Memo from the desk of Dean Moira Finnie
To:
MrsL, Proprietess of the CCC B&B
Re:
Holiday Recipes
Dear Mrs. L,
The first relevant files I came across in this category happened--not so oddly, perhaps--to be the specialties of two of our most esteemed and yet somehow elusive faculty, Mr.
Spencer Tracy, Professor Emeritus of Ethics and Pediatric and Adolescent Group Psychology. The other recipe is scrawled across a grease-stained 3x5 card from the galley kitchen of the
Santana by one Professor
Humphrey Bogart. Prof. Bogart, you may have heard, authored the groundbreaking philosophical study, entitled "Alienation and the Sardonic Response to Society", which is still studied by serious students in the field to this day.
One note of caution, please: Mssrs.
Tracy &
Bogart specified that these dishes are meant to be eaten alone and with a wicked hangover as your only companion. I'm not sure that these can be doubled or quadrupled to serve a Holiday crowd, but--what the hey--give it a whirl, me girl!
Spencer Tracy's Roast Beef Pie
Ingredients:
Cold roast beef
Butter
Sliced onions
Potatoes
Milk
Salt, pepper
Flour
Tomato sauce
From a cold roast beef, or any other leftover roast, chop enough pieces to fill your baking dish half full. Put the chopped beef into a stewpan with a lump of butter, some sliced onion, and seasoning of salt and pepper.
Now add water to make plenty of gravy. Thicken it with a teaspoonful of flour. Cover the pan and let the ingredients stew slowly. Meanwhile, boil enough potatoes to fill up the rest of the baking dish, after the stewed meat has been transferred to it.
The potatoes must be boiled done - mashed smooth and beaten up with milk, butter and seasoning - just as if they were being served alone.
Just before the dish is placed into the oven, brush a slightly beaten egg over the top of the potatoes. Let it remain in the oven long enough to brown. Make sure there is enough gravy left with the beef, so the dish will not become dry and tasteless.
Serve with Scotch and Milk on ice, or, if nutrition rather than oblivion is your goal, make it tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, or any other sauce you like.
Spencer Tracy
If I might indulge in some affectionate speculation, the following dish must've been the kind of thing a sullen Prof.
Bogie made for himself while living on his boat after fighting with our "artist in residence"
Mayo Methot and before a certain Ms.
Betty Bacall, the well-liked Art-as-Therapy instructor, became his soulmate. I think you'd have to be drinking as well to savor this dish. Maybe you'd have to be "in a lonely place" to consider it appetizing fare. Yes, you are correct in surmising that I'm not a pasta aficionado. I'd probably have to down several stiff drinks before swallowing any of this--no matter what the holiday.
Humphrey Bogart's Spaghetti Loaf
Ingredients
2 cups spaghetti, "all busted up inside" to quote Mr. B.
1/2 lb American cheese
2 eggs, beaten
1 2/3 cups milk, (Bogie says that it doesn't matter if it's sour milk)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup minced parsley
1 tablespoon grated onion
1 clove garlic
Boil the spaghetti in salted water with garlic, until tender. Then drain water and remove garlic.
Add cheese, melted in milk, to beaten eggs.
Combine with salt, onion, parsley, spaghetti.
Mix thoroughly. Pour into buttered pan. Bake in moderate oven for 1 hour.