Broiled Fish with Bacon-Grease-Slathered Bananas

Continuing with the bacon thing, here's a recipe sure to please seafood lovers, bacon lovers, and lovers of all things sunny and fruity. It comes from a 1958 Cookindex recipe card, published by Tested Recipe Institute, Inc.

Shad Tropicana

Select a shad weighing about 4 pounds. Have the fish dealer split and bone it. Wash fish thoroughly and pat dry with paper towels. Place the split, boned shad on a well-greased broiler pan. Brush the fish with melted butter or margarine and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Broil fish, 3 to 5 inches from the heat, without turning, 8 to 10minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Halve 3 slices of bacon. Fry bacon strips in a skillet until crisp. Drain bacon well on paper towel; keep warm. Peel and slice 2 medium-size bananas; dip slices in bacon fat. About 2 minutes before removing shad from broiler, arrange banana slices in a row on top of fish. Finish broiling fish. Remove fish carefully with a broad spatula or pancake turner to a hot platter. Garnish with bacon, lemon wedges and parsley. Makes 4 servings.

Dexterous Wrenches and Autumn Frolics

What better way to follow up on an eel post than to show you a page about oysters! Especially apropos on an autumn day such as this.

Helpful advice is, as usual, offered in abundance. For example, one should wash the oysters so as not to offend fastidious guests.

Your own "good man" will be truly heartened by your offering of this pearl of bivalves when he comes home on a wet night, cold, tired, and hungry.

Indeed.

Don't forget your bushel basket. Or your knife. or the pepper pot.

Country Eel Stew. You Know What it Tastes Like.

I love the earthy practicality of Common Sense in the Home. Here's another fine example:

Let's be honest: who hasn't been duped by one of those city slicker eel merchants? And who really has time to consider the diets of urban eels compared to those of more pastoral climes?

It's not just us. Even Freud had eel issues.

"Since eels do not keep diaries," the investigator, 19-year-old Sigmund Freud, wrote to a friend in the spring of 1876, the only way to determine gender was to cut and slice, "but in vain, all the eels which I cut open are of the fairer sex."

Poor Sigmund appears to be the victim of his own envy.

But I digress.

The advice is just so darned useful. For example, the suggestion about avoiding a three pound eel, despite the obvious draw.

(Three pounds is a big fella by anyone's reckoning.)

But I digress again.

So you start with a one pound country eel and THEN you add butter.

This affirms one of my culinary beliefs: add butter and anything tastes like chicken.

Stew that is.

Crab Imperial Quickie

I chose this one because the story mentions a dinner for President Eisenhower.

Plus I love that she advises us all to roll our own cracker crumbs.

Not to mention the name.

Cannes Seafood Casserole

This artist says "I try to turn out a painting that will speak for itself."

If the statement also holds true for recipes, I'd say that this one deserves a spot in the Cannes Food Festival.

(Get it? Cannes? Oh never mind.)

It's another fine example of the heavy reliance on canned food products during the sixties. With all that white sauce, butter, and cheese it might be rather good using fresh ingredients. I'd probably hold off on the hardboiled eggs, which also seems to be sixties thing.

Have a look.

Seafood Casserole

3 hard-cooked eggs, sliced

2 cups medium white sauce

1 can shrimp cut in halves

1 can tuna, well drained

1 cup bread crumbs mixed with 1/2 stick melted butter

1 2-oz can sliced mushrooms

1 can crabmeat

1/4 lb. grated cheddar cheese

Place in buttered baking dish, layers of sliced egg, shrimp, tuna, mushrooms and crabmeat, pouring white sauce over each layer. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Cover top with buttered crumbs. Bake in 325 degree oven for 45 minutes. Serves 6 to 8.