Yes, Swish Steak.

Among my cookbooks, there is a recent acquisition I consider to be the jewel in my crown-- a must-have for anyone who fancies herself (or, of course, himself) Queen of the Kitchen: The Gay Cookbook by Chef Lou Rand Hogan* (Sherbourne Press, 1965).

The Gay Cookbook: "the complete compendium of campy cuisine and menus for men... or what have you" was first brought to my attention by Celia Sacks of Omnivore Books on Food, who had a copy proudly displayed in her store window the last time I visited. She always seems to know what will pique my interest.

A gay cookbook? Pre-Stonewall? I never thought any such thing could exist. I was transfixed. I just had to have a copy for my library. I mentioned the book later that evening to friends over drinks. One month later, those same friends placed a copy in my not-so-little hands. It was probably the most perfect birthday present. Ever.

When I returned home, I opened the book and was immediately struck by how much times have changed since 1965. Not only our food ways, but our slang, too. Especially what I would call gay-speak. The "girlfriend" tone has remained, but the terms have certainly changed. There is a self-mockery that may be horrifying to some readers; others might find the embracing of extreme stereotyping fun and, in a sense, freeing. The last two paragraphs of the book's introduction leave no doubt as to what the reader is in for:

Yes, in that magic hour 'tween day and dark, after effacing the ravages of the day's toil, and before the night's serious cruising, ya gotta take on some food. Man, woman, or child, a girl has got to eat!

So we'll offer here a sort of nonsensical cookbook for the androgynous (don't bother to look it up, Maude. It means "limp-wristed"), and while we can't guarantee the quality of the guests these dishes may be set before, we do not hesitate to assure the reader that all preparations and recipe details are honest and practical.

Here then is the GAY COOKBOOK, which some queen will promptly call FAGGOT'S FARE.

Fierce! At least we have been warned.

I knew I just had to make something from this book. But what? Something from Chapter Six: That Old, Tired Fish? Chapter Five: The Shell Game; Oysters, Lobsters, Shrimp, and What To Do With Crabs? I finally settled on the dish I feel best exemplifies this time capsule of Camp: Swish Steak-- a dish that just may have been served in many a home among the Swish Alps-- otherwise known as the Hollywood Hills.

Swish Steak

Serves 4.

The recipe is delivered to you as originally written. The curly parsley is my own photographic addition. I happen to think that this is an unintentional omission of the author. What gay chef in his right mind would not add a splash of color to a monochromatic dish?

I did, however, omit the MSG. My concern is not for my own health, but for yours. And for the health of Dr. Joyce Brothers. If she happened to wander into your kitchen uninvited and took a bite of MSG-laden Swish Steak, it would kill her. I know this for a fact because she told me so. If you are too young to remember Dr. Joyce Brothers, then you are certainly too young to remember this cookbook.

It really does taste like the 1960's. Or, at least this is what I imagine them to taste like. I was only there for about five months. And on bottle-fed formula.

I suggest you pop this little number into the oven, pour yourself some Cream Sherry, and sit back to enjoy a careful watching of The Boys in The Band. By the time you've finished, dinner will be ready.

Go on, gurl. Dish it out like only you know how to do.

Ingredients:

4 Steaks (for swishing)

3 medium onions, sliced

3 pts. gravy--OR-- part gravy, part rich stock

6 buds garlic, minced

1 tsp. coarse-ground Black pepper

1 tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. MSG

4 Tbs. flour

4 Tbs. fat (bacon if possible)

(opt.) small can mushrooms 'stems & pieces'

(opt.) small can Tomato sauce

(opt.) 1 Tbs. meat extract (V.V., Boveril, etc.)

