Sfoof and Goodbye

I have greatly enjoyed writing this blog and some of the reactions I have had to it. However, after a year of blogging, I seem to have run out of stories, if not recipes, and have decided to stop here. Also, I am working on a few other projects that take too much of my time and attention, especially the Alix Aymé exhibition that is scheduled to open next spring at The Evergreen Museum and Library of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  I thank all of you who have read my blog and especially those of you who have let me know that you enjoyed it. Perhaps I will begin it again someday.

While looking for recipes that use the allegedly beneficial turmeric, I came across Sfoof, a Lebanese cake that appeared enticing. A beautiful color and sweet, but not too sweet.

 Sfoof also sounds like the noise an object might make while disappearing, and therefore is auditorily appropriate for my final blog.

I have made it several times, varying the ingredients each time. This is my latest and, I think, tastiest version. I served it yesterday afternoon to our friend Cory Maclauchlin who dropped by with his recently completed manuscript: Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Story of A Confederacy of Dunces, which is soon to be published by Da Capo Press. I have just finished reading the beautifully written first chapter and I believe that this will be the serious and masterful biography of Toole for which admirers of his have long been waiting. Kudos to Cory! You can learn more about the book at www.kentoole.blogspot.com

Ingredients

• 1 ½  cups semolina flour
• ½  cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 ½  teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/8  cups white sugar
• 1 cup of milk
• ½  cup vegetable oil
• 1 plus tablespoon of pine nuts and/or pistachio nuts
• 1 tablespoon of Herbsaint, Ricard or Pernod

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Grease a 9 inch round baking pan.

In a small bowl, mix semolina, flour, turmeric and baking powder. Set aside.

In a large bowl, stir milk and sugar until sugar is dissolved. Add flour mixture, oil, Herbsaint or some other licorice-flavored liqueur. Beat with an electric beater at medium speed for a full 5 minutes.

Pour the mixture into a prepared 9 inch round pan. Sprinkle top with nuts. Bake, in a convection oven if possible, at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out dry.

Makes 8 genrous slices.

                                            
                                                    Sfoof ready to be put in the oven

Sfoof ready to disappear

Fusilli with Sausage and Turmeric

After a brutal summer with high temperatures, violent storms, and even an earthquake, mild autumn weather seems to have arrived in Fredericksburg.  Yesterday was our first day in many months that could be considered “a sweater day” (a light sweater, of course).

 With the coming of cooler temperatures, I’d like to write about a good cool weather dish that even looks autumnal, mostly because it makes use of turmeric, the vivid yellow spice found in curries and other Indian dishes.

 Turmeric has been recommended to us by my cousin Stephen Duplantier, a brilliant cook and documentary filmmaker who was honored at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1989 for his films made in Louisiana French, including Vivre Pour Manger, about Cajun cooking. He now lives in Costa Rica and is the editor of Neotropica, an online magazine for American expatriates in Latin America (www.neotropica.info ). Stephen is a strong believer in food that is healthy as well as good-tasting, and he is convinced that turmeric has many benefits.

Turmeric, I’ve learned, is a proven anti-inflammatory and research is currently underway exploring its effectiveness in treating cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and various other disorders.  And if that’s not enough, it also repels ants.

Following Stephen’s advice, I have taken to adding turmeric to soup, chicken salad, rice and pasta, and I like the mildly pungent taste and bright color it gives these dishes.  Recently  I got a little too enthusiastic while sprinkling it in a pot of chicken broth and it turned the broth a threatening yellow of a hue that Van Gogh might have employed in a painting near the end of his troubled life. Worried, I emailed Stephen: “Can one perish from an excess of Turmeric?”    “No,” he replied, “the worst that can happen is you may start to speak English with a Hindi accent and experience an overwhelming desire to read the Bhagavad-Gita.”

Since then I have been more judicious in my use of it. The following is one of my favorite turmeric flavored dishes. Even John, generally not a big fan of pasta, has made approving noises about this one.

One of the main ingredients is Hartmann’s Weisswurst or Bratwurst, found at our local Wegmans supermarket. It is delicious, has no nitrates or nitrites, and is flavored only with spices and lemon juice. I also find at Wegmans the Better Than Bouillon soup base, which provides lots of flavor in a little jar. These are the only two specific items in this recipe that may be hard to find, but adequate substitutes should be fairly easy to locate. I believe the De Cecco pasta is available almost everywhere.

