Dishes

When one cooks a great meal, one wants to plate it on a great plate.

Chefs go to extremes for plating dishes.  Restaurateurs include in their massive budgets designs for personalized dishes, glassware and even cutlery.

Grant Achatz and others of his genre of cooking even configure and convolute serving pieces for the month’s tasting tour or Omakase.

Brides pay special attention to ‘Selections’, usually Bone China to last a lifetime serving special meals to special people in a special marriage.

Antique dealers look for odds and ends of Bone China or Crystal to sell at inflated costs.

There exist companies and online retailers who specialize in finding discontinued patterns to replace a broken plate or cup from an old Bone China pattern.

In a lifetime, one collects an amazing amount of tzotchkes; I am no different.  In fact, I have reached an age where I want to divulge myself of all these things, these objects d’arts with which I no longer find use nor have the energy to dust or keep clean and sitting on display.

I have so much, that even packing into a dozen boxes for what my children might use later on in life, still leaves me with so much I want to puke.

First because of the ridiculous amounts of money I have laid out in a lifetime, and second because I have no use for them anymore and feel saddened that when I make a dinner usually there are only six of us and eight if my single children join us for a Holiday celebration.  Any more people and I make it buffet-style.

So, in my youthful idiocy in purchasing at the time, I chose one of the more expensive single place settings that Royal Crown Derby (I actually used to, and still do, pronounce it Darby and not Derby) made back in the 80’s spending nearly $500.00 for one place setting including the soup bowl.

In Fine Bone China, a place setting is sold separate to the soup bowl; each usually costing the same amount of money.  The logic, I suppose, being that everybody serves soup so why make it part of the package?  The marketing people figured that they could charge just as much for the single soup bowl as they lure the consumer in with a good price on a place setting, thereby making double the amount of money.  Those sucky brides.

Old Imari.  My crowning jewel.

Of course, no doubt there are far more expensive sets out there as I could imagine the Queen of England serves on and in the White House for their State Dinners.  However, for me, in Montreal where I don’t live in a social scene of epic magnitudes; this place setting was the most expensive in my collection.

I say ‘Collection’ because unlike most Brides of the time; I did not buy one entire set but instead chose full place settings of different sets of Bone China, for fear of ever breaking a plate: the logic being, worst case scenario, I would have to replace just one place setting if anything pattern had become discontinued or irreplaceable.

So when I  set a table; each place setting is different.  (Fritz & Floyd also came out with a salad plate called Old Imari which I also purchased.  Each place setting for 16 had a co-ordinating extra salad plate which meant using an Excel sheet to keep track of which extra salad plate went with its place setting)

THE EXCEL LIST

The following is THE list which is strictly adhered to when setting my table….which takes forever to set…

Caplan Duval P.P. Plan number 6467

16 Service Plates Gold Beads

1:  Royal Daulton Martinique place set + soup
2:  Royal Daulton Alice + soup
3:  Royal Crown Darby Carlton +soup
4:  Noritake Icon + soup
5:  Gladstone + soup
6:  Alabaster Gold + soup
7:  Royal Crown Darby Old Imari + soup
8:  Wedgewood Old Country Rose + soup
9:  Wedgwood Curzon + soup
10: Aynsley empress cobalt + soup
11: Mikasa Contessina
12: Royal Crown Darby-Chardonnay
13: Wedgewood Cornucopia + soup
14:  Aynsley georgian cobalt + soup
15: Royal Daulton Forsythe + soup
16: Royal Daulton Carlysle + soup
17: Versace Medusa + bowl soup w plate

Matching Salads

1: Fitz & Floyd: Old Imari
2:  Gr. dolphin Str
3:  Tarecho Stork
4:  Geisha
5:  Coquilloles
6:  Kyoto Crane
7: Treilage
8: Spode Seville
9: Florentine/turquoise
10: faberge egg
11: Victoria Beale- Forbidden Fruit
12: Zanger–Magnolia
13: Fitz and Floyd “Cherubin 1″
14: Spode: Lida and Acacia
15:  Wedgwood Persia
16: Mikasa Florabella
17: Versace Medusa

Serving Pieces

Soup Tureen and plate (can be platter)
RD Alice Gravy boat and plate
Carlisle small oval
Carlisle covered vegetable
Alabaster Gold teapot, sugar and creamer
Old Country Rose:1 round bowls
: 3-tier pastry
: coverd veg casserole
: 2 cream soupers
: gravy boat and stand

Sterling Silver

Birks Louis XV service for 16
Plus:  salad spoon and fork
tablespoon
slotted tablespoon
berry spoon
serving fork (2)
brides knife
pie server
gravy ladle

2 serving spoons in chest as well

(I even have  every original invoice for each and every placesetting or serving piece I ever bought.  This is the only time in my entire personal life that I have ever kept an invoice for longer than a year.)

