Betty Crocker’s International Cookbook (1980)

Dolmades and crepes ... and a memory of pork chops

I’ve written previously about growing up in a large household, where my mom cooked a hearty and healthy dinner every night, for years, for 11 people. My mom was a good cook, but her dinners didn’t stray too far from the meat-starch-veggie triad, supported by the convenience of canned and frozen vegetables.

I have found memories of her pork chops covered in cream of mushroom soup, cooked in her workhorse electric frying pan. It’s a dish whose flavor I can still dredge up from my memory. I never asked her for a specific recipe for this, and when I’ve tried to make it as an adult it has never been the same. Was it the electric frying pan that made the difference? The cut of pork chop? (It’s an investigation for another time.)

Her repertoire of dishes really didn’t include anything that strayed into what we would think of as “ethnic” cooking. My exposure to dishes from other cultures didn’t stray much from our once-a-month ordering out of pizza (always on a Sunday) and my mom’s spaghetti casserole (which put me off green olives for years).

So it wasn’t until I went to college, and moved to the city after, that I was exposed to garlic, ate my first bagel, had a taco, tried to figure out sushi, had a crepe, ate tandoori chicken, etc. And when I started cooking for myself and was ready to expand beyond my two-volume, mass market paperback edition of The Joy of Cooking (the most unsuitable format for a cookbook I ever had) I was ready to tip-toe into “international” cooking.

I don’t remember if Betty Crocker’s International Cookbook (1980) was something my ex-wife and I got early in our marriage, but the condition of the book highlights what a workhorse it was. In the days before the internet, a large size cookbook with vivid pictures was essential to give the cook an idea of what the final dish should look like, especially when cooking with new ingredients.

This cookbook came out at the dawn of the era where key ingredients from different countries became easier to access. But, with the “Betty Crocker” name attached, this cookbook also assured the cook that there often might be a more easily purchased ingredient that could substitute for some “exotic” spice or grain or other foodstuff. And the pictures give the cook a sense of what the final dish SHOULD look like.

This cookbook was a workhorse, as the cover and inside pages attest. And, as with many of my cookbooks, the most used recipes have well-stained pages, and the book easily opens to these pages.

One recipe in particular stands out, the one for stuffed grape leaves. Nowadays, dolmades are easily found in many grocery stores. But 40 years ago, you either found them in a Middle Eastern restaurant (if your town was fortunate to have one) or you made them yourself (which usually meant a trip to some specialty grocery store to find grape leaves).

(Sidenote … I realized this summer, after only 20+ years of living in this house, that I have a bumper crop of grape leaves that grow on my fence every year. Next year, maybe I will harvest them.)

I also often made crepes, though not the recipe in this book. But, seafood crepes sounded tasty so that’s what I made today/

(Final side note … there is little food styling here. I don’t know how to roll dolmades … or any other rolled food … very well. And my camera technique was rushed with bad lighting. But both dishes were delicious.)