Ingredients:

About 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

4 cups of De Ceccho fusilli pasta (half plain and half spinach)

1 medium red onion, peeled and chopped

1 stalk of celery, chopped

3 or four cloves of garlic minced

1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1 teaspoon of turmeric powder

1 pound package of Hartmann’s Weisswurst or Bratwurst cooked sausages, sliced thin

About two tablespoons of minced seasoning ham

8 ounces of sour cream

1 teaspoon of “Better than Bouillion” (the vegetable variety)

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

A cup of freshly grated Parmigiano

½ cup chopped parsley

Set a large pot of salted water over high heat. When it comes to a rolling boil, dump in the pasta, stirring occasionally to make sure it does not clump. If you are using the De Cecco fusilli, the cooking time is 12 minutes. I always keep a cup of ice water ready to throw into the pasta water when the timer goes off to stop the cooking immediately.

 While the pasta is cooking, sauté the onion, celery, garlic, and pepper in the olive oil in a large saucepan until they are all softened.

 Stir in the turmeric.

 Then add the sliced sausages and the minced ham. Add the Better than Bouillon and continue to sauté and stir for a few minutes, then add the sour cream, while still stirring.

By the time the pasta is ready to drain, the sauce should be ready.

Drain the pasta in a colander and dump it into the pot with the sauce. Mix thoroughly in the pot and then divide between two bowls, Sprinkle half the Parmigiano and parsley on each one. A few turns of a black pepper mill and the pasta is ready to serve.

Makes two generous servings.

De Cecco is my preferred brand of pasta

Hartmann's Bratwurst and Weisswurst have no chemical additives

One teaspoonful of Better Than Bouillon adds a lot of flavor

The sauce in the pot

Ready to eat...

Viola Woodward and "A Mess of Greens"

When we bought our house in Fredericksburg more than a dozen years ago, we inherited a housekeeper who had worked for its previous owners. In a very short time, Viola Woodward did much more than keep our house clean and in good order. She became a great friend, a member of the family, a constant source of amusement and joy. On the days she came to work, the noise of the vacuum cleaner was often drowned out by the sound of laughter. Her generous spirit, her astute and witty observations on life in Fredericksburg, her abiding good sense, made her work days more entertaining than any sitcom on TV.


To celebrate John’s 50th birthday, we decided that we were going to throw a large party. We told Viola, who also worked on the side as a bartender at private parties, that we wanted her to come as guest. But she would not hear of it. She enjoyed her star turn as an entertainer behind the bar too much to be merely among the invitees. So we set up a bar for her on the back deck, under a tent erected for the occasion. And there she became the heart and soul of the party, dispensing drinks and good humor in equal measure.

When Viola and her husband moved to North Carolina a few years ago, we were devastated. We do stay in touch by phone and see her on her occasional visits to her family in Fredericksburg.

When I had a double knee replacement in 2007, Viola came up to help John look after me during my recovery. Her company was extremely therapeutic, and she cooked some wonderful meals for me while she was here. Her specialty was “a mess of greens.”  Here is my version, inspired by her recipe:

1 lb of kale, chopped and washed

1 tablespoon of cooking oil

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Four cloves of garlic, sliced

2 tablespoons (more or less) of country ham bits

1 teaspoon of salt and about ¼ teaspoon of freshly ground pepper

Grated ginger (optional)

1 cup of chicken broth

In a pot large enough to hold the pound of chopped kale, pour a tablespoon of cooking oil, and over medium heat, sauté the ham and sliced garlic until the garlic is lightly browned. Add one cup of chicken broth and the kale, salt and pepper. Reduce the heat and simmer until kale is tender (20-25 minutes. Drain, saving the “pot liquor” for a soup.  Stir in the olive oil and optional ginger. Serve.

                            Viola presiding at the bar, dispensing drinks and good humor

Pasta For One (Or More)

              

The Fleshpots of the East

Chicken Fricassee (for Jane Davies)

One Easter before I was born, my father gave my sisters a pair of baby chicks that he had named, ominously for them,  Fricassee and Gumbo. According to my sister Lorraine, Gumbo was, alas, soon petted to death. But Fricassee lived to be a Methuselah among chickens.  She was still alive when I arrived a few years later and I remember her well.

When I was an infant and Fricassee was still a fairly young hen, our family lived in a small frame house on Brashear Street, near the college in Lafayette, Louisiana, where my father was  a professor of agriculture. It was an exceedingly quiet neighborhood and there was so little traffic that Fricassee was allowed to stay unsupervised in the front yard. According to Lorraine, Fricassee soon struck up a friendship with Connie, a neighbor’s pet duck on the other side of the street. Lorraine tells me that every morning Fricassee would cross the street to get her friend Connie and then accompany her back to our yard where they would spend the day clucking and quacking and scratching for bugs. At sunset, Fricassee would take Connie back to her yard, and then return home to the pen behind the house where she slept each night.

