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.