Posted on 05/16/2007 3:19:29 PM PDT by mdittmar
A group of San Diego students are learning about U.S. military history in the most unusual place -- their high school cooking class. KPBS Education Reporter Ana Tintocalis has this report.
Welcome to the Blue Castle Café, a stainless steel restaurant-style kitchen at San Diego High School. Every week, a group of culinary arts students put on white chef hats and cook up all sorts of popular meals -- from club sandwiches to breakfast burritos. But, on this day, the teenage chefs are preparing recipes from a cookbook by Vietnam veteran Rudy Shay-pee.
Shay-pee: I can remember long, long hours and hard work. And the high point of my day was what I was eating. That's what all we had for our high point of our day. So what better way to tell part of the story than talk about what we were eating?
Shay-pee was so affected by his time in the mess hall that he wrote a book about the history of military cooking. He asked these students to prepare and test the meals. Some of the recipes date back to the Civil War. Others are from World War Two. The students say they quickly learned military food wasn't all that attractive or appetizing. And most meals had very peculiar nicknames. For example, have you ever devoured a bowl of Burgoo? Culinary Arts teacher Linda Ross says it was a kind of beef stew served during the Civil War.
Ross: It’s supposed to have beef, pork, squirrel, possum…what ever meats they could find.
And she says it was common for soldiers and sailors to find shotgun pellets in the stew's meat scrap. In fact, servicemen believed finding those pellets brought them good luck. Students like 15-year-old Amanda Williams were a little surprised.
Williams: Well, there's been some diverse comments from, yuck this is disgusting to wow!
Then there's something called Spotted Dog, which was a bread pudding, served during the War of 1812. And in World War Two there was "S-O-S," which was a piece of toast with a kind of beef cream spread on top.
Mrs. Ross’ students also prepared Hard Tack -- a tough and flavorless cracker that's credited with keeping troops going during the Civil War. Amanda and sophomore Richard Frias offered a sample.
Tintocalis: I don't find that very tasty.
It’s flour water and salt and you bake it until its hard. And most ships carried this as their last ditch scenario ratios. And if you leave it out long enough, it will break your teeth.
Richard: So the union and the confederate soldiers respectively had hard tack…that's all they had for weeks on end. This stuff might suck, but it will keep you alive.
Richard, who's also a teenage military buff, says the trickiest part about this culinary challenge was downsizing the recipes, which originally fed up to 2,500 hungry servicemen. The amateur chefs also had to go against their instincts and cut back on seasoning and spices. Military dishes are supposed to be bland because they're feeding the masses. Students say that was especially tough when they made clam chowder, something that was widely served during World War Two. But in the end, the teens made something most everyone was happy with.
Students: It was delicious. Pretty good. It’s creamy. Came out just right. I never had clam chowder before. It’s different. It’s good, its good.
Of course the toughest critic is cookbook author Rudy Shay-pee.
Shay-pee: I'm from the Pacific Northwest. And so I'm a clam chowder aficionado. And mamma didn't make chowder like this. So thumbs up! Yeah, two thumbs up!
San Diego High's culinary class is one of a few in San Diego County. Shay-pee plans to write a chapter in his cookbook about the student chefs and all the work they put into the project.
Nice finesse over the infamous creamed-chipped-beef-on-toast, a/k/a "$#!+ on a shingle".
I notice they didn't try Ham-and-Limas . . . some things are just too bad to revive . . .
When my husband finally got out of the Reserves, the company cook gave him an old box of recipes. So I have such wonders as Spaghetti and Meatballs for 500 . . .
Probably every U.S. Army duty station is different, but I liked the S.O.S. at our mess hall. The powdered eggs, however, were pretty bad.
I liked C-Ration fruit cake, and beanies-and-weenies. The lima beans and ham made me gag.
Names ping! Would you buy a cookbook from this man?
(I suspect this is a transcription error, and the poor gentleman has a nice German name, Tschoepe.)
Next, you will tell us you liked the chocolate pound cake!
My grandmother was an awful cook. So bad that my father developed a love of ham and lima beans as well as SOS when he was in the army.
Sadly for me he would make mom cook these delicacies for us when we were growing up.
The SOS was OK but limas and ham? gag
If you started with good beef and had a chef who knew how to make a decent cream sauce (THAT is something that is difficult to do well - even in small quantities), no reason the SOS shouldn't turn out just fine. It's the dry, tough, stringy beef and the curdled white sauce that gave it the bad reputation (burning the toast doesn't help either).
I enjoyed looking over the shoulder of my husband's unit's cook. They were a very laid-back reserve unit up in N.J. at the tail end of the Vietnam era . . . lots of talented men in that organization. They were always under strength but scored high in the summer camp tests . . . through sheer inventiveness and good will.
Fortunately, my father is a splendid cook who taught us how. He still uses a 1936 copy of The Joy of Cooking, but mostly cooks by inspiration.
My maternal grandmother never believed my dad could cook . . . and she knew her daughter couldn't . . . so every Thursday she came over and cooked dinner so that her grandchildren wouldn't starve to death.
I do the same. I learned all I know from that book. it is dog eared and broken along the spine in 3 places!
That's my Desert Island Cookbook. I also have an edition from the 70s edited by Marion Rombauer Becker, and it's pretty close to the original with some additions . . . but the new "revised modern" one by Ethan Becker is simply awful. It was completely rewritten, and it has lost the uniqueness that made that cookbook, it's just like any other pop cookbook.
Why, yes, I have. It's still served in KY, usually without the squirrel, possum. If you're ever at Keeneland, the breeders' horse track in Lexington, KY, I highly recommend the burgoo for lunch, with the bread pudding with whiskey sauce for dessert.
Thats the one I have
(Does that say something about my wife's cooking? :-)) )
SOS is ok.
Also, the 1970s edition has those great general information sections at the beginning of each chapter, and the general instructions at the beginning of each type of food. Somebody who had never cooked before could pick up that book and do a pretty good job, if they read the directions first!
Don't care.
Now dittmar is German name;)
That book is the greatest!
It even teaches you how to build an oven in the wild!
“Hardtack Come Again No More!”
Let us close our game of poker,
Take our tin cups in our hand,
As we all stand by the cook tent door.
As dried mummys of hard cracker are handed to each man,
Oh! Hardtack come again no more!
CH:
‘Tis the song, the sigh of the hungry,
Oh, Hardtack, hardtack come again no more.
Many days have you lingered,
Upon our stomachs, sore.
Oh! Hardtack come again no more!
‘Tis a hungry, thirsty soldier,
Who wears his life away,
In torn cloths whose better days are o’er.
And he’s sighing now for whiskey in a voice as dry as hay.
Oh! Hardtack come again no more!
Ch:
‘Tis the wail that is heard in the camp,
Both night and day.
‘Tis the murmer that mingles with each snore.
‘Tis the sighing of the soul for spring chickens far away.
Oh! Hardtack come again no more!
Ch:
But to these cries and murmers,
There comes a sudden hush.
As frail forms are fainting by the door.
For they feed us now on horsefeed that the cooks call MUSH!
Oh! Hardtack come again once more!
Ch: (last)
‘Tis the dying wail of the starving!
Oh! Hardtack, hardtack come again once more!
You were old and very wormy,
But your failings we’ll pass o’er.
Oh! Hardtack come again once more!
(To the tune of “Hard Times Come Again No More”
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