Pigeon du General Longstreet

     At the request of readers, Gourmet, in 1943, published a stream of articles written and illustrated by Stephen Longstreet.  Purportedly about his grandfather, each contains a recipe, sometimes several, from the erstwhile grandfather's notebook.
     Here's a breakfast dish featuring squab.
     "It's my own dish," Gramp would say, "but it needs a fancy title. Your aunt says we're related to some hillbilly general in Dixie, so I'm giving him credit for the dish."


Pigeon du General Longstreet

3 squab, cleaned and deboned,
     Set aside bones
     Set aside livers
1 small red onion, sliced
1 carrot, sliced
pinch of ground cloves
2 peppercorns
salt
1 shallot, sliced
3 slices ham, chopped fine
1 slice toast soaked in milk
2 Tablespoons butter
1/2 cup Sherry
1/2 cup Madeira
1 small white onion, grated

Place squab bones in small pot with onion, carrot, pepper, salt and shallot and simmer for one hour.  Cook livers in 1/2 of the butter. Chop. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In another small pot put livers, ham, toast, Sherry, Madeira and onion.  Simmer. When reduced, stuff into the birds.  Use steel pins to truss.
Pour bone broth and butter over the birds.
Bake for 12 minutes.  Reduce heat to 300 degrees and bake for an additional 25 minutes.  Just before removing from oven, raise heat again to 500, remove when glazed.

Gramps ate two, boy Stephen ate one.

(To understand squab and possible substitutions, see Zester's Battle of the Birds.)

The Star Cooks Mushrooms a la Andalouse

In her evening dress and hairdo.

     For Super-Bowl Sunday, I'm testing Stephen Longstreet's recipe, gleaned from his 1942 visit to Hollywood with an old friend from back-east who's now a star.

Mushrooms a la Andalouse

2 lbs. mushrooms, stemmed or sliced

2 oz. unsalted butter

1 oz. diced ham or pork belly

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup sherry

1/2 cup port

Pepper

Salt

1/2 nutmeg, grated 

1/3 cup chopped pimentos

2 Tablespoons crushed parsley

Braise the mushrooms in the butter, olive oil and ham for 8 minutes.  Add sherry and port.  Stir for a few minutes more, until liquid begins to reduce. Spoon mushrooms into a casserole and allow liquid to reduce by a half.  Pour into casserole. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, nutmeg, pimento and parsley.

Bake at 375 degrees for one hour.

Serve spread on toast that lightly spread with any sort of forcemeat and the grated lemon rind.

Chef Chan's Idea of Lobster Bercy

   

All I need is 4 three pounders.

     In the winter of 1942,  a Mr. and Mrs. Oil Well invited Stephen Longstreet to be a guest at their villa somewhere on the coast between Hollywood and Big Sur. Their Chinese chef, Chan, prepared his idea of Lobster Bercy.  Longstreet thought it the best lobster he had ever eaten.  Asian-Fusion circa 1942?
     I'm assuming you slay the lobster before you extract its meat.  

Chan's Lobster Bercy 

4 three lb. lobster, meat sliced thin
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup olive oil
2 shallot, finely minced
1 cup water chestnuts, sliced
1 cup bamboo shoots, sliced
1 cup chablis
1 cup sherry
1 cup heavy cream
5 eggs beaten with 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 cup chives, diced
8 or more slices toasted bread
Dash paprika

     In a large sauce pan, melt the butter and olive oil over medium high heat. Add the shallots, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots and brown.  Add the lobster meat and bring to sizzling hot.
     Add the wine and sherry and reduce.  Add the cream, beaten eggs and chives.  Lower flame to a simmer.  Stir slowly until mixture thickens.
      Serve on toast, dusted with paprika.

The Hero of "High Button Shoes"

     One of the most fascinating characters who has turned up in my Gourmet magazine research is Stephen Longstreet, who wrote the book for that venerable Broadway musical.  
     If you think creative non-fiction is a recent phenomena, meet this raconteur of mythical proportions, an artist and screen-writer who travelled all around the world.
      Even his grandchildren struggle to piece together what parts of his memoirs were real.
      There is always a recipe in his articles for Gourmet.  These he purportedly found in his grandfather Longstreet's notebook.  Longstreet was one of his noms de plume,  and the dimensions of the grandfather questionable.
      Are the recipes real?
      Unlike Julie, I'm not a skinny person, and am not prepared to test and presumably consume each of these dishes.
     I'm proposing to crowd-share this experiment.
     Each day I will post one of his recipes.
     If you are game?
     Pick one, prepare it and report back in the comments!
     Here's the first - - -Note that at this stage of Gourmet's evolution, recipes were not presented in the ingredients and method format we are now used to, so I've converted it, while keeping most of Longstreet's prose.

Kidney Pie a la Winter Palace (Gourmet, February, 1943)

From Gramp’s notebook: “Russian kidney pie, imported from France to Russia by Peter the Great…goes back to a Dutch dish eaten after Lent.”

Water

Salt

Vineger

3 Veal kidneys

1 lb sirloin steak, cut in 1 inch squares

½ large onion, chopped

½ cup parsley

¼ cup chicken fat or suet

1 cup sherry

1 teaspoon white brandy

Bay leaf

Black pepper

Sea salt

1 pint button mushrooms

1 Tablespoon pickled red pepper

1 carrot, diced

Caraway seeds

Wash the kidneys the mixture of salt water and vinagar. Cut into inch squares and discard the hard tough muscles. Add the sirloin. Put kidney and steak pieces in a pan with fat, onions and parsley, sauté until amber brown.  Add sherry and brandy to cover, bayleaf, pepper and salt, simmer for almost and hour.  Add button mushrooms, pepper and diced carrot.

Pour into an ovenproof casserole, cover with simple pastry, sprinkle with caraway seeds. Bake in a 400 degree oven until crust is done.

Accompany with Dutch beer.