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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1956-01-05, Page 2Table Talks • The French have gained a world-wide reputation for mak- ing delectably seasoned soups. The back -of -the -stove soup pot —into which is tossed and poured every bit of otherwise unused food and every drop of water in which meats and vege- table are cooked, awaiting the final seasoning on soup day—is said to have originated there. French onion soup is popular everywhere, especially among men, One of the tricks that makes it so much liked is that French onion soup is usually served in earthenware bowls— and there's a reason ! That toast- ed, cheese -covered French bread that is floating on your onion soup was placed in the bottom of the individual bow] after be- ing toasted. It was then topped with the cheese and the 'bowl was placed under the broiler while the cheese browned light- ly and the bowl heated. The bowl was then removed from the oven and filled with hot soup. The browned cheese -toast rises to the top when the soup is added. * * Most French cooks make beef ztock by a long process of boil- ing meat and bones to the de- sired strength, but canned beef bouillon can be used to make a version that is almost as satisfy- ing to one who enjoys Inion soup. Large sweet onions are usually chosen for this soup, though the medium - sized, stronger, red onions may be used, if you like. Peel onions and cut in uniform thin slices before beginning your soup. FRENCH ONION SOUP 4 large sweet onions, peeled and sliced 3 cans beef bouillon 1 teaspoon salt Dash of Worcestershire sauce Freshly ground black pepper Butter for browning onion Melt butter and brown onion slices, watching and stirring with a spatula to prevent burn- ing. Onion slices should become transparent with a faint tinge of brown. Add other ingredients and cook slowly for about 1/2 hour. Serve as described above. * Italy is known for its mine- strone soup and there are in- numerable variations even in that country. Minestrone is usually thick withvegetables, steasoned lightly with garlic, and served with a topping of grated Parmesan cheese. The follow- ing recipe is the type of soup very frequently served in Italy. Minestrone 2 pounds beef soup bone with meat 4 quarts cold water 2 teaspoons salt 1 cup dried red kidney beans (or 21/ cups canned) 1/2 cup each, chopped onion and minced parsley 1 tablespoon olive oil 2 cups shredded cabbage 1 cup sliced fresh snap beans 1 cup sliced fresh carrots 1 cup diced celery n% cup shelled fresh peas 1 cup thinly sliced zucchini squash 1 cup tomato puree (or a 6 -oz. can tomato paste) 5 slices bacon, finely chopped 34 cup elbow or shell macaroni or broken -pieces spaghetti 34 cup rice 2 tablespoons salt 2 teaspoons ground sage leaves 34 teaspoon ground black pep- per Prated cheese Place soup bone and meat, water, 2 teaspoons salt and dried beans (if dried beans are used) In large kettle. Cover and -sim- mer until meat and beans are tender (2-3 hours). Remove soup bone, trim off meat, dis- card bone and add meat to stock. Saute onion and parsley in dive oil; add to stock. Add vegetables, bacon, macaroni, rice and seasonings (If canned beans aeare used, add at this time). Cover, Simmer 30 minutes or i, • xtyt:i,t iii TV 15 THE "WATCHMAN" AT TAMC PLANT—Robotsentinels with superhuman eyes which never close are watching the Cadillac Tank plant. They're two television cameras, mounted on towers, like that shown at left. In other photo, Guard Alfred M. Benham glances at Iwo television screens to see that all is well. The screens, loca ted in a central communications office in the plant, show Benham what the cameras os te. By the cameras. pushingbuttons, he can regulate the move - Crazy Hypnotist Caused Four Year Panic The little town of Sala in Sweden was in the grip of a panic-stricken fear. Neighbours spied on neighbours, and friends on friends. For, in a town where even petty crime was a rarity, four brutal murders had been committed—and the mur- derer was still at large. Where would he strike next? For four years the police were baffled, until their chief played a hunch. The murder series had begun quietly enough with the disap- pearance in November, 1930, of a young dairy -worker named Sven Eriksson. Two nights later his body was found in the near- by lake. , Eriksson had been shot at point-blank range, and though the 'bullet touched his until vegetables, macaroni, and rice are tender. Serve hot in heated bowls. Sprinkle Par- mesan cheese over soup. 16-20 servings. Split Pea Soup 1 ham shank bone 3 quarts water 2 cups split green peas 2 teaspoons salt i!