6 Freeze the chilled ice cream custard in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.
7 Add the Grape-Nuts when the ice cream is almost finished. Store in the freezer until ready to serve.
Mar-A-Lago
Marjorie Merriweather Post and E.F. Hutton built this Palm Beach Florida palace at the height of the Roaring Twenties on seventeen acres between Lake Worth and the Atlantic Ocean. Designed by the Ziegfeld Follies stage set designer, Mar-A-Lago was elaborately decorated with furniture, tapestries, and paintings from decaying ducal palaces. The estate was the site for Marjorie's elaborate benefit galas where she and her hundreds of glittering guests would party the night away under an artificial blue moon. Mar-A-Lago is now owned by Donald Trump.
The Original Flapper's Hotel Room Fete
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald
Zelda Fitzgerald was born to party. She set the standard for the Jazz Age cult of youth in the 1920s, dazzling society with her unbridled spirit and fearlessness. Even before she was a wild woman she was a wild child. Growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, she acted on her impulses regardless of what other people thought. She swam in a scandalous flesh-colored bathing suit, hung out at the ice cream parlor sipping dopes instead of doing her homework, and wore mascara before the other girls did. She was no proper Southern belle! Zelda Sayre's fiery personality attracted the attention of F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance when he was an Army officer stationed near her home town during World War I. It was love at first sight for both of them. After a rocky courtship, Zelda and Scott were married in New York City in the spring of 1920 and began living the high life in peerless fashion. They took up residence in the Biltmore Hotel and regularly ordered fresh spinach and Champagne for midnight snacks.
The Fitzgeralds never lived in one place for very long. They rented a cottage in Westport, Connecticut, and continued to party with friends from New York before moving back to Manhattan. They retreated to St. Paul, Minnesota (Scott's family home) for the birth of their daughter, and then they rented a house in Great Neck, New York, where they partied with their neighbor Ring Lardner. They went to Paris to take their place in café society, partying with Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriates, and then they rented a villa on the French Riviera where Zelda entertained herself by cliff diving into the sea and dancing on restaurant tables. They returned to the United States and after a stint in Hollywood, they rented an old mansion on the Delaware River where they could get some rest from their wild ways and Scott could get down to work.
Scott turned this rich life experience into his great American novel The Great Gatsby and several more, in addition to numerous short stories. Zelda was his muse and some of her ideas were infused in his stories, for example The Jelly Bean. His novels were inspired by the life he was living with Zelda but he claimed the material as his territory. Zelda tried to carve out a career of her own as a ballerina but became obsessed with this quest to the point of exhaustion. So she started competing with him in the literary world, writing a lengthy play, Candalabra, a novel, Save Me the Waltz, and short stories including Eulogy on the Flapper. Zelda also began painting and ultimately had an exhibition of her work in New York in 1934. The following party is a tribute to Zelda's arrival in Manhattan and the decadent hotel life the newly-wed Fitzgeralds shared at the dawn of the Jazz Age.
Room Service for a Party of Two
In honor of the salad days of Zelda and Scott, this intimate party is for lovers—lovers of romance and fancy hotels, champagne and room service. Stay in your bedroom all day watching movies and enjoying these dishes. My favorite thing to order from room service in a luxury hotel is breakfast in bed, and the recipes for Eggs Benedict and Hollandaise Sauce are classics of the genre. Waldorf Salad is suitable for a light lunch while you are lazing the day away in your “suite.” This salad was named after the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, where it was invented in 1896. In homage to the spinach and Champagne the Fitzgeralds dined on at the Biltmore, Champagne Creamed Spinach combines both ingredients to make flapper-inspired ambrosia for your midnight pleasure.
Eggs Benedict
SERVES 2
INGREDIENTS:
2 English muffins
1 tablespoon white vinegar
4 slices Canadian bacon
4 eggs
½ cup warm Hollandaise sauce (recipe follows)
2 black olives
METHOD:
1 Split the English muffins, wrap them in foil, and keep them in a warm oven until ready to assemble the Eggs Benedict.
2 Bring a saucepan full of water to a simmer and stir in the vinegar.
3 While the water is coming to a simmer, fry the Canadian bacon in a skillet, and then keep it in a warm place until ready to assemble the Eggs Benedict.
4 Crack the eggs individually into a teacup and gently slide them into the simmering vinegar water. Poach the eggs until the whites are set and the centers are still soft. Remove poached eggs from the simmering water with a slotted spoon and drain them on several layers of paper towels.
5 Remove the English muffins from the warm oven and open them. Place a piece of fried Canadian bacon on each muffin half and then top the Canadian bacon with a poached egg.
6 Spoon enough Hollandaise sauce onto each poached egg to cover.
7 Cut the black olives in half lengthwise and garnish each egg with one of the halves. Serve two eggs per person.
Hollandaise Sauce
SERVES 2
INGREDIENTS:
1 egg yolk
1½ teaspoons cold water
2 ounces melted butter
½ teaspoon lemon juice
pinch cayenne pepper
salt and white pepper to taste
METHOD:
1 Whisk egg yolk and water in a stainless steel or glass bowl over simmering water and cook until mixture thickens to ribbon stage.
2 Slowly pour melted butter into yolks, drop by drop at first, whisking constantly to form an emulsion. Pour the butter in a thin stream after the emulsion gets started and the sauce starts to thicken, and continue whisking.
3 Remove bowl from heat and whisk in the lemon juice and cayenne pepper.
4 Season sauce with salt and white pepper to taste.
5 Serve immediately or keep in a warm but not too hot place until ready to serve. (A thermos will hold it at the perfect temperature for a long while.)
Waldorf Salad
SERVES 2
INGREDIENTS:
¼ cup cream
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 cup diced red apple
½ cup diced celery
¼ cup halved seedless grapes
¼ cup chopped pecans
1 teaspoon lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
2 leaves butter lettuce
METHOD:
1 Whip the cream to soft peaks in a bowl. Whisk the mayonnaise into the whipped cream.
2 Add the