Date I made this recipe:
January 26, 2014 (Grammy Awards)
Liberace Cooks! Hundreds of delicious recipes for you from
his seven dining rooms as told to Carol Truax
Published by:
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
© 1970
Recipe: Liberace Special Sirloin Stew – p. 109
The Grammy Awards are on tonight and you know what this
means, right? Yup. Time for a Liberace primer!
If not for the recent biopic, Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon,
sadly many of you would not know how the heck the man known as
"Liberace" (full name: Władziu
Valentino Liberace) became a musical superstar and that would be a shame.
Little "Lee" Liberace was a piano prodigy and the
man figured out how to turn that talent, plus an outrageous wardrobe, into a
goldmine. And when I say
"outrageous" people, we're talking capes and sequins and rings and
other gaudy jewels, not to mention his other well-known accessory, a candelabra
that sat on top of his piano for every performance. So it's not for nothing that Liberace was
known as Mr. Showmanship (although he likely assigned himself that moniker to
add to the allure). Oddly enough, about
the time I started seeing Liberace on various TV talk shows, along came an heir
to the Mr. Showmanship title, Elton John.
Both men were gay, both were rather "out there" for the time
and both liked to make a statement although whether it was a bona fide fashion
statement is questionable. When you have
a second or two, Google both men and their outfits and then you tell me!
Liberace made old ladies swoon every time he swept (more
like "swished") into a room and the public couldn't get enough of
him. But alas, whereas Elton John (and
his wardrobe) went on to win several Grammy's, Liberace did not. Not that he was a slouch in the award
department – he had several gold records, as well as a TV show ("The
Liberace Show," naturally) and that's something to write home to mother
about.
Speaking of mother, Liberace (or "Lee" as he was
known to friends) was born to an Italian father and Polish mother
in—wait...what? West Allis, Wisconsin? I've been there. Several times. One of my former employers' HQ is there. Well, whadaya know! By age 18, he started to make a name for
himself as a classical musician, even playing with the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra at age 20. But being a
classical pianist is a hard job so Liberace went in search of something else to
do to showcase his talents et voila, in 1940, he started appearing in music
videos (well, not our kind of music videos but...) and all of a sudden, the guy
had himself an act, complete with candelabra, and the rest, as they say, was
history. Lee played every type of piano composition/song
imaginable on his shows and on his records but Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat major (Chopin was Polish) is the one
for which he is remembered.
Although his musical career (and scandalous affair with his
chauffer...who later had plastic surgery to look like Liberace –yikes!) is
well-documented, his leap to the kitchen is less so. But as told to co-author, Carol Truax,
"Food and music are the best things in life" so there it is!
What absolutely made me hoot every time I look at this cookbook's
cover was the fact that Liberace had seven dining rooms. Seven.
Wow. If you are an avid fan of
the TV show, House Hunters, you'll
know that today, most people want an open kitchen/dining area rather than a
formal (or even informal) dining room and yet the man had seven. This makes sense though, when you read the
back cover: "You don't have to
duplicate Liberace's lavishly decorated
Hollywood mansion to enjoy Liberace's special
recipes...." Outrageous outfits
and lavishly decorated mansion with seven dining rooms—it all makes sense.
Now this cookbook is a little unclear about where these
dining rooms are located but photos (OMG, they are so vintage, it's hilarious)
give us some clues: there appears to be
a formal dining room; a photo of Lee and guests in an informal dining room; a
dining terrace; a TV-watching dining room (I kid you not) and an bar (decorated
in vintage aqua) in a [dining room] with a view. If I had the right house, I would install
this bar in a second as it is so kitsch, so vintage that I love it. Love it.
This however, only makes for five dining rooms so that means we are
missing two and this irks. WHERE are
they?!
I looked through the book again and cannot find a list (so
harrumph—maybe the "seven" is just a tiny exaggeration which, given
Lee's outrageous personality, would not be a big surprise) but here's the
chapter listing that might give us some clue:
Chapter 1 – Indoor-Outdoor Eating;
Chapter 2 – Do It Yourself and Eat It
Yourself in the Kitchen; Chapter 3 –
Beautiful Buffet by the Yard; Chapter
4 – TV Dinging; Chapter 5 – Cookout
on the Loggia (a gallery or corridor); Chapter
6 – Room with a View and Chapter 7 – Seven
Dinners in the Formal Dining Room.
So there you have it – seven chapters, seven eating areas. (Oh, and by
the way, the cook-top hood in the loggia is patterned after a piano keyboard.)
Today's recipe selection – Liberace Special Sirloin Stew -
came from the Beautiful Buffet by
the Yard chapter which made me hoot:
it is now winter in Minnesota,
our yards are buried and the day I made this recipe, the temperature was
hovering around -15. Not only did we not
do a buffet (for two whole people) but we skipped the entire "yard"
part and just stayed indoors. Sensibly
stayed indoors. But this delicious (and
comforting) stew more than made up for the fact that we can't go outside right
now without suffering frostbite.
Those that read last week's blog know that a chief complaint
about Walt Disney's chili and beans recipe was that it didn't have much
flavor. Even the spices I added didn't
do anything to kick it up. But this
recipe was more than flavorful and the only "spices" added were salt
and pepper – go figure. I think the
vegetables had a lot to do with it – sweet carrots and sweet peas helped out
quite a bit as did the onions which were sautéed in bacon fat – yum! My husband and I enjoyed every last leftover
morsel for almost a week and I would make this again in a heartbeat. So kudos to Liberace and his special sirloin
stew.
You'll note that this recipe serves 12 but as we are only
two, we halved the recipe and that was fine as well as cost-saving: sirloin ain't cheap! The only thing I was lukewarm about was the
addition of the dumplings but Andy liked them so I let him polish off the
majority.
So now you know what you are going to do, right? You're going to go to YouTube and listen/watch Liberace's recordings and then you are
going to make this stew or find this cookbook and make something else and you
will be happy. And when you watch next
year's Grammy's, think for just a second about Mr. Showmanship and what he did
for the industry well before today's stars came along; today's stars have
nothing on Lee Liberace and his outfits.
Nothing!
Enjoy.
Liberace Special
Sirloin Stew (serves 12)
3 thick or 6 thin slices bacon, diced
2 large onion, chopped
5 pounds sirloin steak, cut into 1 ½-inch cubes
6 carrots, cut up
5 potatoes, peeled and cut up
1 ½ pounds or 2 packages frozen green beans
2 packages frozen peas
12 Italian tomatoes, peeled, or 1 1-pound 13-ounce can
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Bisquick dumplings (8-ounce package) (Ann's Note:
I do not know if a Bisquick dumpling mix existed when this book was
published but I do know I found several recipes online for dumplings made with
Bisquick. What you do is make up the
recipe per package directions and then drop them into the stew. To me, the dumplings were more like biscuits
but that could just be me. As mentioned
above, Andy liked them so he ate them.
Case closed.)
Sauté the bacon in a heavy casserole. (A note in the instructions says
"Liberace liked Belgian ware."
Ha!) When browned, remove and set
aside. Brown the onion in the
drippings. Add the beef and brown on all
sides. Add the vegetables, salt, pepper
and bacon bits. Simmer, covered for 20
minutes. Drop in the Bisquick dumplings,
following package directions. (Ann's
Note: the dumplings take 20 minutes
total to cook.)
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