In July 1959 Clementine Paddleford, food editor for This Week magazine, visited Dave and Pamela Garroway at their New York home for her series “How America Eats.” As part of the article, Dave and Pamela talked about how their family liked to eat.
Dave confessed that his one talent in the kitchen was making a New Orleans Remoulade, which he liked to make and serve on shrimp when they had company over for dinner and conversation.1 For years, he admitted, “I lived on salmon sandwiches, milk and bananas. I still like bananas, but now I prefer them flambeed.” The difference, he said, was marrying Pamela. “She is keeping my waistline trim, yet I have never eaten better.”
While Pamela, who had lived in Paris for many years, knew French food well, it was a comparably humble dish of hers that became a favorite of Dave’s: Homemade Canned Chili, made with two cans of chili con carne and some extra ingredients.2 The article noted that on Friday nights in the wintertime, Dave loved to come home to a dinner of chili and crackers. It was also a favorite on their Sunday table at their beach house on Long Island. They liked to serve it along with a green salad tossed with thyme and tarragon wine vinegar dressing, hot garlic bread, Chianti or beer (depending on individual taste), and chilled melon balls for dessert.
Lest the Garroways’ favorite recipes be lost forever, it’s my pleasure to provide you with the three recipes from the article. Use them in all good health.
Remoulade Sauce
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup Creole mustard*
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup finely-chopped celery
1/2 cup finely-chopped onion
2 tbsp. minced parsley
2 tbsp. finely-chopped dill pickle
1 clove garlic, minced
juice of one lemon
few drops hot pepper sauce
1 tbsp. paprika
red pepper to taste
Combine mayonnaise, mustard and olive oil. Add remaining ingredients and blend thoroughly. Serve over shrimp. Yield: 2 cups sauce.
*Note: If a sharper type of mustard is used, the amount may be decreased as desired.
Homemade Canned Chili
6 medium onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 pound ground beef
2 cans (1 pound each) chili con carne with beans
1/2 cup chili sauce
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash of pepper
few drops hot pepper sauce
Saute onions in butter until soft; remove from pan. Cook beef until brown. Add sauteed onions and remaining ingredients. Heat, stirring until well-blended. Cover. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Yield: 4 portions.
Flounder in Sherry
1 lb. flounder fillets, cut into serving pieces
1/3 cup minced onion
1/2 cup sherry wine
1 can (4 oz.) chopped mushrooms and liquid
salt
coarsely-ground black pepper
Place fish fillets in shallow greased baking dish. Sprinkle on onion. Add sherry, mushrooms and mushroom liquid. Season with salt and pepper. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 to 30 minutes. Serve with sauce, as desired. Yield: 3 to 4 portions.
To complete the course, Pamela suggests buttered green peas and little new potatoes feathered with parsley. For dessert, a lemon ice and ladyfingers.
- There’s a story behind how he got the recipe: just before the U.S. entered World War II, Garroway covered the Louisiana Maneuvers for NBC. One day he was talking to a chef in Shreveport who was bothered by the firing of a particular piece of artillery. It kept him awake. Garroway said he’d get the gun silenced if the chef would teach him how to make the delicious Remoulade sauce he’d just enjoyed. Garroway confessed in 1954, “I was safe in saying it. I knew this gun was to be moved the next day.”
- The time-honored method of modifying store-bought food that, in my household growing up, was called “doctoring it up.”