My debt to the 60 Minute Gourmet

Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey taught New Yorkers to cook. I was one of them.

Michael Kraus New York Times

I used to look forward to Wednesdays the way other people did Fridays because that was the day the Times ran its 60 Minute Gourmet column.  It was the early 70’s, I was living at my loft on Houston Street, and I used to pick up the Times on my way to work at the Village Voice, which was about 10 blocks away on University Place in those days.  The Times had begun running the 60 Minute Gourmet in the 60’s. 

It was written at first by its food editor, Craig Claiborne, a Mississippi born man who had served in the Navy during World War II.  He got a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and used his GI Bill benefits to attend the Lausanne Hotel School in Switzerland. He made his way back to the United States and settled in New York where he ended up joining the staff of Gourmet magazine and later moved to the Times where he settled in as restaurant critic and food editor.

The 60 Minute Gourmet was utterly unique in that it was a column that basically said to the average reader of the New York Times, you too can be a gourmet cook, and you don’t have to spend half the day searching for exotic ingredients and the rest of the day over a hot stove.  You could pick up what you needed to make an incredible meal at your local grocery store, and it would take you only 60 minutes!  What a concept! 

I had quickly become interested in cooking soon after arriving in New York principally because I discovered I couldn’t eat out on the $80 a week I was earning at the Voice.  So I paid 75 cents for a little paperback cookbook at Brentano’s on Eighth Street and started there. I had no idea what I was doing, but it turned out that the cheapest cookbook on the shelf was on French peasant cooking.  The recipes were straightforward and uncomplicated.  And man, did the food taste great!  There were recipes for pork chops that called for vinegar and Dijon mustard and pickles!  Chicken cooked with white wine and onions and garlic and tarragon!  Green beans sauteed with red onions and served with slices of lemon!  Duck roasted on a bed of – get this – lettuce and peas!

The Times hired a French chef named Pierre Franey who had run the uptown luxury restaurant Le Pavillon to write the column with Claiborne, and off they went, turning a few column inches in the “Living” section of the paper into a weekly culinary adventure.  I would clip the column and stick it in my pocket and pick up the stuff I needed as I walked home from the Voice.  I would buy pork chops or a chicken or a couple of Newport steaks from the Florence Meat Market on Jones Street, or I’d stop for Italian sausages at Faicco’s on Bleecker, or walk a little further down the street and buy a few soft shelled crabs at the fish market and then pop next door to the vegetable market for Brussels sprouts and asparagus and leeks and mushrooms and garlic and new potatoes.

In the middle of the kitchen I had a big butcher block prep table I had  picked up in the restaurant district on the Bowery on which I would lay out all the ingredients and then I would check out the recipe again.  I remember one day a friend from the Voice walked home with me for some reason and it turned out to be the day Claiborne and Franey reprised their classic recipe for beef Stroganoff.  I cubed the steaks from the Florence meat market and quickly browned them in butter.  Removing the meat from the pan, I added chopped onion and mushrooms, quickly sauteed them and added a can of beef broth and turned the pan down to a simmer.  Returning the beef cubes to the pan, in a separate bowl I mixed sour cream, Worcestershire sauce, and a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste.  I spooned some of the liquid from the pan into the sour cream mixture and whipped it until it was well mixed and then turned off the stove and slowly added it to the pan spoonful by spoonful until the sauce was creamy and smooth.

I served it, as the 60 Minute Gourmet recommended, with some buttered noodles and parsley.  My friend from the Voice was astounded when we sat down to eat.  Here was a “gourmet” meal I had whipped up in less than an hour and the flavors exploded in our mouths.

 

I bet I cooked 75 percent of the recipes they ran in the 60 Minute Gourmet.  It was like a weekly trip around Europe with occasional forays into more exotic locales like India for curries and Mexico for chili and down south for cornbread and “smothered” chicken Claiborne had learned to cook as a boy in Mississippi.  Eventually, they published two 60 Minute Gourmet cookbooks, which are still in print and well worth picking up, if only because the recipes are so easy and tasty and quick.  Back then, they changed my life by introducing me to new flavors and combinations of ingredients and approaches to cooking.  Today the revelations are likely to be less profound, but just as satisfying.  There is something magical about being able to cook up something for your family in less than an hour which nearly always looks gorgeous on the plate and tastes way better than you would ever expect.

It’s kind of strange looking back on those days from a time where the Times has an entire food section edited by the talented Sam Sifton on Wednesdays, multiple pages, maybe a dozen recipes, and wonderfully mouth-watering photos, not to mention a world of restaurants that range from your own backyard to the Far East and Africa and even the Pacific islands.  Some of those restaurants are closed now because of COVID, and others are operating at greatly diminished capacities not to mention menus.  All the more reason to take a trip around your tastebuds with Pierre Franey and Craig Claiborne.

So here’s a 60 Minute Gourmet recipe for chicken breasts with lemon and herbs:

4 skinless chicken breasts

Flour for dredging

2 tablespoons olive oil

Fresh or dried thyme or tarragon

1 or 2 chopped shallots (or ½ an onion)

2 or 3 cloves of chopped garlic

Zest of one lemon

Juice from the lemon

Half to full cup of chicken broth, canned is okay

2 or three tablespoons of butter

Dredge the breasts lightly in flour.  Heat the oil in a skillet and add the chicken breasts in one layer.  Sautee at medium heat until the breasts are lightly browned on both sides, about 5 minutes a side.

Pour off most of the oil and add the shallots and garlic and saute for about a minute (don’t burn the garlic).  Add the herbs, lemon zest, lemon juice, and chicken broth to the pan. Cook briefly until the sauce begins to thicken.  Remove the chicken breasts to a platter and swirl the butter into the pan.  At this point, you could add a half cup of heavy cream and keep the pan on the heat until it warms.  Either way, pour the sauce over the chicken and serve with rice or new potatoes or buttered egg noodles with parsley.

Sure, it’s a trip down memory lane to the 70’s.  But cook it, and you’ll be surprised how bright and fresh and brand new it tastes.  And it took you less than an hour!