Dracula
1897
Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker was a famous actor’s PA and a popular theater’s business manager, but who cares? He gave us neither the first, nor the last (I’m with Stanley “How many damn vampires are we supposed to care about?” Hudson), but the ultimate, the quintessential, the sine qua non vampire. Stoker’s Dracula is firmly embedded in our culture; more people recognize its name than that of Millard Filmore or Thomas Midgley, and that’s a whale of a feat for someone who never gave up his day job. Stoker was at the right place in the right time to do the Gothic voodoo of making a spooky supernatural story out of a culture’s coalescing fears, and he did it up right.
I have to say that this is one of my all-time favorite books, an honored member of the Bedtime Canon. Even knowing very well what’s going to happen, I still feel a chill when Team Helsing goes in search of the Count. And I have to agree with comedian Sinbad, who wondered why they always seem to be caught in Drac’s lair with the sun going down? Seriously. I’d be out an hour after dawn, every time, and set my phone alarm to go off at 5 p.m. No. 4:30.
I’ll happily read any edition, but my favorites are the one illustrated by Edward Gorey, for obvious reasons, and the Norton Critical Edition edited by Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal.
The original manuscript for the novel was found in a Pennsylvania, not Transylvania, barn in the 1980s. And Stoker’s journal about writing it was found in 2011 on his great-grandson’s bookshelf. I, too, have overloaded and under-read bookshelves, but I have a hard time understanding how that got overlooked. There doesn’t appear to be any support in either document for the notion that Stoker based the character on Vlad Tepes. Another cherished myth fangs the dust.
The entrée for our third Gothic dinner appears very early in the first chapter (not the other first chapter, “Dracula’s Guest,” which you can find in various Gothic/supernatural anthologies) as Jonathan Harker travels into the heart of Transylvania and his own doom:
We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausebergh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good bur thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl,” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians.
And now you can make it yourself.
Menu
Paprika Chicken
Cucumber Salad
Cheese plate. Because any gathering, no matter how gloomth-filled, is better with a cheese plate.
Libations: anything dark red and viscous
Dessert: Chec with raspberry sauce
Ambience
Costumes: everyone as a peasant except one person in a nice traveling suit
Rough wooden table, or ordinary table covered by a cotton tablecloth with a little embroidery on it
Candles and crosses galore
Goth It Up
At least one guest should wear his/her hair in a giant grey butt in homage to the worst film adaptation ever. Or an orange butt, in homage to Warner Brothers’ Gossamer and his haunted castle. Yes, Gothic can have elements of humor.
One of the guests should eat heartily. The rest should keep their eyes on him, occasionally exchanging meaningful looks with each other.
Say grace in Hungarian.
Recipes
Paprika Chicken
Ingredients
1 cut-up fryer
4 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika. You can just use regular paprika or lovely smoked paprika, or a combination of the two, unless you know that hunting down the Hungarian paprika will enhance the experience for you.
2 large onions, cut into longish strips.
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Flour, salt, pepper
Egg noodles
Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter and the olive oil in a large frypan. Dredge the chicken pieces in flour with a bit of salt and pepper, and brown them on both sides. Remove the chicken and add 2 tablespoons butter and the onions to the pan; stir in the paprika and cook on low-medium heat about 8 minutes, until the onions are soft. Return the chicken to the pan and cover; cook on low-medium heat for 30 minutes. Serve over egg noodles.
Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
3 large cucumbers
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 tablespoons white vinegar
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon paprika – smoked, sweet, whatever
Peel the cucumbers and slice them thinly. Place in a shallow serving dish and sprinkle with ¼ teaspoon of salt, and let them stand for half an hour; then squeeeeze the cucumber slices to remove as much liquid from them as possible. You washed your hands, right? Rinse out the serving dish and replace the squeezed cucumbers, and add the chopped onions. In a separate bowl, mix the vinegar, sugar, and paprika with two tablespoons of water; pour over the cucumber/onion mix and stir.
Cheese Plate
Get a plate. Put cheese on it. Bonus points for trappista or orda.
Chec with Raspberry Sauce
Ingredients
4 eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
½ cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
Zest from two lemons
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
4 tablespoons cocoa
Use a mixer or blender to mix eggs, lemon zest, sugar, and vanilla until smooth; add milk and oil. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl, then add to egg mixture. Stir for two minutes and pour into a large loaf pan, holding back about a cup of batter. Mix the reserved batter with the cocoa and pour over the regular batter to create marbling.
Bake at 350 for 50 – 55 minutes. Serve with raspberry sauce, for obvious reasons.
Raspberry Sauce
Buy a bottle of raspberry sauce; or combine a pint of fresh raspberries with ¼ cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons orange or lemon juice in a saucepan; whisk 2 tablespoons cornstarch into 1 cup cold water, and add to the raspberry mixture. Bring it to a boil, then simmer for about 5 minutes. Puree in a blender and strain through a fine sieve.