Preparation [No paragraph breaks]:

Lay each steak flat; pound lightly with a meat tenderizer (a sort of mallet-like thing with a big and peculiar shaped head), or give each steak a dozen or so whacks with the blunt back of a heave knife, sort of criss-cross on either side. These blows should just cut the surface of the meat but not too deeeply [sic]. Dredge each piece in the flour; heat fat in heavy skillet to very hot. Sear (Brown... as if you didn't know...) meat on both sides in fat in skillet. Take meat out of skillet, put into roast pan (one with a cover). Toss sliced onions and garlic into fat in skillet, cover, cook 3-5 minutes; then dump it all into the roast pan onto the steaks. Add salt and pepper, the MSG, the leftover flour, the mushrooms and tomato sauce if used. Pour stock and gravy (any left-over, rich, brown gravy, except 'sweet-sour' or sauerbraten gravy), into roaster over and around the meat. Cover and cook in 325° oven until tender. This may be 2 or 3 hours. For last half hour, take cover off roast pan, but gravy should still just cover the meat. When meat is real tender, carefully take steaks out of the gravy and set aside on a platter or pan in a warm place. Why not the oven with the heat turned off? Scrape out all the sauce, etc. from the roast pan into a small sauce pot, getting every bit of it. Let this sit for a while on the stove until all the fat-- and there'll be quite a lot of it-- rises to the top. Skim this away. The gravy, full of onion, mushrooms, etc. should be thick enough; taste for seasoning, and you're ready for chow down! Serve the Swish Steak with some of the sauce over each piece of meat. This is wonderful with hot buttered noodles, or with mashed potatoes, etc. Men just love this one, though whether it's the 'swish' or the 'steak' would be hard to say. But-- keep 'em happy...

* Lou Rand Hogan was also the creator of what is believed to be the first gay detective in print (the sexual identity of that perennial bachelor, Sherlock Holmes, is open for debate), Francis Morley, in Rough Trade (originally titled The Gay Detective), also from 1965. The Gay Cookbook, incidentally, was written right here in San Francisco.

Last week, I accepted a dinner invitation from an ex-boyfriend to dine with two old, out-of-town friends at Bar Crudo. It would seem that I can be lured nearly anywhere by the promise of raw shellfish and wine.

It was an oddly comfortable dinner. There was none of the awkwardness that typically accompanies former couples who find themselves momentarily placed in the situation of acting as partners again, even though the partnering has been limited to the dinner table. Dining-- especially from shared dishes-- is an activity that is unmistakeably intimate. I decided to not focus on the obvious questions like why on earth would he invite me to dinner to meet two of his oldest friends or why I had accepted the invitation. Rather, I decided to focus on his friends and the platters of seafood that had been so carefully placed in front of us.

His friends were smart, charming, and very enthusiastic. Dismay was expressed by his friend Lindsay over the prospect of eating raw oysters-- an activity in which she had never before engaged, but was willing to give them a chance, nevertheless. I ordered the smallest, sweetest ones on the menu, to make the exercise as easy as possible. She gave them a go, declared them good, and then immediately turned her attention to the one half of a Dungeness Crab carcass lying lifeless on the pile of ice that both separated and united us.

When she saw crab on the menu, her eyes went wide behind her glasses. When our waitress explained that there was only one half of a crab left in the restaurant, her eyes got even wider, as a mild panic set in. "We want that crab." There was no raised voice or exclamation point to end those four words, but the sense of urgency with which they were imparted caused our server to move more quickly than we were to see her do for the rest of the evening.

"You don't understand," she told me, "We live in Texas now. You can't get fresh crab in Texas." Enough said. I decided not to wonder aloud if the crab was actually local.

I sat there staring at the cold, dead crab for a minute, remembering the two pounds of crab meat that lay ignored and shivering in my freezer between the ice cream and bottle of Limoncello that had been equally forgotten. I looked back at Lindsay, who was so delighted by the sight of just a fraction of what I had taken for granted at home. I felt instantly shamed, and said as much when I offered her my share of the crab. It wasn't so much generosity as it was penance.

When I got home, I opened my freezer door to pay my respects to the crab meat. I waved at it briefly and offered it my apologies. Why had I been avoiding it? Why had I put two pounds of crab meat out of my head?

And then I understood. My expectations had been too high. When the crabs fell into my lap unexpectedly, I was excited, full of high hopes and grand plans. I wanted them to be shared in any number of fun ways with people I cared about, since one should never eat crab alone.

