Elegant Survival

For an elegant tea or coffee offering this week, why not try a Swedish cream bun? M-J's recipe:

SWEDISH SEMLOR, AN ELEGANT TRADITION

Parallèle "45"

Chocolate Cake with Royal Icing (Icing Recipe is on Elegant Cuisine Page)

Instead of going out and catching a virus, how about staying home and creating a southwest taco  luncheon? I used harvest vegetables: tomatillos, poblano peppers, green chiles, and onions, all chopped and sautéed together. Then I added  two pounds of  ground beef, two tablespoons of Tone's taco seasoning, and some New Mexico chile powder. Grated sharp Tillamook Cheddar cheese and shredded Romaine lettuce were set in bowls to accompany the taco meat. Taco shells were a pre-made Texan brand, baked for ten minutes in a 350-degree oven. We served ourselves, as shown in the following photographs.

~~M-J

1) My recipe for pogne de Romans is just under my bread-making photos, about halfway down the Elegant Cuisine page, listed at left.

2) A review of Hotel St. Francis, Santa Fe, appears on the Elegant Culture and Travel page, listed at left.

...I pre-baked the crust in a flan pan, turned it out, filled it with apples, brown sugar, concentrated apple juice, a small amount of corn flour, butter bits, then dusted the surface with cinnamon-sugar and baked the tart forty-five minutes in a very hot oven. I shall serve it for a dinner party, and offer vanilla-flavoured whipped cream as a topping.

Ice cubes, approximately five per drink (they will be strained out of the final product)

1 sugar cube or 1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon Peychaud's bitters

1/8 teaspoon angostura bitters

1 teaspoon of  water

1/4 cup of  whiskey

2 teaspoons of Pernod Liquor (France)

1 small piece of lemon peel

Method:

 Fill a higball glass with ice. Place the sugar in a separate glass.

Pour the Peychaud and Angostura bitters, then the teaspoon of water over the sugar;  tap it with a spoon until sugar dissolves. Add ice and whiskey to the glass. Let this mixture stand, stirring  a few times, for five minutes. Dump out ice from the first glass; add Pernod. Strain whiskey mixture into the glass. Wring the lemon peel above the Sazerac cocktail and run it along the glass' rim.

~~M-J de Mesterton

This tasteful series of compositions is perfect for parties, when the last thing you need is cacophonous squalling by pop singers. Saul Stokes is an American genius, a musical innovator whose unique sounds take him around the world. Here is the Saul Stokes Sonica site, complete with a web-store where one may purchase his CDs with PayPal.