For this installment of their food-and-film feature, a Mobile couple offered a Southern summertime classic at the table and, on the screen, a story that reached well beyond baseball. The pairing balanced the comforts of home cooking with a film the writers found both uplifting and sobering.
Congealed chicken salad with grilled cheese
The recipe was a molded, chilled chicken salad well suited to a hot day. It began with four chopped, salted chicken breasts, two chopped hard-boiled eggs, a cup of chopped stuffed olives, a teaspoon of chopped onion or chives and three-quarters of a cup of minced celery.
An envelope of gelatin, softened in cold water and then dissolved over hot water, was stirred gradually into two cups of mayonnaise, and that mixture was folded into the chicken. Poured into a casserole dish and refrigerated overnight, or at least an hour or two, it set into a dish the couple said served eight generously. They recommended pairing it with grilled cheese and pronounced it good eating, especially in summer, earning two thumbs up.
The feature presentation: 42
The film was 42, the story of Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the modern major leagues. The writers called it uplifting and painful at once, a reminder that not so long ago the country was rigidly divided, with returning black veterans of World War II treated as second-class citizens under a separate-but-equal system.
Robinson, played by Chadwick Boseman, comes home from the war wanting only to play ball and signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers after general manager Branch Rickey, portrayed by Harrison Ford, chooses him to break the color line. Rickey warns him that he will have to turn the other cheek to succeed, and Robinson accepts the difficult, dangerous path toward baseball immortality.
The couple praised the acting and direction throughout, singling out Boseman and Ford and noting a strong supporting cast. It was, they concluded, a movie worth watching: a great story about a great man, well acted, well directed and entertaining to the end. They gave it two thumbs up, closing the column on a note of genuine admiration for a film that used the national pastime to tell a larger American story.