Posts Tagged ‘Dagny Johnson’

The Food of Love

Sunday, July 24th, 2016

Love-Walked-Inweb

My most recent television appearance was devoted to encouraging viewers to come to my concert this coming Saturday. Alice Parker and I (known near and far—mostly near—as the Divas of Hawley, Massachusetts) will star in LOVE WALKED IN, an evening of classic love songs by such songwriters as the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Burt Bacharach, and Alice herself.

If you’re in Western Massachusetts this weekend, I urge you to join us on July 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Federated Church on Route 2 in Charlemont. Donations at the door will go to the Rose Anna Dixwell Fund, which helps fund music lessons for local children.

I firmly believe that all children—and all adults, for that matter!—should make music whenever possible so I’m proud to be associated with this endeavor.

The evening will be fun, with lots of hamming it up from the resident soprano and lots of singing along. Cabot Cheese has donated nibbles for the after-concert reception, and bakers are standing by to brave the heat and make cookies, so our program should be delicious literally as well as figuratively.

To highlight the concert’s romantic theme on Mass Appeal, I prepared my idea of a romantic meal. Everyone’s ideal romantic meal is different. This one was loosely based on a meal I enjoyed when I was 19 at la Maison de Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

Van Gogh's Bedroom

Van Gogh’s Bedroom

My companions and I toured the tiny room in which Van Gogh spent his last months. We then dined downstairs in a lovely, convenient restaurant. I ordered a small steak (really, the French know how to cook steak to perfection) with a delectable salad. To complete the meal the waiter brought an ENORMOUS bowl of chocolate mousse to our table. I was in food heaven.

The company—my honorary godmother Dagny Johnson and her nephew Eric—was pretty wonderful, too. If Van Gogh had been able to enjoy such food and such company, he would probably never have committed suicide.

I couldn’t replicate the steak or salad exactly; I’m not French. So instead for my romantic meal I made my favorite flank steak, which I have described before on this blog, and a fresh salad with my neighbor Gam’s herbed buttermilk dressing. Gam’s recipe calls for dried herbs, but since I had fresh ones I used those instead. The dressing turned a fascinating shade of green.

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I did have a French recipe for chocolate mousse, thanks to my mother’s cordon-bleu studies. So the mousse was authentic.

I didn’t have QUITE enough time to beat the egg whites for the mousse on the air—live TV presents unique challenges—but I brought along some mousse to serve and share with everyone at the studio.

It went fast!

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Seth comforted me following the egg-white debacle.

Gam’s Herbed Buttermilk Dressing

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley (or more!)
1/2 teaspoon dried chives or lots of fresh
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano or lots of fresh
1/4 teaspoon dried basil or lots of fresh
1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon or lots of fresh
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice (plus more if you like)
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup mayonnaise

Instructions:

Combine all ingredients in the order indicated and mix well. Store in the refrigerator, and re-shake before using. Makes a little over 2 cups of dressing.

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Taffy’s Cordon Bleu Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

6 ounces good-quality semisweet chocolate
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) sweet butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
5 tablespoons coffee, divided (you may use water instead or use a bit of each)
4 eggs at room temperature, separated
1/2 cup superfine sugar, divided (if you don’t have superfine sugar and don’t want to buy it, whirl regular sugar around in a food processor for a bit; that will do just fine.)
1 pinch salt

Instructions:

In the top of a double boiler (or in a heatproof bowl over warm water) combine the chocolate, the butter, the vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of coffee. Cook the mixture over hot water, stirring, until the chocolate melts. Remove the pan from the top of the hot water, and set it aside to cool.

In another heatproof bowl combine the egg yolks, 3 tablespoons of coffee, and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Place them over the hot water and cook, whisking vigorously, until the mixture becomes uniformly frothy and lighter in color.

Remove the yolk mixture from the top of the hot water, and whisk it for another minute or so. Whisk in the chocolate mixture. Allow the resulting concoction to cool for a few minutes so that it is lukewarm to the touch. (You may begin beating the egg whites while the chocolate/yolk mixture is cooling.)

