bees alive to produce it.
• Frisée lettuce for garnish
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

In a medium sized bowl, whisk mayonnaise, lemon juice, and honey until well incorporated. Add salt and pepper to your own heart’s desire and personal sense of taste. Toss in grapes, apple, celery, and walnuts. Toss well, then heap upon a bed of frisée.

Serve cold, naturally.

Posted in Celebrities, Salad, Stage, Film, and Television | Tagged , , , , , | 27 Comments

Calamity in the Kitchen

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Michael Procopio

Martha Jane Cannary Burke

When I was a little boy, my grandmother would occasionally tell me stories of my rich, Wild West heritage. More correctly, she would make statements about it, since her stories weren’t very involved. They were more like out-of-nowhere utterances. Tall Tale Tourette’s is how I prefer to think of them.

She’d swoop upon our household once or twice a year from Arizona– where she moved “for her health”– to teach us card games, bake a couple of pies, plunder my stuffed animal collection “for the Indian children”, and pepper her speech with grand statements like “You know you’re related to Calamity Jane and Crazy Horse, don’t you?”

Being young and susceptible to sensationalism, I believed everything she told me. I would imagine Calamity Jane and Chief Crazy Horse sitting together outside of Mr. Horse’s teepee, sometimes sipping frosty mugs of  root beer, other times talking about how special I was, and what I would be and look like when I grew up.

Daydreaming about my famous ancestors made me feel less suburban and very special– as if I were in line to inherit the throne of The Great American West. Or something to that effect. It was my fantasy, after all, and I enjoyed every moment of it, however short-lived.

And it was short-lived.

On another visit, my grandmother lead me into the living room, sat me down on the good couch, pressed a coin into my little hand, and said with great, whispered solemnity, “Now Michael, I want you to take real good care of this. It’s two hundred years old. Worth a lot of money.” And then she wandered off into the kitchen.

I examined the coin. It was  a 1976 Bicentennial quarter. She saw the date 1776 embossed beneath George Washington’s beefy neck and discarded the rest of the information. It was at that moment that I understood that was was more likely to be descended from a crazy woman than a Crazy Horse. But she meant well, showered me with attention, and baked an excellent pie.

Doris Day as Martha Jane Cannary Burke

I did my best to overlook her eccentricities, but I never again took any of her stories as gospel. I just took them with a heavy pinch of salt, since I didn’t think a mere grain of it would be enough to counteract my grandmother’s imagination. I left Calamity Jane where I thought she best belonged– out of my family tree and onto the back lot of Warner Bros. Studios, played by Doris Day (which in itself was a total fabrication). Since Doris Day happened to by my aunt and uncle’s next door neighbor at the time (though I never saw her), I figured that was about as close to Miss Calamity as I would ever get. And that was close enough for me.

Thirty-three years later, however, a random encounter got me to rethink my relationship to this gun-toting wildcat.

At the end of an endless-seeming evening at work, I fell into conversation with a couple who were on their way to Montana for a little getaway.

A silver baby cup from Livingston, Montana. Filled with whiskey, surrounded by quarters.

“Montana?” I asked. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve always meant to visit because that’s where my grandfather’s from.” When they asked what town, I told them the name of what I imagined to be a small town they’d never heard of. “Livingston,” I replied.

“Oh my god,” said the woman, “That’s where we’re going! We love Livingston.”

“Seriously?” I thought that my grandfather had fled the town because it was such a shit hole and I said as much to this couple sitting at my table, unable to understand why on earth they would choose such a place to holiday.

“Oh, it was a shit hole,” said the man. “The town was so poor, it couldn’t afford to tear down the old buildings and put up new ones, like all the other places in the area. But now it’s an artist colony and all the old buildings have been refurbished. It’s a really special place.”

To which the woman added, “And Calamity Jane lived there.”

“Well I’ll be a… ” I realized I was too far-removed from pioneer life to come up with an appropriate homey simile, so I stopped myself. Instead,  I thanked them for the information, wished them well, and called them a cab. I ran home and Googled “Livingston, Montana” and “Calamity Jane”. It turns out she did live in Livingston periodically. My great-grandfather ran the general store, which was the only game in town in terms of dry goods purchases at the time. They had to have met,  if only in passing.

So there was a grain of truth to my grandmother’s tall tale–however tiny.

I thought about that same great-grandfather who ran the general store. He was half Lakota, but could pass for white with his Irish freckles. Could a really be descended from the man who lead the raid which killed General Custer? Maybe, maybe not. There is no existing proof to back up the story, but I’ll tell you one thing:

I’ll bet you anything that I come from people who may have met him, too. And that’s good enough for me.

It’s unimportant that Calamity Jane did not (or that Crazy Horse may or may not have) contributed to my gene pool. What matters to me is that my grandmother’s stories didn’t just come from the movies. Or Outer Space. There was an ounce of truth to them, however far she may have stretched it to suit her own needs.

And that, I think, is how all tall tales evolve–around fact. An alcoholic, gun-toting, Wild Bill Hickock-pestering army scout walks into a general store looking for a sack of flour and–presto!–eighty years later, she’s family.

The truth is relative. Or not, as the case may be.

I’d like to wax philosophical about that idea but, right now, I’d rather make something to eat. Something that Calamity Jane (née Martha Jane Canary) might have made cooking breakfast at the inn she kept just outside of Livingston, Montana. Something like flapjacks. Or, in this case:

Calamity Flapjanes

Martha Jane Cannary was no stranger to tall tales. She spent a good deal of her existence distancing herself from that which was painful and exaggerating the things of which she was most proud. She worked as laundress, a cook, and a prostitute. She scouted for the U.S. Army, she saved the lives of stagecoach passengers from Indian attacks, and she nursed smallpox victims backed to health.

And, of course, she was no stranger to nursing a bottle of whiskey.

She (falsely) claimed to have served under General George A. Custer (that would have been an uncomfortable connection, had I been truly related to both her and Chief Crazy Horse). Nor did she ever marry Wild Bill Hickock like she said she did. She is, however, buried next to him. Having said that Calamity Jane was of no use to him alive, Hickock’s friends thought it would be amusing to see if he might change his opinion of her in the Sweet Hereafter.

In honor of my non-relative, I’ve made something as straight-shooting, hardy, and boozy as a Wild West woman in leather pants: buckwheat pancakes liberally sprinkled with rye whiskey and doused with salty, sweet syrup. It’s sure to be a real crowd pleaser, provided the crowd is populated by cattle ranchers, army scouts, and prostitutes.

And that’s no lie. Or not much of one, at any rate.

