The Famous and the Food (3)

S 43 Sikorsky (1935)

Zie de eerste aflevering hier (alle links hier in een nieuw venster)


Howard Hughes

Zie Wiki hier


A former Howard Hughes chef says the late billionaire recluse was as eccentric about food as he was about his privacy... [Garcy G.] Reich, who as Hugh's personal chef for nine years, said the billionaire's favorite food was tenderloin filet and a beef stroganoff-type dish. Reich said he also enjoyed fudge. He said Hughes existed at times on fudge, milk and water. The chef said Hughes once sent him a four-page memo on how to pick a can of peaches from the shelf, how to open the can and which peach to select. Reich, who cooked at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, said Hughes stuck to a regimented diet of the same foods, changing the menu about every four months. When Hughes moved to Las Vegas, Reich stayed in Los Angeles but continued to cut steaks for the recluse, who had them flown to Nevada. He said Hughes demanded everything be prepared exactly as he instructed and instantly detected any variation, such as an unwashed cutting board or too much seasoning. Reich said that while Hughes was precise about how his meals were prepared, he didn't have someone taste his food before he ate it. The chef said Hughes demanded that all utensils used in cooking be sterilized. Reich was Hughes' chef from 1958 to 1967, while the billionaire lived in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Boeing 307 Stratoliner (1938)
Het eerste vliegtuig met een drukcabine

Obsessed by the most trivial details, Howard kept strict control of his food and that of his wife. This preoccupation with his food and its preparation had begun decades earlier when, as a child, he sat in his mother's kitchen and watched her scrub and scald and scour not jut the pots and pans, but the meat and vegetables as well. So the adult Howard feared that hordes of germs could attack him through ill-prepared nutrients. If Hughes had been a Renaissance prince instead of a modern-day tycoon, he would have undoubtedly procured a taster. Instead, he spent weeks devising ways to insure that his meals were sanitary and cooked to exact specifications... Howard's obsessive-compulsive disorder produced full-blown food fetishes. Suddenly, he was fixated on the minutes it took to open a can in a sterile manner, the exact thickness of roast beef, the shapes of stew vegetables, the precise number of chocolate chips in a batch of the 'germ-free' cookies, and the conditions of the vats that Kellogg's used to prepare his favorite breakfast cereal...When he ordered his special beef stew, the vegetables had to be pared into perfect half-inch squares, with 'each and every corner cut off at a precise forty-five-degree angle.' He kept a slide ruler on his TV table to measure any suspiciously inexact pea or carrot. A plate of his chocolate chip cookies had to have a precise number of chips per dozen. And Hughes could gauge the amount just by balancing the cookies in one hand. Too few or too may chips and the cookies were rushed back to the crestfallen chef. He even devised an exact way of folding the chips into the batter 'so that they would not be bruised.'...There were distinct rules for preparation and delivery of room service orders, which were prepared by Howard's staff of chefs, not the [Beverly Hills] Hotel staff.

XF 11 waarmee hij op een woonwijk is gecrashed (1943)

Gary G. Reich, who worked as a chef for Howard Hughes, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Walt Disney's theme parks, has died at the age of 62...Reich...worked as Hughes' personal chef for nine years...While working at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Reich once fixed scrambled eggs and bacon for Britain's Princess Margaret. She was so impressed that she recommended him to the White House, where he was chef to Johnson but quit only after a few months. He described Johnson's tastes as unadventurous, although he was a 'great steak eater.' He became chef at Disneyland in California in 1969 and moved to Orlando in 1970 for the opening of Walt Disney World the following year. Reich was born in Debrecen, Hungary, and said he began cooking at the age of 9. Asked once if he had a specialty, Reich said, 'Whatever I am preparing at the time.

H4 Hercules (1947)

Ook wel The Spruce Goose, sparrenhouten gans (maar het was berk)

Volgende aflevering zie hier