It meant for a magnificent table and discussions; if, in the rarest times, there was nothing political or new on the horizon, to discuss.

My Mother had Sterling Silver cutlery which she always credited to ‘Aunt Soph’**. Her Crystal goblets, too.  If ‘Aunt Soph’ hadn’t insisted she have Birks Sterling Silver then she would nevert have chosen or even contemplated purchasing such a lush and lavish set such as she did, and get it engraved.

As hommage to my Mother and to understand why these pieces are important I need to tell a story.

The Birks Sterling Silver set of Louis XV are a story in themselves.  The service for 8 included each piece to have ingraved on them the initial ‘L’ for her last name would be changed from Levi to Luffer, passing her hand in marriage to my father.

The set also included serving pieces such as spoons, ladles and pie servers.   Each and every holiday; she and I together would share the task of polishing the Silver.  A task she hated which I loved.  In later life I, too, would grow to hate polishing the Silver.

As a young bride with very young children, I had the great misfortune of having to bury my Mother, who passed on when I was just 32.  My brother and sister had no need for her Sterling, nor her Crystal, so it went to me to inherit these troves of treasure from my Mother.  Subsequent years later, I, too, purchased Birks Sterling Silver flatware at an antique shop where service for 16 was on sale.  Already I was thinking of both my children and their futures so that each child could inherit a serving for 12.

Keep waiting Kids!!!  I’ll make you wait forever….;))

Until then, these will never leave my house, nope not in my lifetime - these are what make heirlooms, heirlooms and why sometimes, material items are important to inherit in death.

It doesn’t matter that I, too, have my own Crystal and Fine Bone China - these were my Mother’s, they were her pride and joy and that makes them so special to me.

 

 

 

So in order to continue this post, it begs a story.

‘Aunt Soph’ was Sophie Bronfman.  Yes, those Bronfmans.  Sophie and Abe who my mother met through her own brother, the late Dr. Irving Levi.

The Levi’s (my Mother’s maiden name)  heralded from Manitoba; both my grandparents coming over from Europe as young infants so far back, I imagine centuries ago.  As Canadians, they lived through Anti-Semitic times in Alberta; my grandfather a furrier and grandmother staying home to raise her family in Winnipeg.  A family of two sons, three girls; one of which was born with Epilepsy and other illnesses that rendered her ’slow’.  In those days to have a child like that was considered more than bad luck, it made the family ostracized and worse people did think the integrity of the blood line was poor.  So as kids, we, the cousins, all heard stories of how ‘Auntie Ettie’ got sick.  She wasn’t born that way…she had had an accident and hit her head on pavement and that is why she was ’sick.’

Later on in years, as Adults, we came to realize through  my brother, who was diagnosed with a sister disease, Tourettes Syndrome,  that the accident was a made-up lie to hide any insecurities for my grandparents.

Soon after the Holocaust in the forties; doors were being opened for ‘Jews’ that had long been closed due to anti-Semitism.  One of those doors that opened was at Montreal’s prestigious McGill University.

So ironic that a school who had to open up themselves for Jews much later became directed and headed up by a Dean who was a Jew.   Related to another Aunt through her marriage.

At any rate McGill University announced that they would allow, that year 1940-something, 2 Jews from all of Canada to enter into their institution for learning.  Obviously the standards of which and who of these two Jews would be impeccable: the brightest and most intelligent - the elite of the non-elite Jew.

My uncle would become Jew number 1.  I don’t know Jew number 2 and never actually did know his name.  However, this meant my uncle had to move to Montreal; a huge city far away from Winnipeg, Alberta.  Because he and my mother were such close siblings it didn’t take long for him to convince my mother to move to Montreal and then slowly the rest of the Levi’s came to live in Montreal.

It was at that time during my Uncle’s days at McGill that Sophie and Abe Bronfman began holding Friday night Shabbat dinners for these two men, on a regular basis.  So the story that I remember, goes.

It was at these Shabbat dinners that Irving met a Bronfman daughter who he liked and courted.  However, also at the Shabbat tables sat a niece to Sophie Bronfman,  having the fortune or misfortune of growing up in such a house; a girl named Rhoda Rasminsky.

They married and that is how my Mother came to know ‘Aunt Soph’.   She had become ‘Mechutonim’.

This is not such a mouth-dropping story of elegance and society, just the story to tell of my Mother’s Birks Sterling and her Crystal goblets: Water, Highball, Champagne and Wine.  In a service for 8.