Flap Janes

(Adapted with permission from Elise Bauer’s Buckwheat Pancake recipe from Simply Recipes. Bless you.)

Serves 2 to 3 Tall Tale Tellers, or 4 to 5 Little White Liars

Ingredients:

  • A small amount Vegetable oil for coating the pan
  • 3/4 cup (100g) buckwheat flour
  • 3/4 cup (100g) all-purpose flour
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups (475 ml) buttermilk
  • A liberal sprinkling of whiskey (rye, bourbon, or illegally distilled in your yard)
  • 3/4 cups maple syrup
  • 2 good pinches of salt

Preparation:

1. Place an old, trusty griddle or cast iron skillet over your wood stove that has been fired with 4 3-pound pieces of hickory wood. Should you lack this most basic amenity, warm it over medium heat from your gas or electric burner. If you want to be extra sissified, hitch up your petticoats and break out your non-stick skillet. Whichever pan you use, it should be ready for the batter as soon as it is mixed.

2. Whisk together the dry ingredient–both flours, sugar, salt, baking soda–in a bowl large enough to double as a protective helmet, should an Indian attack occur. Pour the melted butter over the dry ingredients that you may or may not have purchased from a striking gentleman with freckles and prominent cheek bones from that delightful little general store in Livingston, Montana and start stirring. Beat the egg with a fork and stir it into half of the buttermilk.

3. Next add the buttermilk/egg mixture to the dry ingredients, then carefully add the rest of the buttermilk to get the right consistency for your batter. (Hint: it should not be so quick to pour as the brown fox who jumped over the lazy dog, but neither should it be a slow as molasses in January.)

DO NOT OVERMIX. A few lumps are just dandy, thank you.

4. Put a small amount (about half a teaspoon) of vegetable oil on the pan, using a paper towel to spread the oil into an even coating. Ladle 1/4 cup of batter into your pan, reduce heat to medium-low, and let the pancake cook for 2-3 minutes. When air bubbles start to rise to the surface at the center of your pancake, flip it. Cook for 1-2 minutes on the other side, or until nicely browned like a cowboy’s neck. Only not as leathery.

5. Keep your flap janes warm on a rack in the oven set to very low as you are making them. Spread more oil as needed in the pan as you go. Cook until all the batter has been used or until you are so bored with the process that you decide to stop.

6. To serve, add two good pinches of salt to your maple syrup. Taste it. Is it salty-sweet? If not, add more salt, since that’s what we’re aiming for here. Set aside. To plate, stack 4 to 5 pancakes, sprinkling a small amount of whiskey as you go. You know, the thumb-over-the-bottle-mouth shaking method. Gentle-like. You don’t want your breakfast swimming in booze. Think: functional alcoholic. Eat with generous pats of butter and salty maple syrup.

Posted in Breakfast Time, Celebrities | Tagged , , , , , , , | 37 Comments

Touchscreen Dining: Out of Touch?

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Michael Procopio

Have you seen this contraption? It’s a 7 inch tall interactive, touchscreen restaurant menu tablet from E La Carte.

And it might very well be part of your dining future.

My feelings toward it are mixed, at best.

I am historically resistant to technological change. I quietly mourned the compact disc’s triumph over the long playing record; I didn’t see the necessity of a laptop computer when my desktop one worked perfectly fine; I was forcibly enrolled in Twitter by a friend; and the only reason I purchased a cell phone was because I would not be able to find my boyfriend in a crowd of 20,000 people 500 miles from home without one.

And yet I have come to embrace all of these technologies. In fact, I am physically embracing my computer as I type this on top of my lap. With my phone in my pocket. Playing downloaded music. The Twitter feed, however, is turned off. I have my limits.

I have the feeling that ordering from a touchscreen menu is one of those limits.

It isn’t as though I haven’t done it before. Anyone who has taken a Virgin Airlines flight has seen these screens. We pull up the food menu, place our index fingers to the screen to make our choices, then swipe our credit cards along the bottom of the tablet. Shortly thereafter, a flight attendant appears with what we have ordered.  It isn’t exactly magic, but it is certainly efficient.

However,  I do to miss being asked the question “Chicken or fish?” I may get my cold falafel sandwich quickly, but I never feel very good about it. There’s a subtle but important different between being handed a tray of food and being served it.

The people at E La Carte state that their menu tablet isn’t meant to replace those who serve. Rather, it is “meant to make the hospitality experience more convenient, social, and fun for the guests and more profitable for the restaurant operator.”

With the tablet, guests can “order, pay, play games, and give feedback straight from their seats.”

According to the product’s makers, there are three main benefits for the restaurant:

1. Boost average check size by up to 10% through up-selling, pictures, and impulse orders.

2. Improving customer retention with easy-to-use loyalty and survey interactions.

3. Improve service by quick payment, retaining customer order history, and games at the table.

How on earth can a computer up-sell better than a human being? I think I need this explained to me.

When my friend Roy alerted me to this new piece of technology, my first reaction as both a career server at a fine dining establishment and someone resistant to new technology was to view the E La Carte tablet as vilely impersonal and a threat to my profession. Over the last 24 hours, however, I have calmed myself as I weigh what I imagine the cons– and the pros– this particular piece of equipment.

There are three important components a good restaurant must supply in order to provide its guests with a great dining experience (just pick up a Zagat guide and look at their rating criteria if you don’t believe me:

1. Great food

2. Congenial décor

3. Excellent service

Though the menu tablet aims to provide photos of all the menu items, I am wondering if its creators have taken into account the fact that someone is going to have to style, photograph, photo edit, and upload a photo every time a new dish is created.

Substitutions? E La Carte states that guests can make alterations to their chosen menu item through this product. Simple enough when a guest might prefer mashed potatoes to french fries with their Porterhouse, but what about more complex– or outrageous– requests? Is it time then for a server to appear at the table with the bad news?

Computer says no.

As for décor, I get irritated when the people I eat with leave their smart phones on the table, so I’m not going to want a 7 inch piece of electronics shining at me as I dine. A candle on the table and the smiles of my companions are all the glow I need, thank you very much.

And what about the human component of the dining experience that this gadget swears it is not intended to replace? As a server, one of the most important parts of my job is to form a personal connection with my guest. Argue all you like, but there is a certain amount of server/guest bonding that happens within the first few moments of interaction. When I say hello and ask someone if they’d like a drink or if they just want to settle in a moment and catch their breath, I’m not just offering to go fetch them something– I’m giving them the sense that they are going to be well taken care of.

The nuances of human vs. computer interaction are too many to get into in this post.