Combine the egg whites and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat them until the egg whites are foamy. Sprinkle on the remaining sugar and beat the egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the whites into the chocolate mixture. (It helps to add a little bit of them at first, then the rest.)

Spoon the mousse into a serving bowl or bowls. Cover and refrigerate for several hours or overnight; then serve with a little whipped cream. Serves 8.

And now the videos……


For the Love of Film: Heroes, Orphans, and Peach Jam

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

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I know I went on and on and on about the fascinating Iris Barry in my last post. This post will also participate in the For the Love of Film blogathon—but in a less long-winded way.
 
Thinking about Iris Barry’s passion for film reminded me that I have been lucky enough to know several people who have put their passion to work in preservation. I thought I’d mention three of them (briefly, I promise!). One of them has an event coming up that should appeal to the film folk reading this. (I’m sure many of you know about it already.)
 
1. My late honorary godmother, Dagny Johnson, zealously pursued short and long films about Paris for her film festival in the 1960s and 1970s, Paris en Films.
 
She understood the race against time involved in finding and saving films of all sorts. I have seldom seen her happier than she was the day on which she announced that one of her contacts had found a film about the French resistance in a gypsy camp—in perfect condition. I’d love to have half of her knowledge of French film. (I wouldn’t mind her personal charm, either!) 
Dagny Johnson in Cuba in 1950 with a mysterious stranger (Courtesy of Eric Johnson)

Dagny Johnson in Cuba in 1950 with a mysterious stranger (Courtesy of Eric Johnson)

 
2. My former colleague Jane Klain in the Research Services division of the Paley Center for Media in New York is a bloodhound when it comes to finding old television programs that were once considered lost—particularly when those programs involve her great love, American musical theater. I love watching Jane work and listening to her enthusiasm when she is on the trail of a television program. She is one of Manhattan’s unsung heroines. 
 
This 1959 production of "What Makes Sammy Run?" was one of Jane's TV finds.

This 1959 production of "What Makes Sammy Run?" was one of Jane's TV finds.

3. Finally, my graduate-school pal Dan Streible at New York University organizes a biennial Orphan Film Symposium. The next one will take place in April.

The symposium finds, celebrates, and helps preserve films that have no commercial homes. (Dan has a much better definition than this on the Orphan site!) In it Dan brings together scholars and enthusiasts who recognize the aesthetic, historical, and cultural value of diverse orphan films.
 
Dan’s orphan metaphor is perfect for preservation. It indicates the ways in which these films have been cast adrift as well as the moral imperative for people to help save and protect them.
  
Dan and Friend (Courtesy of NYU)
Dan and Friend (Courtesy of NYU)

 

Dagny, Jane, and Dan, I salute you and the other wonderful film and television preservationists in my life (hi, Mike!).

In addition to attending the Orphan Film Symposium you can show your support for preservation by donating to the National Film Preservation Foundation. The NFPF is giving away four DVD sets to donors chosen in a random drawing this week. Here’s the link to donate.

And of course please do visit some of the other bloggers who have spent at least part of this week writing For the Love of Film. The blogathon is sponsored by Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren, who hope to raise awareness of, and funds for, the NFPF.
 
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Preservation, Tinky Style: Peach Jam
 
I’m not a person who preserves film or television professionally. I’m more likely to save vegetables or fruit.
 
In case you’d like to contribute to food preservation as well as film preservation, here’s a simple peach jam recipe. Spice it up a little if you like with some crystallized ginger—or color and flavor it with a few raspberries. This is the basic formula.
 
I know peaches aren’t in season for most of my readers right now, but if you’d like to cheat a little you may certainly use unsweetened frozen peaches. Be sure to defrost the peaches before cooking and to adjust the recipe proportionately to fit the volume of peaches you have. You can’t really go wrong with fresh jam on the table.
 
Ingredients:
 
4 cups peach slices or peaches
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 pat butter
 
Instructions:
 
In a 4-quart nonreactive pot combine the peaches, 2 cups of the sugar, and the lemon juice. Let the mixture sit for an hour or so to allow the peaches to juice up.
 