When my father became Dean of Agriculture, we moved from Brashear Street to the college farm.  Fricassee came with us and led a privileged life among the other barnyard fowl.  A few years later, when my father was named president of the college, we moved from the farm to the newly-constructed President’s House on the campus.  It was not a suitable place, my mother decided, for a pet chicken. She asked Mr. Landry, the grocer, if he would mind keeping Fricassee in his chicken coop. Mr. Landry said that would be fine.  We often accompanied Mother to Landry’s Grocery on Cherry Street and always went to the coop behind the store to say hi to Fricassee.  This continued for some time until the Saturday my mother telephoned Mr. Landry to order a chicken for our Sunday dinner.  The chicken he sent was Fricassee. Mother, fortunately, came out the back door just as Gus, our servant, was about to wring Fricassee’s neck. Mother screamed and stopped the execution.  Fricassee was not sent back to Mr. Landry. A pen was found and she lived out the rest of her life, not in the Groves, but in the bushes of Academe in our back yard.

At least once a week, we had for lunch (our main meal) chicken fricassee made from some fowl less fortunate than Fricassee.

It was prepared by our diminutive cook, Lizzie Pillet, who was descended from a Pygmy tribe. She was tiny, but a wonderful cook who every day brought to the table delicious dishes that, I’m afraid, we probably took for granted.

I still love chicken fricassee and though I have it less often than when Lizzie prepared it, I do make it from time to time and serve it, as it was always served, over boiled long grain rice.

Here is my recipe:

Large pie pan

Dutch oven

Heat oven to 350 degrees

4 large organic chicken thighs with skin and bone

2 tablespoons of olive oil

4 tablespoons of flour mixed with 1 teaspoon of salt and twelve    turns of freshly ground pepper in the large pie pan

Another 2 tablespoons of flour for browning

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and roughly chopped

2 stalks of celery, roughly chopped

1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

¼ cup of minced seasoning ham

¼ teaspoon of red curry powder

2 bay leaves

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

½ cup of chopped parsley

1 cup of torn basil leaves

About 1 cup and a half of organic chicken stock, with more in reserve.

Dry the chicken thighs and toss in the flour mixture until well-coated.

Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.

Brown the chicken thighs in the olive oil and then set aside.

Sauté the onion, celery and jalapeno pepper in the olive oil until they are softened.

Remove vegetables, lower heat  and add two tablespoons of flour to the Dutch oven and lightly brown, being very careful not to burn the flour.

Put chicken thighs and minced ham back in the Dutch oven and add enough of the chicken stock to almost cover the chicken.

Add the remaining ingredients and put into a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes, or until tender, checking from time to time to make sure there is enough cooking liquid.

Serve over boiled long-grain rice. Accompany with a dry white wine like sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio.

Chicken thighs in flour mixture

Minced jalapeno

Chopped seasoning ham

Chicken Fricassee in the Dutch oven

Served over boiled long grain rice

A Perfect Caesar Salad

Recently we spent a week in the lovely Connecticut town of Kent and while there had a number of meals, both lunch and dinner, at a much-loved Kent institution: The Fife N’Drum. (www.fifendrum.com)

It is hard to decide which to praise more: the food or the ambience. Both are memorable. The ambience is warm, unpretentious, convivial, and the food is consistently excellent.

 

The guiding spirit of the restaurant is dapper Dolph Traymon who owns the restaurant with his elegant and welcoming wife, Audrey.

In 1973, Dolph retired from his successful career as a staff pianist for A.B.C. and as an accompanist for such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Joel Gray, to open with Audrey a restaurant that would not only serve good food, but also become his own personal concert hall. Today, at age 92, Dolph still entertains the diners six days and six nights a week with beautifully polished performances on the restaurant’s two Steinway grands.

We had five meals at the Fife n’Drum and therefore were able to have a real sampling of the menu. Everything was good, but the dishes we liked best were the half duck flambé and the tenderloin au poivre.  And especially the Caesar Salad for two with which we began almost every meal.

 

In this age when the deconstructed Caesar – several unmolested leaves of romaine lettuce artfully arranged on a plate with an anchovy and a few croutons – often appears without warning in restaurants that should know better, the classic version of the Fife n’Drum is both delicious and reassuring.

 

Dolph and Audrey’s daughter, Elissa Potts, who does a superb job of managing (“stage managing” would perhaps be a more accurate description)  the restaurant and making sure that the guests are as coddled as the egg yolk in the Caesar Salad, generously gave me a copy of the recipe, and I tried it last night with a good result. My Caesar lacked only the theatrical flair of the table-side preparation by one of the skilled staff.

We had our last meal at the Fife n’Drum on a Sunday evening and spotted Daniel Boulud, one of the most famous chefs in the world, sitting quietly at the bar enjoying his dinner. What better endorsement could a restaurant have?