I understand that both restaurant owners and restaurant guests can benefit from such a menu in cases where one is looking merely to satisfy one’s hunger quickly and efficiently, like at a corporate chain restaurant such as Applebee’s (which is rumored to be adopting the tablets). Such venues already have standardized menu items that are photographically illustrated.

Touchscreen menus might also be a terrific boon for people who, for varying reasons, are unable to communicate well with spoken words. I’ve seen what an iPad can do for kids with autism. Could such interactive menus also help them gain confidence in ordering dinner? It’s an idea that intrigues me.

They may also be helpful to those unfamiliar with a particular cuisine and/or language (ever been to a Vietnamese restaurant and felt entirely helpless?). The idea of a computer with a built in glossary of terms and ingredients (or a translator) is an intriguing one.

And just think about how it could transform a wine list. 86′ed items could be immediately removed from the menu. Can’t remember what grapes are in that Grüner Veltliner (hint: it’s Grüner Veltliner, but you would be spared the humiliation of asking such a question of you could simply click over to a glossary or related link)? Of course, the draw back is that one could get so lost in so much information, that one might never be able to choose. Or put the damned menu down.

I think a tool such as the E La Carta has some excellent possibilities, but not in the way it’s being marketed. In addition to the ideas previously mentioned, I think that such a product used as a menu would cut down on the need for paper menus that must be thrown away or otherwise recycled every time they are either dirtied or in need of updating.

But then you should give your order to a human being and remove the electronic device from the dinner table.  Talk to him. Ask for her opinion. Just interact. Technology can be a wonderful thing, but not at the expense of interpersonal exchange. It has its time and its place.

The other day I was riding to work on the bus. When I had taken my seat,  I reflexively pulled out my iPhone to play a game of cribbage or stare at Facebook updates or do something– anything– to shut out my surroundings. Then something wonderful happened:

My battery died.

I was alarmed by how helpless I felt and my immediate thought was “Now what am I supposed to do?” And then I felt like a fool. I looked at my fellow passengers on the bus. Every person on it my age or younger was using their smart phone. None of them were smiling. It was just the old Chinese ladies at the front who were chatting and laughing away. I had no idea what they were saying, but they seemed to be doing perfectly fine without a touchscreen at arm’s length.

It struck me then that this is precisely what we’re all doing when we can’t manage to pull our eyes away from our gadgets– we are keeping people at arm’s length. And that personal computers aren’t, well, personable.

We spend so much of our time in front of computers– I know I do. Working as a waiter is a marvelous antidote to technology because every night I am forced to talk to people I’ve never met before. I ask them questions like “How are you?” and “Where are you from?” Granted, I get paid to do so, but it’s something I actually look forward to. It pulls me out of myself and, for a few hours every evening, my focus is on the welfare of other people.

And I look for the same thing when I am the one who is dining. I want to feel welcomed as a guest, not merely a customer. However much of a fantasy that might be at times, I want to believe it. I want to thank the person who placed that martini in front of me. I want to talk to a human being, not press buttons (unless they happen to the the emotional buttons of my dining partner). I want to feel as though I am being taken care of.

I just don’t happen to think that’s possible with a computer.

What are your thoughts? Like the idea? Hate it? If you’re one of those people who only comment because you can’t stand waiters, you will be cheerfully ignored. Or, if you’re extra offensive, deleted.

Posted in Rants and Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

On Toast

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Michael Procopio

Some mornings, when I am awakened by the sound of my alarm clock or my grumbling stomach, I do what millions of others do–  I crawl out of bed, head for the kitchen, and make toast.

I was going to say that I make it  without thinking, but that would be untrue, since I do not own any appliance specifically designed to do the thinking for me in terms of heating and browning bread. I do without these appliances because they are a luxury I cannot afford in terms of counter space.

So I make my toast in the oven. There is a certain amount of thought that must go into the process, but nothing so mentally taxing it would send me back to bed.

I crank my oven up to broil and place two pieces of bread on the middle rack to let them dry out a bit as I wait for my tea kettle to boil. Just before the kettle has a chance to express itself audibly, I remove the bread slices from the oven and place them under the broiler to brown. It is a fairly straightforward process on most days. Unless I am either too tired or too distracted to be properly watchful, in which case not even dental records could prove that the charred remains at the bottom of my broiler ever bore the name bread.

If my toasting mission has been a successful one, I will pour my tea and slather my freshly-carbonized breakfast with whatever is most handy. I eat it absentmindedly as I sit with my tea and read the news.

If ever a thought of mine was given to toast beyond its making, it has been merely to wonder what should be placed upon it: butter, cheese, peanut butter, bacon, tomatoes. I have always regarded my toast as a platform upon which to place other, more interesting things.

And, though I sometimes take my toast with jam, I almost always take it for granted. That is, until a friend of mine caused me to look at the stuff in a different light.

“You know, I think you should write about toast,” he said. His choice of venue was fitting, since these words were uttered near the bread station of our restaurant, which is conveniently located in front of a giant heat source– a large fireplace that was currently blazing and sending its heat out toward the stacks of fresh loaves. Before I could wonder aloud if toast could ever be made interesting, he added:

“It was the first food Gabrielle Giffords asked for and it’s sometimes the only thing I have an appetite for myself.” Since this statement came from a man who has been battling brain cancer with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy for the past seven months, I took notice.

And now, for the first time in my life, I am giving proper thought to toast.

I’ve never had to fight off death, but I have often wondered if I would have the emotional and spiritual strength to beat back the brutal savaging done to me by a bullet or a mass of cancer cells or any other life-threatening agent. I know that I am fortunate enough to have the all support necessary should I need it– a good doctor, my family, my friends– but none of these externals would be of any real avail unless I had within me the powerful and indomitable urge to live. Battling death is not for the weak-willed.

I’m sure I have it within me, but it has never needed to come out and show itself, like it has for Giffords and my friend Doug. Both of them have stared death in the face. Both of them have made a slow-but-steady crawl back to life, though their bodies and appetites have been weakened. And both of them have expressed their recovering hunger by asking for toast.

It makes perfect sense that they should ask for such a thing. Toast is basic, comforting, and easily digestible– something which can be quickly made with ingredients readily at hand. It is bland, yet appealing to nearly everyone.  To those of us struggling to regain our health, toast presents itself to us as a sort of gustatory life raft we can hold onto until there is enough strength to pull ourselves out of the deep.

In another sense, the asking for toast is a symbolic act, however unintentional. Freshly-baked bread has a relatively short shelf life– it hardens and stales and is generally rendered unfit for eating unless it is ground up into crumbs and re-purposed or thrown to hungry birds. Yet if that same bread is sliced up and heated, it is given a new lease on life, but with a deeper, richer texture and flavor than it had before it was held to the fire.