Cook the fruit over low heat until tender. Add the remaining sugar and butter, and cook rapidly until thick, stirring frequently. The jam is ready when it sheets off a cold, stainless-steel spoon. Remove any foam you see (there shouldn’t be too much, thanks to the butter). Stir the jam for 5 minutes before you ladle it into sterilized jars; this keeps the fruit from rising to the top of the jars when cooled. Process in a boiling-water bath for 5 minutes.
 
If you don’t want to be bothered processing the jam, just put it in the sterilized jars and keep it in the refrigerator. Serve with toast, biscuits, or scones.
 
Makes about 4 cups.
 
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Spring Break: Sunset in a Pie Pan

Sunday, April 26th, 2009
Dagny Johnson with her friend Vince Travaglini (labeled Christmas 1950)

Dagny Johnson with her friend Vince Travaglini (labeled Christmas 1950, courtesy of Eric Johnson)

Key lime pie is refreshingly delicious and may just be the easiest pie in the world to make. I love it not just because of its flavor and ease, however, but because it reminds me of a magical figure in my life.

Anna Dagny Johnson and my mother were college friends. Originally from the Midwest, Dody (as we called her) contracted polio on their junior year abroad in France. Eventually the Chicago winters proved too icy for a woman on crutches, and she and her family commissioned a Japanese architect to design a perfect little one-story house on Key Largo in Florida. Hidden away from the road, encircled by native foliage, the house looked out on the Gulf of Mexico.
Although she worked for several years as a labor lawyer (a career that brought her a lifelong hatred of J. Edgar Hoover), for most of her life Dagny lived off family money and followed her heart.
She adored Paris–its rhythm, its people, its look. For decades she spent Florida’s hot summers in the City of Light, shipping her specially fitted red Ford convertible across the Atlantic Ocean so that she could be mobile in France. I remember her driving me along the boulevards when I was seven. She put the car’s top down and made me repeat the mantra “Paris is the most beautiful city in the world” until it was imprinted in my psyche.
Dagny was always a lover of film. At Mount Holyoke in the 1930s she and future Connecticut governor Ella Grasso showed documentaries about the Spanish Civil War on campus. In the 1960s she hit upon the idea of programming a festival of films shot in or about Paris. “Paris en Films” (Paris on Film) ran for several summer seasons. My brother David, Dody’s nephew Eric, and I each worked for the festival for at least one summer.
I’ll never forget my first time there. Dody had rented an ornate apartment from a Spanish nobleman. She, Eric, and I shared the apartment at night. During the day a huge cast of characters joined us. These included Madame Garcia, a Spaniard who cooked tuna omelets(!) whenever Dody wanted to entertain someone important; Agnes, who wrote letters and answered the phone; Antoine, the aristocrat who was the figurehead president of Paris en Films (Dody did most of the work); and Monsieur Lamoureux, Dody’s hairdresser, who always arrived by walking directly into her bedroom via French doors.
We also encountered figures from the film world. Alberto Cavalcanti was one of the few film directors who enjoyed strong careers in three different countries. He took part in the experimental French film movement in the 1920s, made pictures for Britain’s Ealing Studios during World War II, and returned to his native Brazil after the war to make lavish color films. By the time we met him in Paris Alberto was very old and much too fond of a drink, but he still had wonderful stories to tell and an occasional twinkle in his eye. He adored Dody. He left her his papers, which Eric donated to the British Film Institute after her death.
The festival’s films were shown outdoors that summer in the garden of the Hôtel de Sully, a historic home in Paris. Eric showed typical American organizational talent and helped transport and project the films. I was never quite sure what my role was—a little ticket taking, a little translation (since my French was pretty good at the time), a little shopping.
The festival, like Dagny herself, was always in lukewarm water financially; there were certain restaurants and hotels to which we could never return because it—or she—owed them money. Nevertheless, we somehow managed to show interesting films every night, from the experimental work of Chris Marker and Stan Brakhage to early footage by the Lumière brothers and Thomas Edison’s operatives, from “The Red Balloon” to a silent Hollywood film starring Adolph Menjou. Dody was named a chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. She was one of few Americans to receive this honor.
Eric and I were too busy running around Paris to notice what a great time we were having. Whenever we meet or write today, we exchange Humphrey Bogart’s signature line, “We’ll always have Paris.” We laugh as we say it, but it’s also true. Somehow without my realizing it our time there became one of the highlights of my youth.
 