Here is the Fife n’Drum’s Caesar:

A large wooden bowl

4-6 anchovies or the equivalent of anchovy paste

½ crushed clove of garlic

½ teaspoon of dry mustard

10 turns of freshly ground pepper

Mash all to a paste, then add

1 coddled egg yoke*

1 tablespoon of Lee & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce

¼ cup of good olive oil

2-3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar

Mix together to emulsify

Then add to the bowl:

1 head of romaine washed and chopped

1 cup of croutons**

10 more turns of freshly ground black pepper

Toss together until all the romaine is well coated

*I dropped a fresh organic egg in boiling water for one minute before separating the yoke from the white.

**Next time I may make croutons from scratch, but last night I used store-bought plain croutons tossed in olive oil with a clove of crushed garlic and a pinch of salt in a skillet over a medium flame until they were crisp and slightly brown. On second thought, they were so good that next time I may not attack a day-old baguette, as the recipe for croutons I have calls for me to do. What a bother, not to mention all those crumbs.

                     Waiter Tino Santiago and his tableside creations

                             The Fife n’Drum Caesar

                          Tino preparing the duck flambé

Cous Cous Salad

So far, all of the recipes in this blog come from past meals. This one, however, I have just finished making and it is going to be served tonight when we have four guests coming to dinner. It is  baking hot in Fredericksburg (but not the soggy, oppressive heat I remember from my native Louisiana…when people in Virginia complain about the summer heat and humidity, I always think; “If they only knew!”) So we are having a cold buffet.

The Cous Cous salad is going to be one dish of a meal that will also include chicken salad and shrimp salad, served with a Sauvignon Blanc, and followed by a chocolate mousse from our cherished Wegmans. I couldn’t make a better one.

Ingredients:

20 ounces  of plain Cous Cous

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 teaspoon of salt

4 cups of water

Put water, oil, and salt in a large pot and bring to a boil

Add Cous Cous, turn off heat and cover.

Let sit for five minutes then uncover and gently fluff with a fork, breaking up all lumps

 Empty into a very large bowl.

Then add and mix in:

 1 medium zucchini, chopped and blanched in boiling salted water for one minute

6 Campari tomatoes, quartered and seeded (or cherry tomatoes, halved)

½ small  jalapeno, finely diced

½ cup of finely chopped fresh herbs: chives, parsley, tarragon, basil and mint

1 can of whole water chestnuts, drained and halved

¼ cup of pine nuts

¼ cup peeled and salted pistachio nuts

¼ cup roughly chopped roasted, salted almonds

Chopped green onion tops

One small sweet red pepper, seeded and minced

Juice of one lemon

¼ teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper

Add extra olive oil if the salad seems too dry

Let chill in fridge for at least four hours.

Serves six as a side dish (I hope)

                             The finished Cous Cous Salad

Taking a Brief Break

I will not be making a posting this Saturday. I have temporarily run out of recipes and stories. And I am trying to meet the deadline for the translation I am doing of the French text for the book on Alix Aymé that Somogy is publishing early next year. At the moment I have time for little else.  But I hope to start posting again on the first weekend in July.  I hope you will visit the blog then!

For more information about Alix Aymé and the upcoming exhibition at the Evergreen Museum and Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, visit our web site:  http://www.fc-fineart.com/

My Omelet

I knew two young Brazilian artists when I lived in Paris in the late 1960s, both named after famous composers: Mozart Pela and Rossini Perez. Of the two, Rossini was the more serious and productive artist. He lived in a remarkable maze of a studio that he had constructed in a dilapidated building at Place de la Bastille where the new Paris Opéra now stands. He gave seductive, long-lasting, very laid-back parties with delicious food, wine, sambas, bossa novas, and beautiful people of several different sexes. I suspect the food was heavily laced with hashish because his guests were always extremely relaxed and happy. We sat around on comfortable sofas and low chairs, ate, drank, and sank into a mood of joyful calm.  However, Rossini was also a hard-working artist, a painter and print-maker, whose works are in important collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was given a major commission by the Brazilian government and many of his pieces adorn buildings in the capital city of Brasilia.

Mozart, on the other hand, was something of a slacker who seemed to live in a permanent state of near-exhaustion. A mutual friend who knew him well told me that he only produced about one painting a year and devoted most of his energy to his real passion: scouring flea markets for cheap ceramic vases from the 1940s, of which he had amassed an enormous collection.

I had first heard of him when I was living in Florence and my close friend, Carl Selph, who was planning a vacation in Austria, was asked by a cranky American art historian named Robert Wolf if he could possibly give Mozart a ride to Salzburg. Unfortunately, this did not fit into Carl’s plan, and I heard no more about the Brazilian Mozart until I met him a few years later through a mutual friend in Paris.