Before it became toast.

I went for a walk with Doug shortly after his brain surgery. As we strolled around the park, he told me that having a brain tumor was–oddly– one of the best things that ever happened to him because it caused him to concentrate on what was most important to him– spending time with his family.  He added that every day he is given on this earth is a gift not to be wasted.

It was a hard-earned lesson I knew I would do very well to heed. Thinking about toast, of all things, has reminded me of that.

So thank you for that reminder, Doug. You’ve been sliced up, held to the fire and come back to life. Every time I put bread in the oven in the morning, I will think of you and do my best not to squander the new day I’ve been given.

And I will certainly never take my toast for granted again.

Or you, for that matter.

Posted in Breakfast Time | Tagged , , | 73 Comments

Manicotti, Dad-style.

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Michael Procopio

Boardwalk, Atlantic City. 1934-ish

See this young fellow? It happens to be his eightieth birthday today.

And before you crack wise about his Shirley Temple ringlets, I can assure you this is a male child.

I know because he’s my father.

Just look at him! He doesn’t look a day over three. And at the present date, he doesn’t resemble anything approaching what eighty typically looks like. For some reason, he’s never looked his age.

How does he do it?

I can tell you one thing: it certainly didn’t come about from eating his vegetables. Dad’s a meat man, through and through. It makes perfect sense, really, because he was born above his grandfather’s butcher shop in South Philadelphia. He’s got meat in his blood.

Dad, mom, and Uncle Walt, Griffith Park. 1953-ish

He’s also got some incredible genes, which delights me to no end because a) I’m his son and b) I look a hell of a lot like him.

Except I’m taller.

When I was growing up, one of the few constants in my life was this: if dad was cooking dinner, we were going to be eating beef. A typical meal cooked by this man consisted of: grilled steaks served with steak sauce, steak hollandaise, and a lovely little steak salad served on the side.

If we dined out, we’d head to The Sizzler or The Black Angus.

I think you get the picture.

If I went to my father’s house and there was not a) Glenn Miller or Frank Sinatra on the stereo, b) a scotch in his hand, c) a deck of cards primed for gin rummy or cribbage, and d) a steak on the grill, I might have slid into a quiet panic, certain that he had been inexpertly replicated and begun a search for my real dad among my stepmother’s incredibly well-arranged closets.

There was almost as much tradition and ritual to a dinner made by my father as there was a holiday feast. My father was a grill man. I never thought of him as anything else, cooking-wise.

And then one day, he blew my mind.

It was a holiday dinner. My great aunts and grandmother, who traditionally did all the cooking, were either getting too old to whip up multi-course feasts, or they had passed on. My father stepped in to make the pasta dish which, in my opinion, had always been the main event. There were perhaps two or three times a year I got to eat my grandmother’s translucent ricotta-stuffed ravioli. I was felt deprived and saddened that I might never eat them again, ashamed that they were something I had always taken for granted.

“They’re letting dad make the ravioli?” I said to my brother. A man making pasta? In our family? The old broads never let the men hang around the kitchen, let alone cook it it.

“What’s he going to do, grill them?” I thought.

When I inquired after the health of the ravioli, I was informed by the gentleman who sired me that we weren’t having ravioli this time, but manicotti. The word “heretic” popped into my head, but I kept it to myself.

Manicotti. Of course he made manicotti. Tell a man to make a pasta dish and you end up with a cheese-filled phallic symbol. I think that may very well be the reason they aren’t referred to as ladycotti.

When he added that he made crepes instead of using dried manicotti tubes, I would have hit the floor if I hadn’t been concerned for the welfare of the drink I was holding and in great need of.

“Crepes, huh?” I said.

“Yeah, I thought it would be nicer to have something not quite so heavy,” he replied. Or something to that effect.

When in the history of the universe had this steak-and-potatoes man ever before uttered such a thing? I was about to start searching the closets for my real father, but I realized that such a search would be futile, since we were at some one else’s house.

As we sat down to dinner and I looked around the table at what was left of my family– most of the older generation had passed on by then– I felt ashamed of myself for my selfishness and shocked at how, as the token liberal at the table, I was the one so bloody resistant to change, so inwardly bent out of shape by a simple, practical streamlining of the menu. My father had volunteered to make the pasta dish in order to help, to make things easier on his elders. I felt foolish.

And then I tucked into a plateful of his manicotti. They may not have been my grandmother’s ravioli, but they were every bit as delicious– and delicate– as something she would have made. It was the same filling, the same sauce. The ingredients for the crepes were essentially the same ingredients as her pasta dough, but with different proportions, a different approach, a different shape.

The way I now think of it is very much how I think of familial genetics. My grandmother had certain DNA to work with. She mingled it with my grandfathers and out came my father– same ingredients, similar essence, but completely his own person. It made perfect sense that my father should maintain the essence of his mother’s pasta dish and yet make it something completely his own. To try to recreate her ravioli precisely would be a compliment to her, but it would be akin to seeing my father dress up in her clothes. An interesting idea, certainly, but the result would be utterly unconvincing– he’s got hairy legs.

No, he had the right idea. Manicotti made his way with her ingredients.

Since it’s his day today, I wanted to make what I now consider his signature dish– the one that most took me by surprise, the one that isn’t steak (and do not get me wrong– I love it when he cooks steak).

And, of course, when I make my father’s manicotti, it comes out not exactly as his, which is how it should be. Again, we’ve got the same ingredients to work with, but different outcome. I may look a hell of a lot like him, we both love Sinatra and Miller, we drink scotch together, we both play a mean game of cards, but we are very distinct people.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So Happy Boit-day, Pop. I hope it’s a great one.

Love,

Michael

Crepe Manicotti

First off, I would just like to announce to the world that I find it an incredible challenge to make delicate, baked manicotti look attractive. I don’t (much) care, either, because they are delicious.

I should also like to state that getting the recipe without my father’s knowledge proved no small task since he and my stepmother share the same email address and always seem to be together whenever I telephone. My stepmother hurriedly jotted down the recipe and wisely told me to destroy all evidence of it.

Use whatever you like to sauce the manicotti, since you’ve more than likely got your own preferred one. I used my pasta alla gin sauce. You could probably pour Elmer’s glue over them and they’d still be delightful.

Makes about 12 manicotti.