My crab-eating reality, however, was different from my crab-eating fantasies. I was sick with a stomach virus and working a lot. Circumstances had stacked themselves between myself and the crab. What was once alive and fresh and full of possibility wound up wrapped and thrown into a dark place to freeze over. Like so many other things.

And then, of course, I thought of the man who invited me to dinner. Our relationship was rather like the crab in my freezer-- something once regarded as a source of grand plans, the sweet meat of it hard to get at through the tough shell, but thoroughly worth the effort. A seasonal item with a very short shelf life. I'd wrapped that up tight and thrown into a dark, cold place where I didn't have to look at it along with the damned crab.

Well, I've taken the crab meat out of the freezer. It may no longer be fresh but it's still there and my feeling is that what is left should be put to good use-- it's just too precious a thing to let go to waste. Something good can and should be made of it.

It does, however, take a long time for something that cold to thaw.

Crab Rangoon

I'm not quite certain why I chose to make this dish. I could have made something fresher, something that showed off the crab a little more. I suppose I just wanted to try something a little different this time around. And it suits me. It suits me just fine.

Crab Rangoon is dish whose origins and ingredients are as fanciful as its name. I very much doubt the current military government of Myanmar (formerly catalogued as Burma by English Colonials) would ever allow such a recipe into the country. Unless, perhaps, they changed its name to Crab Yangon, tortured it a bit (it is, of course, boiled in oil), and then slapped a uniform on it after it had been sufficiently "retrained."

Nope, Crab Rangoon is a uniquely American concoction-- one that takes a little bit of this culture (wontons are Chinese), and a little bit of that one (A-1 Steak Sauce is English, cream cheese is a Northern European invention) and serves it up in a way that is universally acceptable (fried). Hopefully, none but the truly naive are fooled by the name.

There are two schools of thought relating to the genesis of Crab Rangoon. The first tells of its debut at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904-- a year the city has never since exceeded in terms of global attention or charm. The claim is dubious-- more so than the other "firsts" of the Fair, like cotton candy, peanut butter, or the hamburger. I'm willing to give them Dr. Pepper and the ice cream cone, at most.

The second, most likely story is that the dish was created in Oakland, at the original Trader Vic's. According to their website, "Trader Vic employed what was becoming the ever-present hallmark of all his food and beverage recipes: a light touch, meant to enhance but never disguise nor overpower the fine original taste of his main ingredients."

Given that this is a fried dish with cream cheese and, according to the original Trader Vic's recipe, A-1 Steak Sauce and garlic salt, that's about as colorful as one of the one-legged Vic's legendary tall tales.

Fortunately, the dish is much easier to swallow than his stories.

This is an adapted, non-traditional recipe. I figured if Vic could come up with a "Polynesian recipe" and name it for a city nowhere near Polynesia, I could take a few liberties, too.

Makes about 30 pieces.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound fresh crab meat, preferably, but canned crab meat may certainly be substituted.

1/3 pound cream cheese at room temperature

4 tablespoons of finely chopped red onion, more or less according to your own tastes

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon or more of chopped cilantro

a few dashes of Worcestershire Sauce

as many wonton wrappers as you can fill

1 egg yolk, well beaten with a teaspoon of water

vegetable oil, for frying

Preparation:

1. Combine crab meat with cream cheese, onion, garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and cilantro. I find mixing the ingredients with clean hands to be immensely satisfying. Refrigerate if not using immediately.

2. Heat at frying oil to 375 F. Give yourself some room-- do not stint on pot size and make sure the oil is at least three inches deep. Pre-heat oven to 200 F and line a baking sheet with paper towels for future oil drainage.

3. Working four wonton wrappers at a time, lightly moisten (sigh) the edges of the wrappers with egg yolk. Place a heaping teaspoonful of crab mixture in the center of each. To shape into blossoms, seal each corner together and gather in the middle like so:

If a little bit of crab peaks out from the top, as illustrated above, don't worry-- they won't come apart. Pinch and twist the corners, making certain that you are making flowers and not swastikas. This is important.

