Kitchen Kitsch
Time for a little word association, using the name “Liberace”:
Music? Sure.
Sequins? Absolutely.
Bling? Without a doubt.
Food? Maybe not so much.
While it may be known only to his most ardent fans, Liberace was indeed a good cook and loved to entertain off-stage as well as on, according to R. Darin Hollingsworth, executive director of the Liberace Foundation. And a new spotlight on those interests may help introduce the late showman to a new generation of fans.
The vehicle — or part of it, anyway — is “Joy of Liberace: Retro Recipes From America’s Kitschiest Kitchen” (Angel City Press, $25) by Michael and Karan Feder.
The book, launched during the museum’s Mother’s Day party that honored both Liberace’s late mother and his own May 16 birthday, is filled with period photos of Liberace with his mother and friends, plus newer retro-look photos of food prepared by the Riviera, Liberace’s ancestral Las Vegas home.
The recipes actually came from Liberace, the Feders said, most of them from a cookbook published in 1970. The couple went through 400 recipes to choose the 80-plus that made the new book. They include such period pieces as Weenie Broil, Divine Turkey Divan, eggs with caviar, jellied Clamato garni and Liberace Classic Macaroni and Cheese, and some whose names, at least, were updated, such as Retro Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Way-Over-the-Top Caviar Cheese Dip and Chicken a La King of Bling! (complete with exclamation mark).
Michael Feder said “Joy of Liberace” is different in two ways (well, besides the obvious Liberace-and-bling aspect) from most contemporary cookbooks: There’s no focus on nutrition — whether the ingredients are organic or not, or contain saturated or trans fats — and not every part of each dish is necessarily edible.
The first point is evidenced by such recipes as chicken in brandy and cream — subtitled “Less is Definitely Not More” — which lists among its ingredients butter, egg yolks and 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream, plus brandy and white wine.
As for the second? Well, that would be the huge faux rhinestones and similar bling sources that the Riviera’s longtime pastry chef Tom Martinez and staff applied to many of the dishes — especially desserts — photographed for the book. Those also were the inspiration for a Feder invention: Bling Cake.
You see, the Feders hope that the joy of Liberace will be spread by the “Joy of Liberace,” that those who read and peruse the book will be inspired to have Liberace-themed parties. All of the recipes are provided for an evening of retro fun. Where else, pray tell, would you find a recipe for the Salamiami Bouquet, which basically consists of softened cream cheese — which a Riviera staffer thoughtfully tinted pastel hues for the photo — in cornets of salami, arranged into a bouquet?
Which brings us to the concept of the Bling Cake. Michael Feder attended law school in New Orleans, where the Mardi Gras-season King Cake is legendary. It works like this: Each King Cake — a ring-shaped yeast-dough cake decorated in traditional Mardi Gras colors of yellow, green and gold — contains a small baby-shaped nonedible charm. When the cake is cut at a Mardi Gras party, the person who receives the baby in his or her piece has the honor — or burden, depending on your viewpoint — of hosting the next Mardi Gras party.
So, the Feders reasoned, why not hide a piece of bling in Liberace’s Exceptional and Extraordinary Angel Bling Cake Pie? Serve it in the days leading up to the anniversary of Liberace’s death Feb. 4 — or at any other time — and the person who receives the bling in his or her piece has the next party.
“It was Liberace’s style,” said Karan Feder, a costume designer for movies, TV and theater who currently is the Liberace Museum’s costume curator. “He was always outside the box.”
And believe it or not, all of this is for a good cause. Liberace, as Hollingsworth noted, “was a showman, but he also knew the value of education.” A scholarship recipient himself, Liberace practiced celebrity philanthropy “in the purest sense of the word,” Hollingsworth said, and well before it was either common or a little cynical, as it often is today. Among his gifts was the Liberace Foundation’s scholarship program for students of the creative arts, which to date has awarded more than $5 million in scholarships to more than 2,200 students at more than 100 American colleges and universities.
A percentage of the book’s proceeds go to the foundation, but Michael Feder said a Liberace renaissance would raise even more money for the nonprofit.
