The President Who Really Cooked

Who? You'll be surprised. Also, an astonishing American food tradition. A fine old menu. Recipes, a new American wine and an old balsamic vinegar.

Last night, along with a long list of familiar food folks, I participated in Cooking For Kamala. Because no matter where our politics may fall, people who care deeply about food can’t help being excited by the prospect of having a serious cook occupying the highest office in the land.

But it turns out that Kamala is not the first presidential cook. The last person who wore an apron in the oval office is rather surprising: Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike might have been the General who issued a warning about the military-industrial complex, but in a time when real men wore no aprons, he did all the family cooking.

This following is from Ike The Cook, a book I recently found on my bookshelf. (If you yearn to own one, you can find it here.)

Here's the President at Camp David, making breakfast for the staff. What I like best about this picture is that Ike is using his apron as a potholder, which lets you know how truly comfortable he was in the kitchen.

Turns out that Ike didn't just stick to the stove; he was also a rancher and gardener. Here's Mamie in the corn.

A few of Ike's no-nonsense recipes:

I bought my copy of the book at Bonnie Slotnick’s cookbook store. Hannah Goldfield has a lovely article about Bonnie Slotnick in this week’s New Yorker. In it she mentions another unusual book I bought there that contains one of the strangest recipes I’ve ever encountered. I thought you might like to see it.

Like many great cookbooks of it's kind, this one is a self-published compilation of recipes from (mostly) church-going women. The recipes in these books often vary in quality, but at the very least they make for fun, voyeuristic reading.  

What was on the table in 1957 Virginia?  Whipped syllabub, turkey pie for 200, and five different types of chess pie, it would appear. (Maybe not all at the same time.) There's also a recipe for sweet potato souffle with sherry and black walnuts that I'm dying to try. 

Think I'll pass on the tips for excelling in housewifery. 

But here's one odd find: beaten biscuits. Has anyone ever baked with an axe? Virginia Cookery quotes a 1885 tome on Virginian cooking, also called Virginia Cookery, written by Ms. Mary Stuart Smith. 

""In the Virginia of the olden time no breakfast or tea-table was thought to be properly furnished without a plate of these indispensable biscuits... Let one spend the night at some gentleman-farmer's home, and the first sound heard in the morning, after the crowing of the cock, was the heavy, regular fall of the cook's axe, as she beat and beat her biscuit dough...Nowadays beaten biscuits are a rarity, found here and there, but soda and modern institutions have caused them to be sadly out of vogue...There are difficulties in the way," Mrs. Smith then goes on to explain that a biscuit block, the trunk of an oak or chestnut tree, sawed off and planed, must be provided near the kitchen." 

Mrs. Smith's Beaten Biscuit 
4 cups flour
1 tablespoon lard
1 teaspoon salt
water 
milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Sift flour with salt and work in lard. Have ready a mug filled with equal parts of sweet milk and water. Add it gradually to the other ingredients, kneading all the while, and stopping as soon as the flour will hold together, for the dough should be very stiff. Beat thirty minutes with an axe kept for the purpose. Prick with a fork and bake until a delicate brown. 

Looking for a purely American menu to run this week I came upon this gem from 1992. What interests me most, apart from the prices, is the inclusion of two unusual ingredients.

One is Coromandel oysters, which I fell in love with in New Zealand because of their clean, rich flavor and crisp texture. You almost never find them on this side of the Pacific (although I see that they sell them at Santa Monica Seafood). The other is the inclusion of Thresher Shark, which reminded me that in the late eighties the USDA began urging food editors to encourage our readers to serve shark.

We dutifully did as asked, but it turned out to be a stunningly bad idea. It’s not that shark’s not delicious - it’s just that the fish live a long a time (19 to 50 years), reproduce late in life, and have only a few young at a time. As Americans began gobbling them up, they quickly became endangered.

The fishery is apparently now well managed, but shark, which is at the top of the food chain and therefor high in mercury, is no longer an ordinary menu item.

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Last spring, when I was wandering through the wonderful Corti Brothers in Sacramento, I asked Darrell Corti what products I should take home with me. He pointed to this Bariani 12 year old balsamic vinegar; “It’s American,” he said, “and it really shouldn’t exist. But it’s astonishing for the price.”

Let me just say that I will never be without it again.

Had dinner this week at Klocke Estate, a brandy distillery that has recently opened in Claverack, high in the hills above the Hudson River. It is, hands down, the prettiest place to dine in the area, with gorgeous views, beautiful food and wonderful drinks. I began with these crab and roe-topped local eggs and a glass of Klocke’s bracingly refreshing vermouth.