Derby Day Dishes

Are you ready to watch tiny, tiny people try to hold onto horses running in a great big circle, desperately hoping that nobody slips and breaks some bones?

As you may have guessed, I'm not exactly the biggest Kentucky Derby fan in the world, but I realized my copy of The Courier-Journal & Times Cookbook (Lillian Marshall, 1971) has a whole Kentucky Derby menu, as The Courier-Journal is Louisville's newspaper.

So what do --Louisvillians? Louisvillites? -- recommend for a Derby Day party?

It's quite a spread:

That's a spring leg of lamb front and center, surrounded by an ice cream sundae for 25, salami slices rolled around cream cheese, a fruit thing that might pass for a forehead enhancement on a particularly flamboyant Star Trek alien, and a cauliflower that got too close to Regan MacNeil.

Of course, the only thing most of you are thinking about is in the bottom right-- the mint juleps. Just in case you need the recipe:

Fun Fact: When I was a kid, I had a Mint Tulip Strawberry Shortcake doll. I always wondered what the heck a mint tulip was supposed to be... I mean, I knew what blueberry muffins and butter cookies were, but mint tulips? And now, 30-some years later, I'm smacking my forehead and realizing the toy line couldn't openly admit to naming a kids' toy after an alcoholic beverage.

If you're curious about what got hosed all over the cauliflower, it's not actually a gift from Pazuzu:

It's watercress blended with onion, vinegar, mustard, mayo, and sour cream because why enjoy a simple sour cream sauce when you can make it look like pond scum instead?

If you want a supremely time-consuming way to waste good alcohol, the fruit platter was made for you:

Yay! Spend a whole morning arranging fruit and lacquering it up with lemon-gelatin-wine glaze while all your friends are day drinking.

The menu will, in any case, get everyone sufficiently ready to celebrate. If the mint juleps and wine-soaked fruit aren't enough, the sundae is packing a little something special too:

It wouldn't be Kentucky Sauce without a good shot of bourbon.

If you're a fan, enjoy the race and the bourbon! Bourbon just tastes like nail polish remover to me, so you can have your fun in peace without me pestering you.