Blah-Blah-Blah Helen Gurley Brown Blah-Blah-Blah

The title tells you what you really want to know. This hot mushroom sandwich from Food Editors' Favorites: Treasured Recipes was an unquestionable fail in my book of food.

First, it's not really a two-fisted sandwich, it's party food. It's an appetizer masquerading as dinner. Second, it's boring...really boring; I would prefer an appetizer to head more in the direction of an amuse-bouche, but this sandwich didn't even have a sense of humor.

It did, however, have an intriguing 1970's pedigree. The recipe is said to have been a favorite of Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown; for all young ladies out there who don't know who she is, go read Wikipedia for a fast overview, and thank your lucky, free-wheeling stars that she wrote Sex and the Single Girl many years ago.

The recipe came from celebrated caterer Donald Bruce White who said it was one of Mrs. Brown's favorites. White is worth talking about all on his own, let along thinking about this particularly snooze-inducing appetizer. An article in New York Magazine about 1983's new, hot caterers had this to say about White:

"Donald Bruce White's loyal clients love using his Coalport dinner plates; their Park Avenue drawing rooms are grand enough to accomodate his sterling-silver rolling carving board with it shuge dome-shaped top. White's soirees - deb parties, benefits, late suppers- have a comfortable gentility, an old-money propriety, an enormous sense of style. What would he serve for a buffet supper? Lump crabmeat made with a fine julienne of orange, served with Smithfield ham and corn sticks, spinach in Maderia, and crunchy coleslaw. No hors d'oeuvre with this supper. For dessert, an orange souffle and tuiles, the crispy curved almond cookies. This supper would cost $40 per person. For a first course at a seated dinner, he suggests small mousselines of smoked salmon and heavy cramy formed into tiny eggs and arranged aorund slices of brioche, garnished with caviar." 

Regardless, the sandwich isn't too hard to fix, and I suppose wouldn't be bad for one appetizer among several others for a cocktail party if you do that kind of thing. I don't.

I minced up the mushrooms and placed them in a pan with butter and minced scallion. I cooked until all liquid had disappeared.

Minced Mushrooms

Cooked Mushrooms with Scallions and Butter

Simultaneously, I placed more butter into a pan, added all-purpose flour, and made a lovely roux in no time. I added homemade chicken stock, heavy cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne. That really should have been enough to make it tasty. Yeah right. It was also not enough to make it particularly photogenic.

Then the creamy mixture was combined with the mushrooms. Getting sleepy yet?

At that point I pulled out a square loaf of sourdough bread and trimmed the crust off all the way around...

and cut into slices. Thick slices. The recipe says thin, but I didn't read closely so without a doubt, these were too thick. 

Then I spread the mushroom cream sauce on the bread, another slice stacked on top, more mushroom sauce, and another slice of bread.

Even the pictures of this make me start to yawn. The sandwich went into the oven at 400 for 10 minutes and came out semi-toasty.

I really wanted to like this sandwich. I also really wanted to add roasted red pepper and arugula and something -almost anything- into the mix for zest. Even the cayenne pepper didn't intimidate my taste buds like it so often does, and I couldn't even taste the nutmeg. I can maybe see the appeal of this appetizer with thinner sliced bread; the mushroom sauce was beginning to soak the bread - think both crunchy and soft simultaneously. That was a waste of good sourdough bread; instead of make additional sandwiches, I saved the bread and used it for very tasty French Toast.

Shrimp, Asparagus, and Thunderstorms

I've been in a cooking slump. It's been a good number of days since I had the urge to get into the kitchen and whip up something delicious. And I was really tired of take out food. I mean, how many Subway sandwiches can you eat before you're bored to tears?

I'd recently eaten at a local restaurant and talked to the front of the house manager about the cookbooks on display; she shared her love of collecting cookbooks, and invited me to come back to talk with the chef one of these days. He has a sizable collection that he uses for inspiration when creating dishes. Before I left the restaurant, the house manager gave me a copy of Food Editors Favorites: Treasured Recipes.

This is a cookbook that's been around since 1983, and was published for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) with the permission of the Newspaper Food Editors and Writers Association (now known as the Association of Food Journalists (AFJ.) Like always, I read through the cookbook and made a list of what sounded good. Then I dilly-dallied around, went shopping, and was ready to make food. And what night did I pick to get started? The night of severe thunderstorm watches and warnings.

We'd had a couple of days of 80+ weather, which doesn't make me feel like heading into a kitchen to heat things up. It does make me want to walk to the local Dairy Queen, but I suppose I can't live on just soft serve ice cream...can I?

I decided to make two recipes that required overnight marinading: Chinese Asparagus and Broiled Shrimp with Rosemary.As I started working on the shrimp dish, I could hear thunder in the distance. I kept Weather Underground up on my computer screen to watch the progress of the storm.

First, I took the shrimp out to defrost and placed it into my blue colander.

Both recipes suggest marinading overnight, so all I really needed to do was prep and wait. The skies grew darker and the air seemed calm. A pregant calm, as if something's coming. Soon.

I pulled the asparagus out of the fridge, took pictures. I remembered seeing asaparagus growing at my sister's house over the weekend, the stalks shooting up from the ground. The asapargus had been transplanted from an aunt's house years ago, and now produces a good crop each year.

I peeled asparagus. The rains came, heavy at first, then insistent. The radar changed from green to red to pink. The storm blew threw, dropped the temperature 15 degrees, brought in cooling winds. I chopped asparagus,  checked on the shrimp, ate dinner. I blanched the asparagus in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then drained thoroughly.

I made the marinade for the shrimp - olive oil, lemon, lemon peel, garlic, rosemary, cayenne, parsley.

I made the marinade for the asparagus: soy sauce, sugar, cider vinegar, sesame oil. I tasted the marinade and decided to fuss with it by adding tupelo honey and pepper. I figured fresh cracked pepper would be a nice counter element to the saltiness of the soy sauce. The recipe actually called for additional salt on top of the soy sauce! I added the asparagus and squished it around with the marinade to combine.

Both shrimp and asparagus went into the fridge for an overnight staycation. The next day after work, I ate some watermelon (which I'll tell you about later,) and put the finishing touches on the two salads. But honestly, the asparagus needed no further touches.

I'd never had an asparagus dish quite like this. It was slightly salty, somewhat sweet. And despite absorbing the flavors of the marinade, the asparagus remained tender-crisp. It was a good change from your basic asparagus with lemon-butter sauce.

I separated the shrimp from the marinade and broiled the shrimp...a little too long. I love the flavor of rosemary, and it's a heady compliment to shrimp and lemon.

I piled both the shrimp and asparagus onto my plate, along with some store-bought traditional potato salad, and had a tasty summertime dinner. 

The next day, I had the same combination for lunch at work. I still had potato salad and asparagus remaining, so I munched on both of those until they were completely gone. I'd say that's a success!