Date I made these recipes – Sunday, September 18, 2016 –
Emmy Award Night!
Autograph® Celebrity
Cookbook – introduced and compiled by Professor Richard Brown, New York
University; foreword by Michael Lomonaco, Chef/Director, Windows on the World
until it was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks
Published by DuPont,
maker of Autograph® non-stick coating
© 1992
Purchased at BCPA Sale (Bloomington Crime
Prevention Association), June 2016
Recipe: Pan-Fried
Steak with Balsamic Sauce from the late actor, Jerry Orbach, who played
Detective Lennie Briscoe on the TV show, Law & Order – p. 88
Love in the Afternoon
Cookbook – Recipes from Your Favorite ABC-TV Soap Operas: Ryan's Hope; All My Children; One Life to
Live; General Hospital
Published by M. Evans and Company, Inc.
ISBN: 0-87131-426-6
Purchased at BCPA Sale (Bloomington Crime
Prevention Association), June 2012
Recipe: Heiress Asparagus Soup from One Life to
Live's character Dorian Lord Callison, played by Robin Strasser – p. 85
So the Emmy Awards
were on last night and this turned out to be a good thing as it distracted me from
another competition that aired on another network: the Packers v. Vikings game. In Minnesota . It did not go well for my Packers.
Things went much better on the Emmy Awards unless, of course, you lost in your category, in which
case you might as well have been playing for the Pack who lost the game.
And so it came to pass that I watched much more (like 90%
more) of the Emmys than the game which was not at all what I intended. I taped both shows, but intended to spend
more time watching the game than the Emmys but that didn't happen.
Normally, I might have also "split" my Sunday
night menu between an "Emmy" meal and a Packers football meal but it
just got too hard to fit everything in.
And so it came to pass that a few days before the game, I decided on an
Emmy-meal-or-bust approach and to heck with the football stuff for now.
Focus is a good thing, amirite Packers?
The first book I used is the Autograph® Celebrity Cookbook. You
should know that this book does not contain any celebrity "autographs,"
as that refers to a non-stick coating created by DuPont, "sponsor" of
this cookbook. But it does contain
celebrity photos and recipes, and all proceeds from the sale of this cookbook
were given to Citymeals-on-Wheels in NYC, an organization that provides meals
to homebound elderly New Yorkers. That
makes me happy. But here's what makes me
sad: The foreword to this book,
published in 1992, was written by chef Michael Lomonaco who was then in charge
of the famous restaurant at the top of the North
Tower of the World Trade
Centers Twin
Towers
On 9/11/2001, everyone on Lomonaco's staff was in that
restaurant serving patrons, many of them people who had "always wanted to
eat there." My friend, Bob, knew of
one such person who was there that day.
Given the spectacular view from the 106th/107th
floor, it is no wonder it was popular. I
might have eaten there except for my fear of heights.
On 9/11, American Airlines Flight 11 plowed into that
building; you know what happened after that.
Chef Lomonaco was in the lobby at that time and was evacuated. He was the only survivor of the restaurant
staff.
Until I read the foreword, I did not connect the dots. I knew who he was since he has appeared on
numerous cooking shows, and I knew what happened to Windows on the World, and I
might have even remembered that he was in the lobby, but I didn't pull it all
together until the day I got pulled the book from my shelf to cook from it for
my blog. I think it is somewhat fitting,
if not ironic that I had just written all about 9/11 the week before and now
there I was with another cosmic connection to that day.
It's also fitting that many of the celebrities featured in
this book (along with their recipes) found their fame in New York and not LA, performing on the stage
or in movies or on TV. Back in the early
days of television, many productions were filmed in New York
and if you go to Queens , you can go to the Museum of the Moving Image and take in
memorabilia and see the old lots. (I
have been there and it is awesome! I
have also been to London 's
Museum of the Moving Image, or MOMI
as it's referred to over there. http://www.movingimage.us/
One actor who made his claim to fame on both the New York stage and
screen was the late Jerry Orcbach who most of you know as Detective Lennie
Briscoe from the long-running TV show, Law
& Order. I loved the show, loved
"Lennie" and particularly loved how the show was shot in NYC. My husband and my favorite thing to do when
watching episodes is "neighborhood spotting" where we guess (mostly
correctly) where a scene took place.
As between Jerry's recipes for "Chicken with
Artichokes, Mushrooms, and White Wine," and "Pan-Fried Steak with
Balsamic Sauce," tonight's "Emmy" went (narrowly) to the
steak. It was delicious. It was also shown paired with fresh asparagus
which I did not make, but I did make an asparagus soup from another cookbook
which sort of tied the whole thing together.
If Jerry's recipes don't float your boat, here's a sampling
of some of the other actors and recipes that might:
- Alan Alda (M*A*S*H) – Sauteed Shrimp with Basil and Cherry Tomatoes
- Adam Arkin (guest-starred recently on How to Get Away with Murder) – French Onion Soup
- Tony Goldwyn (Scandal) – Pork Tenderloin Steaks with Spicy Tomato Sauce
- Ben Stiller (Night at the Museum, Zoolander) – Sweet Ricotta Pancakes
The second cookbook I used – Love in the Afternoon - is also celebrity-themed but this time
around, the celebrities are all soap opera actors. Daytime TV, of which soaps used to be a huge
part, have had their own Emmy Awards for years – Daytime Emmys. Daytime Emmys were held in May of this year
and according to the internet, they were the 43rd Daytime
Emmys. I did not realize they were on
for that long.
In the "old" days, of daytime TV, it was difficult
for a soap opera actor to cross over to primetime TV or movies but these days,
actors and actresses are free to roam about the cabin. Now, many of the people we see getting a
"nighttime" Emmy got their start on soap operas (or, as Tony Award
host James Corden hilariously pointed out, Law
& Order!).