Mozart once invited me to dinner at his apartment in a public housing project (HLM) in a distant and dodgy arrondissement, and on the appointed evening, at the appointed hour, I showed up at the door of the sinister looking building at the same time as the other invited guest: Lotte Eisner, a great authority on German Expressionist Cinema, whom I knew by sight from the Paris Cinémathèque.

The first year I worked in Paris, I lived almost opposite the Palais de Chaillot where the Cinémathèque was then located, and spent many pleasant hours there. It provided cheap and interesting entertainment, and I was somewhat starved for movies because I had been living in Florence which was then a kind of cinematic backwater and where all American movies were dubbed into Italian, often hilariously so. Among the films I had seen there were Chi Ha Paura di Virginia Woolf? and Che Fine Ha Fatto Baby Jane? And  I loved the re-release of Gone With Wind - Via Col Vento - with a scene in which Mammy had to say “Avanti, avanti, Signorina Rossella!.” instead of “Hurry, hurry Miss Scarlett!” I don’t know how she managed to get it all out, and with a southern accent to boot.

On weekends, I would frequently go to the two p.m. feature at the Cinémathèque, then the four p.m. feature, go home to have a bite of dinner, and then return for the eight p.m. feature, and when there was something really good on, stay for the ten p.m. feature. Between showings, while waiting in the lobby, I often saw the Holy Trinity of the Cinémathèque chatting together in the middle of a blue cloud of Gauloise smoke: Henri Langlois, its founder, a passionate cinephile who saved thousands and thousands of films; his portly mistress, Mary Meerson, and tiny, gnarled Lotte Eisner, absorbed in conversation.

Lotte, in addition to being a critic and historian, was also the Chief Archivist of the Cinémathèque, the one who brought order to Langlois’s creative disorder. Everyone knew these three personages and I had seen Lotte many, many times, but had never spoken to her until we found ourselves on the doorstep of Mozart Pela’s building, waiting for our host to appear.  We rang the bell and waited and waited and waited. We sat down on the stoop and began to chat. Lotte theorized that Mozart was probably in the flat, but felt too fatigued to entertain, so was ignoring the bell. Finally we gave up and decided to leave. I asked Lotte if I might treat her to a meal if we could find an eating place somewhere nearby and she said that sounded like a good idea. We made our way out of the project toward a lighted street and found an unpromising looking brasserie.  By that time we were both famished. And that is probably why the omelet I ordered seemed the best I had ever eaten. It was fluffy and light, golden brown on the outside and smooth and creamy on the inside.  We had a delightful evening. And when I accompanied Lotte back to the Métro, she invited me to come for tea at her flat in Neuilly the following Sunday, an invitation I was happy to accept.

On Sunday, when I left my flat in the Marais, a bustling neighborhood with many shops, I almost stopped at a florist to buy some flowers for Lotte, but then decided that I would probably be able to find a bouquet once the Métro had taken me to Neuilly. As soon as I got to her neighborhood, I realized I had made a mistake. This part of Neuilly was strictly residential, there was not a shop to be found, and the streets were deserted. I felt as if I had entered a de Chirico painting as I walked  in the bright sunshine along walls with shut windows and closed doors and not a soul in sight until I noticed a young couple ahead of me, walking in the same direction. I saw them stop, look in a window, then disappear into a door. It was a fruit vendor’s shop, the only thing open on the entire street, and in the window was an attractive display of pineapples. “Good,” I thought, “I’ll buy Lotte a pineapple instead of flowers.” I stood behind the young couple and saw that they also were buying a pineapple. They paid and left with their purchase, and then I did the same.  I was about a dozen paces behind them as we bore our pineapples through the void of a silent Sunday afternoon in Neuilly. Things were getting a little surreal.  They stopped and rang a bell.  As I approached I realized that they had stopped at the same address I was going to. The door buzzed and we entered together.” “Are you going to see Lotte?” the man asked in a German accent. “Yes,” I said. “I hope she‘s fond of pineapples.” Then Werner Herzog introduced himself and his wife.

The talk over tea that afternoon was, of course, all about movies, and I mostly just listened. It was 1968 or 69 and Herzog was at the beginning of his career. Later I learned what a great influence Lotte had on his filmmaking and how devoted he was to her. In 1974, when she was dangerously ill, he walked from Munich to Paris to show his faith that she would recover, which she did. He published a diary of the trip, On Walking in Ice  is the title of the English translation. Lotte is also the voice from the whirlwind in his 1974 masterpiece Aguirre – The Wrath of God.

Over the years, I have perfected my omelet making technique and on the mornings when I get it right, I think my omelet is probably just as good as the one I devoured with Lotte in that louche corner of Paris so many years ago.

