About 40 years into
our marriage, my managing partner gave up wailing with the pots
and pans on a daily basis. Said she was all cooked out. That’s
understandable. For four decades she had been providing some fine
home-cooking, most of those years to two growing boys, every day.
Anyway, she isn’t one
hundred percent cooked out. She does a baked potato now and then,
Idahos as well as sweet, and her Native American specialty, succotash
(she’s native American but not Native American), and still does,
after 55 years in harness (if the truth be known, I’m the one
in harness) and occasionally has a fit of baking--pecan pie, pumpkin
bread, scones. And she doesn’t consider her delectable Chinese
chicken salad or tasty quesadilla snack--cheese folded into a
corn tortilla and zapped in the toaster--a true cooking chore.
Despite being cooked
out, she never asked me to take over culinary chores. Even though
I was once a cook. Did it for months for up to fourteen hungry
young men without ever getting a single complaint. Maybe she didn’t
like my school of cuisine.
"Le Cordon Wild
Bleu Yonder."
A French name, sort
of, but not what you’d call haute cuisine. And while it originated
and came to full flower in Germany, not Deutsche Kuchen,
either, though some of the ingredients were German. No, Le Cordon
Wild Bleu Yonder is American to the core.
Here are some of the
gourmet dishes I would have whipped up for us if she’d only asked:
- Gedoing.
The simplest and least popular dessert of "Le Cordon Wild
Bleu Yonder." Boiled bread. At the time of its inception,
German Army bread (hard to find in a supermarket these days,
especially the World War II cellulose-enhanced variety). The
bread came, though not often enough to suit us, in big, cracked,
dense, dark grayish-brown loaves which fell into shards if we
tried to slice it too thin on the camp slicer.
Crumble the failed slices and cube the crust.
Soak overnight in water, the most plentiful ingredient in this
style of cuisine. Add Klim (powdered milk), sugar and either
raisins, prunes, cocoa, chocolate shavings (I got the chocolate
from military emergency ration D-bars) or instant coffee powder
(it came in Red Cross parcels and we called it soluble coffee).
Boil. Allow to cool and set.
I did it on the barracks’s communal stove and occasionally when
the room’s stove time ran out before it thickened, we drank
it. No one complained. (In Le Cordon Wild Bleu Yonder there
are no failures.)
- Saumon Luft III. (The canard de l’orange of Le Cordon Wild
Bleu Yonder). One can salmon. Add sauce.
Sauce: Cheddar cheese, finely cubed.
Melt cheese. Add margarine and milk.
Milk: To Klim, add water very slowly, stirring vigorously until
smoothly liquid. Salt and pepper to taste.
Simmer salmon and sauce until it appears to be done (or, as
at Stalag Luft III, your stove time expires).
- Coffee whip.
Klim. Prepare as for sauce above but only to consistency of
a smooth paste.
Margarine.
Combine, working the margarine in smoothly.
Add instant coffee, stirring vigorously.
Sugar, to taste (if you have enough).
After I got home and married Dody and settled down, I made a
version of the post-liberation coffee whip I had dreamed of,
using only the finest of ingredients, for Dody, her sister and
her husband.
Heavy cream instead
of Klim, creamery butter instead of margarine, as much sugar
as I wanted, ditto instant coffee.
Heaven.
Only they wouldn’t
touch it and I could only manage a couple of spoonfuls of it.
Took me most of the week to finish it off.
Le Cordon Wild Bleu
Yonder also included canned corned beef with turnips, powdered-egg
soufflé (which never fell because it never rose), chickenless
stewed chicken and tooth powder cake (tooth powder made the
cake rise), for which I will be pleased and proud to offer recipes
if there is an overwhelming demand for them.
I do not do Le Cordon
Wild Bleu Yonder at home. Dody says I am cooked out.
David Westheimer lives
with his wife of 55 years, Dody, in the same Los Angeles apartment
they moved into from Houston, Texas 39 years ago. Their son, Fred,
is a Senior Vice-President at the William Morris Agency and his
younger brother, Eric, is a veterinarian. Succeeding generations
include five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. As a journalist,
David worked for Oveta Culp Hobby. At 83, David Westheimer continues
to write, and not just for Senior Women. His latest effort, "The
Great Wounded Bird", his recollections of World War II, winner
of the Texas Review 1999 poetry prize, was published this year
by Texas Review Press and may be ordered from Amazon Books, where
it is 1,458,159th on their sales list, from Barnes & Noble and
Borders Books. He is a novelist and a retired Air Force Officer.
He can be reached for a repertoire of feigned curmudgeonly remarks
at: DWestheime@aol.com.
