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Cookbooks!
As I promised yesterday, here's a bit from the World of Parties cookbook I found in the stacks. It was published in 1964 (in Japan, oddly enough) and offers exactly as much racial sensitivity as you'd expect.
The best, and by "best" I mean "worst," party theme is "Chinese Coolie Chow." It starts off by explaining that you can, of course, telephone a local Chinese restaurant and order food for a Chinese-themed party, but...
The Japanese Hibachi Hospitality theme tends to what Middle America thinks of as Japanese, of course, with teriyaki featured. The meat in the teriyaki recipe is not canned, surprisingly enough. The Japanese Crabmeat Salad, however, seems to be "Japanese" only in that the canned crabmeat is Japanese king crab, and the cook may add soy sauce as she desires.
I'm impressed that the India's Cool Curries party features 2 tablespoons of curry powder in each recipe, far more than the American-palate curry recipes I've seen running around in other books and online. These recipes don't say how many they serve, although other recipes in the book serve 12, and tend to call for about 2 pounds of meat in each recipe.
However, the Arroz con Pollo in the Spanish Gypsy Outing suffers by comparison: for three whole canned chickens - meant to serve 12 - there is a total of 3 cloves of garlic, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1 cup of onions, 1 teaspoon saffron, and 12 stuffed green olives. Paprika to taste.
The New Year's In Germany section features a side dish using what we nowadays call baby corn, but is referred to, appetizingly, as "embryo corn cobs." (Get a jar of them in brine, heat in melted butter, stick a pick in each one, and serve.)
That's more-or-less the high points. I don't know enough about Caribbean, North African, or Filipino cooking to judge if those recipes are halfway decent or not. ETA: I just realized that the Caribbean recipes contain nothing spicy whatsoever. The hottest they get is bell peppers. Suffice it to say, about the only thing I know about Caribbean cookery is that quite a lot of it features things like Scotch Bonnets. This makes the whole 2 tablespoons of curry powder featured in the Indian dishes even more inexplicable.
Later today or tomorrow... The People's Cookbook!
The best, and by "best" I mean "worst," party theme is "Chinese Coolie Chow." It starts off by explaining that you can, of course, telephone a local Chinese restaurant and order food for a Chinese-themed party, but...
I know from joyful experience that it's a lot more fun, as well as much less expensive, to telephone friends instead, and ask them over for an impromptu Chinese coolie supper that you've assembled with the aid of canned, frozen, packaged, and home-prepared products.The feast starts with Chinese Spring Rolls, purchased frozen, then continues with egg drop soup, fried rice (made, of course, from converted packaged rice), and a couple of generic stir-fry dishes, one with meat (canned chicken, turkey, or ham, plus ground beef), and one with "sea food," (boiled ham or bacon, canned shrimp, canned lobster, canned crab). Two additional suggested "Chinese" dishes are Egg Foo Yung and Chop Suey, which I believe were both invented in the States.
You can transform your playroom or patio into an Oriental bazaar. Among your friends there should be plenty of "atmosphere" to borrow for the evening. Coolie coats and trousers, or bankers' coats are in almost everyone's wardrobe today.
The Japanese Hibachi Hospitality theme tends to what Middle America thinks of as Japanese, of course, with teriyaki featured. The meat in the teriyaki recipe is not canned, surprisingly enough. The Japanese Crabmeat Salad, however, seems to be "Japanese" only in that the canned crabmeat is Japanese king crab, and the cook may add soy sauce as she desires.
I'm impressed that the India's Cool Curries party features 2 tablespoons of curry powder in each recipe, far more than the American-palate curry recipes I've seen running around in other books and online. These recipes don't say how many they serve, although other recipes in the book serve 12, and tend to call for about 2 pounds of meat in each recipe.
However, the Arroz con Pollo in the Spanish Gypsy Outing suffers by comparison: for three whole canned chickens - meant to serve 12 - there is a total of 3 cloves of garlic, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1 cup of onions, 1 teaspoon saffron, and 12 stuffed green olives. Paprika to taste.
The New Year's In Germany section features a side dish using what we nowadays call baby corn, but is referred to, appetizingly, as "embryo corn cobs." (Get a jar of them in brine, heat in melted butter, stick a pick in each one, and serve.)
That's more-or-less the high points. I don't know enough about Caribbean, North African, or Filipino cooking to judge if those recipes are halfway decent or not. ETA: I just realized that the Caribbean recipes contain nothing spicy whatsoever. The hottest they get is bell peppers. Suffice it to say, about the only thing I know about Caribbean cookery is that quite a lot of it features things like Scotch Bonnets. This makes the whole 2 tablespoons of curry powder featured in the Indian dishes even more inexplicable.
Later today or tomorrow... The People's Cookbook!
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The English curry of the 1950s, and well into the 1970s as I can remember, contained sultanas for some reason. It was a weird greenish colour, and often came with side-dishes of sliced banana or salted peanuts.