& teaspoon pepper 1 medium-size onion, sliced 4 tablespoons melted butter or margarine 6 tablespoons flour Combine hairs bone, water, peas, pepper, and onion. Cover; bring to boil, then simmer for 21/-3 hours. Strain soup. Cut meat from bone. Mix butter and flour; add some soup stock and .stir until smooth; add to soup. Cook and stir until soup is thickened. Add ham that was removed `from bone (add addi- tional cubed, cooked ham, if desired — about 1 cup). Cook until ham is thoroughly heated. * * * Here is a corn and chicken chowder that is easy to make. Garnish it with buttered : op - corn, toast cubes, chopped pars- ley, chopped chives, or with slivered, toasted almonds just before serving. Corn -Chicken Chowder 2 tablespoons butter 4¢cup finely chopped onions 1 cup finely diced raw potato 1 cup chicken broth 1 cup finely chopped cooked chicken 1 No. 2 can whole kernel corn 2 teaspoons salt ''Dash pepper 3 cups milk Dash Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons minced parsley Melt butter in saucepan; add onion and cook until yellow. Add potatoes and chic'.en broth. Cover and cook until potato is tender. Add remaining ingredi- ents and heat only to boiling point. Add additional season- ings, if you like. Serve in heat- ed bowls. Serves 6. DELATED GIFT — Mrs. Suzanne Silvorcruys Stevenson puts finish Ing touches on her two -years -late wedding present to her bro- Ther, Baron Robert Silvercruys, Belgium's ambassador to the United States. It's to marble bust of his wife, the former Mrs. Rosemary McMahon. The Baroness, widow of Connecticut's late Sen. Brion McMahon, married Sllvercruys In 1953. The bust is eventually to be placed in the ltelglan Embassy in Washing. tam Model far the bust Is a plotter cast, left, fashioned two years ago, heart, he was still alive when his body was flung into the water for the coroner found that death was due chiefly to drowning. Eriksson was trusted by his firm and respected by those knew him. He had no known enemies. Who would want to kill him? Robbery was discounted as a motive, for the victim's wages were intact in his wallet. Extensive police inquiries in and around Sala failed to iden- tify the murderer or even the motive behind his crime. There was only a single clue, the bul- let extracted from the body of the victim. But all efforts to find the weapon or its owner failed. Weeks and months went by and the police made no head- way at all. The work was com- plicated, moreover, by a series of unusual minor crimes in and around Sala—burglaries, stolen cars, robberies and so on. .And these defied all efforts at solu- tion. Then, on the night of Sep- tember 15th, 1933, the house of Axel Fjellberg, a prominent local mining official, caught fire and was completely gutted. From the smoking ruins next morning the firemen recovered two bodies, both badly burned but recognizable. They were Axel Kjellberg and his house- keeper. Both had been shot in the head. The fire had been started to cover the double murder. This time the motive was soon apparent. A safe, scorch- ed, blackened and empty, was found. It had contained some 18,500 kroner (worth then about £1,000) which Kjellberg had drawn from the bank the pre- vious day to pay the wages of the mineworkers. Clues were scarce. The smell of paraffin on partially -burned timber proved that arson had been committed; but the bullets extracted from the bodies re- vealed that they had been fired from the same gun as that which had killed Eriksson. When the news of the double murder became known in Sala, a special meeting was called and citizens took turns to pa- trol the' streets at night. The murderer was not found, but for some months there were no more killings. Then, in the early morning of October 12th, 1934, one of the patrols saw a house on fire. This time the fire brigade ar- rived in time to extinguish the blaze before it had got very far. But it was too late to save 60 - year -old Mrs. Bloomqvist, the wealthy widow who owned the house, The firemen found her body in the scorched bed. But she appeared to have died from suf- focation, and not from burns which were relatively slight. There was no sign of a bullet wound. The body was sent to Stock- holm for a full post-mortem by experts, And the report con- firmed the local doctor's diag- nosis: death by suffocation, but not from smoke! Robbery was again the mo- tive. Mrs. Bloomqvst kept a great deal of valuable jewel» lery (worth about £1,200) in a locked metal box in her bed- room, instead of depositing it In a bank vault, But when a search was made for it, only the fire -twisted box could be found. The lock had been forced and the box was empty. Again the police were baf- fled. Only the motive and the lack of real clues suggested that this, too, was the work of the same cold-blooded "mon- eaters.