Cooking with Dr. Monkey (mid-century recipe edition)

Today's episode: Golden shrimp puff.

Some friends of ours held a Mid Century Potluck the other night and I made a dish from a recipe I found in the 1967 edition of the Betty Crocker Hostess Cookbook.  I chose this dish because it looked easy to make and I thought it might taste good, but mainly because it looked easy to make.

I started out by boiling, then cleaning, then chopping up my shrimp.  I boiled it in Old Bay seasoned water to give it a little flavor because the rest of the recipe was light on the herbs and spices.

Next I cut off the crusts from ten slices of white bread, then I cubed up the slices, and laid them to rest in my rectangular Pyrex baking dish.

Then in my giant measure cup, I cracked six eggs and whisked them together.

To the eggs I added three cups of milk, 3/4 tablespoon of dried mustard, 1/2 tsp of salt, and two tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley and I mixed it all together.

Then I dumped in two cups of reduced fat cheddar, the recipe called for 'processed American cheese,' but I sacrificed that bit of authenticity.  I dumped my shrimp in and then I poured the mixture over my bead cubes:

It went in to the oven next and I baked it at 325 for about 50 minutes.

When it came out of the oven it was indeed puffy.  It puffed up to twice it's original size and had I followed the recipe, I should have served it right then, but I didn't.  I let it sit and cool some and then we took it to the party about an hour later and it deflated and became kind of rubbery.

The verdict:  It tasted kind of odd and it severely lacked spices and flavoring.  The egginess of it was almost overpowering.  It tasted like baked eggs that let other shit get in it's way.  Would I make it again?  Probably not but it was fun to try it.

The other food at the party was actually very good, aside from the fact that most of it consisted of various incarnations of Spam and Jell-O based creations.  My dish was an also ran in a tight field of surprisingly tasty dishes from the past.

Cooking with Dr. Monkey (vintage recipe edition)

A few weeks ago I bought a vintage cookbook in an antique store.  It's called The American Woman's Cookbook and it's the 1944 edition.  I've been toying with the idea of making recipes out of cookbooks like this one and last night I took the plunge and made one.  I wanted to start off with one that looked pretty easy to make and so I tried the recipe for caramel pudding.

This recipe called for only four ingredients which are: 2 cups of whole milk, 1/4 cup of flour, 1 cup of brown sugar, and two eggs, separated.

I heated the 3/4's of the milk up with a double boiler, the recipe says I was supposed to 'scald' it, which means heat it just to the point before it takes a boil.  As the milk heated up I dumped in my brown sugar and stirred it until it dissolved.

Into the remaining milk I put my egg yolks and the flour and I mixed it all up together and when all the sugar had dissolved and the milk was scalded, I poured the egg yolk flour mixture in the sugary milk and I whisked it.

Next I beat my egg whites with my electric mixer until they were stiff and frothy.

Finally I folded my egg whites into the main milky mixture and I stirred it all about.  I then put it in the freezer to cool it down rapidly and to see if it would set.

The Verdict: Not pudding like in the least, not any where near pudding.  Not very caramel tasting either.

This concoction tastes good, it's got a slight caramel flavor, but it's not pudding.  It didn't set for shit not even after an hour in the freezer.  The egg whites kept floating to the top and leaving the sweet slightly caramel slightly thick milk on the bottom.

So I have to call this experiment in vintage recipe making a fail but on the plus side, the next time I make something that needs a meringue topping, I'll be a whiz at making it.

Happy eating!