Left to right: Agnes, Dagny, Tinky, and Eric in Paris

Left to right: Agnes, Dagny, Tinky, and Eric in Paris

After Paris, Dagny’s other great love was the preservation of the Florida Keys. She used all her strength of character (and much of her remaining strength of body) to combat rampant development and preserve the native flora and fauna of her beloved home. She is appropriately the first figure profiled in Susan Nugent’s book Women Conserving the Florida Keys.

None of what I’ve written so far conveys the exhilarating (and sometimes maddening) experience of being with Dagny. She had passion for–and a strong opinion about–everyone and everything she encountered. Her pronouncements were never simple statements; each sentence was filled with capital letters and ended with an exclamation mark. Each vista she looked at, each mouthful she ate, was THE MOST WONDERFUL EVER!!!—something to be savored and shared with friends.
One of her great joys was the view she saw daily from her little house on Key Largo. Each afternoon she turned her sights and those of her guests to the coming sunset. She argued it was best enjoyed sipping a cocktail or nibbling on a refreshing piece of key-lime pie. We were told to linger over the sunsets; no one could stop watching until the first star came out.
Like Dody herself those sunsets over the bay were colorful and dramatic. Like her they imposed their rhythm on those who came near them: they forced us to slow down and adapt to their pace. And they were always worth the trouble it took to drop whatever we were doing and yield to their appeal.
Dagny Johnson died in 2003.  She has a couple of memorials. A hammock park on Key Largo is dedicated to the memory of her efforts to save the fragile Floridian ecosystem. Appropriately, it is located at the site of one of her greatest victories in that struggle. The large arch that marks its entry was supposed to be the gateway to Port Bougainville, an oversized development she helped to avert.
Dody also has a cinematic legacy, the 1939 film Love Affair. After she contracted polio in France she and her wonderful, funny mother sailed back to the United States. On the boat they met director Leo McCarey and his wife. McCarey was so inspired by the charming, gallant crippled girl he had met on board that he created a plot that (very loosely) combined shipboard romance and loss of mobility.
The film was remade as An Affair to Remember in 1957. The films’ plots (which are identical) are creaky, but they are among the most romantic movies ever made. I think of Dody whenever I watch either version (or even the weird 1994 re-remake).
I also think of her when I make or eat any of her culinary passions—a fresh orange or avocado, a dish of crème brulé, a croque monsieur, or a cool slice of key lime pie. As the pie slides down my throat I sit once again by the Gulf of Mexico. I hear Dody rattle on about Paris and religion and the Florida Keys. And the lush yet delicate Key Largo sunset washes over me.

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Key Largo Key Lime Pie

As in the key-lime chicken recipe below, do not substitute Persian lime juice for key lime juice here. And don’t worry that your key lime pie isn’t green (or add food coloring to make it so). Key limes are yellow, and your pie will be naturally tinted a very pale shade of that color.
According to the web site of Nellie & Joe’s, the company that makes the key-lime juice and recipe I use, classic key-lime pies are not baked (a plus in the Florida heat!). The lime juice is alleged to cook the egg yolks. Here in the north, however, I usually bake my pie. Some folks like to use the leftover egg whites to make a meringue topping for their pie and eschew the whipped cream. I much prefer whipped cream for texture and flavor.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup key-lime juice
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
3 egg yolks (use the whites in another recipe; you won’t need them here)
1 8-inch pie shell with a graham-cracker crust (preferably homemade)
whipped cream as needed

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl whisk together the juice, condensed milk, and egg yolks until they are smooth. Pour this mixture into your pie shell, and place the pie in the oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
The pie won’t necessarily set, but you don’t need it to!
After removing the pie from the oven let it cool to room temperature; then cover it and place it in the freezer until a few minutes before you are ready to eat. Remove the pie from the freezer, adorn it with whipped cream (either all the way across the top or just around the edges, depending on how much additional fat you want to absorb!), and serve. If you have leftover pie, store it, covered, in the refrigerator. Serves 6 to 8.
 
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