°° In Sala and the near -by coun- tr elde a hew terror 'enveloped the people. Who would be the next victikot It was almost eighteen months later that the police had their first real break. For on that day another Sala• man was struck down. He was a strong young man named Elon Petterson and worked in the office of a local stone quarry. On his way to the quarry carrying the payroll of 20,000 kroner (about £1,200) which he had just collected from the bank, he was attacked and robbed by two men who escaped in a car. This time the murderers were seen. An eye -witness saw Pet- terson go by on his cycle, heard two shots, and saw two men dragging the body of the vic- tim along the road. Then they threw the body into a ditch and drove away. Petterson died f r o m his wounds without recovering con- sciousness. But the eye -witness had noted the number of the car—W-1504. And Police Chief Karl Weimar, checking through the list of missing cars, found one with a similar description, with the number E-4504. May- be they had the number changed, he thought. Playing his hunch, he issued a description of the car to the Press and stated that every garage, private and public, would be searched for this car. A day later the car was found abandoned near Sala—and the licence number had been alter- ed. The repair man who altered the number was traced and his evidence seemed incredible. For it incriminated a highly respected citizen of Sala, a ga- rage -owner named Erik Hed- strom. Hedstrom at first denied any knowledge of the murders, but when a search of his house and garage located the missing au- tomatic carrying his finger- prints, he confessed. This also incriminated a Swedish doctor named Thurneman. He, too, was arrested and confessed. SMUGGLED HIS V. C. The Russian shell landed, its fuse spluttering, on the deck of the British warship. Young Lieut. Charles Lucas unhesita- tingly seized it in both hands and hurled it overboard. A split second later, before it hit the water, the shell ex- ploded. "He deserves a Vii,' com- mented ented the Prince Consort. "But the plain fact is we've no award good enough." And to his wife, Queen Victoria, he outlined his breakfast brainwave for a new decoration for conspicuous bravery. "The highest of all awards," he explained. "And we can name it after you!" "For Valour" In this way, just a hundred years, ago, the Victoria Cross was born. Seven artists submit- ted designs and the Queen selected the Maltese Cross with the inscription, "For Valour," which we now know so well. Since then, 1,347 men have won the V.C., three as recently as the Korean war. It can be won by women, such -as nurses on the battlefield, but no wom- an has ever won it. It can be won by civilians who have vol- unteered against the E..iemy, yet no civilians have gained the award since the Indian Mutiny. Towards the end of World War II there was a flurry in of- ficial dovecotes when King George VI approved 'he award posthumously to a Dane. War Office spokesmen insisted that a foreigner could not win the V.C. As a nineteen -year-old young- ster serving in a tanker, Anders. Lassen switched to the British Army when Denmark fell, though he left his mother and father behind in Copenhagen. Storming three German lake - shore positions in Italy, account- ing for six machine-guns, kill- ing eight of the enemy, Lassen paid for his V.C. with his life. Another Dane who won the Cross in the 'first World War could not accept it until he be- came a naturalized British sub- ject. But the V.C. was once won by a Russian serving with . the Canadian forces, while a German won the V.C. during the Crimean War. Gently the Lassen affair was glossed over. After all, the V.C. was indubitably awarded +^ the American Unknown Soldier. Several V.C.s of tlie 1939-45 war were citizens of the neutral Republic of Ireland. But their home addresses were censored and at least one Irish V.C. smug- gled his decoration home in his shoe in case it should be con- fiscated by the customs. There have been five Negro V.C.s, and twenty-nir Indians gained the honour in the last war alone. In . an action in the Solomons a Fijian corporal was awarded the V.C. after crawl- ing forward under fire to rescue the wounded from an enemy ambush. But the award was posthu- mous as, sadly, one-fourth of all V.C.s have been in the register's history. Sergeant Nigel Leakey wrenched open the turret Of an Italian tank in Abyssinia and shot all the .crew, but he had been dead nearly five years be- fore the famous initials were added to his name. Orphans aged six and seven have trotted up to the Queen at Buckingham Palace to receive the award for their fathers. More happily Major Herbert Le Patourel received posthumous V.C. but came home after being found alive in a prison camp. Believed to be stl" living, though now an old m^-1, there's a V.C. who was struck off the official register back in 1908 for committing a felony. After be - These confessions, made pub- lic at the trial a few weeks later, revealed that Dr. Thurne- man