Latest news with #TheJoyofCooking
Los Angeles Times
02-05-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Replacing cookbooks lost in the L.A. fires is a meaningful act for this local shop. You can help
Los Angeles is nearly four months removed from the wildfires that destroyed more than 18,000 homes and structures in January, but much of the damage remains — both emotional and material. One L.A. shop is hoping to provide comfort to those who've lost their homes, even if it provides only a semblance of normalcy, by restoring cookbooks. On Thursday, cookbook store Now Serving announced a new initiative called Friends of the Shop. It's a call to action that will allow anyone to purchase specific cookbooks requested by those who've lost their collections in the fires. '[It's] hearing the stories of how they're attached to [a cookbook] or what it means to them, and just being able to give them a little piece of something that feels familiar,' says Michelle Mungcal, who operates the Chinatown shop with her husband, Ken Concepcion. 'We'll never be able to replace whatever edition of 'The Joy of Cooking' your dad gave you, but if you can see that on your shelf and it makes you think of that, it means something.' In the months since the fires, Mungcal says that Now Serving has seen multiple customers shopping to replace lost cookbook collections; this upcoming series of fundraisers and donation drives might help survivors 'build a sense of home' no matter what their current home might look like. The cookbook shop is joining other members of L.A.'s culinary community in helping those affected by the fires. Authors, chefs and food writers such as Molly Baz, Natasha Feldman Bauch and Jess Damuck have hosted community events and giveaways for kitchen appliances, pantry items and more in an effort to help those who've lost their homes rebuild their lives — even as some of them have themselves lost their homes. The initiative, Mungcal says, has been in the works since they finished processing the experience of the fires themselves. Mungcal, Concepcion and their daughter live in Pasadena, three blocks from the closest burn zone. Friends lost their homes, colleagues lost their homes, their daughter's teacher lost their home. 'It definitely has impacted the community we live in, personally,' Mungcal says, 'so once we settled into our footing a little bit, we knew that we wanted to be able to help in some way.' The first phase of the project is now live: a questionnaire on the Now Serving website where those who've lost their homes and cookbook collections can enter up to 10 book titles they hope to receive, as well as their preference of a new book, a used book or any condition. The Now Serving team has also begun listing the titles requested, which can then be purchased by those who'd like to help. The process was in part inspired by another local small business, apron company Hedley & Bennett, whose 'wake up and fight' initiative helped keep it afloat during the pandemic. For every mask purchased, Hedley & Bennett donated a mask to first responders and other essential workers. 'The reality is that as a small bookstore we can't give away books, unfortunately,' Mungcal says. 'It helps us to sell some books at a time that's very hard for small businesses, and then also be able to pay it forward a little bit.' Mungcal also plans to reach out to publishers and authors to inquire about donating specific cookbook titles that have been requested by those in need. The team also has a plan for cookbooks that might be more expensive to replace, such as rare or out-of-print editions: Merchandise featuring art by Nathaniel Russell — who also designed the announcement poster for Friends of the Shop — will help fundraise, as will raffles, which have just gone live on the shop's website and will be ongoing. These raffles could include Substack subscriptions or cooking classes by more cookbook authors, content creators and others in the food industry. Dorie Greenspan, David Lebovitz, Ruth Reichl, Nik Sharma, Hetty McKinnon and Liz Prueitt are some of the authors who have already stepped up. Questions of how people can donate their own cookbook collections to the cause are already pouring in; Now Serving hopes to organize donation drives in the future, perhaps for an event in July, six months from the fires' havoc. They envision a free pickup day of cookbooks and possibly donations from brands of new kitchen items for fire survivors, similar to the Stock That Pantry event that cookbook author Baz hosted in February. The road to recovery — and even to recovering these cookbooks — will be a long one, Mungcal says; she wants people to know that there will be weeks and months ahead with chances to donate and help L.A.'s cookbook-loving community. For raffle, event and donation announcements, follow Now Serving on Instagram at @nowservingla. Now Serving is located in Chinatown's Far East Plaza at 727 N. Broadway, Unit 133.