Most of the famous soaps I grew up with are now long gone,
but I tell you what, in their heyday, we were all glued to the set. I was a fan
of CBS' The Young and the Restless (still running) as well as All My Children. My mother was a fan of The Edge of Night, The
Guiding Light and The Secret Storm,
which she watched while ironing. (You remember ironing, right?)
So I watched as many soaps as I could in high school and
then went off to college where I was amazed to find a whole
"underworld" of soap addicts.
And by "addicts," I mean students who planned classes around their
favorite soap operas. At the time, most
of us did not have TV sets in our dorm rooms (it was the dinosaur era), but the
Wildcat Den, a student lounge and restaurant at my undergrad alma mater, Northern Michigan University, solved
that problem by broadcasting the shows on the big screen TV. (And by "big
screen" I do not mean the ginormous screens gracing many a home these
days, but something sufficient to be seen from far away).
If you went into the Wildcat Den you knew better than to try
to have a conversation with someone during soap time. You also knew better than to point out the
men who were watching (but claimed they weren't). When you're addicted, you're addicted.
This cookbook only focuses on four ABC soaps: Ryan's Hope, All My Children, One Life to
Live, and General Hospital. Other
popular soaps though were: Days of Our Lives ("like the sand
through an hourglass, these are the Days
of Our Lives") and the aforementioned The Young and the Restless but it is loaded with great-sounding
recipes. As always, I often hate my own
self-imposed rule of choosing just one to use and then write about.
Looking back at these shows, the thing I find most
interesting is how many strong women there were and how many [fictional]
families were "ruled" by matriarchs, not patriarchs. Actress Ruth Warrick, who was in the movie, Citizen Kane, played the always stuffy
and uptight Phoebe Tyler Wallingford on All
My Children. Actress Jeanne Cooper
played tough-as-nails Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless.
These were women who did not spend time in the kitchen, no sir! They had
"people." People who took care
of the sundry things in life so they could focus on stirring up the pot. (Some day though, I want to have
"people.")
Although this is very much a woman-centric cookbook, fear
not all you Asa Buchanan (actor Philip Carey) fans because Asa (from One Life to Live) has a few recipes up
his sleeve as well. If you watched the
show (I confess I did not), then it should not surprise you that Asa's – head
of the Texas Buchanan family – focus on Texas barbecue.
This cookbook is broken out into chapters by the featured
soaps and then by characters from those shows.
There are plenty of recipes from which to choose and I had flagged
several, but when I decided on steak from the other book as the main dish, I
felt the need to find a suitable accompaniment from this book. After a brief consideration of
"Continental Celery Root," one of Dorian Lord Callison's (actress
Robin Strasser) recipes, I settled on
the soup. Both dishes complimented each
other nicely.
And so there you go folks, everything you need to know about
TV shows, soap operas, the Emmys and more.
Enjoy!
N.B. I cannot tell you how much I smiled when I saw a recipe
called "Ruby Red Franks" (from All
My Children character Opal Gardner), not because I wanted to make it but
because it reminded me of one of my law professors. The late Professor David Cobin taught Civil
Procedure (Civ Pro) to first year law students and that class required us to
purchase also a supplement containing all the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
That year, the book cover was a dark red and so he often asked us to
pull out our "ruby red supplement."
I still have that book on my shelf, all of 15 years after using it
because I cannot throw it out. He was such a sweet man and took such pity on
all of us confused law students (Civ Pro is no picnic) RIP, Professor Cobin.
Pan-Fried Steak with
Balsamic Sauce from Autograph® Celebrity Cookbook and actor
Jerry Orbach – serves 4
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 (1-inch-thick) boneless sirloin steaks (about 2 pounds)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
In a small bowl, stir together the cumin, coriander, ½
teaspoon of the salt and the pepper. Rub
the mixture over the steaks.
In a 12-inch skillet or sauté pan, heat the oil over
medium-high heat. Add steaks and cook 3
to 4 minutes per side for medium-rare.
Transfer the steaks to a large platter.
Add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook, stirring
frequently, until the onion is lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add the rosemary; stir to combine. Add the vinegar, sugar, and the remaining ¼
teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Cook
until slightly reduced, about 2 minutes.
Remove from the heat and swirl in the butter. Spoon the sauce over the steaks and serve.
Heiress Asparagus Soup
from the Love in the Afternoon Cookbook and (character) Dorian Lord Callison,
played by actress Robin Strasser – 6 portions
2 packages (10 ounces each) frozen asparagus, thawed
1 large celery rib without leaves, chopped
¼ teaspoon dried marjoram, crushed, using a mortar and
pestle
1/8 teaspoon salt
Pinch of white pepper
3 ¼ cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons butter or corn-oil margarine
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup dairy sour cream
Combine the asparagus, celery and seasonings in a saucepan
and cover with 1 ½ cups of the chicken broth.
Simmer until the asparagus is tender.
Ann's Note: My celery remained a little too crunchy for
my taste so if I had to do this over again, I would cook the celery and
seasonings until the celery is fairly soft, then add the asparagus.
Melt the butter or margarine in a skillet and sauté the
onion until golden. Ann's Note: Like the celery,
I thought that the onion could have been cooked more but for how long depends
on your taste as the recipe does not give cooking time guidelines.
Place the asparagus mixture and the onion in a blender
container and blend until smooth. Ann's Note: I reserved some of the asparagus so that the
soup was half blended, half "whole" asparagus. We like it that way.
Add the sour cream and remaining chicken broth and continue
to blend then return the mixture to the saucepan and heat to serving
temperature, but do not boil.