How likely is such a renaissance? Likely, said the bling-shoe-bedecked Michael Feder. He recalled an appearance at a men’s apparel convention in Las Vegas in which one of Liberace’s cars and a life-sized cutout of the musician/entertainer drew young people who may not have known how to pronounce his name but wanted to have their photo taken with him. Liberace greeting cards have grown from four in the original line to the current 18.
Up next: Liberace-themed shoes — complete with detachable cape — plus Liberace’s Pink Hot Chocolate, Luminous Lemon Drop Mix, even a church-style votive candle embellished with a cocktail recipe and the slogan “Dinner is poured,” and “Liberace is the patron saint of dazzling moms.”
Liberace was known for not taking his persona too seriously (although he was a serious musician), with such lines as, in regard to his costumes, “They look kind of funny, but they’re making me money.”
“It’s making fun nice, not making fun mean,” Michael Feder said of the renaissance concept.
And it’s all about, he said, “creating a new audience without turning off the people who loved him. The core audience has been waiting for a piece of candy.”
And the younger audience, he said, is taking a new look.
“It was like when you’re a kid,” he said, “and you don’t appreciate Grandma’s house so much” — at least until later, when you realize what a treasure trove of ’50s and ’60s furniture it is.
“It’s hard,” Feder noted, “to find authentic kitsch.”
HELLO-GORGEOUS
LIME SOUFFLE PIE
2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
1/4 cup lime juice
2/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
Grated rind of 1/2 lime
Pinch of salt
Baked pie shell
Mix gelatin with water, lime juice and 1/3 cup sugar. Separate eggs and beat yolks.
Add gelatin mixture to the beaten egg yolks and cook, stirring, until mixture coats a spoon. Add the lime rind and chill mixture until slightly thickened. Beat the egg whites with salt until almost stiff and beat in remaining sugar, a tablespoon at a time. Fold into the lime mixture and pour into the baked pie shell. Chill.
Serves 6 to 8.
LIBERACE’S EXCEPTIONAL
AND EXTRAORDINARY
ANGEL BLING CAKE PIE
2 egg whites
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
3/4 cup chopped nuts
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
Beat the egg whites with salt until almost stiff. Beat in the sugar, a tablespoon at a time. Add cream of tartar and nuts.
Spoon into a greased 9-inch pie plate and bake about an hour. Cool.
Whip the cream, add vanilla and spread over the plate. Chill.
Serves 6.
SALAMIAMI BOUQUET
1 tablespoon cream
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1/2 pound salami (about 4 to 6 inches in diameter), sliced paper thin
Mix cream with cream cheese.
Spread a little of the mixture on each slice of salami. Cut in half. Roll up and fasten with a decorative toothpick.
Serves 8.
Notes: Cream cheese can be tinted with food coloring, if desired. And let your imagination run wild with the filled salami, possibly arranging it into a bouquet complete with parsley “greenery.”
FRUIT, FRUITIER,
FRUITIEST SALAD
2 grapefruit, peeled and sectioned
4 oranges, peeled and sectioned
4 peaches, cut up
2 cups cut-up fresh pineapple
2 cups diced melon
1 cup seedless grapes
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon orange juice
1 teaspoon pineapple juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup whipped cream
Mix the fruit together in a cold serving bowl. Mix mayonnaise with remaining ingredients and toss in bowl with fruit. Serves 8.
BAKED SHRIMP WITH WHISKEY
3 pounds raw shrimp
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup melted butter
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/3 cup whiskey
Preheat broiler to medium broil. Peel the shrimp. Arrange in broiling pan.
Mix salt and pepper with butter and lemon juice and pour over the shrimp. Turn to be sure they’re coated on both sides. Broil about 4 inches from heat until they turn pink — not more than 3 minutes. Pour the whiskey over, reduce heat and cook 5 more minutes.
Serve with rice, buttered noodles, spaghetti or on toasted white bread.
Serves 6.
— Recipes from “Joy of Liberace: Retro Recipes From America’s Kitschiest Kitchen”
