Stuck in an elevator with the June issue of Gourmet

It's time to set the Wayback Machine for June, 1977!

I'll admit the enthusiasm is a little forced. Granted, not everything I write about in monthly installments can be quite as entertaining as last year's 401 Party and Holiday Ideas from Alcoa (Conny von Hagen, 1971), but the pretentiousness of old issues of Gourmet makes them not nearly as much fun as I'd hoped. I wanted the issues of Gourmet to be like watching an old episode of Frasier, but they're more like actually getting stuck with the character in an elevator, and he just wants to tell me about the very expensive and sophisticated trip he's planning while I push the button to get off several floors too early so I can take the stairs the rest of the way. (This issue recommends a holiday in Genoa and a Hungarian riding tour.)

However, this month I got to feel a little bit of superiority as I was paging through. This recipe is nothing especially surprising or spectacular, BUT...

I did get to laugh a little that the writer (Fanny Todd Mitchell) felt compelled to provide a translation for pesto. Apparently even an unsophisticated 2018 reader is more likely to be familiar with the mixture than Gourmet's hoity-toity original readers. I've got something on those fancy-pants 1977 readers.

And as I read through this recipe from an article on ricotta...

I suddenly began to suspect that this was a recipe for the rich people's version of shit on a shingle. It's got the dried beef, and ricotta and eggs bolster the milk that's always in the recipe-- a little bit of spinach to class it up, and of course, a longer cooking time than a simple creamed mixture because they're not rushing to have dinner on the table by the time dad gets home... Still, this seems a bit like someone is trying to play a joke on those supercilious readers. I just wish the recipe suggested serving this with slices of Italian bread and had a title like Textural Slate à l'Excreta, but that might have given away the game.