New York Times
16-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
A Chicken à la King That's Actually Fit for a King
After leaving the Navy in 1946, a 25-year-old Craig Claiborne moved into a small Chicago apartment to begin his civilian life working in advertising and public relations. During that time, as Claiborne writes in his memoir, 'A Feast Made for Laughter,' he cooked meals for himself from an edition of 'The Joy of Cooking' his sister gave him for Christmas, along with a chafing dish he lugged home through the snow. Recipe: Chicken à la King Whenever I think of chafing dishes and 'The Joy of Cooking,' I think of a metal tray kept warm by a small flame, filled with what I call hotel or buffet chicken, colloquially known as creamed chicken — and officially chicken à la king. Like Salisbury steak and green-bean casserole, the regal midcentury favorite of tender poached chicken, usually breast meat, in a creamy sherry sauce is a foggy window into our nation's past. Some call the dish comforting, like potpie without the filling; others recoil at the memory of cafeteria gloop, the most dreaded hot lunch at school. This newspaper called it 'the entree that wouldn't die.' Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, who grew up in Brooklyn in the 1960s and early '70s, remembers chicken à la king as diner food: white bread, cream of mushroom soup, maybe some frozen peas and carrots. 'It was a Swanson dinner,' he said, adding later: 'But people loved it.' At his West Village bar and grill, Cecchi's, he serves an updated take, with brandy and dry vermouth in place of the sherry and a half moon of puff pastry perched on top. I had totally forgotten about chicken à la king until recently, when I saw it in an airport lounge. I won't say that the metal chafing dish of chicken smothered in a bell-peppery mushroom gravy particularly called to me; it was the only option. But as a weary traveler in need of protein, I ate it comfortably, happily, and it sustained me for hours as home cooking does. I spent the next few months researching this chicken 'king' and cooking from old cookbooks, and I concluded that most once-fashionable menu items that feel outdated today maybe didn't have enough cheerleaders along the way. Sherry and egg yolks stirred into a mushroom cream sauce with chicken stock is an umami powerhouse with oodles of potential. As James Beard writes in his 'American Cookery,' chicken à la king is often 'prepared in mediocre fashion,' but the original 'is really quite good if done with care and fine ingredients.' Beard adds that a chafing dish 'can kill even the best of food.' It probably tasted pretty good in the 19th century, in fancy hotels where its modern iteration is said to have originated, with several hotel chefs, including George Greenwald of the Brighton Beach Hotel, laying claim to it. Canonically, in even older French cookbooks, you can find evidence of creamy recipes with the appendage 'à la reine,' sometimes a reference to the pastry crown or nest serving as both vessel and carbohydrate for the mushroomy chicken. Such supposedly simple preparations, as Beard noted, will, of course, taste as good as the ingredients used to make them. This very good iteration comes from Claiborne, adapted from a column he wrote for The New York Times in 1969. I cooked it one night with meat pulled from a beautiful, organic, corn-hued heritage bird that I braised myself (so I could use the rich stock to thin out the cream). Another night, with big-box supermarket chicken breasts. A third night, the mauled remains of a rotisserie chicken. They all had their merits, each variation a dot on the effort-to-reward matrix. Chicken à la king won't win you any awards, but cooking through Claiborne's recipe will present to you many rewards. You'll feel as if you've stepped into the past, going through the motions of the proverbial American ancestors, the ones who were consistently seduced by French cooking but adapted its lessons to the new land. John Birdsall, whose new book, 'What Is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution,' comes out in June, pointed out to me over email that the extravagant amount of cream in the Times recipe matches Claiborne's writing voice and persona, as well as what he wrote about creamed dishes in 'Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer' from the same year: that the rule of thumb is one cup of cream sauce to two cups of solids (chicken, ham, vegetables). Though you might look at the full cup of heavy cream and clutch your pearls, note that it's thinned out with chicken stock, as in a velouté (meaning 'velvety'), one of the French mother sauces. It's not the kind of sauce I would leave in a chafing dish for hours, but ladled fresh over toast points or steamed rice? That's a fine dinner.
