The odyssey began with a letter to Dave Cathey (Oklahoman Food Editor) from Pat Kearney of Quail Creek supplying a set of recipes.
Of course, Dave being the chicken-dog reporter and culinary historian he’s, jumped at this opportunity.
Kearney’s Chi Omega sorority at the University of Oklahoma had a fundraiser to be produced within the Hilton Inn on Northwest Expressway to assist the chapter’s deliberate renovations in 1971.
Named the Gourmet Fare, the sorority contacted well-known eating place, club and motel chefs from all over the metropolis and requested them to offer a signature recipe for a tasting and personal demonstration of a specialty dish. Common in recent times, an event of this type changed into uncommon for the time. Guests even took home a program that covered all of the recipes.
The unexpected hassle encountered become wrangling this array of cooks to be anywhere at the identical time, and getting a chef to write down a recipe is like herding a flock of geese.
But the Chi Omegas at OU had been a set of creative and decided women. I recognize from non-public enjoy how determined they have been as my sister Dr. Kaye Sears is an alumnus of that same chapter of Chi Omega. Kaye majored in Home Economics, equal as Pat Kearney.
Pat met with Dave and I and shared the recipe e-book she’d stored from the event. Paging through it, I identified the beginning of the various treasured recipes way to my affiliation with the chefs worried over time.
The lengthy-misplaced recipes evoked such a lot of memories. Many are from lengthy closed eating places and motels. Their creations are as numerous as John Frank’s Seafood au Gratin, Junior’s famous Caesar Salad, my recipe from Larry and Jerry Wood’s Christopher’s for Sautéed Red Snapper Fillets with Snow Butter (a recipe I gleaned in New Orleans.)
Most exciting locate for me became the treatment of a fried shrimp labeled Indonesian Prawns via Dan Sloan.
I knew them as Box Office Shrimp from a practical mystery eating place in a domestic on NW 13th road, just west of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Secret due to the fact the widely known consumers should drink with abandon.
I even have acknowledged this dish for many years; it turned into introduced to me by my longtime buddy the overdue Lloyd Henry Cook. Lloyd served as govt Chef at The University of Oklahoma’s Memorial Union for twenty years. After Lloyd retired from the Union, he assisted me and my past due nephew Chip Sears in catering parties all over the kingdom, inclusive of a wedding in Pauls Valley featuring a suckling pig — a story for all over again.
In all of the years, I knew Lloyd, he never gave me the exact technique. Thanks to Pat Kearney, I found out just how easy, but particular, it’s miles.
So right here, nearly 50 years later, thanks to Pat, is how to make Box Office Shrimp. We tested the recipe with some local culinarians to rave opinions.