I start with an eight-inch non-stick skillet and about a teaspoon of olive oil (which I have come to prefer to butter) over medium-high heat. I break into a bowl two organic eggs (that, courtesy of our butcher, we get from local hens),  add a splash of tap water, a large pinch of salt, a bit of freshly ground pepper, and beat vigorously with a fork. . When the eggs are thoroughly mixed and well-aerated and the oil is hot, I dump them in the skillet and turn down the heat to low. I toss in some fresh chopped chives, parsley, and tarragon from our garden, sprinkle a heaping tablespoon of shredded gruyère on top and wait until I see that the underside of the omelet has begun to turn a light golden color. Then with a very wide spatula I gently fold it over, and over once again, until it actually looks like an omelet. Another couple of minutes and it is ready to serve.

Chopped herbs from the garden

   Tools and ingredients

                                    The mixture in the skillet

                                                     The first fold-over

Ready to be eaten

   

Chicken Salad for Bad Southern Belles

“Good Southern belles never put dark meat in their chicken salad…”  wrote Marilyn Schwartz in her classic guide to manners below the Mason/Dixon Line: The Southern Belle Primer, or Why Princess Margaret Will Never Be a Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Southern belles who follow this archaic rule (that smacks of racism) don’t know what they are missing. I think the best chicken salads are made with dark meat. Here is my recipe for chicken salad that also contains several other ingredients that once might have kept a Southern belle from receiving an invitation to join the Junior League.

The day before, or at least an hour before:

Put in a medium saucepan:

1 package of skinless, boneless chicken thighs

1 large carrot, roughly chopped

1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped

1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon salt

Enough chicken stock to cover all

Poach over a medium-low heat until the chicken breasts are cooked (about 20 minutes).

Reserve liquid for later use and put chicken thighs in a covered bowl in the refrigerator to chill.


1 small red onion

Peel and chop into small pieces and then put in a jar and cover with balsamic vinegar. Put into refrigerator to marinate.


Next day, or at least an hour later:

The chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 stalk of celery, chopped

¾ cup of chopped fennel bulb

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon of fresh chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon of fresh chopped dill

1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1 can of whole water chestnuts

½ cup of roasted, lightly salted almonds

½ cup of shelled pistachio nuts

2 tablespoons of the marinated chopped red onions

Five or six bread & butter pickles, chopped

Five or six cornichons, chopped

½ teaspoon of red curry powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon of ground black pepper

2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, preferably Hellman’s (under no circumstances substitute Miracle Whip. For such a gaucherie you would be given a stern rebuke by Ms. Schwartz)

Thoroughly combine all the above ingredients in a large bowl. The salad is better if it is put in the fridge for an hour or so to allow the flavors “to marry.” If you don’t have time for this, stall for as long as you can before serving to let the flavors at least co-habit for a while.

I like to serve the salad on a bed of arugula lightly dressed with a vinaigrette.

Serves 3 or 4

My Secret Recipe for a Wicked Leek Soup

A friend who has tried this says that the recipe is actually much better than the pun that inspired it.

Ingredients:



2 medium leeks, thoroughly washed and chopped, both white and green parts

½ fennel bulb, chopped

1 stalk of celery, chopped

1 medium white potato, peeled, thinly sliced and diced

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced

1 cup of Italian parsley, chopped

1 medium jalapeño pepper, -seeded and minced

1 stick of unsalted butter

2 tablespoons of flour

1 teaspoon of sea salt

½ teaspoon of ground black pepper

1 teaspoon of red curry powder

32 fluid ounces of chicken stock



Gently melt the butter in a large saucepan.

Add the flour and stir over a low flame until it begins to bubble and lightly color.

Add the other ingredients and stir until the vegetables have softened.

Add chicken stock and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or until all the vegetables are very tender.

Let cool.

Remove a little more than half the soup and liquefy it in a blender.

Pour back into the rest of the soup, stir over low heat and bring to a simmer. Serve.


About 4 generous servings

Definitely Not Peggy Guggenheim’s Hungarian Goulash

When I lived in Florence in the 1960s, I heard colorful stories about the art collector Peggy Guggenheim, but I never met her. Most of the stories were told me by my friend Count Francesco Guicciardini who knew Peggy well and on his trips to Venice sometimes stayed with her at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal.

It was common knowledge that Ms. Guggenheim collected lovers as passionately as she collected art. According to one of her biographers, Peggy and her younger sister, Hazel, competed to see who could sleep with the most men. When Peggy got to one thousand they stopped counting and she was declared the winner. Hazel is said to have commented that the only reason she lost was that Peggy was a few years older and therefore had a head start.

