Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 19

oy- WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1986 Pittsburgh OSHfuXfltC It iTffirfi Et cetera Great pumpkin recipes MP Amateur chefs can carve out a niche in the culinary world Saturday by entering their favorite original pumpkin recipe in the PPG Place pumpkin cooking contest. Entries will be judged on ease of preparation, flavor and appearance. Prizes of $100, $50 and $25 in gift certificates from the shops at PPG Place will be awarded to the winners. Entriesalong with written recipes, must be received in PPG Plaza by noon and will be judged at 1. The contest is part of Saturday's PPG Place Pumpkin Festival.

Hearty, healthy eating If you are concerned about eating healthy for your heart, particularly when dining out, then consider obtaining a free copy of "Dining Out to Your Heart's Content." The guide, prepared by the American Heart Association, rates more than 70 area restaurants on whether they can accommodate special dietary requests, provide non-smoking areas, prepare dishes without adding salt or monosodium glutamate (MSG) and eight other health-related questions. For a free copy of the guide, call the Western Pennsylvania Chapter of the AHA at 731-7500. Welcome back, Gussie Businesswoman Gussie Glick will return to Market Square when she opens her new, New Diamond Market in the lower level of the Garden on the Square on Nov. 3. The old New Diamond Market closed a year ago this month after losing its lease in the G.C.

Murphy store. The new shop, with its trademark green awning, will carry fresh poultry, fish and produce and have a deli section offering a variety of cheeses. Guild benefit Robert W. Kernicky, executive chef of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, will be the man behind the feast that will be served when the Greater Pittsburgh Guild for the Blind holds its Fifth Annual Gourmet Dinner and Dance on Dec. 7.

In the past four years, the gourmet dinner has raised $45,825 to help rehabilitate the blind and visually impaired. Tickets are $100 per plate and reservations are limited to 180. The donation is tax deductible. Reservations can be made until Dec. 1 by calling 221-2200.

What's cookin HMO of Western Pennsylvania is offering a Culinary Cuisine cooking class on Tuesday at the Vandergrift Treatment Center, 110 Grant Ave. The class is for those interested in maintaining a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet when cooking at home or dining out. Fee is $2 per person and includes materials, handouts and food samples. For additional information, call 339-6641. Genesis of Pittsburgh, publisher of the children's cookbook "Young-Stirs," is sponsoring two free cooking classes for children on Nov.

1 and 8 at the Annex Cookery in Shadyside. The hour-long classes, limited in size, will meet at 9 a.m. Children will gel hands-on experience in general cooking skills. To-Tegister, call 835-5367. What's new Diet take-out, at the Squirrel Hill Diet Center on Forbes Avenue.

Professional caterers will prepare one-portion meals and desserts with fresh ingredients that are free of salt and preservatives. Prices range from $2 to $4.75 per meal. For additional information, call 422-DIET (3438) La Normande on Center Avenue, Shadyside, is celebrating its eighth birthday on Nov. 7 with a black tie and champagne reception, a menu of entirely original dishes and Chateau Lafite Rothschild wine. The reception begins at 7:30 p.m., followed by dinner at 8:15.

Cost: $125 per person. For reservations, call 621-0744. Compiled by Marcia Bennett By Michelle Pilecki iqueur with fruit. It's a tempting combination, for holiday enter-Itaining or gift-giving. And are trickier, but blend the flavors you like.

It might be a good idea, though, to blend vodka one-to-one or even two-to-one to keep the flavors of strong spirits from overpowering the fruits. Select juicy, ripe fruit in season when you can. Frozen or even canned fruit also works. Slice or chop coarsely you want to expose a lot of surface area, but you also want to be able to remove the fruit easily. Small berries (like raspberries) just need to be capped and rinsed.

Most fruits don't even have to be peeled (bananas, pineapples and the fuzzily skinned peaches being obvious exceptions). easy to make at home. But if you want it for Christmas, the time to make it is now because fruit-flavored liqueurs take time. But very little of your time. The second law of thermodynamics goes to work here to blend the flavors of fruit, spice and alcohol over weeks or months without human intervention or supervision.

A little preparation time is all that's needed. Liqueurs require a few minutes here and a few minutes there over about a month. Combine fruit, spice, spirits and wait for the tasty results And, as an extra bonus don't throw away the fruit once you've finished with it. While the liqueur The results will excite the admiration of friends and the envy of enemies (or vice versa), not to mention an enormous saving over the commercial varieties. And the creative cook or amateur with a healthy sense of adventure can try new taste combinations to create something unique.

Making your own liqueurs is unbelievably easy. All you do is toss some fruit, spices, herbs or nuts into a jar, fill it with liquor, cap it, and shake it a bit every day for a couple of weeks. Then strain it, filter it, mix it with sugar syrup, bottle it, age it, and drink it. What could be simpler? (Actually, there is an easier way. You can buy commercial liqueur essences from some Italian grocers and wine-making suppliers, to add to alcohol.

