The secret skull and other imaginary spooky "Gourmet" themes

My favorite thing about the cover of the September 1977 issue of Gourmet is that the composition of the photo from Seville kind of reminds me of a skull. This allows me to imagine the magazine is already hinting at Halloween, something I adore, rather than simply trying to sell plane tickets and high-end liquor.

I didn't expect to see my imagined Halloween theme continued in the magazine. (I'll be shocked if even the October issue explicitly mentions the humble holiday.) However, the Gourmet Menus theme for the month, late-summer luncheons, let me continue to pretend the issue is secretly Halloweeny:

Whole fish oozing pink and yellowish goop, staring out with their dead eyes? A gelatinous blob ready to engulf anything in its path? It's an embarrassment of riches. Heck, the serving utensils are practically a machete and a pitchfork!

The playful tablecloth may be trying to hide it, but I'm calling this a Halloween preview!

The fish follow the popular fish-stuffed-with-other-fish theme:

The blob is a cucumber gelatin. It's high-class because it uses unflavored gelatin and food coloring rather than lime Jell-O.

This issue of Gourmet makes me happy the only way Gourmet ever makes me happy-- unintentionally. If you're not a Halloween freak and you don't like my pushing it into early-September recipes, though, I'll leave you with a picture from their more summery-looking menu, which stars Boeuf à la Mode en Gelée on the same bright tablecloth.

Yep, it's a whole aspic garden filled with tiny carrot and turnip flowers growing in rows of sliced beef "soil," with onions and green beans growing in the central plot. Apparently even Gourmet can occasionally be playful. (The recipe goes on for MILES, though, and I am too lazy to even try to copy it for you. Suffice it to say that you need a lot of patience and the better part of a day to make this disk of jellied meat and veg.)

Happy September! Go cut some carrots into flowers or carve an early jack-o-lantern.