Ingredients:

For the crepes:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup water
2 whole eggs
A pinch of salt

For the filling:

1 1/2 pound of ricotta cheese
2 whole eggs
2 to 3 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley (it’s entirely up to you)
1 cup of freshly grated pecorino romano cheese. Use more or less, I just happen to like all things cheesy, if you hadn’t gathered that by now.
A pinch or two of freshly grated nutmeg (This is not part of my father’s recipe, it is just something I find wholly enjoyable)

Preparation:

1. Place ricotta in a fine mesh sieve or cheese cloth to remove some of the excess water, then put into a medium sized work bowl, add the rest of the filling ingredients and stir well until everything is incorporated nicely and there are no streaks of egg yolk. You’ll know when it’s ready. Set aside.

2. To make the crepe batter, whisk eggs until they are well combined, add water and whisk until further combined, then add flour and salt until everything is even more combined and there are no lumps. The batter should be loose and pourable.

3. To form the crepes, pour 2 ounces of batter into a small nonstick pan, rolling the batter over the bottom surface to coat it thinly and evenly, and place over medium heat. Let the crepe cook until the edges just barely lift themselves from the pan (about 1 minute), then flip it just as you would a pancake, since that is essentially what you are dealing with. Cook for another minute on this flip side and remove crepe to an awaiting plate. I find it best to let the pan cool a bit before proceeding on to the next one. Continue this process until you have run out of batter.

4. Prepare your baking dish by covering the bottom of said dish with sauce. To fill the manicotti, pipe filling into the center of the crepes, then roll gently as if making, say,  taquitos. Gingerly place your manicotti seam side down into the baking dish as you make them. And do position them as close together as possible. When your dish is full, cover the manicotti with more sauce, sprinkle on scads of grated cheese, then pop into the oven at 350º for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the dish is bubbling and the cheese on top is melted. If the dish is bubbling but the cheese is not melted to your liking, pop it under the broiler until you are well pleased with the results. Remove from oven, let stand a few minutes to cool slightly, then serve up to your guests or, in this particular case, virtually to your father, since you can’t physically see him on his 80th birthday.

Posted in Holidays, Savories | Tagged , , | 23 Comments

(Irene Irene) Cara Cara Granita

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Michael Procopio

It’s Oscar time again, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Which is pretty much what I wound up doing this year. Not noticing, I mean. I somehow managed to see only one Oscar-nominated movie over the past twelve months and I am not about to make a heaping pile of grits to celebrate it, no matter how much I enjoyed the film.

So instead of discussing the current cast of award hopefuls, I thought I might celebrate those marvelous singers of Academy Award-winning singers of yesteryear.

I mean, why not?

As I ran down the list of songs, I realized that there were a handful of artists who introduced not one, but two Oscar-winning tunes to the world: Bob Hope, Judy Garland, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, disaster film songstress Maureen McGovern, Barbra Streisand, Bing Crosby (who sang a record four), Fred Astaire (if you count his whistling to The Continental), and…

Irene Cara. Remember her name?

I thought long and hard about which singer to single out and pay tribute to. Judy Garland? Too obvious. And the only thing I could think of doing for her was making a meal comprised entirely of pills, which is beyond my scope as a home cook. Bing Crosby? I suppose I could have taken some young, tender chicken, beaten it mercilessly, and marinated it in Minute Maid® orange juice, but I didn’t have the stomach for it. Barbara Streisand? I worried that whatever I chose to make would spring to life from the counter top and try to wrest from me total creative control.

I almost gave up.

Then I remembered the Cara Cara orange and how every time my chef would utter its name, I would quietly insert two “Irenes” into his sentence, as in “I’d like to have the Irene Irene Cara Cara orange salad, please.” My chef seems to love this fruit so much, he says things like, “It’s so nice, they named it twice.”

Twice.

And, since Miss Cara sang an Oscar-winning song not once but twice, I just had to go with it.

When I realized that she was one of the original cast members of the best children’s show of my generation, The Electric Company*, there was nothing else I could do but pay this woman tribute.

So I set about to make an Irene Irene Cara Cara sorbet.

Referencing a recipe for blood orange sorbet by the rather solid David Lebovitz (Solid as in his recipes. I have never once asked him to flex for me.), I did everything with precision. I measured my juice in milliliters and weighed my sugar in grams, I made a perfect little syrup, I added just the right hint of alcohol to make it scoopable.

I did everything right except allow my ancient ice cream maker’s freezing element to get cold enough. When I set my sorbet to churn, it went round and round but, instead of firming up into a silky sorbet, all it managed to do was make itself dizzy. I would have thought three days in a cranked up freezer would have done the trick, but I think it decided do kill itself after bearing witness to my last ice cream experiment, which will more than likely never see the light of day on these pages. I was filled with the same emotion that was conveniently printed on label of the Campari whose content I had so tenderly splashed into my sorbet base:

What a feeling. I was also undeniably frustrated but, search as I might, that word was nowhere to be found on any of my ingredient packaging.

I had half a mind to just throw everything away and pour myself a drink, but I thought better of it. There was to be no drinking in my immediate future because my creditors are counting upon my showing up to work sober.

And I couldn’t let Miss Cara down. Her comeback is entirely dependent upon the success of this dessert.

So I placed my motion sick sorbet base into my refrigerator, and returned to it in the morning. I have to admit that I was rather pleased by the outcome.

Irene Irene Cara Cara Orange Granita

I don’t care how much you groan at the name because it’s a dessert as refreshing as Miss Cara’s voice and as perky as those breasts of hers she so reluctantly showed to that guy with the video camera in the movie Fame.

As I have said before, this recipe is based upon the blood orange sorbet recipe of David Lebovitz, who has a much better ice cream maker than I do, but is nowhere near as perky as Miss Cara’s Cara Caras.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 cups (500 ml) freshly squeezed Cara Cara orange juice
• 1/4 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons, plus 3 tablespoons (for soaking citrus segments) of Campari
• About 1/2 cup of Cara Cara orange flesh, hacked into little pieces

Preparation:

1. Put your sugar into a small, non-reactive saucepan. When one says “non-reactive” when referring to sauce pans, one means a pan that is made of a material that does not react adversely to acid, such as stainless steel, glass, or ceramics. If you think your saucepan is non-reactive simply because it shows no emotion when you fill it with ingredients and put it over high heat, you are either hopeless in the kitchen or you are an entirely fascinating, innocent creature and I would like to get to know you better.

Add just enough juice to saturate you sugar, then heat–stirring frequently– until the sugar is completely dissolved and you have a lovely little syrup.