These were a source of pride for my Mother who did not marry a mate that matched up in the Society pages.  My mother loved her brother intensely, and so her brother did her.  Through five in the family, they remained dedicated to each other until her death.

So, back to my story…Irving, my Uncle, went on to marry Rhoda.  However, when my Mother moved herself to Montreal; she became part of the Shabbat dinners herself.  ‘Aunt  Soph’ took to my mother quickly and they were friendly that as a small child, I remember the house in Westmount where the elevator took you to the ballroom downstairs.  Vaguely.

Needless to say; when my mother met my father it became extremely important for ‘Aunt Soph’ to make sure my mother’s selection included Birks Sterling and Crystal glassware:  the hallmarks of Society in an era when it was important to show you came from the upper-class.

My mother cherished these pieces and always credited ‘Aunt Soph’ .  Each and every time these fine wares came out of the China Cabinet for dinner on every Jewish Holiday and Shabbat; with pride my Mother alway found it necessary to explain again and again why she had such fancy dinner and silverware. It reminded her, she would say, about her new life when she came to Montreal, leaving the small town of Winnipeg behind for the big city, and then the stories began.

With joy my mother would always have me set the table and with together at the kitchen table, shine the Silver.  Her China plates were simple white and not even Bone China: but the accoutrements were genuine.

I haven’t even gotten to the good part.  The Food.  My mother was indeed a ‘balabusta’ though she held a career and a full-time job.  The holiday’s at Auntie Sarah’s (my mother) were a treat all the cousins looked towards, especially because the food was endless and the choices amazing.

I was close to my Aunt Rhoda and Uncle Irving; as close as any of us were because we were the children of his favorite Sister, although my own brother and sister were closer in age and closer in friendship to the older cousins, by ten years as I was the ‘accident baby.’

There were many, many times, after my parent’s deaths, that I would spend an afternoon with my Aunt, and if we didn’t go out somewhere, we wound up at her kitchen table always with a glass of tea.

See, my most primal memories were directly related to food.

.

Aunt Rhoda’s family always loved coming to our house for dinner because like I said in our house the food flowed; unfortunately, so did the big asses. 

 

 

 

That is how my Mother came to own Birks Sterling Louis XV. 

 

 

 

 

Now, how I came to have a tea set that ‘Aunt Soph’ Bronfman had given to my Aunt Rhoda; her daughter.

 

 

 

 

It was Aunt Rhoda who taught me how to ‘drink tea and hold a teacup’.  Like yesterday I remember sitting at her Harvard home with my Mother, and most probably another Aunt Ruth and some of us kids, when my grubby hands picked up the cup and almost dropped it.  Aghast my Aunt Rhoda then gave me my ‘Tea’ lesson, which to this very day, is the way I drink and hold my tea, when served in teacups.

It is also, though many years later, how it came to be that Aunt Rhoda gave me the tea-set (pot, sugar and creamer) and swore me to secrecy.  After all, she had a daughter and daughter-in-laws to whom she could give this too, and I was flattered.  It was the nicest thing she ever did for me, in her life.

It remains a living memory of my Aunt Rhoda and holds a special shelf in my Dining Room Cabinet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third teapot in this trilogy is one given to me by my late Mother-n-law.  All I know of this teapot is that it was her Mother’s that somehow remained in one piece all the way from Poland - and the only thing left from her family who lived through the Holocaust.  She told me it is encased in pure 18kt gold.  That is all I know of the history of this teapot

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is it:

 

 

 

 

 

I would love to hear and see pictures of dishes, glasses, or silverware patterns that my readers have and are willing to share.

Perhaps one day, Alinea and its serving pieces will wind up in the Smithsonian.  I don’t doubt that will happen.

After all The Chicago Culinary Museum and Chefs Hall of Fame , according to the Chicago Tribune,  recently announced that Chef Art Smith will be its 2010 inductee, joining Chefs Bayless, Carrie Nahabedian, Jimmy Bannos and Charlie Trotter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sterling Silver Cleaning Trick

A trick for all you young and old Brides and even young and old men is the following:

Get yourself silver tin foil or a metal plate which can be bought on Ebay.  Line the sink or a basin with the silver foil or lay the plate down and splash a  half a handful of any brand water softener.  I use Calgon.  Pour boiling water slowly into the sink or basin and then lay your silver in this bath making sure it touches the silver foil or plate.  Leave it for a minute or two and the chemical reaction will immediately turn your oxidized Silver into shiny Silver.  Rinse, wipe and polish it.  Ta Da Shiny Sterling Silver.

** ‘Aunt Soph’ is all I knew of Sophie Bronfman’s name.  I never heard her referred to in any other way, including when my Aunt Rhoda spoke of her.

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