The Seduction of Mimi

Originally written for Jeannette Ferrary's workshop: Food for Thought

ONCE UPON A TIME I received a vintage, dog-eared copy of Mimi Sheraton's The Seducer's Cookbook as a gift from my mother.

The giving of this book from mother to child is, apparently, a time-honored tradition.

The note, "Somehow I've got to get a daughter in law! Love to Michael from Mother, 1967" is scribbled inside the front cover...

I'm crossing my fingers that my own mother is simply appreciative of the fact that I admire Mimi's work, the latest of which, The Bialy Eaters, reflects the author's obsession with a salty, onion-flecked cousin of the bagel best eaten at Kosher bakeries on New York's Lower East Side.

Unlike the well-researched and often moving Bialy Eaters, Sheraton's The Seducer's Cookbook (published in 1963) features food as mere appetizer, or more specifically, bait:

"Just as a mouse trap sits with its lure of cheese, waiting for the hungry mouse to bound over to be captured forever."

"EVER SINCE I WAS FIFTEEN, and persuaded to neck with a boy who gave me a frozen Milky Way," begins the author, "I have been aware of the seductive powers of food." Even the legendary lover Casanova, she continues, used food as "the main weapon in his personal war on female chastity." After all, Mimi winks, how could a girl not trust a man providing her with wonderful things to eat?

I MET UP WITH MY OWN Casanova in Ferrara, Italy, not far from Bologna. He was a respected (married) professor who looked like Woody Allen, spoke little English, and laughed uproariously at everything I said. A bit naive, I missed signals telegraphed throughout twelve-courses of truffle-enriched madness, and agreed to let the little professor drive me back to my hotel -- a long drive during which he continued to roar with laughter as I hissed the word, "NO!"

I may have been "intoxicated and confused" by the "provocative and lascivious" fonduta served in Ferrara, yet I somehow managed to keep my clothes on.

In The Seducer's Cookbook, a wiser Auntie Mimi leads equally inexperienced innocents through such perplexing moments: "If you cannot get frankfurters or sausages that are truly skinless," she warns, "peel them before slicing."

Sage advice is also provided for planning a menu to seduce another woman's husband. Baked oysters and beef in lemon-parsley butter are necessary -- along with restraint -- because, Mimi wisecracks, "he can get home-cooked food anytime and maybe that's what he's bored with." After the filet, "he may feel so at home he'll slip right into bed with you without ever noticing the difference."

Ouch!

As for the seduction of ones' own spouse, Mimi yawns, "God knows it's convenient -- no running around at odd hours with strangers, no need for subterfuge, no getting out of warm beds on cold nights to go home... "

HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE about the traveling salesman and the beet farmer's daughter? Yes, all of this does have a certain 'take my wife, please' quality -- yet Mimi Sheraton is a meticulous and very tasty (pun intended) food writer. She can be elegant and specific: "Give her a big balloon-shaped goblet full of a golden dry vermouth, with one piece of ice and a long curl of orange peel... " and "...untended meat burned black as charcoal, so that it looked like some fossil unearthed from the ruins of Pompeii."

Sheraton also provides full menus lovingly laid out as a course of action for weakening the resistance of your prey -- as well as reviving those who have suffered "a surfeit of food, attention, and you."

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

• Grilled orange slices with brown sugar and butter

• Scrambled eggs with caraway seeds and pan-fried ham slices aromatic with ginger

• Freshly baked corn sticks with sweet butter and cottage cheese,

• honey or orange marmalade

• Coffee, and plenty of it

Surprisingly, Sheraton's most instructive -- and endearing -- writing appears buried in the text of her recipes with recommendations to apply toppings "over the asparagus, spreading nuts with the back of a spoon;" "dry the meat and wipe it with a cloth dipped in brandy;" and, "sprinkle with a few chopped pecans if you have them around."

From Sheraton's In My Mother's Kitchen: Recipes & Reminiscences, the charming note that "soup should cook at a smile," is a personal favorite.

MIMI SHERATON IS A SERIOUS WRITER. The provocative, comedic (and commercial) quality of her early work accurately reflects a time when suggestive (if not downright dirty-minded) performers like Lenny Bruce and Alan Sherman became money-making recording stars in the league of a 1960s-era Barbra Streisand.

Sheraton is the respected author of sentimental cookbook shelf classics like Visions of Sugarplums, The German Cookbook, and The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup -- but she also co-wrote Borscht-Belt comedian Alan King's bio, Is Salami & Eggs Better Than Sex?

After discovering Sheraton's The Seducer's Cookbook, I'm wondering if her sequel to The Bialy Eaters might not turn out to be Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Borscht, But Were Afraid To Ask.

After all, good food, served in appropriate ways, never goes out of style; and no matter what's on the menu, Mimi Sheraton scores.

[Flickr posting: https://flickr.com/photos/lipsticktraces/95173751]