2. Stir this syrup into your Cara Cara orange juice. Add three tablespoons of Campari and stir well. Pour the mixture into a shallow dish and set in your freezer or the freezer of a good friend or neighbor who will allow you frequent access to his or her kitchen. Let stand in said freezer for about 45 minutes.

Toss your chunks of orange with the remaining Campari and place in your refrigerator to chill and marinate, covered.

3. When the juice mixture begins to for ice crystals, break them up with a fork, then leave it be for another 20 minutes. Fork the juice again. Repeat until all the juice is frozen. The texture should be grain, which is why the Italians call it granita.This should take roughly 2.5 to 3 hours, depending upon your freezer.

If you are lazy, you can simply freeze the juice into one, solid block and shave it up, but then it wouldn’t be granita, it would be a sno-cone.

And everyone would know how lazy you were.

Or, if you’re really, really lazy, don’t bother to freeze anything at all, but simply pour the mixture over ice (which someone would have to have pre-frozen), but then it would be called a cocktail.

4. When you feel your granita is ready for its big night, stir in the Campari-soaked orange pieces, spoon into chilled glasses, and serve immediately.

And, as you and your guests are eating it and you are receiving their accolades, do your best to come up with ideas for a Maureen McGovern-inspired dessert. Clue: it should be served either flaming or upside down.

Do get back to me. And soon.

*That Electric Company was some sort of genius Oscar-winner mill. Rita Moreno, Morgan Freeman, Irene Cara. There is something to be said for groovy literacy programming.

Posted in Celebrities, Stage, Film, and Television, Sweets and the Like | Tagged , , , , , | 23 Comments

Happy Birthday, Mr. Buckles

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Michael Procopio

Do you know who this man is? Well, I didn’t either until a couple of weeks ago. His name is Frank Buckles. He celebrated his 110th birthday on February 1st.

That makes him a super-centenarian, which I happen to think is, well, just, umm… dandy.

He also happens to be the last surviving American veteran of World War I.

So today I wanted to celebrate his birthday in my own way by baking him a very special dessert:

I’m calling it The Frank Buckle, naturally. And I am not putting any candles on it because a) there simply isn’t enough room for 110 candles, b) the cost of said candles would be prohibitive, and c) I could not in good conscience burden this man with blowing them out because it would more than likely take him until his 111th birthday to do so.

I had thought of baking bread in the shape of a pudgy boy, but it seemed rather inappropriate, given the fact that Mr. Buckles was still doing 50 sit ups a day well into his 109th year. And besides, I didn’t want people to confuse him with that other doughboy.

Though Frank Buckles didn’t see any action during The First World War, he did manage to be captured by the Japanese while working in the Philippines during the Second. He spent two and a half years in a prison camp where he was starved to a weight below 100 pounds and developed beriberi, yet still managed to lead his fellow prisoners in exercises.

It’s no small wonder this man was still driving a tractor on his West Virginia farm at the age of 102.

And yet, people are making plans for his funeral, which I happen to think is an unfortunate thing to be doing for such an historically robust man: he was recently awarded the privilege of being buried below ground at Arlington National Cemetery. The French have said they would send honor guards and a military official, the British will send their air vice-marshal and (if he isn’t too busy) their ambassador.

I imagine everyone will cry a little and tap their toes to some military marches or yet-to-be-determined Irving Berlin tunes. And then they might have a little cake or something and fold flags.

It’s all rather morbid. The man is still among the living, for god’s sake, so I prefer to celebrate that. When he goes, there will be no one left to ask about the war that toppled old empires and kick-started new ones. Perhaps instead of prematurely eulogizing Mr. Buckles, we should be asking him for any advice we can get out of him while he is still doing his sit ups among us.

So Happy Birthday, Mr. Buckles. I know my wish is two weeks late, but I didn’t think you’d mind, since 14 days must seem like nothing to someone who’s been around for approximately 40,191.

Here’s to many more.

Frank Buckle

Just as The War To End All Wars didn’t live up to its nickname, this is not the Dessert To End All Desserts, but it is sturdy and homey, just like its namesake. Oh, and it’s tasty, too. I would have added that earlier, but I’ve never gotten close enough to Frank Buckles to sample him.

Since there is nothing especially World War One-y about a buckle, I did the only thing that came to mind to make it so– I dug trenches in the batter and crowded blueberries into them. I had considered making the area between the trenches a sort of No Man’s Land, but it would have necessarily been devoid of berries except for those left blown to pieces on the surface, which just didn’t seem terribly inviting, if you ask me.

Which you didn’t.

I should also note that buckles are called just that because, when the thing is baked, the surface of the dessert dips and cracks, leaving the crumb topping buckled in appearance. This particular cake did not buckle.

Then again, neither did Frank.

Serves 8 to 12, depending upon how one slices it.

Ingredients:

For the Cake*

•2 cups plus 2 tablespoons of sifted all-purpose flour, separated
•2 teaspoons baking powder
•1/2 teaspoon salt
•1/4 cup softened unsalted butter
•1/2 cup light brown sugar
•1/4 cup granulated sugar
•2 tablespoons grated orange or tangerine zest
•1 teaspoon almond extract
•1/2 cup whole milk
•1 pint of blueberries

For the topping:

•1/3 cup softened unsalted butter
•1/2 cup sugar
•1/3 cup all-purpose flour
•1/2 cup lightly slivered almonds
•1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease an 8-inch spring form pan with butter or whatever your fat of choice happens to be. Line the bottom with parchment paper that has been cut to size, then butter that, too. Dust the inside of greased-up pan with flour, tapping out the excess, then set aside the pan.

2. Place all topping ingredients except the almonds into a medium-sized bowl. Work the butter into the sugar and flour with your fingertips until the desired crumb-like texture has been achieved. Mix in almonds taking care not to break them up too terribly. Place this bowl of topping into your freezer until ready. I just find that crumbly toppings stay more crumbly when cold. It could be a totally wasted step, but please leave me to my illusions– I have so few left to me.

2. Sift together 2 cups of flour, salt, and baking powder and set aside. Cream the butter, sugar, and orange zest using the paddle attachment of an electric stand mixer until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and almond extract until the mixture is even lighter and fluffier than before.

3. Add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk and making certain to end with the milk. Why one must end with the milk is well-known in certain baking circles, but I am not privy to their information, so I just do what I am told.

4. Toss blueberries with two tablespoons of flour (which will help them to scatter more or less evenly through out the batter) and fold all but a scant handful into the batter. Pour batter into awaiting spring form pan. “Pour” is a rather inaccurate word, since the batter feels more like a dough at this point. Let’s make it “place” or “situate”. Gently press the dough/batter into the pan into an even layer.

