"Patio food of the '50s was like Prozac for the tongue and tummy," says the introduction to "Patio Daddy-O, '50s Recipes With a '90s Twist" (Chronicle Books; $12.95).
Authors Gideon Bosker, Karen Brooks, and Leland and Crystal Payton have assembled a collection of mouth-watering recipes. There are even recipes for city dwellers who have never whiled away the hours fanning the charcoal.Take, for example, the Hot-Iron Grilled Cheese Sandwich, cooked with a hot clothes iron. The recipe, in brief, involves buttering the outside of two slices of white bread, using them to encase two slices of American cheese, wrapping the whole in a single layer of tin foil, putting it on a counter or cutting board and placing on top of it a hot iron. "Leave the iron on each side until the sandwich is very flat and toasted, about four minutes per side."
The chef is advised to lift the foil periodically to test cooking progress. No iron setting is given. Presumably, whatever you'd use for a Banlon shirt would work just fine.
- Leah Garchik