4. Fry the wontons. You may do this in batches if you like or one at a time, since the frying time is fairly quick-- about 45 seconds, depending upon the true heat of the oil. The dual goal is to get the wrappers to a crisp, bubbly brown and to heat the filling through. The filling does not need to be horrendously molten. Place each wonton on the towel-lined baking sheet to drain. When frying has been completed, place your newly-born Crab Rangoon into the oven to keep warm.

Best served immediately. And not piping hot, unless you actually are trying to give your guests mouth burns.

Serve with Chinese mustard, Red Pepper sauce like Sriracha, or fish sauce. Whatever you like. It's your Crab Rangoon, make it work for you.

Breaking two cardinal rules in my kitchen--versatility and real-world functionality--my favorite new toy is silly, beautiful, and fun. It can only do one thing: make cookies in the shape of an obscure cut of lamb. A while back, while checking out the display cases at the excellent little butcher shop, Avendano's, my friends spotted a batch of hand-crafted, limited-edition, copper cookie cutters. For some reason, they thought of me.

The packaging was gorgeous. Each form is hand-stitched to a card painted with a watercolor depiction of the actual cut of meat. I am now blessed with a "Middle Cut Rib" of lamb, which, to be honest, does not resemble any overly trimmed product that I’ve seen at most meat counters. My favorite part is the tiny tag, hanging off the cookie cutter like some exclusive designer label and engraved--by hand, of course--with the maker's phone number.

This past weekend, I finally had a chance to give it a try. Since royal icing is one of my least favorite foods, depicting meat with only cookie dough became the challenge. An old recipe (adapted from Vanilla Refrigerator Cookies in the 1976 edition of the Joy of Cooking) and a bit of red food coloring leftover from making velvet cake came to rescue. I debated incorporating demi-glace or bouillon for meaty flavor, but decided to stay simple for the test run. Next time.

Here are some photos and notes from my first stab at meat cookies:

The red-colored dough, with a bits of white dough aka fat marbling left from the mixing. The color will lighten with baking, so make it darker than the final shade you want.

While still warm and soft, shape the dough into a thick piece that roughly follows the contour of the cutter. Basically, you're making a lamb loin, or the meat before the butcher saws it into steaks or chops. Make it slightly smaller than the outline of the cutter, though, to allow for the fat layer...

...with some reserved, uncolored dough, build up a thin (or thick—your preference) layer of "fat" around the lamb loin. I started off with an offset spatula, and then figured out it's much easier just to flatten pieces of white dough between my palms and press then right into the red dough. Press down firmly on the dough to avoid air pockets, which will later become cracks and gaps. Any breaks later are easy to fix, though, with extra dough.

After chilling for a few hours, I sliced the loin thinly with a chef's knife and transferred the cookies to a parchment lined sheet pan. Final shaping with the cutter happens right on the pan. (The two front cookies have been cut).

Sweet meat trimmings. I mushed them together into a log, chilled again, and then sliced into pretty, round, marbled cookies.

Be sure to cool the cookies completely on a wire rack before storing them in an airtight container.

Layered between parchment, the cookies traveled very well to a weekend picnic in the park. If there's a meat-lover in your life who happens to like baking or who deserves a batch of meat cookies...well, I think there's a gift out there waiting to be made.

Red Meat Refrigerator Cookies
Makes 12 large cookies, plus trimmings.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest or 1/2 teaspoon lemon oil
• 1 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 – 4 teaspoons red food coloring

Preparation
1. Beat butter until creamy. Add sugar gradually and beat until pale and fluffy.
2. In a separate small bowl, lightly beat together the eggs, vanilla, lemon, and almond. Drizzle into the butter-sugar mixture and beat until smooth.
3. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Stir into the butter mixture.
4. Remove 1/4 of the dough to a separate bowl. Adding gradually, blend the red food coloring into the remaining dough. Leave the coloring slightly streaking, to keep the cookies tender and to mimic marbled meat.
5. Shape into logs or lamb loins. Chill thoroughly, or at least four hours.
6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Working quickly, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices. Re-chill dough, if needed, to keep it firm. Arrange on parchment paper and bake just until lightly golden around edges, or 8-10 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool completely.