One of the stories that Francesco told me about his friend is perhaps apocryphal, but it seems to have had Peggy’s blessing. She owned a life-sized bronze statue by Marino Marini of a horse and nude rider that could be seen from the Grand Canal. Allegedly, the sculpture came with several detachable erect male members of varying sizes. Francesco said that whenever Peggy heard that the Archbishop of Venice was going to be passing in his barge in front of her Palazzo, she always attached the largest one.

In the late 1960s, while on a trip to Venice, I was able to visit her collection which by that time was open to the public. On the second floor of the palazzo, a dumpy looking woman dressed like a maid in a shapeless blue dress was sitting at a table selling catalogues. When I stopped to buy one, she put down a card on which she had been scribbling something. I glanced down and saw that it was a recipe for Hungarian Goulash. While she was giving me my change, I suddenly realized that it was Peggy herself looking like anything but a glamorous seductress. Sensing that it might not be wise to acknowledge that I had recognized her, I took my change and the catalogue and went to look at the impressive art.

More than a decade later, in the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Arts Quarterly, I read an amusing article about life in Peggy’s palazzo written by one of her former curators. He mentioned that once when the Hungarian Ambassador was invited to dinner, Peggy made a Hungarian Goulash that was almost inedible and made everyone ill. Was it from the recipe I had a glimpse of? Probably.

A few days ago I attempted my first goulash, the recipe an amalgam of several I found on the Internet. It was simple to make and turned out very well. At the very least, it was tasty and did not make either John or me ill.

Here it is:

Ingredients:

1 pound of beef chunks for stew

Flour for coating beef

Enough Canola oil to coat the bottom of a large pot

1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced

2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and minced

1 small Jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced

About 1 ½ cups of low sodium chicken broth

1 teaspoon of good paprika

1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce

1 quarter cup of catsup

1 tablespoon of raw sugar

¼ teaspoon of dry mustard

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

¼ cup chopped parsley for garnish

8 ounces of sour cream



For dumplings:

6 tablespoons of flour

1 well beaten egg

1/8 teaspoon of salt

Coat beef with flour and brown in a large pot over a medium high frame, tossing frequently to keep the meat from burning.

When well browned, remove meat and set aside.

Toss sliced onions, garlic and Jalapeño pepper in the pot until the onions begin to turn golden. Add more oil if needed.

Return beef to the pot and add paprika, Worcestershire sauce, catsup, raw sugar, dry mustard, bay leaf, salt and pepper.

Let simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours, until beef is very tender, adding more stock if necessary.

Before the stew has finished cooking, combine in a bowl the beaten egg, flour and salt. Let the mixture sit for at least half an hour.

Add the dumpling mixture to the stew one spoonful at a time and let simmer for about five minutes.

Ladle the stew and dumplings into two bowls, garnish with parsley, add a generous dollop of sour cream and serve.

Serves two.

John and Barbara Suval’s Grilled Lamb

John Suval, a third-generation dealer in rare porcelain and a celebrated carnivore, and his wife Barbara, a charming and generous hostess and excellent cook, live in one of the most beautiful and historic 18th century houses in Fredericksburg. Wellford House on Caroline Street was built in 1785 by Dr. Robert Wellford, a close friend of George Washington. Were General Washington to stop by today, he would probably feel very much at home in a house that is beautifully furnished with period antiques and a gorgeous selection of Chinese and China Trade porcelain and early British and European ceramics.

We are fortunate that because of our close friendship with John and Barbara, Wellford House is the place we dine most often after our own home. To say that we have never had a bad meal there is an understatement. This is their recipe for grilled lamb that we have often enjoyed. It is a collaborative effort: Barbara buys and prepares the lamb; John grills it.

1  five-pound leg of lamb

4 tablespoons of lemon or lime juice

3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

3 tablespoons of soy sauce

3 tablespoons of Dijon style or other fine mustard

3 or 4 cloves of garlic, finely minced

2 tablespoons of brown sugar

A dash of Tabasco sauce


Ask the butcher to de-bone and butterfly the lamb.

Combine and whisk together the other ingredients in a bowl until they are well blended.

Using paper towels, pat the lamb until it is dry, and then brush the sauce generously over it.

Place the lamb in a large bowl or a zip-lock bag and let marinate in the refrigerator for up to two days.

The lamb is best prepared over coals on an outdoor grill.

When the coals are hot, place the lamb on the grill and let cook for about 40 minutes, turning it occasionally and basting with what is left of the sauce.

When lamb is done, remove it from the grill to a large platter and let it rest for five or ten minutes. Carve on the slant and serve.