5. With a clean index finger, dig two trenches into the dough and place your berries like good little Tommies, Poilus, and Doughboys on one side and nasty, Belgian-crushing Jerries on the other. Note how quiet-seeming it is on the Western Front and then promptly bury all of your unfortunate berries with a tank-like gesture, plowing them under to their doom.

6. After giving your berries a proper moment of silence, pull the crumble topping out of the freezer and generously cover your buckle with it. Pop into the middle of your now-hot oven and bake for one hour or until the cake has firmly set. If you are worried about your top getting too brown, just cover it with some tin foil when you feel it has reached its proper shade of dark.

7. Let cool, remove from pan, and serve with sweetened whipped cream, honeyed sour cream, or whatever it is you plan to serve it with.

But, given that this dessert has been created in honor of our oldest living veteran, I hope you serve it proudly.

*This recipe is a heavily bastardized version of Simply Recipes’s, umm, recipe.

Posted in Breakfast Time, Sweets and the Like | Tagged , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Two For You…

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Michael Procopio

I was thirteen years old when Anthony Blanche introduced me to a most sinister drink– the Brandy Alexander.

Mr. Blanche– or Antoine, as he sometimes styled himself–rolled his “r”‘s and wore varnish on his toenails. He  drank champagne in the middle of the afternoon and he stammered at all the right moments.

He was the definition of louche before I ever knew the meaning of the word.

I was both fascinated and repulsed by him, which is precisely how I feel about the Brandy Alexander, since the two are inextricably linked in my brain.

There is a moment early on in Brideshead Revisited (1981 BBC version, not that terrible film that came and went a few years back*) in which Antoine has “chivied out” Charles Ryder “like an old st-toat” and taken him out for cocktails and dinner. The scene opens with four cocktails being placed in front of Blanche. He utters the following words to Ryder:

“Two for you and… two for me. Yum, yum. I expect you prefer sherry but, my dear Charles, you’re not going to have sherry. You’re going to try this d-delicious concoction instead.”

Charles takes a sip from one of the glasses and grimaces. Antoine then proceeds to drink all four of them before going off to dinner where he sets out to bash their mutual friend Sebastian Flyte and warn Charles of the dangers of involving himself with him and the entire Flyte family.

His delivery was smooth and subtle, but delivered a powerful punch. Not unlike those four cocktails he downed in the bar.

And, believe me, they do pack a punch. Have you ever pretended you were Anthony Blanche and ordered four Brandy Alexanders? I have. I did it just so I could re-enact the scene. And I needed props. When one downs four consecutive Brandy Alexanders at one go, one doesn’t feel the kick of the booze until it’s much too late to do anything about it.

I won’t go into detail, but I can assure you it was the last time I ever attempted to keep up with Mr. Blanche.

It’s hard to imagine that such a girlie drink could be so dangerous. Or so sinister. It’s cream and chocolate, for God’s sake. But the more thought I give to the subject, the more I’m convinced that the drinking of Brandy Alexanders leads to very bad things.

The other week, I shared these thoughts with a friend. He looked at me a moment and said, “Isn’t the Brandy Alexander the drink that turned Lee Remick into a raging alcoholic in The Days of Wine and Roses?”

Why, yes, it was.

On her first date with future husband/momentarily functioning rum pot Jack Lemmon, she explains that she doesn’t drink because she doesn’t like the taste of alcohol. She prefers chocolate instead. His solution? He buys her a Brandy Alexander. She loves it, she drinks more. And then a lot more. Lemmon eventually gets sober, she does not.

Another example came up in conversation with my friend Nicky. He told me he had just finished working on a production of John Patrick Shanley’s Savage in Limbo in which a character says of the Brandy Alexander, “My mother drank four of those one Christmas, and she died. She drank four of ‘em and then she started breathin’ out. Ssss. And she never breathed in again.”

Evil, I tell you. And deadly.

Even Feist has added her two cents in a song appropriately entitled “Brandy Alexander”.

He’s my Brandy Alexander/
Always gets me into trouble/
But that’s another matter/
Brandy Alexander

Brandy Alexanders. So smooth and creamy and chocolatey. So devious, so dangerous, so deadly. And so terribly delicious.

Is it any wonder Helen Hayes– a woman who shunned drinking– downed three of them before she realized there was alcohol in them?

They always get you into trouble. Miss Hayes never stated clearly whether or not they got her into trouble, but she is dead.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

Brandy Alexander

There is talk in certain circles that this particular alcoholic beverage was created in honor of the marriage between Mary, Princess Royal and Viscount Lascalles in 1922. This is certainly possible, considering the fact that Mary may have been in dire need of alcohol to cope with a loveless match, but naming cocktails after members of the royal family has always been frowned upon by them. Just think of the Fergie Fizz** to properly appreciate their concern.

I, however, prefer the idea that it was named for Alexander Woolcott, a man very fond of said cocktail and– as the inspiration for Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner– would have driven anyone within his general vicinity to drink.

Makes one drink. For multiple Brandy Alexanders (or Brandies Alexander, if you prefer), please study this chart if you need a little help.

Ingredients:

1 part Brandy
1 part Crème de Cacao (by the way, it’s pronounced “ko-ko”. The “cacao” part, I mean.)
1 part heavy cream
2 to 3 ice cubes
Nutmeg for garnish. Not chocolate shavings, mind you. Nutmeg.

Preparation:

Place ice into the tumbler of a cocktail shaker. Pour all three liquids over the ice, close the lid tightly, and shake vigorously.

If you are a true alcoholic and are prone to fits of the shakes, get someone to place the shaker into your trembling hands and let those delirium tremens to the work for you. It’s that easy.

Pour your now-frothy drink into an awaiting martini glass, garnish with a pinch of nutmeg, and prepare to meet your own doom.

Or at least get into a little trouble.

Cheers,

Michael

*My boyfriend at the time took me too see this film on my birthday because he knew I’d love tearing it to pieces. How well that fellow understood me.

**Be grateful that I could not find the recipe. As I remember it, it was made with beer, some Sprite®-like soda, and topped off with champagne. I drank one when I was in London around the time of her wedding to Andrew, Duke of York. The only thing I can say in my own defense is that I was 16 years old and didn’t know any better.

Posted in Liquids, Stage, Film, and Television | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 34 Comments

Croaked Madame

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Michael Procopio

When my brother went off to the south of France for his year abroad, one of the first things he planned to do was take a little side trip to Monaco to visit Princess Grace.

He had no prior introduction to either Her Serene Highness nor her family, but I am almost certain he considered that, since he and she were half Irish and both of their fathers were from Philadelphia, he was a shoe-in for a dinner invite.