was the real "monster," a man who, though a skilled nerve specialist with a good practice in Stockholm, had an obsession to create the "perfect crime." He had induced Hed- strom to enter into alliance with him, with the idea of carrying out crimes planned and perfect- ed by the doctor. Through his practice Dr. Thurneman got to know Eriks- son, the first victim, and using his hypnotic powers persuaded him to take part in their first planned crime, robbing the dairy at Sala where Eriksson worked. But Eriksson backed out at the last moment, so Dr. Thurne- man "arranged" that Hedstrom and two other men should way- lay and kill Eriksson to silence him. Though their , first robbery plan had misfired, the others were carried out effectively. For Dr. Thurneman and -his ac- complices were responsible for most of the robberies and bur- glaries committed in the Sala area over a period lasting nearly six years. The murder of Mrs. Bloom- qvst was planned when the doc- tor had discovered that she kept valuable jewellery at her house. She was one of Dr, Thurne- man's patients and an easy subject for his hypnotic powers. Each of the five members of this gang had amassed a small fortune. When they had enough, they had planned to break up and leave for America. After a sensational trial, all five men were found guilty' Of murder and were sentenced to life impriso ament — the Maxi- mum penalty in Sweden. But Dr. Thurneman was later found to be insane axed was sent to a lunatic asylum. ing found guilty of housebreak- ing, he went to Dartmoor and took his V.C. to jail with him. Seven such men in all have been struck off the roll for felonies, cowardice or treason, but the medal itself cannot be taken away. Some years ago a V.C. was convicted of murder, and King George V ruled that the man was entitled to have his wish and wear the medal to the scaffold. Fortunately, events decreed otherwise, for the sentenoe was, commuted to life imprisonment. Not long ago thieves stole Flight -Sergeant Aaron's posthu- mous V.C. from his parents' home—won when he landed a bomber 'plane with his face half shot away—but the burglars slipped the medal into the near- est police -station when they realized what they had taken. Yet V.C.s have sometimes sold their medals. One of the first frogmen V.C.s, who came from Belfast, sold his decoration for $225 and found that the cash helped to re -paper the front room as well as provide clothes for the children. "What's the use of a medal when you need money for your family to live?" he demanded„ Nevertheless, the story had a happy ending when the dealer gave the medal back to him and he promised never to part with it again. The dealer's generosity in this can be gauged by the high prices V.C. medals fetch in the sale- room. A Cross won by a Sebas- topol surgeon recently reaped $1200 for the hero's great- neph- ew. A man went along to a Lon- don saleroom prepared to bid up to $75 for the Cross won by his great-uncle as a Crimean mid- shipman. He could hardly believed his ears when the medal was knock- ed down for $300, a compara- tive bargain. Members of the Wood family pooled their savings to buy back Sergeant Harry Wood's medal but they found they had to bid against the Scots Guards and the world's foremost collectors before they secured it for $750. Until recently genuine V.C.s were cast from the bronze of Russian guns captured at the siege of Sebastopol. By Queen Victoria's order several of the cannon were set aside to provide metal for heroes for ever. But the Queen underestimated the number of heroes, and supplies of Sebastopol bronze ran out thirteen years ago. So now gun- metal is supplied by the Royal Mint. A 70 -year-old London crafts- man named Alec Forbes has been casting the crosses for the past fifty years. He has seen the medal won by 16 -year-old boys, by heirs to the peerage and by rag-and-bone men. He has made the Crosses for at least four sets of VC. brothers and knows of three instances where the V.C. was won by father and son. Three men have won it twice over in effect by holding the V.C. and " Bar. On returning to civilian life, strangely enough, few heroes repeat the pattern of bravery by winning other awards for valour. No one is likely to win the V.C. this year. Queen Victoria declared that the V.C. could be given . for supreme courage in. peacetime and five Tommies won it for rescuing shipwrecked companions in a storm. But her son, Edward VII, ruled that the Victoria Cross could be won only in battle. It's one of the few medals, in fact, that we can go on 'hoping won't be won any more! • OUTFIT FOR LOVERS A single Cupid's arrow pierces the "hearts" of these showgirls in Tokyo, Japan, as they display a sort of twin dress for lovers. Tsukiko Akashi, left, and Shako fukakuse ore the "lovers," Each has Oh arm in middle sleeve, �A