Serves four

La Salade de la Marquise de Sevigné

Café Le Sevigné on a sunny April afternoon

In the late 1960s, I lived for a time in the Marais, a section of Paris that had not yet become fashionable, where many buildings were shabby and rents were cheap. I had a tiny apartment with a huge casement window overlooking the garden of the Hôtel Lamoignon and the Musée Carnavalet. Almost everything I could see from my window, except for the pigeons, dated from the 17th century.

In the spring and summer, every night precisely at nine, the garden of the Hôtel Lamoignon was beautifully illuminated. Once, when I was to be traveling in Germany, I lent the apartment to some friends from England. We spent one night together in the apartment before I left on my trip. After an early dinner somewhere, we returned to the apartment. At one minute before nine, I opened the window, picked up the phone, and asked an imaginary operator to connect me with the gardener. I paused for a second, then said: “Vous-pouvez illuminer le jardin maintenant.” I put the phone down and the lights in the garden magically came on. My friends were enormously impressed… until they realized that the lights came on every night at nine.

A few blocks from my apartment, on the corner of the rue Payenne and the rue du Parc Royal, was a small hotel with a family style restaurant that served good, inexpensive food to its customers who sat together, family style, at several large round tables. One day I was having lunch there with my friends Jean and Gino and a rich and stylish Lesbian from Omaha named Marilyn (a.k.a. “Superdike”). Marilyn drove a Porsche and wore lots of leather, all of it Gucci. She also had an incredibly filthy mouth. It was the Sixties and many women were beginning to use four-letter words in public, something my rather genteel southern upbringing had not prepared me for.

Gino and Marilyn were having a discussion laced with expletives about a subject I will not mention. Across the table from us sat an elderly and elegant woman, her jowls gently lifted by a silk ribbon to which was attached a small cameo. One could see the ghost of great beauty in her features. Just as I was hoping that she did not understand English, she turned to me and said with a crisp English accent: “May I have the vinegar, please?”

“Are you English?” I asked as I handed her the vinegar, already knowing the answer. “Yes,” she said, “but I have been in Paris for a very long time. I came over to dance in the Folies Bergère just after 1900. Paris was so wonderful then, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was!

I was also a model. I modeled for Boldini and Degas…quel salaud, ce Degas! … which roughly translates: “Degas, that bastard!” …at this point I stopped worrying about her overhearing Marilyn and Gino’s obscene conversation. She had obviously heard it all.

“Life in Paris was magical,” she continued, “until, of course, the First World War came along and ruined everything. It was horrible, and I was desperate. I didn’t have a sou! I had to do something…so I went to Rio de Janeiro…I met a very nice man there who told me: ‘If you want to get back to Europe, don’t let them buy you anything but champagne’…I followed his advice and I developed quite a taste for it…eventually, I did get back to Paris, and I still love champagne…a lovely man I knew used to send me a case of it every year. That was long ago.” She sighed and looked wistful. Then brightening a bit, added: “I still have some of the drawings that Boldini did of me. Perhaps someday I’ll show them to you.”

Alas, I never saw her again. A few years later, at a huge Degas exhibition at the Met, when I came upon some of the loose drawings of dancers Degas made toward the end of his life, I wondered if she might have been one of them.

L’Hôtel du Parc Royal has disappeared and in its place is the Café Le Sevigné which describes itself as a “Bar-Brasserie-Salon de thé.” It is one of our favorite places for lunch in Paris and we have become very friendly with its charming patron, Philippe. We discovered it one hot spring afternoon when we stopped in for a cold beer after visiting the Musée Picasso, just around the corner. We happened to be in the Marais again the next day, and when we went to Le Sevigné a second time, Philippe was so pleased to see us that he insisted on buying us a round of drinks.

I told him the story of the lunch I had had in the same room, now much changed, forty years before, and he was intrigued by it. He mentions it every time we eat there, and he treats me with great respect as a relic of his bar’s historic past. He also always treats us to at least one round of free drinks.

Our usual lunch there is one of the several large salades composées on the menu. Our favorite is La Salade de la Marquise de Sevigné.

It is « composed » of the following ingredients:


About half a dozen leaves of butter lettuce

Two thin slices of a tart green apple covered with thin slices of foie gras

Four thin slices of Jambon de Parme

Two thick slices of tomato

The above ingredients are arranged on a plate, dressed with a light vinaigrette and topped with a generous serving of still warm fried chicken gizzards. Washed down with a large schooner of Leffe Brun, a brown Belgian beer, and accompanied by several chunks of a good baguette, it makes a lovely lunch on a warm Parisian afternoon.

                               La Salade de la Marquise de Sevigné

                               Philippe and I at Café Le Sevigné

 Café Le Sevigné, on the corner of the rue Payenne and the rue du Parc Royal

                     Square du Parc Royal, across the street from Café Le Sevigné



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