A dish beyond sustainable, it's enduring

With all the attention being paid to seafood and how so much is being overfished it seems fitting to note the one remarkable exception.

Essentially, you must kill whatever you catch to eat it, even the lowly oyster dies as you bite down on it.

Enter the Stone Crab

Found all along the Eastern Seaboard, it is especially plentiful in Florida.

As a matter of fact at Joe's Stone Crab in Miami Beach it is the specialty of the house for close to 80 years.  2013 Restaurant Business magazine sites it as being the second highest  grossing restaurant in the United States ($35mm), pretty good for a place who's bread and butter is only available from November to May.  They  even have their  own fishing fleet to keep the restaurant in a fresh supply.

Here is what makes the Stone Crab so amazing.  When you catch it (has to be legal size of at least 5 1/2 inches) you simply break off the left claw and throw the crab back in the ocean!

A new claw grows back by the next season. So you actually have a growing supply, not a declining one.

If you'd like to try them you can order from Joe's on line.

A marshmallow can determine your kids future

A number of  years ago a psychologist named Walter Mischel was thinking about his daughter. She was five years old and  beginning to learn about putting off immediate gratification for a greater reward further down the road. He was curious if she was making progress.

Realizing that probably everyone in her school class was pondering  the same thing, he wondered when kids  first become aware of learning the essential tool of self control.

He conducted a very simple experiment. 

He put the child in a small room, with no distractions but a table with  a marshmallow on it. There was also an adult with the following instructions.

The child was told he/she would be left alone for a short while, and upon the return of the adult, if the child had not eaten the marshmellow they would be rewarded with two!

Watching the kids respond was an adventure in itself.  They would try to distract them selves by banging on the legs of the table or by looking away.  Some kids came so close- they would  dab some of the sugar off with their fingers and lick it.  They would bite tiny, microscopic bits and turn the marshmellow upside down to avoid detection.

As much as they wanted the  sugar treat, they also were aware of a future, better reward if they just put off the immediate urge.

Some succumbed, some didn't.  He wondered what might have influenced their decisions.

As he began to review his findings he was immediately made aware, by a number of people, that perhaps the study really had no value.

People pointed out things like: what if the child had recently eaten or just wasn't hungary? Or what if the child had an innate distrust of adults?   What if he didn't like marshmallows in the first  place? Not to mention the sample was from a very small school.

Mischel acknowledged the flaws and never resumed, refined or published his experiment.

As his daughter was about to enter college he wondered what became of the kids in the study fifteen  or so years later.

It was easy enough to find out, the kids were all  from the same area and now about the same age.

What he found was interesting.

The kids that waited for the two  marshmellow had sigher SAT scores, lower body mass indexes, and greater workplace success.

In other words, you could do this test yourself (as a matter of fact a number of school districts currently use it)  You can intervene if you suspect your child isn't leaning self control with something this simple and directly influence their later lives.

A side dish that became a national sensation

A cousin of the deposed, and murdered, Imperial Royal Russian family, Michael Romanoff opened a wildly successful restaurant on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills in 1941 that lasted into the 60's.

Called, Romanoff's of course

Prince Michael Romanoff

Does he have the right attitude?

Nobility and Hollywood go hand in hand. The prince defined the role so well, he was often cast in movies just playing himself.  His restaurant was often used for elegant restaurant locations as well.

Thing is, his real name was Harry Gurgerson born in Lithuania. New York magazine called him a "professional impostor." Not only wasn't he a prince, he wasn't even Russian!  Fooled them all for a long time.

BUT:

His restaurant became a major gathering place for Hollywood royalty.

The biggest hit was his specialty dish called "Noodles Romanoff."

You had to have them when you went there.

The buzz was so strong (the dish was mentioned regularly in the gossip columns) that major national food companies took notice, bought the recipe and distributed it nationally. 

The dish from a royal restaurant was now available on tables across America. Imagine, an opportunity to taste a "royal" dish right in you own home.

It lasted for over a decade.  

Of course over time it lost its niche.  And is now gone.

I googled it and there are a shit load of "authentic" recipes.

One caught my eye because it used pedantic ingredients, including a bag from Kraft Mac and Cheese.

I made it last night. It's great, and tastes like those dishes of long ago, note the important "golden noodle" look.

So if you'd like to take a step back to taste the late 50's mid 60's this is it.

It's easy.

Betty Crocker's "Noodles Romanoff" Recipe

All recipes I've seen are missing the orange glow that the Kraft Blue Box has.

Why didn't I think of stealing the packet out of a box and add it to the mix of the parmesan, sour cream, garlic & onion ingredients.

Noodles Romanoff

The key to success here is the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese day-glo yellow powder. Without it, you will never approach the original.

One package egg noodles (about 1 lb.)

1 cup sour cream (use full fat—don't make me come over there)

2 T butter, melted

1 medium onion, chopped finely

2 cloves garlic, crushed or chopped finely

3/4 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano (okay, so I'm a cheese snob, except for):

1 package day-glo cheddar cheese powder from a box of Kraft Macaroni 'n' Cheese

1/2 cup chopped parsley

Cracked pepper to taste

Directions: Cook the noodles to al dente. While cooking noodles, sauté the onion and garlic in butter in large saucepan. Add parsley at the last minute; remove from heat. When noodles are a hair away from being done, drain but retain residual pasta water (don't wring them dry).

Put the hot noodles into the saucepan, then add the sour cream, and the Kraft day-glo orange powder and half the Reggiano. Mix very well with the cooked onions, garlic and parsley. The result should be a pleasingly creamy deep yellow mess. Add the pepper. Serve in individual bowls with the rest of the parmesan. 

Coco Chanel's Everyday Breakfast

Her rich boyfriend, Boy Chapel bought her a four story building at 31 Rue Cambon in 1910 for her new shop called Chanel Modes.

This became the center of her empire.  Her shop was on the ground floor haute  couture on the second, her apartment on the third and her workshop on the 4th.

Her apartment soon became an entertainment center, catering to the many wealthy Parisians as well as international visitors.

Soon there were events virtually every night.  Needless to say this quickly became tiring.  People having too much to drink wanted to retreat to her bedroom and pass out, as well  as lotharios hoping to know CoCo even better.

So she remodeled her apartment.  She added her famous staircase, from which she would watch her shows, and in a brilliant stroke she  eliminated the bedroom.

Of course she needed a place to be able to retreat or  quietly slip out  and sleep.  She talked to her friend, Charles Ritz, and he gave her a tiny closet sized apartment at the Ritz Hotel. The back door conveniently located right in front of her shop.

The back entrance she used was where Princess Diana and Dodi exited on that fateful night.

This worked quite well for years.  The only extravagance she indulged in at the Ritz was breakfast.  Every morning it was the same thing.  A half a dozen oysters.

A sad addendum:  During World War II Coco moved into a spacious suite at the Ritz with Nazi SS General Walter Schellenberg, chief of intelligence.  He would later be imprisoned for war crimes.

The Ritz, ever eager to tap into celebrity fame has a CoCo Chanel suite.  It rents for $12,000 a night.

Of course it's over decorated, and not a really a  part of this story