But it doesn't offer a particularly wide range of flavors, and it's not nearly as much fun.) now tastes like the fruit, the fruit is equally inundated with alcohol. Send the kids to bed early and spoon the leftover fruit over ice cream. To make liqueur, pile the fruit loosely into a clean, glass, wide-mouth jar. Never use plastic which may impart flavors or metal which may react with andor discolor the mixture. Add whole spices or fresh herbs.

Ground spices will be hard to filter out, and dried herbs (if they're past their prime) may taste musty. Chunks of citrus fruits, citrus peels, or apple peels are possible extra flavors, as well as chopped nuts, or even flower petals (unsprayed, of course). Pour the liquor of your choice into the jar, cover the (Continued on Page 21) Homemade liqueurs are also cheap high quality, but very inexpensive. And legal, too. Since you're just flavoring alcohol, not distilling it, the commonwealth doesn't mind.

You may not be able perfectly to mimic commercial brands, but you can create new flavors uniquely yours. Now for the details. The liquor base most frequently used is vodka clear, colorless and tasteless vodka. The cheapest brand of unflavored, charcoal-filtered vodka in the state store or the back of your closet is perfect. This way the flavor of the fruit predominates.

You can also try other liquors. Rum is especially good with tropical fruits. Brandy does well with peaches, plums, apples, apricots and cherries. Whiskeys and gin Specialties are lure of Twentieth Century Club r'l fresh melon cubes. House and Holden are sisters, but House has only been in the club kitchen for the past 11 years.

Up until then, she was preoccupied feeding a husband and family of five children. For as long as Lewis can remember, the TCC has been making its caramel and nut soaked "sticky buns." Thomas Gamrod, club manager, says he believes the original recipe for the sweet rolls was published back in 1910 in a TCC cookbook, which has long been out of print. The rolls are served at all brunches, lunches and dinners and can be purchased by TCC members if ordered 24 hours in advance. Equally popular among the club's sweets are its macaroon cookies, apple dumplings, German chocolate cake and fresh butterscotch sauce, served warm over pecan balls. Many of the menu items have been developed from members' favorite recipes, Gamrod says.

Since the membership is made up essentially of women, a lot of the recipes include chicken or turkey and fresh vegetables. Particularly appealing are the fresh tomato slices spread with a parsley, garlic and creamed cheese filling and then stacked, breaded and baked. "We make everything from scratch," Gamrod says, and the TCC is willing to share most of its recipes, "all except our honey salad dressing which is top secret." Scheduling their luncheon series at the Twentieth Century Club is sort of a homecoming for the Symphony Silhouettes. They have met in a variety of places over the past four decades, but are returning to Oakland to be more accessible to their members and to enjoy the good food. By Marcia Bennett Post-Gazette Staff Writer Can airy-light macaroons be addicting? Do people really crave a special cheese souffle or a homemade butterscotch sauce? If you've tasted the macaroons prepared by Blanche Lewis or the cheese souffle created by Lillian Holden in the kitchens of the Twentieth Century Club in Oakland, you know the answer.

The dozens of house specialties "prepared especially for the ladies" have been a powerful lure to bring the Symphony Silhouettes back to the Oakland club for their five lectureluncheon series which begins at 11 a.m. Oct. 30. Formed 39 years ago by a small group of music lovers, the Silhouettes still meet to learn more about the symphony and composers from noted Pittsburgh musicians. At their first meeting the guest speaker was Vladimir Bakaleinikoff, music adviser to the symphony.

The first speaker this season will be Joseph Wilcox Jenkins, professor of music at Duquesne University. Holden, who lives in Baldwin, and Lewis, who lives in Terrace Village, aren't sure how long they have been working together in the club's kitchens, but they know it is more than 35 years. "I don't even use recipes anymore," Holden says as she stirs large pans of simmering turkey which' will soon be encased in Lewis' flaky pastry for individual pot pies. Across the large, spotless kitchen, Myrtle "Pokey" House of Bulger, Washington County, prepares frosted grapes to garnish her specialty pineapple boats filled with a fresh cWcken salad and garnished with Best bet A touch of Beverly Hills, will be coming to Pittsburgh via Home's candy department. The Beverly Hills Confection Collection of white-, dark-and milk-chocolate-covered cookies, each about the size of a large walnut and costing nearly $1 each, is the newest West Coast craze to come to town.

They are packaged in half-dozen dozen and two-dozen ($19) boxes and are an extravagant and yum- my treat for a special friend. 1 Bill Levis Post-Gazette Myrtle "Pokey" House, left, and Lillian Holden in the Twentieth Century Clvb Iritrhcn. i.