Sadly, the houses of Grimaldi and Procopio never got to mingle.

On the 13th of September, 1982, Princess Grace suffered a stroke while driving her youngest daughter home from their family retreat at Roc Agel. The car veered off the road, down a mountainside, and into a florist’s garden.

Princess Stephanie survived the crash, but my brother’s plan to meet her mother did not. When Princess Grace died on September 14, Douglas cancelled his plans.

He never went to Monaco.

Her death, however, became his hobby. He began collecting Princess Grace memorabilia and sending it home to us in boxes– magazine and news articles about the accident, postcards with her image on them, a record of her reciting the story of L’Oiseau Du Nord et L’Oiseau Du Soleil. He was, to put it mildly, obsessed.

One of those boxes included a memorable (to me) letter in which he took enough time out of his deep mourning to mention the cafe sandwich in which he took much solace: the croque madame. “It’s a ham and cheese sandwich, but with an egg on top that looks like a woman’s breast.” He thought it was genius.

Not being particularly interested in women’s breasts or egg sandwiches, I opted instead to try my had at making eggless croques messieurs (I am uncertain if this is the correct plural of croque monsieur but I’m going with it). They came out tasty, but uninspiring– a grilled-up ham and cheese sandwich, but made with something harder to find and more expensive than American cheese: Gruyère.

From thousands of miles away, I tried to share in both my brother’s love of ham-and-cheese sandwiches and his deep sense of loss over an Oscar-winning actress, but my interest eventually waned. I moved onto other, more important things like The Go Go’s and Sun In.

Not long after, my brother traded in his grief over Princess Grace for a much more attainable celebrity-stalking obsession: Pope John Paul II. He blew off the tiny Principality of Monaco for the even tinier sovereign state of The Vatican. I think he believed the less square acreage he had to cover in any country, the better the chance of meeting its head of state.

Like everything else in life, Monsieur Croque and his perky-breasted wife were abandoned and forgotten.

It had been years since I had given any thought to the croque madame, but when my friend Rebecca recently ordered a croque monsieur, I became amused by the fact that I was instantly reminded of Princess Grace. It was like some edible free-association game. She and the sandwich are inextricably linked in my mind. When I think “Grace Kelly”, I think of Hitchcock and High Society. When I think “Princess Grace of Monaco”, I think “ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on top.” Same woman, different associations. It’s really rather maddening.

But I don’t think I would have it any other way.

Croque Madame

The key to a decent croque madame (or monsieur, for that matter) is the Mornay sauce. If you are not up on your sauces and think that, since this sauce carries a French name, it must be difficult to make, you are very wrong. And possibly a francophobe.

If I just said “the sauce you make for macaroni and cheese” it would still, essentially, be the same thing. Since Princess Grace straddled both the English and French-speaking worlds, you may call it what you like. As long as you make it at least once in your life, I do not care what you call it.

Makes one sandwich

Ingredients:

2 slices of bread (preferably pain de mie) I used brioche, which worked beautifully, by the way. If you have access to neither, use a good quality white loaf. And you must cut off the crusts. Must.
2 slices of ham, cut into the same exact shape as the bread slices. We are going for neatness since we are eating this in honor of a dead princess.
1 egg gently cooked in 2 tablespoons of butter until the white has set and the yolk is runny.
Enough grated Gruyère cheese to cover the ham.
2 tablespoons of butter in which to griddle and brown the bread.
As much Mornay sauce as you dare. At least enough to spread on both sides of the bread and top the egg.

For the Mornay Sauce:

2 1/2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups of warm whole milk
1/4 teaspoon of salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste (The classic recipe calls for white pepper. I do not believe in white pepper.)
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon freshly-grated nutmeg (Nutmeg is not optional. Really.)
2 to 3 ounces of grated Gruyère cheese

Preparation:

1. To make the Mornay sauce, melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and stir constantly until the mixture (roux) is a pale yellow froth. DO NOT BROWN. Slowly add milk and continue whisking until the sauce thickens and comes to a boil (2 to 3 minutes). Reduce heat to low, add salt, nutmeg, and pepper to taste. Let simmer for another 2 to 3 minutes.

Congratulations, you now have a Béchamel sauce.

2. Stir in Gruyère cheese and whisk until thoroughly melted and incorporated into the sauce. This, my good people, is Mornay sauce. Once you’ve finished congratulating yourself, put it aside and place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the sauce to prevent a skin from forming. Keep warm. There is enough sauce here for probably 10 sandwiches, by the way. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of uses for it, both culinary and other.

3. In a pan large enough to accommodate your two slices of bread in side-by-side fashion, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add bread slices and lightly brown their bottoms. Turn bread over and spread enough Mornay sauce to cover each slice. Add your two precision-cut ham slices neatly on one piece of bread, and cover that with a liberal amount of grated cheese. Place pan under the broiler long enough to melt the cheese over the ham. (I had to transfer my bread to a smaller pan in order for it to fit under my broiler, which is why the pan in my photos looks almost Princess clean.)

4. Remove pan from broiler. Place second bread slice over the one laden with ham and cheese to for a true sandwich. Gently place the egg on top of the sandwich, cover it with more Mornay sauce, and return sandwich to the broiler. When the sauce on top bubbles and browns, remove from the broiler.

5. Slide your croque madame onto a piece of your finest china, pop open a beer (but pour it into a glass, please), pop a copy of To Catch a Thief into your dvd player, and fast forward to that scene in which Grace Kelly takes Cary Grant on a wild ride over the same stretch of road where she died 27 years later.

6. Better open another beer.

Posted in Celebrities, Meatness, Sandwiches, Savories, Stage, Film, and Television | Tagged , , , , , , | 34 Comments

Happy New-ish Year

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Michael Procopio

Well, Gelukkig Nieuwjaar to all you people out there. I’m still under the New Year wire, am I not?

I rather enjoyed 2010, but I am comfortable letting it go. I met a lot of really interesting people, did innumerable fascinating things, and ate an incalculable number of calories.

And I will not list a single thing here, because everyone and their stepmother has already furnished you with end-of-year lists.

But I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you nice people who deign to grace my site with your visits. Really. You make me not want to be a shut-in.

Here’s to a wonderful 2011. I have lots of stories to (over-) share with you this year.

In the meantime, however, I am going to walk about twenty paces and downstairs to the left, grab myself a margarita, and meditate myself into a stupor with the sounds of screaming monkeys and Twittering food bloggers.

In Cancún, Mexico.

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments